Casablanca: A Hollywood Classic

Containing some of Hollywood's most famous one-liners, "Heres looking at you kid"and "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", Casablanca is a love story and a drama that takes place in Morocco during the rise of World War II. Famous actor, Humphrey Bogart plays Rick, an American entrepreneur with a mysterious past who owns the popular hangout Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca. The regulars at this night club consist of French natives who are looking to flee the Nazi's and go to America. Many of the refugees seek Rick out for help, but he seems to be a strong believer of everyone for themselves. Things change though when a long lost lover resurfaces in Casablanca looking to escape the Nazi Regime. He is forced to decide between "love and virtue". This movie will sweep you off your feet as it tells the story of love and war musically accompanied by romantic oldies. It will leave you craving more.

This movie warms my heart. It is such a typical Hollywood love story, yet so well done. I love the old fashion, black and white feel that this movie has, especially its warm lighting on the characters faces. They look so wistful and young. In my opinion, classics like this movie create the best escape for the audience. You can't help but get lost in the eyes of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The critics are right, Casablanca is definitely one of the best classics of all time.

Editing on Movement makes Bonnie and Clyde a Must See

Like most gangster movies, Bonnie and Clyde is full of action, car chases, criminals, and machines guns, but this movie would not be nearly as entertaining without the editors magic. This films rhythmic editing is what sets the pace and determines how quickly or slowly cuts are made (Corrigan and White 139). In Bonnie and Clyde movement or stillness is the key editing tool to creating the action and general speed of the film. A perfect example of editing on movement is the police car chase, right after the Barrow Brothers rob a bank in a town right outside of Oklahoma. The pace changes from the silent, slower cuts of Clyde, Buck Barrow, and Bonnie robbing the bank, to a wild police chase. It begins when the alarm sounds in the bank and the scene cuts to a reaction shot of Buck's wife screaming for Buck to get into the car. As Bonnie and Clyde pile into the moving car the scene quickly cuts again to four police cars speeding around the corner and shoots being fired. The speed of the cuts build as the camera alternates from the police to the gang driving across dirt roads and wide open fields. Then, unexpectedly, the shot intercuts to a parallel action of interviews with the witnesses from the bank robbery (141). These four continuous intercuts creates the "stop-and-go" feel to this specific scene and changes the fast paced rhythm of the police chase to an intermittent, slower rhythm (141). After these crosscuts occur the police chase finally ends as the closest police car to the gangs car flips over and Bonnie, Clyde, C.W. Moss, Buck and his wife safely cross over the boarder into Oklahoma. Without the rhythmic editing in this scene the intensity of the chase would not be evident.

Throughout the police chase I found my heartbeat increase in speed as the cuts became quicker; especially as the police car gained on the criminals. I also felt that the banjo music added to the speed of the chase. The music got faster as cuts got faster and the music stopped when the movement stopped. I really found this effective, the only thing I felt was lacking from the this scene is variety of angles. It did get a little repetitive seeing the same angle of the police car a few times in a row, but we can't hold a movie made in the 1960's up to the standards of filming today.

Bonnie and Clyde: Intimate and Violent

Based on a true story, this film is a particularly personal take on the legendary bank robbers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. A love story gone astray, it portrays the criminal duo's addiction to each other as they live out a lifestyle consumed by crime and running from the law. This movie follows Boonie and Clyde as they drive across the Mid-West in the 1920's robbing banks as a means to earn money during the Depression. Both characters seem to be having the time of their life until Boonie comes to her senses and begins to want more from life then crime and more from Clyde then superficial love, but is it too late? An outstanding use of disjunctive editing, Boonie and Clyde makes robbing a bank look easy and exhilarating. I definitely recommend this classic for its representation of two contradicting view points: a humanistic and intimate portrayal of Boonie and Clyde; and the lawful and objective perspective of the duo. Enter into the west and decide for yourself who these infamous people really are: criminals, lovers, a poor couple in the midst of an economic crisis, a couple looking for some excitement or maybe all of the above.

Colors In Run Lola Run add to it's Disjunctive Style

The first thing that caught my eye was Lola's red hair. It made a statement about Lola's want to stick out and abstain from the norm of society. I do not think it was an accident that Tom Tykwer, the director of the film, chose red to represent the things relating to Lola and yellow for the things relating to Manni. In general red resembles a stopping or being prevented to do something, so when something red appears within the movie it seems to be stopping Lola from getting to Manni. For example right from the beginning scene we see Lola with her red hair pick up a red phone and it is when Lola is on that phone that she learns the trouble Manni is in. Another reddish object that sticks out as something that definitely holds her back is the red ambulance. In opposition, the color yellow seems to reflect Manni's feelings toward robbing the grocery store. Whenever Manni is in the yellow phone booth he not only seems to be trapped by the harsh lines of the phone booth's outline, he also seems to be in a contemplative, cautious state. Even when Manni decides to rob the store in the first scenario, the doors to the store as well as the counters inside the store are yellow perhaps reflecting that Manni's still hesitant about the decision he made. It's this specific graphic editing which guides the audience's eyes toward important parts of the film. These bright colors not only stood out to me, but they also made me feel uncomfortable at times. The fact that Lola, the main character, had red hair distracted me, but in a way that made me pay more attention to the film. It is not common to find a movie that stars a character with red hair, but its these colors that are visually powerful. Without these colors the phone, the wig, the phone booth, and the ambulance are just simply objects, but by editing and using vibrant colors the objects hold more of an impact.

