Reading a Film and Writing a Film review

The film critic Christian Metz has written "A film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand." We are used to sitting back in the dark and viewing a film uncritically; indeed, most Hollywood films are constructed to render “invisible” the carefully constructed nature of the medium. Further, because a film is constructed of visual, aural, and linguistic components that are manipulated in numerous ways, it is a challenge to take apart the totality of the film experience and to interpret how that experience was assembled.

        Title/opening credits--Titles are chosen carefully--consider alternatives and why this title was chosen; consider ambiguities in the title .The opening credits establish a tone, and often are used to foreshadow events, themes, or metaphors--pay careful attention from the beginning.

        Story/Plot/Narrative--The story consists of all of the information conveyed by the film (either directly or by inference) assembled in chronological order to communicate the overall sense of what occurred in the film. The plot is contructed as the basic building blocks of the story,conveying specific events. The narrative or narration is the process by which story information is conveyed to the

audience through all of the cinematic means listed below. While dialogue provides a good deal of information, pay attention to all the other audio and visual clues that convey information about the narrative.. In considering the narrative structure, note whether the film follows a standard chronological narrative or not and how time is used. What are the key moments and how are they established? What are the climaxes and anticlimaxes? How far ahead is the audience in understanding what is happening to the characters than the characters themselves are? What propels the story forward? What is the pace of the narrative? How do earlier parts of the narrative

set up later parts? Where are the key emotive moments when the audience is frieghtened, enraged,enraptured, feeling vindicated, etc., and how has the narrative helped to establish these feelings?

Motivation--Motivation is the justification given in the film for the presence of an element; it may appeal to the viewer's knowledge of the real world, to genre conventions, to narrative causality, or to a stylistic pattern within the film. Failure to provide proper motivation challenges the sense of "cinematic realism" in a film. (If a character's personal motivation is explained in a film as a reason for his/her action, that falls under "narrative causality." Do not confuse character motivation as revealed through narrative with your own expectations you bring to the film.    Characters are not real people, and do not make choices outside of what is conveyed narratively.

        Characterization--Who are the central characters? How are minor characters used? Are characters thinly or fully drawn, and why? Who in the audience is meant to relate to which characters, and what sort of emotion (fear, pleasure, anxiety) are audience members meant to feel because of this identification? Is there a clear or ambivalent hero or villain? What values do the characters represent, and do they change during the film? Are the characters meant to play a particular “type” and do they play against type at any time?

        Point of view--Is the film in general told from a particular character's point of view, or is it “objective”? Is the film's perspective primarily intellectual or emotional, visionary or “realistic”? Within the film, is a particular shot viewed from a character's point of view ("subjective shot"), and how does the camera technically reinforce the point of view? Who is the audience meant to be focusing on at a particular moment?

Guide Steps for Writing Your Film Review

Contextual Analysis of the Film

Collect information on the movie plot, characterization, director, theme and locations used. Gather information about the story writing, production techniques and background information on the main theme.

Watch the Movie Twice

Before you start off with the review crafting process, you need to watch the assigned movie once or twice. While doing so, you need to make the best use of your sense of observation. Note down all minor and major details roughly on a piece of paper so that if your memory deludes you while gathering thoughts on writing, you can always refer to these keynotes (brilliant idea!).

Analyze the Movie Plot and Main Characters

Next off, spend a few hours analyzing the whole movie from beginning to the end. Sop deeply into the plot of the movie. Do not let your coloured opinions prevail here. Analysis should be done from the perspective of its category (comedy, action, romantic, historical), direction, acting, dialogues, script and quality.

Draft an Outline for Your Film Essay

Now that the pre-writing stage is realized, the real job begins—writing the film review paper. Start by giving a brief introduction of the movie. Apply the basic writing rule here; begin your write up with a catchy phrase or line. I personally recommend that you fire up with a dialogue or phrase taken from the movie which encloses its theme—this is likely to grab attention of your readers.

Get Help from Add-ons and Previous Reviews

You can make your review interesting by making use of analogies and metaphors, comparing plot of the movie to any other movie of similar category, giving dramatic explanations of best scenes or by throwing light on dimensions that add uniqueness to the movie.

