Act Off Like You Got a Pair!

Full Metal Jacket. Single-handedly creating almost every drill sergeant stereotype in the history of pop-culture. If I’m just to break out and talk about the acting, I have to talk about R. Lee Ermey’s rendition of Sgt Hart. But lets look at the big picture before we get to the juicy stuff. This film for me was astounding, and told in such a beautiful way, narrated by private joker, which i’d like to believe was all the humanity that was left after the end of the movie. Its beautiful in the sense that it doesn’t tell you right and wrong, it presents reality (or kubrick’s view of reality) and just lets you accept all the right and wrong that goes along with it.

The Scenes I chose to analyze in this film are the jelly donut and the subsequent  other two scenes.  These are the scenes that show you what is really happening in that beginning of the film. The acting is beyond superb and it is all a prime example of good casting. None of these actors were stars, some were known, but most we unknown, most likely as choice From Kubrick’s part, forcing us to form our own opinion of these actors as the film went along. no preconceived notions of any prior roles.

On to the scenes then, First up, its the jelly donut scene. Mise-en-scene specifically in this scene is beautiful, the camera angle is lower than usual, making you feel as much like a maggot as every other private having their hands and feet inspected. Acting wise, you begin to see these privates become soul-less as they stand there on their foot-lockers in their most statue like state of discipline. When Sergeant Hart finds Gomer Pyle’s footlocker unlocked, you see all pandemonium about to break loose. When Pyle is actually getting screamed at, from the cinematography’s stand point, the angle of the camera made this perfect shot in which we have the sergeant yelling intensely at gomer, and in the background we have Joker, statue-esque, unable to do a thing about it. His indefference; for shadowing the fact that he just can’t defend Gomer anymore.

In the next I chose to analyze, We see the fact that Gomer hasn’t learned anything, and having the rest of the platoon punished was not phasing him.  This is where the platoon decides to punish Him. We see the moving performance of Gomer as he’s being struck by all the other privates with their bars of soap, and let me just say this: Back then soap was so condensed that shit like that had to hurt. I’m just saying. In this scene we see joker, resisting at first the idea of hitting him. In his eyes he’s regretting what he has to do, but when he actually does it, You see a complete release of all the things that he had to take because of Gomer’s ineptitude. Then when it has all passed, we see joker, lit from beside, his eyes in the dark, contemplating the fact that his humanity was leaving himself.

 -peace!

Viddy Well this Clockwork Movie…

There are many topics I rant about but not many of them are because they rocks. Most things I talk about i talk about because i hate. Like when i talk about Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (The Tim Burton Version) or the fact that the ChocolateMoose beverage exists. (yoohoo has that segment of the drink world covered, thank you.) What i mean to say is that few things in the world rock enough to make me talk constantly about them. A Clockwork Orange, both book and movie, are in these elluded category. From the way it was written with the brilliant nadsat dialogue narration, to the way it was beautifully interpreted into this colorful, at times silly and over the top absurd take by Stanley Kubrick it has been one of the best told stories I’ve seen in very long. The sounds are all over the place and used beautifully.

The Musical Score throughout the movie is amazing with crazed technologically “futuristic” versions of classical Beethoven music. It really added to the complete depth of the absurd, askew futuristic view of this world. The scene i chose to analyze, I chose with a slight bit of bias, because its one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie. The Theater Scene, with the Droog battle is just a gorgeously filmed piece of work and it also has one of the best lines ever “Come and get one in the yarbles! if ya have any yarbles!!” The Mise-en-scene is beautiful, and everything is so carefully divided into the screen, the theater works amost as a frame for the almost rape sequence that went on the beggining. All of this is filled with the nondiegetic score of beautiful classical music, while even before you see whats happening you here the off screen diegetic sounds of a rape.

We cut to what i think is a extreme longshot of Alex and his droogs in the shadows perfectly aligned against the wall. coming out of the shadow in order. Very subtly we here the sounds the droogs giggling hitting chains on the ground. what we don’t really notice is the fact that the loudness is rising, until the whole picture is engulfed in classical music, almost as an ironic touch contrasting the elegance of classical music to the grit and roudiness of the battle going on. These people with no masters fighting to the beautiful sounds of masters of sound and music.

All through out we keep seeing this ironic use of music and quite often, interestingly enough, its diegetic. Its emitted or by the characters (Alex chanting “singing in the rain”) or played by record players (alex’s ecstasy like state in his room listening to ludwig van). This is the kind of experience that made me addicted to this movie, and why i can see it so many times. 3 thumbs way up, to this little piece of obscene cinematography.