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Move...Psychology eventsTaxes stuff for 2008

Run Lola Run

A high energy, fasted paced, movie about Lola, a girl with bright red hair who has a scream loud enough to break glass, and her boyfriend Manni's race against time to get $100,000 or die. Right from the beginning Manny calls Lola screaming, "You weren't there!!!". We quickly learn that Lola was supposed to pick Manni up from a "job" worth $100,000 that he was doing for a gangster named Ronnie, but when Lola did not show up he walked to the train. Everything goes smoothly until Manni leaves the $100,000 on the train and a homeless man helps himself to the money. Manni informs Lola he has to get that money to Ronnie in the next half hour or he will have his head. In desperation, Manni plans to steal the money so Lola has 20 minutes to get to Manni with the money before he robs a local grocery store. Watch to see if Lola can beat the clock and save her boyfriends life. Run, Lola, Run is an amusing and creative film. By the end of the movie you will be reevaluating your perspective on time and asking questions you have never thought to ask. Check it out, you won't regret it!

Cultural props stick out in Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee successfully portrays the culture as well as the time period of Bed-Stuy neighborhood through his use of culture specific props. Since this movie takes place in the 80's music was a big part of Latino and African American culture as a means to express their want for freedom and equality. Lee emphasizes this part of history not only through the specific music that is played like the African American National Anthem and the beginning song "Fight the Power" but through the cultural significance of the boom box. The particular boom box I am speaking about is the one Radio Raheem carries in the movie. Although it is an instrumental prop as well as a cultural prop, it also holds a deeper meaning as the movie progresses making it a contextualized prop. We see this prop for the first time about fifteen minutes into the movie and before we even see Raheem's face we see a close up of the boom box. The characters talking to Raheem make a skittish comment about how big his boom box is and he walks off with the music blaring. This is a literal statement about the boom box itself, but I would like to theorize that this boom box represents the friction between the African Americans, Italians, Caucasians, and Koreans in this movie. The extra-large size of this boom box acts as a metaphor for how significant prejudices are within this neighborhood. There are a few more times where we see Radio Raheem, but all these scenes lead up to a breaking point in the movie dealing with the boom box itself. When Sal destroys Radio Raheem's boom box after him and Buggin' Out come to fight to get their "people" on the wall all hell breaks lose. If you were uncomfortable watching this movie before this scene makes it almost unbearable. I felt the tension between Sal and the others. It is the boom box that builds this tension up. Like I said before be aware this is a hard movie to watch, but it has an important story to tell.

"Do The Right Thing": A controversial film

One of Spike Lee's most controversial films, Do the Right Thing takes place on a scolding summer day in Bed-Stuy, a predominantly black and Latino neighborhood in Brooklyn. The movie begins with the national black anthem, Lift Your Voice and Sing playing in the background, setting the stage for the ongoing issues of prejudices that arise in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood between the Italians, the blacks, the Caucasians, the Koreans, the young and the old. It reads like a case-study of Mookie, the main young black boy, and others from the Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Mookie is only one of his friends who has a job and works at Sal's pizzeria as the only African American delivery boy. Issues begin to arise when a friend of Mookies, Buggin' Out, decides to boycott Sal's pizzeria when Sal refuses to add pictures of famous African Americans to his shrine of Italians. This issue begins a pattern of multiple prejudice instances and like most small arguments it snowballs into something much bigger. Be aware though, this movie is hard to watch because of its dense and somewhat offensive content, but it brings up a lot of questions that I think are necessary to address. That being said, this was not my favorite movie because I felt like the acting was mediocre and at times corny, but I would encourage you to watch and see for yourself.

The Wedding Scene: This Setting is a Genius Way to Introduce the Corleone Family

In general the setting in a movie creates a specific atmosphere and in return creates connotations about the scene. In the few beginning scenes of The Godfather Mario Puzo, the producer, seems to use the setting to introduce the characters to the audience as well as contrast one setting from another. For example the setting of the outdoor wedding created a feeling of joy, comfort, tradition and family for me, but this atmosphere changed quickly when the scene transitioned into Don Vito Corleone's office. In opposition Corleone's office connoted feelings of danger and privacy. The setting went from a bright scene crowded with people to a dark room with only a few people perhaps foreshadowing the privacy of the Corleone family in relation to their "family business". Puzo strategically places the wedding scene in the midst of the office scenes as a way to compare and contrast the two settings. Separate from connotations, the wedding scene literally shows the audience who is part of the immediate family based on who is in the professional pictures and who is wearing a boutonniere. By introducing the audience to the characters in this way we see the importance of family in the wedding setting and the importance of their mafia involvement in the office setting and its because of these subtle hints that the audience feels like we understand who is "in" and who is "out" without even being told.

Personally I have never been into mob type movies, which some would categorize The Godfather under, but overall I felt this movie was well written. It challenged my prior stereotype of shoot,em up movies (as I call them) and opened my eyes to the character development that takes place in this film. I was impressed by how Puzo showed Michael's slow progression from a secluded family member to the new Godfather. The only qualm i have about this film is that it is quite long and sometimes resembles a television series based on the immense amount of detail that is included in this three hour movie. It is somewhat predictable that there is going to be a sequel since the movie ends with a new beginning as Michael as the Godfather. Overall though, I was presently surprised by the film and found myself on the edge of my seat my the end of the movie.