Here’s a trap—mostly students read reviews written by critics on the same movie just to get an overall idea of how review writing is done; what they fail to realize is that without conscious volition, they adopt their ideas which are reflected in their paper. Consequently, the review produced is not up to the mark and affect grades.

Film Review Guidelines

Paragraph 1:  Offer your overall impression of the film while mentioning the movie's title, director, and key actors.

Paragraph 2:  Summarize the plot of the film

Paragraph 3: How did the actors portray key character roles?  Did they fulfill your expectations given your knowledge of the original novel or play (if one exists)?

Paragraph 4:  Were any particular film techniques used in key scenes?  How did the film techniques anmd music enhance the setting and themes of the film?  You may need two paragraphs to explain this information.

Paragraph 5: Address how well the film represents the novel or play.  Offer evidence for your opinion. Remember to mention use of symbols and literary devices.  Do they "transfer" from the novel/play into the movie well?

Paragraph 6: Ending paragraph--your last opportunity to guide the reader.  Offer a clincher that tells the reader to attend the film or not.

vozMe - From text to speech (speech synthesis)

vozMe - From text to speech (speech synthesis)

Literary analysis at high school level.

Students often have difficulty making the leap from comprehending literature to analyzing it. These tips show the interrelationship at play between the two and examples.

Understanding literary elements is a complex process that encourages students to develop skills existing at several levels of Bloom's taxonomy. For this reason, teachers have a wonderful opportunity to scaffold learning experiences using literary elements when teaching fiction. By teaching students to own their knowledge of literary elements, teachers are helping them build a solid foundation of analytical thinking skills.

Defining Literary Elements

Analyzing literature first requires students to understand a variety of literary terms and definitions. Just like a handyman carries around his trusty tool bag, literature students must fill up their own resource sack before getting down to the challenging work of analysis. Therefore, they must know the concrete definitions to an array of literary terms. Be sure to provide students with a comprehensive list of terms they will be expected to know or learn throughout the school year.

Applying Literary Elements

It's important that teachers start out by explaining to students that literary elements are tools that will help them access literature for the rest of their lives. These are terms and concepts that they need to not only thoroughly understand, but also to use and apply to different texts as they progress through high school and college.

Analysis Enhances Comprehension

Consider Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, a famous Sherlock Holmes tale. This can be a dense text for students to comprehend and, although they are likely to enjoy the suspenseful plot, they may not connect with the language. But when students apply their knowledge of literary elements to such as text, they can more deeply connect with the story, identify the characters, and uncover timeless themes still relevant in today's society. They will start to realize that analysis improves comprehension, and in return comprehension improves analysis. But they must be heartily supported to get there.

Scaffolding Analysis

Ideally, teachers will scaffold the use of sophisticated literary elements in the upper grades with the more concrete, easily understood terms in the lower grades such as

• indirect characterization
• direct characterization
• plot
• external conflict
• internal conflict

Literary Elements Diagnostic Testing

One way to ensure your students are mostly on the same page is to administer a diagnostic test assessing their current knowledge of literary elements. You may not be as successful using dictionary definitions here; instead, try incorporating examples into your questions. This way, you are more likely to uncover what students really know but haven't necessarily memorized.

Sample Questions

Here are two sample questions that illustrate the idea that comprehension enhances analysis.
1. Who is being described in the following quote?
“ . . . he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street” (178).
A. Dr. Watson
B. Mr. Barrymore
C. Sherlock Holmes
D. Mr. Frankland
2. In the above quote, what literary element is being applied?
A. Personification
B. Simile
C. Direct characterization
D. Indirect characterization
Throughout your course, you can easily take this discussion further by asking more thought-provoking questions, such as

• Why does Doyle use direct characterization at some points in the novel and indirect characterization at others?
• How is the character indirectly revealed throughout the course of the novel? Consider both the character's speech and actions.
• Which method of characterization is more effective when revealing complex characters? Cite examples from the text to support your position.

