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A Praise For Watching Movies Together in Class

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     This blog post is in response to a discussion we had on our last day of class. We were discussing whether movies should be shown in class or assigned to watch on our own, and some people said they preferred to watch movies alone. However, I would like to say that I loved watching movies together as a class, and doing so even changed my viewpoint on watching movies that i had in the past.     See, for most of my life, I've preferred to watch movies on my own. I just appreciated the comfort of being alone in my room and being able to get completely lost in the movie I was watching. But I realized something about what happened when I watched movies on my own: I often didn't give them a solid chance if I wasn't liking them. If a movie was just not impressing me, I could turn it off very quickly, whether it be out of boredom or active dislike for something going on in the movie. However, in class, we were forced to watch these movies, despite whatever we felt of...
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An Analysis of The Social Dilemma

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    Despite knowing about The Social Dilemma for years now, I finally watched it for the first time last week. And overall, I'd describe it as a great film with a wonderful and very important message. Honestly, I don't use social media much at all, and haven't for many years now. And part of it is because I just am a rather introverted person, so I don't feel the need to post and share about my life very much. But also, I think I saw glimpses of what this movie was really describing and emphasizing. I think social media can be a very negative, and a very addicting force in someone's life, and I think it's often the case for people that less social media use is better for them in the long run.     So going into the movie, I feel like I already agreed with the main message, so I was already nodding away at everything the movie was saying the whole time. But I also think the editing, cinematography, and especially the writing in this movie is very good, and could p...
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A Praise For One of the Biggest Blockbusters of All Time

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     On the first day of class, each of us were asked what our favorite movie was. My answer was Titanic, and despite difficulty of choosing just one favorite movie, I really do believe this one had the most impact on me. And I believe a lot of this is due to very smart filmmaking strategies that were use all throughout the movie. Now this fact, combined with us watching another blockbuster (Jaws) in class, has encouraged me to write a post about my favorite blockbuster of all time.     Now first off, I'm aware that Titanic has kind of a moderate reputation in the film world, with it being very common to make jokes and memes about the movie. But I also think the film has a ton of something that I find really hard for a movie to pull off well, and that's mass appeal. I think Titanic is such a popular movie because it pushes the audience to care about the people on the ship. The movie uses a relatable story and relatable characters to allow the audience to emphasi...
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A Praise For Survivor From a Huge Reality TV Fan

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     I've been waiting to do this post for almost the whole year now. First thing's first, I am a big fan of reality TV shows. I like reality shows such as The Amazing Race, The Circle, Big Brother, but my favorite one has to be Survivor. Now, I know reality TV often gets a bad reputation, but I'm here to prove why this genre has wonderfully cinematic moments and can show true moments of human emotions, using Survivor as my example.     I actually don't have to go back very far in Survivor's 43-season history to provide an example of the excellence of this show. Just this past week, the current season released an episode that provides one of the best moments in the show and reveals such a unique and honest look into the emotions of betrayal of close friends.  Let's set the scene: Survivor is a game show where each week, players are forced to vote one member out of the game, with the winner ending up being the last one remaining. In this season, two gentleme...
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A Praise For the Cinematography of Twilight's Seasons Changing Scene

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     The Twilight movie series has been the subject of a ton of hate over the years. It gets a lot of criticism for it's poor writing and bad acting, and admittedly, I can agree those things may be a bit of a struggle for the movies. But what I think they succeed in, and what I truly believe made the movies so popular, is their use of cinematography.      For this post, I'll specifically focus on a scene from The Twilight Saga: New Moon. I'm not lying when I say this is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. The scene takes place directly after the main character, Bella, gets dumped by her boyfriend. Bella takes this very hard, and soon becomes depressed and stuck in her room. The scene shows the passing of time for her through this depression.     I cannot overstate how good the cinematography in this scene is. First, let's focus on the use of the seasons changing outside Bella's window. Sure, a movie could just say "3 months later" or hav...
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A Praise For the Editing of Ferris Bueller's Day Off

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     In reading about editing in cinema, I began to think of movies that I liked that had a good use of editing. After thinking about it, I concluded that Ferris Bueller's Day Off has some of my favorite editing tricks that were used to create really great scenes. It's hard to describe exactly what makes the editing so great in this movie, other than that it really helps make the end product more entertaining, and that's a solid goal for anyone making a movie.     The first scene of the movie I want to highlight is a scene in which a character finds an intruder in her house, an intruder that the audience is meant to dislike and lightheartedly make fun of. When the woman in the house finally sees this intruder, she kicks him in a sensitive area, and the film uses creative editing cuts to make this scene even more enjoyable:     Another scene I love the editing of is a scene towards the end of the movie. The main character is sprinting home before his p...
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A Praise For Composer Hans Zimmer

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     A funny thing happened when I looked into the Moving Pictures chapter on sound. Before I even read it, I knew I was going to use the elements the book talked about and connect these elements to composer Hans Zimmer to show my appreciation for him. However, in reading the chapter, I saw that the book already mentioned Zimmer on their own! That is how you know a sound composer is truly great and has made a large impact on cinema.     Some of his most notable movie scores in my opinion are The Lion King, Finding Nemo, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, however my favorite movie score of his is his score from Interstellar. There is just something about the music in that movie that represents the ideas of the film so much. Interstellar is a movie about space exploration and curiosity, and somehow the score displays those stories and emotions better than even the movie did. It's so powerful how music can tell a story like that, and no song achieves it bette...
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