Watchmen

Watched Watchmen (2009) last night, id seen it before but had never tried to analyze it the way Danny keeps telling us. So i thought id give it a go and try really hard to not enjoy the film :-p

It starts with a very very good fight scene that has a mixture of live action, wire work, and CGI. it all blends pretty much seamlessly and looks really nice. With the whole scene being fought to the sound of Nat King Cole's 'Unforgettable' it lends the scene an oddly erie menace. Then the opening credits your given a kind of show reel that charts the history of the Watchmen and the Minutemen from the 1940s which is really nicely done. There are other fight scenes that work very well but are generally more of the same stuff but the scene where prisoners are trying to cut Rorscharch out of his cage and end up cutting the arms of an inmate looks fantastic, very good prosthetic work.

Something else i picked up on which i didn't see the first time round was the Structuralism similarities that were used. Superhero comics always have very powerful themes of good and evil but this film shows you the human weaknesses of all the characters. There is a very strong similarity between what happens in the film and the way comic book heroes have been used in the real world. Superman came out in 1938 and set the image of what a superhero should be in the eyes of a lot of people. When Captain America went to war against the Nazis it showed how a superhero could be used for propaganda. This covered in the film by having the Minutemen's costumes mimic those of the early comic book heroes. Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian both go to war during the Vietnam war. It is also mentioned during one of those scenes by the Comedian how he thinks if they hadn't won the war there it would have driven them mad as a nation. Its like the film tries to portray itself as an alternative actual world, a kind of what if superheroes were real, where other superhero films take place in cities that don't exist like Gotham and Metropolis. There is also the fact that most superheroes are portrayed with either less emotional complexities than real people or not effected by them. However in Watchmen they are plagued with emotional baggage, even Dr. Manhattan who appears to have no emotions initially is actually a complex emotional being that simply is less outwardly emotional. It is almost as if by making the superheros real they have lost there strong sense of structuralism. it is no longer a battle between good and evil, but now a battle between a 'grey' force where no ones is strictly right. Rorscharch is the only character to maintain a strong identity of good, even if he goes about it in a very dark and maverick way He also seems to have paid for this with deep psychological and emotional problems. Maybe this is an attempt to show that real people cant be superheroes or maybe it is just good cinema.

Intertextuality in Action

Over the weekend i saw Meet The Spartans ...... it was a bit crap, as most films of its kind are, but it did get me thinking about how it referenced other things not only in films but in current events. Which led me onto some of the more famous films of this style Police Squad, Naked Gun and Hot Shots. All of them rely on intertextuality to sustain them. Hot Shots and Hot Shots Part Deux reference Top Gun and Rambo so heavily that a lot of it wouldn't be funny or even make sense if you hadn't seen the films that they are parodies of. These kind of films show how important intertextuality is, but they cling to it like some kind of crutch, they don't move away and support themselves with originally entertaining content, but rather mock the films that they piggyback.

Another film that Ive seen fairly recently was the re-make/prequel Star Trek. This is visually a beautiful film the CGI is flawless, the ships look both classic and modern. Everything about how it presents itself is superb right down to the costumes. Story wise it reworks the whole timeline of the Star Trek history with a kind of alternate reality brought about through time travel. However there are more than enough nods to the original stories and timeline to keep the all but the die hard fans happy. This use of intertextuality is much more subtle than the spoof parodies of the the first group of films. It is however no less important for without its attention to intertextual detail it would have been pulled apart by fans who wanted a return to the old films.

Are You A Sponge??

That's got to be the main question asked in hundreds of debates on the levels of screen violence. Are human beings sponges when it comes to viewing violent behaviour, do we simply absorb what we see and emulate it in the real world. Of course we bloody don't! But there is always a few that do therefore we have censorship. Screen violence was the topic of conversation in Bill's latest lecture. It did make me laugh as some people had complained about the graphic violence in the clips from 'Alien' 1979 and 'The Thing' 1982 in the last lecture which if I'm being honest is really not that bad, its monsters committing violence against humans not humans committing violence against other humans. Scenes from say 'Saving Private Ryan' 1998 were much more traumatic!


Here have a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOC-E3qIsUQ Now that's screen violence, don't god damn complain next time, if you don't have what it takes to be on the course then leave and stop wasting time for the rest of us. Rant over!

Back when i started doing this blog i read on Sean's blog about 'A Serbian Film' 2010 http://babysfirstcoffin.tumblr.com/post/1341189800/first-blog-post-for-media-histories-cultures-a
I also heard about and watched the trailer to 'The Human Centiped' 2009 when i see these kind of films being advertised i do realise that people are being desensitised to violence in the media it is being glorified and dramatised. As Danny said in our seminar, its like its taking violence and blood shed and making it sexy. This is pretty much true people don't die in real life like they do in films, the fight seen at the end of 'Kill Bill Vol 1' 2003 is so over dramatic it actual take away from the actual horror of the actions that are being perpetrated.

Is screen violence a bad thing? No it isn't but there is a boundary between screen violence that  is an integral part of the plot and screen violence for that sake of violence. Blood shed for the sake of blood just doesn't really work on an entertainment level for many viewers.