Encourage students to see the many benefits of understanding and actively considering the function of literary elements when they read fiction. The ultimate goal, of course, is for students to apply their knowledge of literary elements to help assess and respond to a variety of texts with relative comfort and a degree of authority.

Read more at Suite101: How To Teach Literary Elements in High School: Tips to Help Students Understand How to Analyze Literarture | Suite101.com http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-teach-literary-elements-in-high-school-a77649#ixzz1XBqRMfCJ

How to analyse a Literary work ?

Writing a literary analysis is a feat of close reading, insight, and creativity. Some required technical writing elements are explained in this article.

Above all else, writing a literary analysis requires the writer to have a thorough understanding of the elements of the story, poem, or novel being analyzed. This might sound obvious, but students often try to begin writing an assigned analysis before they have fully comprehended and thought about the subject of that analysis.

Read for Literal Understanding

Before "interpreting" the story and trying to analyze it, the writer must fully understand the literal events. In other words, the reader should not interpret the story before knowing the story. Some plots are complicated, and interesting characters are complex. The reader should have a thorough understanding of the plot and a good sense of each character. Only then can the reader write about the literary piece.

Questions to Ask Before Writing a Literary Analysis

The events in a literary story happen to a particular character in particular circumstances. Analyzing the story requires that the reader is very aware of these particulars. Writing a literary analysis requires the reader to ask and answer several questions. The big question to answer is: How and why did this particular character, in these particular circumstances, respond to and/or cause these particular events?

o answer that question, ask these:

• What happens in this story, and who does it happen to?
• What does the main character want?
• What is getting in the way of the character getting what he or she wants?
• What are the opposing forces, or conflict in the story?
• Is the opposing force nature?
• Is it another character?
• Is it society?
• Is it something within the character?
• How does the character try to overcome the obstacle?
• Why does the character fail or succeed?

Interpreting the Story

Once the reader can answer the questions above, interpretation becomes possible. An analysis is really an interpretation of the story, based on an intricate understanding of the elements of the story.
Knowing the conflict and how the character creates or reacts to that conflict, the reader can begin to analyze that character: is the character flawed? How? What are the character's strengths? Most literary characters are ambiguous; that is, they have more than one motive or conflicting desires. This makes them interesting, and is often a good subject to analyze.

Little Do's and Don'ts

Certain conventions must be followed, in writing the analysis:

• Do not retell the story; interpret the story.
• Do not go into unnecessary detail; only use details that clarify this interpretation.
• Use the story's time frame for writing the analysis. Most of the analysis will be in present tense.
• Order the analysis logically, not chronologically.

Finding the Truth of the Story

A truly literary story - or poem - has its own intrinsic truth. By truth, this writer does not mean some idea that is true for all people, but an idea that is consistent and works as an operating idea for that story.
For example, in James Joyce's story, "Eveline," it is true that the forces against changing Eveline's circumstances are stronger than the forces for changing her circumstances. This truth is ultimately what determines the outcome of that story. An analysis of the story would discuss in detail the forces that keep Eveline from changing her circumstances.
To find the 'truth' of the story, the reader needs to analyze the events in the story: How did the character cause these events to happen -- or not to happen? What is it about the character that led to the particular outcome of the story? This is the real essence of the story.

The Joy of Understanding

Successfully analyzing a story, and conveying one's deep and coherent understanding of the characters and their situation, can be a very rewarding intellectual experience. But it cannot come without a sincere interest in and understanding of the story.

 

Celluloid Heroes

Kinks - Celluloid Heroes
Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star,
And everybody's in movies, it doesn't matter who you are.
There are stars in every city,
In every house and on every street,
And if you walk down Hollywood Boulevard
Their names are written in concrete!

Don't step on Greta Garbo as you walk down the Boulevard,
She looks so weak and fragile that's why she tried to be so hard
But they turned her into a princess
And they sat her on a throne,
But she turned her back on stardom,
Because she wanted to be alone.