-I am out of here! Peace for the middle east!

Editing: An Important Part of the Acid Trip…

“2001: A Space Odyssey”= Mind blowing visuals that expand constantly with such ingenious editing, and of course the most epic sound track to be found in movies up to that moment. Now if i was a user, I’d be able to compliment the movie and even thank it for a much more thorough experience, but i stayed sober throughout the span of the film so the analysis you’ll be getting will be purely out of what i saw from a sober eye. This film is quite a trip even without the LSD in my mouth, so I thank Kubrick for trying to give us a bit of what it would have been like to go to a Pink Floyd concert, without the loss of memory about what went on the day before.

The editing in this film is brilliant. Really. The cuts from shot to shot are blunt and in your face, like a barrage of information that you have to try and comprehend. At barely any point is the are a transition between scenes that is a fade in or out. I was pretty split as to what scene i wanted to analyze, between the “HAL starts going crazy and murders the hibernating scientists” scene or the final “David in the crazy room looking at himself aging real freaky” scene. I decided to go with the latter just for the “wha-huh?” factor it left on me.

This scene is preceded by an group of completely mind blowing sequences, which in there order, and how it is edited make you come to the conclusion that he has traveled far in to the infinite regions of the universe. In Dave’s POV shot we see a moving of everything cut between what begins as close ups of dave’s face  tu extreme close ups of his eye. this implies maybe that much more is going on than just the traveling, something perhaps metaphysical happening.

Here then Dave finds himself inside a room,  shot with a wide angle lens, to give a very eerie feel to it all. Unnatural. What we see, as we’ve seen through out the entire movie is just solid shot after shot of information this editing though similar to ellipsis it was more like jumpcuts meant to confuse yet show a rapid (or was it rapid?) passing of the time.  Its almost scary in the sense that you as a viewer are not aware of the things happening as it unfolds in front of you. The time it takes to send the information and for it to be understood was at points so long that it could be translated into meaning that it took David that long to comprehend where he was.

This scene ends with the birth of the starchild, and the only way we can assume that this is Dave is because we cut to a shot of a withered and aged dave in his deathbed, then to a shot of the monolith, then again to a shot of the bed but instead of Dave we have the StarChild. This type of stuff really blew my mind, and it stretches the limits of what the mind could fill in with the minimum of information, for that and mostly that i truly enjoyed this movie. Good job Stanley. Give yourself a pat on the back. you deserve it.

-peace!

Strange Indeed…

Dr. Strangelove, odd to say the least, you see this is the way the opening credits are written. I absolutely love the way every single word is written in those credits is written up. I’m a visual bastard, I just love anything that can appease my eyes and you can’t blame me, hell, I’m a comicbook artist. its slightly difficult to adjust myself to the black and whites, but its actually a great experience because it can be very straightforward in what it wants to convey with its lighting. It goes directly to the point; silhouettes withouts the bother of color, at times you see very high contrast shadow though some are just normal.

The film in its majority, is long shots, in an attempt maybe to alienate the viewer, these people are so far away, for example in the scene in which Group Captain Mandrake first confronts General Ripper, (the one where he gets locked in with him) You see the group captain as this diminute powerless figure, and the viewer is so far away from him, one is in a sense more powerless to do anything about it.

Group Captain Mandrake (exceptionally well played by Peter Sellers) is, in the depth of the frame, tiny, compared to general ripper, who is so calm smoking his cigar in the frame that it makes him look almost godly in comparison.

This is also further emphasized when The camera cuts to a worms eye view close up of General Ripper. It scared the shit out of me. geez. Its incredible what that view and that lighting can do to an already horrifying man. the low key lighting and almost no fill light made his looks ten times more menacing, and whats worse is that he was calm in that shot. just smoking, making him look like the most evil cynical person maybe ever.

with that I’m off like a light-switch. (thats as unoriginal as it gets.)

-Peace for the middle-east!

Forshadowing Bluntly…

   Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita is quite a fascinating piece of work, it is completely classical in terms of filming techniques, in the sense that You can almost bet that Stanley Kubrick had not discovered the ’shrooms yet at this point of his acclaimed carreer.(Am I right? Am I right? who’s with me, ah?) Even so, in it we can see the characterizations that he develops so much more on in his work.