Bill Schaffer's first two lectures

 Part 1
Three weeks ago we had a change of lecturer from Ivan Phillips to Bill Schaffer. I wont lie i was far from pleased with the change, this was not bill's fault but i did hold it against him, and as a result have kind of neglected this blog. Yesterday Bill's lecture finally hit the spot with me and so Ive decided to go back and talk a little bit about the first two lectures before i move onto the one from yesterday.

Bill's first lecture was mostly about video games and filming styles, he did present one interesting idea for me however. Bill spoke about two types of filming method the first telling a story from 1st person perspective this was done a lot in early cinema and has now started to creep back in to modern cinema in short action scenes such as 'DOOM' first person shooter scene and 'Natural Born Killers' in the diner scene. 1st person filming has also become popular in TV 'Peep Show' for example. The second Filming technique, which is much more common today is that told from multiple perspectives allowing the audience to have an all most god like perspective as if the audience is omnipresent within the narrative.

These ideas also transfer over to video games, most commonly action video games that tend to follow either a 1st person or narrative style of game play. Both styles often follow a linear path of game play but its the users perspective that changes.

Part 2

Bill's second lecture was supposed to be on Sci-Fi, little bit sad that most of it was spent on flicking through his photo album and then talking about genre. But on Genre he was right you cant classify something with any kind of total one word description. If you label something like 'Alien' 1979 as Sci-fi then your only half there as its also could be covered by Horror. Its never clear cut!

sorry this second part has been a while coming, as its really rather short and i should have just sucked it up and got on with it.

The Black Hole 1979

I decided to use this clip as it showed the film in a better light than any of the trailers that were available.

The Black Hole 1979

Just the other week i was reminded of this truly brilliant film. I can say with total confidence this was my favourite film when i was young. I think is saw it when i was maybe 7 years old and i still love it. There are massive inconsistencies in it, the zero gravity scenes are more than silly, really just people walking funny with the occasional bit of cable work. I don't care though its a very good film and has some really emotional moments. The score is inspired and at times extremely eerie. Its all most like a sci-fi horror film at times with concepts much darker than any you would expect to see in a Disney film almost a children's version of something like Alien. It certainly has more menace than any of the Star Wars episodes at the time.

Structuralism Part 2

Judge Dread as represented in the film is a character that is truly law full, good and honest. He has no obvious vices though he is not entirely inhuman.

This is V.I.N.C.E.N.T a robot from the Disney film 'Black Hole' 1979. The Film was very heavy on the whole good and evil theme, what you would have expected though from a Disney film though.

Structuralism

This concept is linked to Semiotics in that it works with symbols that we use all the time. One thing covered in the lecture recently was that idea of Binary Opposition, which is the idea that things can be divided into two areas of description.

Good - Evil

Right - Wrong

White - Black

Day - Night

etc.

A good example of binary opposition in cinema is Star Wars. The concepts involved are based very heavily in Good vs Evil and Right vs Wrong. It is not total in its description however, there are Evil characters who have some good traits, Darth Vader for example still has some vestige of humanity in him, enough to resist the dominant personality of the emperor and save his son. (if that spoiled it for anyone serves you fucking right!)

Another example is that of the comic book heroes and villains. Batman - Joker, Spiderman - Carnage. The idea being that to have a super hero you need a super villain. They balance each other out and also give substance to the other through there own existence. You could say that they put things into perspective, but maybe it is us that simply put them into pre-designed categories.

What ive done before this

For the people on my course who I'm sure have been looking at this blog (thanks makes me feel liked, delusion i know but keeps me afloat). Here is a link to the new more personal blog Ive just started working on. I'm going to be showing some of the things that Ive done myself, and talking more about what makes me tick, and less about the lectures. Please have a look see what you think and post comments. :-)

*edit*

This is what happens when you do things when your falling asleep at the computer,here is the link http://mechanical-sorcery.blogspot.com/   

Death By Fire Terminator Gets Up Factory Chase

This is a perfect example of traditional techniques that i love. I especially like the stop motion bits that although not looking as fluid as a CGI equivalent they do have a lovely sense of nostalgia.

I hate people

I hate people who remove the embedding codes.

Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest: 'Save The Couch' Clip

Spaced | Dawn of the Dead | Channel 4

Intertextuality

My latest lecture was on Intertextuality which is to do with the signs in Ive learned about in semiotics. Basically intertextuality is like a form of reference but only really works if the thing its trying to reference is known to audience, pretty obvious really.

A good example of this is the TV series 'Spaced' which is made by people who, like the audience watch a lot of films. It does however tend to angle itself more at a specific age group which may not make as much sense to people of different generations. Another good example is the series 'The Simpsons' this series has countless references to other forms of media across a broad spectrum using not only film and TV, but also fine art, music, politics and history.

Another way of thinking about intertextuality is how it effects the author on a subconscious level. Anyone who creates something today will have been influenced by things they have experienced in their life before the point of creation. Film makers might come to describe a dramatic scene and all ready have a scene from another film in there mind when he thinks of the . A painter might may be inspired by the way another picture uses colour or its dramatic brushstrokes. It is these subconscious influences that most interest people who study intertextuality as it is window into the way the human mind works.