You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard,
Some that you recognise, some that you've hardly even heard of,
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame,
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain.
Rudolph Valentino, looks very much alive,
And he looks up ladies' dresses as they sadly pass him by.
Avoid stepping on Bela Lugosi
'Cos he's liable to turn and bite,
But stand close by Bette Davis
Because hers was such a lonely life.
If you covered him with garbage,
George Sanders would still have style,
And if you stamped on Mickey Rooney
He would still turn round and smile,
But please don't tread on dearest Marilyn
'Cos she's not very tough,
She should have been made of iron or steel,
But she was only made of flesh and blood.

You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard,
Some that you recognise, some that you've hardly even heard of.
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame,
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain.

Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star
And everybody's in show biz, it doesn't matter who you are.

And those who are successful,
Be always on your guard,
Success walks hand in hand with failure
Along Hollywood Boulevard.

I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,
Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain
And celluloid heroes never really die.

You can see all the stars as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard,
Some that you recognise, some that you've hardly even heard of,
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame,
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain.

Oh celluloid heroes never feel any pain
Oh celluloid heroes never really die.

I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,
Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain
And celluloid heroes never really die.

http://youtu.be/yp_QkUVZGPc

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990):Movie Review

Kurosawa's Magical Tales of Art, Time and Death

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: August 24, 1990

LEAD: A solemn little boy comes out of his house one rainy morning to find the sun shining. His mother, practical and no-nonsense, looks up at the sky and says that foxes hold their wedding processions in such weather. ''They don't like to be seen by people,'' she says, and goes about her business.
A solemn little boy comes out of his house one rainy morning to find the sun shining. His mother, practical and no-nonsense, looks up at the sky and says that foxes hold their wedding processions in such weather. ''They don't like to be seen by people,'' she says, and goes about her business.
The casual remark is enough to send the boy into the forest, where the trees are as large and imposing as California redwoods. Even the ferns are taller than he is. The rain glistens within the shafts of sunlight. The boy moves with a certain amount of dread. This is forbidden territory.
In a moment of pure screen enchantment, a strange wedding procession slowly comes into view, the priests in front, followed by the bridal pair, their attendants, their families, their friends and their retainers. They walk on two feet, like people, but that they are foxes is clear from the orangey whiskers on their otherwise rice-powder-white, masklike faces.
The procession appears to be choreographed. The foxes march in unison to the hollow clicking sounds of ancient musical instruments. Every few steps their haughty manner becomes furtive when, as if on cue, they abruptly pause, cock their heads to the side, listen, and then move on.
This is the sublime beginning of ''Sunshine Through the Rain,'' the first segment of the eight that compose ''Akira Kurosawa's Dreams,'' the grand new film by the 80-year-old Japanese master who, over a 40-year period, has given us ''Rashomon,'' ''Throne of Blood'' and ''Ran,'' among other classics. The film opens today at the 57th Street Playhouse.
One might have expected ''Dreams'' to be a summing up, a coda. It isn't. It's something altogether new for Kurosawa, a collection of short, sometimes fragmentary films that are less like dreams than fairy tales of past, present and future. The magical and mysterious are mixed with the practical, funny and polemical.
The movie is about many things, including the terrors of childhood, parents who are as olympian as gods, the seductive nature of death, nuclear annihilation, environmental pollution and, in a segment titled simply ''Crows,'' art. In this, the movie's least characteristic segment, Martin Scorsese, sporting a red beard and an unmistakable New York accent, appears as Vincent van Gogh, beady-eyed and intense, his head newly bandaged.
Van Gogh explains the bandage to the young Japanese artist who has somehow managed to invade the world of van Gogh's paintings, entering just down-river from the bridge at Arles: ''Yesterday I was trying to do a self-portrait, but the ear kept getting in the way.''
''Dreams'' is a willful work, being exactly the kind of film that Kurosawa wanted to make, with no apologies to anyone. Two of the segments may drive some people up the wall.
