Its to bad he wasnt born today!

Who ever pushed Kurosawa to make color films is amazing!! in Ran every shot was one amazing picture the color in everything was phenomenal and over the top beautiful. i hope he didn't play with the coloring in the camera because the scenery in Ran makes me want to travel to Japan so bad! I want to take the roll of film and take the individual frames and urn some of them into amazing photographs. I wonder if his previous films would have been just as amazing if they were in color as well, if they would have helped his film to be as visually enjoying as Ran was.
I feel that the ending scene when the blind man is alone on top of this huge cliff with this almost angry/ strangely peaceful sky in the background. I think this scene is visually interesting and visually different in that we start out at only seeing his shadow. Where as in other shots looking that away from the subject we can still see details and faces. But in this scene we only see shape and body form. It is almost emphasizing that we too are just as blind as the man on the cliff. That like the blind man our vision is also restricted. Also supporting the dismantling of everything of a hero losing everything even the human senses.

- Jennifer K

It’s raining cats and dogs! Oh wait, it’s a Kurosawa movie…

Kurosawa’s movies are deep in how they portray a hero, but one of their most obnoxious pitfalls is Kurosawa’s choice to over-dramatize weather effects. Throughout the whole entire Kurosawa unit I was reminded of a humorous quote from Wikipedia. When Kurosawa met John Ford , Ford commented that Kurosawa likes to use rain. K responded saying that, “you’re paying a lot of attention to my films.” Well Kurosawa, you’re wrong. Anybody who watches one of your films will have picked up by the end of it that the weather is completely ridiculous. Kurosawa over dramatizes a lot of things in his movies often for artistic effect (like when Lady Kaede had her head chopped off and her blood literally painted the walls). But the weather effects to me do not always serve an artistic purpose. In Yojimbo I think they seriously had to have lined up the entire street with fans and blowers in order to get the wind that powerful. These types of thought crept up on my while I was watching the movies and actually prevented me from enjoying parts of the films. And absolutely nobody wants to see an old Japanese man’s upper thighs. Just nobody. Keep the wind to yourself Kurosawa.

Future Machines: Real Life Future

I must be a machine or I have a ‘bittersweet’ heart. I watched this movie with some other girls and they got all sappy for the way the ending turned out I liked it but nothing worth getting emotional over. I really enjoyed this movie considering the reputation I hear of Woody Allen and how much of a creep human he was. I do like his combination of comedy, drama, and fiction I thought it was put together well and really made the movie ‘pop’. It is a love story, real world vs. the world of Hollywood / screen. I was thinking about this story idea, the bigger basic story concept… how a man leaves his world to be with this woman. Sounds a bit familiar! The story line of stereotypical forming relationship in most of today’s romantic female viewpoint sitcoms but kind of true to what women want (a man to come to change to their tastes or location i.e. less work/change for the woman)

Rita: Go with Tom! He's got no flaws!

Its ironic how if he had no flaws then how is him not being real not a flaw. I don’t know where these other characters minds were but they mostly seem a bit for the moment and not so much for the long term future. Kind of this go for it attempt. I live for the moment but I also don’t like to look at relationships with people as a life moment thing to have. I guess it depends where you place what is important to you. what's life all about anyway?

- Jennifer K

Annie Hall

One of the funniest movies i have seen in a long time! The humor is so different then the humor in movies today. Is it because I am Jewish and the character is also Jewish, and his character i actually see his whinny sense of character as amusing because I have grown up to humor this. OR... is this another genre of comedy in itself? Annie Hall I do not think was necessarily written as a documentary of her life but of Alvy's life looking at hers. I liked seeing Annie Hall from this point of view because the story did not turn into her complaining or her frustration with her relationship but a point of view from Alvy's eye on what she was feeling.

Favorite scene and perfect representation of the kind of humor (I enjoyed) in Annie Hall:

The scene where Alvy and Annie are in the movie theatre line and this annoying guy is behind him spitting down his neck talking about his opinions of movies. And there Alvy is getting rained on and he gets so fed up that he walks to the camera and yells at the audience in frustration. This is awesome! Out of no where he breaks the story line and talks to the audience. The the best thing still come when he pulls out the director the spitting guy was analyzing out from the right side of the screen and proves the spitting guy wrong to get him to shut up. And there Alvy goes, "Don't you just wish life was like this," so honest and blunt.

- Jennifer K

Purple Rose of Cairo is a Treasure for All

“Life’s too short to waste time thinking about life. Let’s just live it.”

Truer words have never been spoken. These are the words Tom Baxter used to try to woo his fan Cecilia in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo. Tom Baxter is a movie character who leaves his film partway through a movie (crazy, I know) to learn about the real world. He falls in love with a down on her luck woman who’s come to see his film five times. The quote above was from when Tom tried to persuade Cecilia that it’s ok to love him even though he’s imaginary. In the context of the movie it’s a bit of a stretch, but in the real world the quote is quite applicable. Too often do we get caught up in what we’re doing that we forget to enjoy ourselves while we’re doing it. It’s easy in life to stop paying attention to the little things that make life such a joy. In the Purple Rose of Cairo Allen makes you think. This is just one quote of many from a very thought provoking movie. It’s the type of movie that after the credits roll you wonder just how much was real and just how much was imaginary. To me I think it’s certainly worth a second viewing.

Alfred Hitchcock

Over dramatized characters? ... Ah who isn’t in that business?

If it weren’t for the TIMELY stunning BLONDE women in these films I don’t know how else Hitchcock would have gotten away with such portrayal of a woman. Kidding (Sorta!), Alfred had some pretty interesting ideas of what role women played in a relationship but just a curious question? What did Alfred really see or expect from women…Did he have bad obsessive women all over him or did he just fantasize about women who would change for the man or were these his ideals of the perfect woman? Maybe not intended, but, the characters in Rear Window and Vertigo were a bit pathetic! Not that they were perfectly pathetic (not in the bad way entirely). I believe these films would not be as enjoyable today if it weren’t for lines like:

Judy: If I let you change me, will that do it? If I do what you tell me, will you love me?
Scottie: Yes. Yes.
Judy: All right. All right then, I'll do it. I don't care anymore about me.

I mean is she not on her knees or what! But I guess I’m not from times like those so who am I to talk about the norms and expectations/pressures women were under then.

I also have another suspicion… what kind of drug influence did Alfred Hitchcock experience while/prior to making Vertigo. Seriously! I mean my best guess- he was apart of the California crowd (considering Vertigo did premiere in San Francisco). We are entering the early 60’s where marijuana hasn’t quiet yet hit the masses like they did during Woodstock. And cocaine, heroin was very popular during the break of the 60’s. When you look at other famous people in California, during that time, you will notice a definite drug influence. For instance look at Ray Charles: definite drug community. Just my thought that possibly Vertigo was ‘another’ little experiment that Alfred had that influenced his visual presentation in this specific film! No disrespect, just maybe this is the origin of some of the scenes from Vertigo.

-Jennifer

Hitchcock: the beginning of the end of an original idea

As I watched through the three Hitchcock films and the various clips from his other movies, I couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. I felt as though I had seen many of the same story lines and plot devices used before. Lady stabbed in the shower…that one looks familiar. Birds attack… I’ve seen that one before in cartoons. Then it occurred to me that my timeline was incorrect and Hitchcock was the one who came up with these ideas in the first place. I never made the connection before, but now that I’ve seen some of his movies, I’m starting to notice how great an influence Alfred Hitchcock had on the film world. His mark can be seen in many modern day cartoons, TV shows, and movies (some of which are just remakes of his films). Hitchcock was the master of suspense and those techniques he invented to tell his stories are still being used today.