Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Quiz for week of march 7-12th

For this weeks film I chose " Grumpy Old Men." I started by choosing an anchor in the beginning of the film which was Max's duck fishing pole. At first I chose it because it reminded me of an old toy I had when I was young but I also chose it because I thought I might be a hobby of his. Throughout the film I found fishing was his biggest hobby along with his childhood best friend John. The fishing pole comes into play when John takes Max's pole and breaks it in half to get back at him for something he did. This is their friendship, pulling pranks. This pole shows to have much more meaning because it helps to unify the two after John fixes his pole and returns it, even though Max doesn't look like he forgives him at first. This is an instance of unification because although the pole is just an object I chose form his home it is a binding aspect of the film and the relationship between the two men. It brings out comedic understanding and underlying meaning that brings depth to the film and its diegesis.

Rush #7 Re-make project

This week we met with our group and swapped ideas among each other. We were all thinking of similar aspects we wanted to include such as surging and bleeding and the use of L-Cuts. We also wanted to use a newer comedy we could relate to and that we knew well. After coming up with a list of ideas we settled on the film "I Love You, Man." The reason for choosing this film was because the plot of the film is based on a man who is trying to find a best man after going through life without a best guy friend. He meets a quirky man who ends up becoming his best man through a series of stages including various instances of surging and bleeding, where one thinks something while the other thinks its something else. We all agreed on a particular scene of when Peter (the main character) is set up for dinner by his mother to meet a new potential guy friend. We plan to put in L-cuts going back to scenes of the dinner, as he talks to his wife about the dinner date where through talking about it realizes the other man was gay.

After fleshing out our idea we met again and have split up the work for the next step of the project.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Rush #6- Billy Wonder and the Concrete-Universal

In the film, Some Like it Hot, I chose a cigar for my anchor point from the first 5 minutes. After reading the blog post I am a bit confused, but feel I have a slight grasp of the message and connection between "universal" and "concrete."

Various cigars recur throughout the film beginning with a center frame shot of a man drinking a scotch and lighting a cigar at a restaurant. This is a example I believe of a concrete instance of the cigar, another being one of the gangsters who kicks the cigar out of the man mouth they just shot. These are material, or human instances correlating to the repetition of the cigar.

The cigars also come into play in the "universal" term, for instance when one of the two men talks about the "smokin" girl in the "slumber party." Also Jack Lemmon's character says, "his mother will approve because I don't smoke," when talking about his new fiance. These are two different examples of the cigar being used in a different context or in the view of ideals or values, such as the last quote I mentioned, which showed the values the man's mother had and how she will approve.