Perks of being a Wallflower

In this week’s screening, we talked about the digital revolution and we also watched a screening on the perks of being a wallflower. As a recap of this movie, it is about a young man named Charlie, and he is going into highschool but he has some past traumas that he is internally going through. His aunt passed away when he was young and his friend committed suicide in middle school. He had trouble making friends and eventually found a group of friends that were seniors (he’s a freshman) and they took him to his first party. He is a shy guy so they were quite interested in him. He accidentally got high at a party and discovered that his new  friend Patrick was dating a popular football player and that his other friend Sam, she likes to date guys that don’t treat her too nicely. Sam also discovered that his friend committed suicide and told Patrick. They then welcomed him into becoming a wallflower as to which they describe it as people who overcome obstacles in their life. Charlie dreams of becoming a writer and Sam really wants to get into Penn State and to meet a nice guy into which she falls for Charlie and vice versa. They bond through music and friendship. When they all moved away to college, Charlie had a relapse and started blaming himself for his aunt’s death, which in fact it was not his fault, and he then tries to harm himself and he finds himself In the hospital to keep an eye on him and to have him seek therapy as well. So we have Patrick dealing with the hardships of  homosexuality, Sam finding a nice man who treats her with respect, and Charlie wanting to become a writer and dealing with harmful thoughts and past traumas. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

This movie holds many ideologies into which it holds deeper meaning in the movie and messages it is trying to break through. What I took from it, was that many people go through things that you don’t know about so try just to be a nice human being to others. Another one is that some people have obstacles in their way but you just have to keep trying to move forward and heal. They also hinted and talked about the aunt majority of the movie and not the parents so that is something that played a big role especially at the end. The genre of this film is young adult and novel and definitely a coming to age movie as we discussed in class. You can tell because at times it is cringey because of some things we did around that age such as having our first kiss or going to dances and things of that nature. Also I feel as though that a lot of the times they show the scenes in low-key lighting especially to emphasize the darkness within themselves and dark secrets. 

I really enjoyed this course as it enlightened me to many different types of movies and how to view them from a different perspective. It definitely educated me to a whole new world of film and the history behind it. Professor Shlegal was very accommodating and was readily available for any questions or concerns I or any other student might have and he always encouraged discussion on these films or the directors/ producers behind them. I also enjoyed this course because he spoke so passionately about it and was excited so it made the class more engaging as well. Very enjoyable course and with a great professor behind it and I am sad that it is coming to an end. Thank you!!! 

Auteur with Henry Selick

 I will be focusing on a a famous director known as Henry Selick, and the connection of auteur theory and how he portrays that in his well known films. I will first explain what auteur theory is and a brief description of its background, then I will move towards explaining Henry Selick and his creative background, then combine those two aspects and how they correlate with each other. Auteur theory is where the director runs the course of the film, so essentially, the director is the author of the film which means the director has complete creative control. This theory originated in France, however, it eventually found a home here in the United States. So along with the director being the author of the film, it also must have certain characteristics of the style that is their signature which allows the audience to have a better understanding of the director as a person and as a filmmaker by connecting the visual aspect of his films and his life. This includes consistent themes of characters, storylines, and visual representation in his films.

Henry Selick was born in 1952 in Glen Ridge, NJ. He is a film director that specializes in stop-motion animation and he also is formally trained as an animator. Selick was inspired at a very young with animation films such as ” Adventure of Prince Achmed,” and “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad,” which featured a stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen. Going into college, he studied science and film and eventually won two awards for his film creations. Soon after college, he was hired by Disney where he started working as a in-betweener which is where he would creates me frames for Disney’s animations but it was indeed a lower level job. He then gradually worked his way up that ladder and was approached by the no- other, Tim Burton. While working with Tim Burton in the famous animation film, “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Selick got his big break for directing this film and essentially spreading his wings to later producing more well known films. (Dimos, 2)