   Now the Mise-en-scene of this film is brilliantly well done, But it didn’t completely call out to me so excitingly. Out of it all a single few really gained my attention and the first had to be the organization of the scene in which Humbert and Charlotte are playing chess, but to discuss that you’d have to go to the previous scene, that has Humbert between Lolita and her mother.

   The arrangement of that scene in particular is very concise. it goes straight to the point as to what it wants to convey. the lighting, coming from the projection screen of the drive-thru, creates a feel of intimacy between all three of them in which you can see the love triangle clearly. When the camera does a close up on Lolita and Charlotte each holding one of Humbert’s hands you see the importance if the moment he chooses. Of course, this is done in the dark, unlit by the movie screen, showing a sense of secrecy about what he chooses, while Charlotte is completely oblivious to it all.

   This is further accentuated in the Chess game scene, but the key differences would be that in this case is done much more symbolically, and directly in Charlotte’s face. In this scene you can see the parallel situations but this time, in the frame when Lolita walks up she is between Charlotte and Humbert, showing a choice already made. This is made clearest when, In the chess game they are playing, Humbert moves his black knight and takes out Charlotte’s White queen this prefectly symbolizing and forshadowing His intentions to be with Lolita. The lighting of this scene also is quite simple, since there is no secret, atleast to the viewer about what is going on in Humbert’s mind.

-peace for the middle-east! 

      

Acusation: Second sincerest Form Of Flattery?

   Well it has recently come to my attention (my e-mail notified me) that i finally got a comment on my blog. “whoopi-deedo!!” I said in my best Adam Sandler voice, because well, maybe someone enjoyed my rather funny little post, seeing as i had poured my soul and sweat into the 15 minutes it took to write, some appreciation wasn’t going to be too bad on the system, yes? Well, ladies and germs, here it is:

“Source? Cool post, but i doubt its yours.”

 OUTRAGE! INFURIATING! He might as well, have said: “hey this is funny, but there is no possible way in which you might have the sense of humor to write something like this”. Worse yet, he could have said: “Cool post, but you are a plagiarist, and i have come to this baseless conclusion without verification”. I mean, just the audacity it would take to write that gives Mr.Comment-of-The-Year some sort of award that i have yet to name because I’m too untalented to think of a funny joke to put there.

   Truth be told: He caught me. Yep, he did. My original Blog post was gonna be something like this:

“Hey guys. I’m Daniel, I like obscure references, but I’m not talented enough to make a blog about it. Gee, I wish i had a sense of humor. “

But instead in my evil plans I google up this little baby with the search words: “obscure” “reference” “blog” “about camaraderie” “for my ingl. 3345 class at 6:30″ its the immediate first link. Lucky me, huh?

   Of course, I was careless, My scheme failed, for i forgot that nobody would believe that pathetic (but evil and plagiarist) me would ever conceive something so freakin’ awesome. Damn you, sir! for once again you have thwarted my evil plans! …And i would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids, and that stupid dog.

   In all honesty, I’m flattered. Because in essence what this comment says that what I on my own wrote was so good, at-least to the person who commented, that it seemed professional. So that’s how I’m taking it, and of-course i have to thank you for that, and for giving base to my second blog.

Who am i kidding? i just google’d “Blog about being accused by classmate of stealing blog due to the immense hilarity of said blog” and wouldn’t you guess that the above blog was right there in the first link. Copy paste is awesome.

-Peace for the middle east!

Making an Obscure Reference is like Crack…

…But even better is seeing the one person in the whole group that gets it, or better yet, actually getting someone elses obscure reference, somhow proving to them that you’re worthy, and that you above all people know who the biker-mice from mars are, and the obvious fact that the one with the mechanical arm was the coolest.

   To people who don’t watch enough movies, or television, what we say is something they vaguely get and pretend to laugh at since we are doing so, which i guess is a tad snobbish and elite like of me, but well, I can’t help having a conversation about the pros and cons of having Mike instead of Joel on mystery science theater, or reminiscing about the fact that few people know that robin Williams was Popeye in the live action movie.

   Like talking about grave of the fireflies, or the fact that a movie the likes of “killer drag-queens on dope” actually exists (starring Alexis Arquette), creates an instant sense of camaraderie amongst those in the know,  somehow fortifying an imaginary bond based on the fact the groundhogs day is one of the best movies ever.

   There isn’t much of point to it all, but isn’t that, in essence, the point?