''Mount Fuji in Red'' is a kind a meta-science fiction visualization of the end of the world or, at least, of Japan. As the citizens of Tokyo panic, Mount Fuji is seen in the distance, silhouetted by the flames from the explosions of nuclear plants in the final stages of melt-down. ''But they told us nuclear plants were safe,'' someone wails.
In ''Mount Fuji in Red,'' the nightmare of nuclear holocaust, expressed in psychological terms in Kurosawa's ''I Live in Fear'' (1955), is made manifest in images of cartoonlike bluntness.
It may be no coincidence that Ishiro Honda, who has worked off and on as Kurosawa's assistant director since 1949, and is his assistant again on this film, is one of those responsible for such Japanese pop artifacts as ''Godzilla,'' ''Rodan'' and ''The Mysterians.''
''The Weeping Demon'' segment is Kurosawa's picture of a Beckett-like world, one ravaged by environmental pollution. ''Flowers are crippled,'' someone says, looking at a dandelion six feet tall. Horned mutants roam the earth. In this last pecking order before the end, demons with two horns eat those with only one.
''Dreams'' is moving both for what is on the screen, and for the set of the mind that made it.
Among other things, ''Dreams'' suggests in oblique fashion that the past does not exist. What we think of as the past is, rather, a romantic concept held by those too young to have any grasp on the meaning of age.
In this astonishingly beautiful, often somber work, emotions experienced long ago do not reappear coated with the softening cobwebs of time. They may have been filed away but, once they are recalled, they are as vivid, sharp and terrifying as they were initially. Time neither eases the pain of old wounds nor hides the scars.
For Kurosawa, the present is not haunted by the past. Instead, it's crowded by an accumulation of other present times that include the future. The job is keeping them in order, like unruly foxes.
The foxes in ''Sunshine Through the Rain'' are not especially unruly, but their power is real and implacable. When the little boy returns home from the forest, he is met by his mother, who has run out of patience with him. She hands the boy a dagger, neatly sheathed within a bamboo scabbard, and tells him the foxes have left it for him.
Since the boy has broken the law protecting the privacy of foxes, they expect him, as a boy of honor, to kill himself. The boy is bewildered. His mother sighs and says that if he can find the foxes again, he might persuade them to forgive him. In that case, he can come home. In the meantime, the door will be locked.
The boy looks hopeful. ''But,'' his mother points out, ''they don't often forgive.''
A little boy is also the ''I'' figure, the dreamer, in another magical segment, ''The Peach Orchard,'' about the fury of some imperial spirits when a peach orchard is chopped down while in bloom. The boy explains that he tried to stop the destruction. Because they believe him, the spirits allow him to see the orchard as it once was.
As these spirits, life-size dolls representing ancient emperors and the members of their courts, begin to sing, the air becomes thick with orangey-pink blossoms and the doll-figures turn into trees. The effect is exhilarating.
In ''The Blizzard,'' a mountain climber is tempted to give in to his frozen exhaustion by a beautiful demon. ''Snow is warm,'' she tells him soothingly. ''Ice is hot.'' ''The Tunnel'' is about a guilt-ridden army officer who must persuade his troops, killed in battle, that they are indeed dead, and that nothing is to be gained by trying to hang onto life.
The film's final episode, ''Village of the Watermills,'' features Chishu Ryu as a philosophical old fellow, the elder of an idyllic village where the air and water are clean, where villagers take no more from nature than they need, and where people live on so long that funerals are times of joy and celebration. The style is lyrical, the mood intended to be healing.
''Dreams'' is absolutely stunning to look at and listen to. It is, in fact, almost as much of a trip as people once thought ''Fantasia'' to be.
More important, though, is that it's a work by a director who has continued to be vigorous and productive into an age at which most film makers are supposed to go silent. Movies are a young man's game. ''Dreams'' is a report from one of the last true frontiers of cinema. ''Akira Kurosawa's Dreams'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). It includes sequences that could frighten very young viewers.

http://youtu.be/4aQlRal3j4Y

A deconstructive reading of Octavio Paz’s “The Blue Bouquet”

A deconstructive reading of Octavio Paz’s “The Blue Bouquet”

            We are being programmed to perceive the world in a particular perspective, and most of us are unaware of it. What we consider “natural” or “common sense” is based on societal norms and standards. Most of us do not see, however, that these norms and standards are set by a dominant group that influences the rest of the world to see things the way it does. This necessarily becomes what is “objective” and everything else is measured against it. People try to make sense out of their experiences with this in mind, unconsciously defining reality according to what they have been influenced to believe.