For those that might confuse Henry Selick for Time Burton, granted that they share similar themes and characteristics in their films and sometimes work together, Henry Selick directed the films such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, “James and the Giant Peach”, and my absolute favorite, “Coraline”. Henry Selick’s trademark or signature is his use of stop motion puppets or special effects in all of his films. After going through some articles, I came across one that had a good description of Henry Selick and his work. In the article, Ben Simon mentioned and gave credit to Selick ” of a whole sub-genre” of stop-motion [models] animation, the animations dark side which is directed towards the films that I mentioned in this blog. Ellen Bensen, who is the author of animation unleashed, stated that darkness and the “organic” feeling of his hand-crafted films are what makes Selick’s personal vision really stand out.

Going more in depth of his films The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and his upcoming film Wendell and Wild which stars Jordan Peele and Keegan-Micheal Key. They all portray similar themes, storylines, and visual representation in these films. However, I should clarify that the upcoming film does not air until 2021so I cannot compare this film to his other creations in this blog. His films all have a similar genre that it stop-motion animation, dark fantasy that plays along the line of children thriller/ gothic but also with the genre of family, drama, and adventure as well. It has many genres, clearly, but all is a very identifiable trait that is shown. His films are very visually pleasing as well with the colors, costumes, and environment he set the film in.

He uses the color scheme to his advantage in order to tell the story. In the TNBF, he uses a very dark color or scheme to portray death and uses a more colorful pallet to signify Christmas and joyfulness. He does the same thing in Coraline where the darker and more obscure colors are shown as a way to portray unhappiness and dullness of Coraline’s current living situation and in the alternate universe to which she finds herself in. The vibrant colors are shown to portray a better and more fulfilling life with all the orange, yellow, blues, reds, green, you name it. Each film though, he holds a vast comparison of the stages in the characters life by showing these colors. The colors are always visually pleasing and enhance the film. Setting is also an important factor in his films. The characters in his films appear to be traveling whether it is to another area, James and the Giant Peach, another dimension, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or another alternate reality, Coraline. All of which, setting plays such a vital role in executing the films and the journey these characters endure and realize what they eventually realize along the way.

Henry Selick also portrays many ideologies in his movies or perhaps the same one which is always powerful. Ideologies are the deeper meaning in movies and the messages that the movies portray to the viewers. In these movies of his that I presented, the characters are dealing with an internal/ external struggle which is wanting more in life than what their current circumstances will allow them. This then leads the characters to travel and leave their home or place they’ve always had because they believe that the grass is greener on the other side. They eventually find their way back to their home but first that distance taught them to appreciate what they have and to build upon it to make their surroundings better rather than abandoning it. I find this to be a powerful message and it seems to be a theme of his. All of this ties into auteur theory and how Henry Selick displays that connection he has with the theory.

References:

Moore, Roger. “The Auteur of Stop-Motion.” OrlandoSentinel.com, 12 Oct. 2018, http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2009-02-06-selick-story.html.

 Ntikoudis, Dimos. “Henry Selick.” IMDb, IMDb.com,   http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0783139/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.

Priebe, Ken A. “The Advanced Art of Stop Motion Animation .” Google Books, Google, 2011, books.google.com/books?hl=en. 

Glory and the Historical Representation

This week, we touched on historical representation and the link of that with film. With historical representation and film, we feel as though we have lived through these movies, however, it could misconstrued history itself but unintentionally so. Due to the false information in films about the past, this could be very problematic. Historical representation and film are intertwined which is something in the earlier years of filmmaking, thought wasn’t going to be the case. People were looking at these older movies about the old west, which was not historically accurate by any means and was just for entertainment, and people were digesting a false narrative about the old west and all that came along with it. Even to this day, when people think of the old west the first thing they think of are cowboys and fights going on. Back then, film was about entertaining and not about being accurate. Film making then shifted in later years to movies that are now more historically accurate because they realized people were taking this information and utilizing it as though it were accurate. This brings me to the movie glory and its historical accuracy. 

