Films

So far we’vre viewed an episode of The Sopranos, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Virgin Suicides, and Hide and Seek.

Notes on each:

The Sopranos: 1) Personal/Family/Memory, 2) Culture/Media, 3) Career/Profession/Education

-this epsiode contained many narratives, but I kind of felt like there was an undercurrent theme of choices and how they can effect our life, I felt some semblence of regret as a theme within this episode

Y Tu Mama Tambien: Youth/Indecision as a major theme, crossroads, relief from the pace/demands of life

*Lack of permanence of people and feelings, living in the present, fleeting feeling of bonds and relationships (I enjoyed this overall story/plot arc)

-Beach/water as a symbol of purity and cleasing

The Virgin Suicides: Felt an undercurrent of youth and entrapment within all the characters, never really know the specifics of why they kill themselves, can only guess at what they are feeling and subsequently apply your own annotations and experiences

Hide and Seek: Rougher to relate to on personal level, can see how home and family discourse helped to shape (not so much influence) the identity of the characters, concept of endocept

My Winnipeg: Whoa.  This was just awful.  I didn’t really like it at all.  I got the home elements and personal, reflective quality but the choppy execution on film was just too much for my personal taste.  I don’t really think I want to draw from this  for my project.  Also just as an aside when did, “Mom, I hit a deer,” become a euphemism for, “I had sex.”  Just a question.

Brick: Independent film, I can dig it.  The characters in the film was interestingly developed in this film and unlike any we’ve seen thus far.  You’re at first wondering some of the back story of the characters and you’re immersed in the plot (i.e. the unorthodox beginning of the file, the phone booth).  I really like the mystique this provided.  The quick, succinct dialogue really kept the interest level high, and this may be something that I want to play around with in the coming assignments (in whatever capacity I am able).  Throughout the film you are given a little more info and you kind see the personality of the characters really show through their actions whether it’s a nerdy way of helping a friend, irrational violence, or worry about someone you love.  This factor in the film really draws on emotion and is something I’ll think about and employ in later work.

Dave Chapelle’s Block Party: I have seen this film before.  I liked it the first time I saw it, and in watching parts of it again I see subtle nuances that I did not pick up on before.  While there are awesome performances in this film from artists that I really enjoy (and I may want to include some of their music or style into my next project), there was also a profound undercurrent to the documentary.  That undercurrent was sort of verbalized about halfway through when Dave talked about people living separate lives, one public and one private, but also having a third persona.  This third persona is the the person that you truly are, someone authentic.  This point is made through the visitation of different places in Brooklyn and the interviews that he does with the musicians as well as the lay people represented in the film.  There’s a genuine and authentic quality about this film that I want to include in my stuff whether through music or taking time to document the feel of my community.

Pulp Fiction: Great movie (though I’ve seen it before).  I like the development of the film, in that it tells each part of the story in fragments which are out of order.  The dialogue to me was important in that it was used as both a transcendant and yet comical device.  In this film you often find humor where humor was not meant to be found, which is like life in a way.  I want to try to use the dialogue tool (quick exchange, fragments, irrelevant yet qualifie topics) in my project especially in trying to document the feel of my community.  Perception in this film was kind of left up in the air which I think is important to kind of present things and them be taken how they are.  In this movie, there is no real overriding  judgment of the characters or their freak actions, no moral compass of any kind which I think removes the pretense.  It presents facts and the viewer can judge the character however he/she wishes, which is a cool quality in the work.

Synecdoche: This was an odd film for me to experience. I felt myself watching for and trying to interpret different patterns all the way through the viewing. For example, the burning room. It was always the same home and usually surrounding the same person, Hazel. I also noted that Caden cleans whenever something catastrophic or upsetting happens. There was Sammy, who showed up in the beginning scenes of the movie, as he was following Caden around and mirroring his life. The most significant and telling pattern was the fact that Caden kept making changes to his play after he had experienced more of his life. This ties into chapter 10 of Ulmer, where he tries to emphasize that there is no storytelling without the a living experience. I may want to try to use this films odd method of patterning or the value of meaningless activity in my last project as a way to kind of show some depth in my work and the experiences that I have had to this point.

Fight Club (personal database movie): Besides being a really awesome movie, I found that I can sort of identify with premise of the film’s main character, Tyler Durden. In this film, Tyler is an overworked, mindless insomniac. This character (or this portion of the character) is played by Edward Norton. This Tyler is stuck in the rutt of his life. He can’t sleep so he goes to support meanings to aid him in doing so. The long and short of it, is that he ends up encountering another portion of his personality (played by Brad Pitt), and he’s trapped between the recklessness of his alter ego and the moral, really gentle feelings of his own being. They start the fight club as a way to access freedom from the consumer driven society that they live in. I ofetn search for this escape from the person that I have to be all the time. It’s not that I don’t love myself (because I do), but everyone needs a break, a release from their own reality. I search for that all the time in the smallest ways. Just some way that I can let myself go for the time being. Just for a little while. I think I have and would liek to continue to mirror this aching feeling for freedom in my work because it’s something that I experience a lot in my personal life. I always seem to have this feeling of wanting to take a small step back and, if only for a moment, watch the world pass by without me having to worry about my place in it.