            The character in Octavio Paz’s Blue Bouquet is an example of someone conditioned to see things a certain way. He “inhales the country air…and hears the breathing of the night.” His romanticism of the country and towards life in general, becomes apparent in these lines:

            I breathed the air of tamarinds. The night hummed, full of leaves and insects. Crickets bivouacked in the tall grass. I raised my head: up there the stars too had set up camp. I thought that the universe was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket’s saw, the star’s blink were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? I threw my cigarette down on the sidewalk. Falling, it drew a shining curve, shooting out brief sparks like a tiny comet.

            He is one of those who believe that one’s life has a purpose and that there is a reason for everything. The lines “I walked a long time, slowly. I felt free, secure between the lips that were at that moment speaking me with such happiness,” show that he is reflective and at that moment seems to be at peace. When he said that “the night was a garden of eyes” probably referring to the stars, this revealed not only a foreshadowing event, but also that the character was poetic.

            His poetry, however, is confronted with the harsh reality of a man wanting to take the former’s eyes out. The man said that his girlfriend had a penchant for a bouquet of blue eyes. This very striking image is one that is difficult to get out of one’s head. But there is more to it than its absurdity – why is there an obsession with blue eyes?

             Blue eyes are usually a signifier for “American.” The fact that the man wanted to take out blue eyes from people does not only show a simple act of obsessive violence but obsessive violence towards the “American.” The man said, “Don’t be afraid, mister. I won’t kill you. I’m only going to take your eyes.” The desire to remove people’s blue eyes may symbolize the desire to stop them from seeing things the “American” way.

            But while there seems to be anti-American present in the text, the line “my girlfriend has this whim. She wants a bouquet of blue eyes. And around here they’re hard to find” can also be construed as an obsession to see things through American eyes, because that is something “hard to find” around here. This could mean that while the dominant way of perceiving the world is through “blue eyes”, the situation in the country was different. The owner of the boardinghouse was described as a “one-eyed taciturn fellow.” As for the man who wanted to take people’s blue eyes out, there was no mention of his eyes, except that half his face (including his eyes perhaps) was covered by a sombrero.

            When the character insisted that his eyes were brown and not blue, he could very well have meant “Spare me, I am not who you’re after. I am different from them.” But the fact that he was mistaken for one of those with blue eyes can be taken to mean that even if his eyes were brown and not blue, it was as if he saw things through blue eyes.

            Another striking image is when the man’s machete grazed the character’s eyelids and the flame from the match burned the latter’s lashes. It is a threat to the character in more ways than the obvious, and he responds by leaving town the next day.

            The symbol of the eyes is very appropriate to refer to how the world is perceived. The bouquet of blue eyes is foreshadowed by the night being described as a garden of eyes. Night is the binary opposite of day, and day is usually associated with light. Light is the root word of “enlightenment” and to be enlightened means to understand things better and come out of the “dark” or come out of one’s confusion. But when the night is described as a garden of eyes – a variety or assortment of ways of seeing, instead of a “blue bouquet,” it seems to undermine the privileged term “light,” and position “night” in the positive, over “day” or “light.” The insecurity, instability or relativity the night offered is preferred to the certainty and “objectivity” of daylight. It was after all, during the Age of Enlightenment that categorical truths were established, the flaws of which were later on revealed through deconstruction.

            While it remains unclear whether the girlfriend’s obsession for blue eyes is in order for her to use them or destroy them, the blue bouquet calls our attention to seeing or perceiving realities through the dominant culture, leading most of us to dream the American dream. The blueprint to success that we follow is Western, in spite of the fact that our culture and context are different. This illusion has led most of us to desire created needs and wants that keep us in poverty as we succumb to a system that furthers its own interest. But the West sees itself in its interest, and so to see things the way it does may be against our own interest. Knowing this forces us to re-examine our own worldviews on national as well as international issues and assess just how blue our black or brown eyes have become.