The movie Glory is about four African American soldiers fighting in the American civil war. The Massechustes infantry regiment engages confederate forces in a bloody battle. The film itself is indeed historically accurate besides the four men. The four characters are simply composites and were fiction but they were created to stand in for the MANY many men who fought for a good cause in this war and risked their lives. When you watch the movie or when the audience watches this film, you are inclined to to invest in these characters and that leads to an attachment to them. You feel as though that you are not just watching these events, but that you feel as though you are personally experiencing the events in the movie Glory. You feel as though you are in the past and the costumes, furniture, music, etc, helps to get you there mentally and emotionally as well. 

The power of cinema is actually quite amazing if you really think about it. It has the power and ability to convey stories and events and people look at these films as another way to receive education and knowledge about the past. That is why it is so important to be as historically accurate as possible, and if not, then label what is fiction or what is non-fiction so that there is no false information or any misleading information as well. The fantastic masterpiece of Glory, is intertwined with our mind for real life events and glory did an amazing job of doing that and executing that accurately. The message of this film is that things are progressively getting better and showing history as a process and it will only get better through time and knowledge. Overall, I genuinely liked the film and thought it was a great watch. It was historically accurate and did a great job in executing the historical representation and film combined. 

Get Out: The Deep Meaning

This week we zoned in on the topic of “Ideology”. Before getting into ideology and what that is, we also viewed a fantastic movie called Get Out, which was directed by Jordan Peele. We also read “Get out and the subversion of the American zombie”,  as well as “Visualizing racism in Get Out and the night f the living dead.” Getting into Get Out, It is a horror/ thriller film about a young African American, Chris,  who is dating a white woman, Rose, and they go on a weekend trip to her family house to essentially meet the family finally. Once he is there, he feels as though her family is uneasy about their interracial relationship due to their over accomadating behavior, as though it is a way for them to deal with I guess. However, as the weekend progresses, he notices strange things starting to unfold. Her mother ends up doing hypnoses on him and getting deep into his mind and making him reveal out loud about his own mother’s death. It is later revealed that Rose and her family reel in African Americans to their house and put them under hypnosis. They then put other white people into them and suppress the actual bodies which are the African American bodies… the father views it as though it is one perfect person because he takes the great minds of the whites and the athletic abilities and strength of the African American to make the perfect person. Crazy huh ? 

Ideology is described as residual, dominant and emerging as defined by Raymond which is great for social media and things of such nature. Residual is no longer current valid beliefs, dominant is current held beliefs, and emerging is the possibility of becoming a dominant belief. Ideology is also commonly referred to, and in this case, deeper meanings behind messages and even messages that are portrayed in movies such as this movie Get Out. In the movie, the mother tapped into his subconscious to reveal the deep dark repressed past of the death of his mother. Along with that, a deer dies in one of the scenes and that deer symbolized his mother’s passing. The argument here ideology is the perspective of society and minorities. The dad is a doctor and and he suppresses the minds of the African Americans, so here it is supposed to symbolize modern slavery such as the enslavement of the minds of the minorities. 

In “Get out and the subversion of the American Zombie,” it talks about the film in a deeper light. They compare Peele’s film of Night of the living dead and Get Out to essentially see they are both zombie films. In both movies, they both find themselves as the only African American surrounded by a sea of white people and they both take initiative into becoming resourceful of a way out of the dangerous environment they find themselves in. He is a victim that is supposed to symbolize racism. In the article, it states that he brought back zombies to the African roots. He says that original zombie is deeply tied to colonism and anxieties surrounding slavery and that there are stories of doctors and witches trying to mush the brain of their enemy aka zombify their enemy. This was a very interesting film and analysis and not one I was expecting. I felt as though there Is more than meets the eye to this movie and how it’s portrayed and it shows a great deal of ideology. 

The Thin Blue Line and “Reality”

I can honestly say that I am a fan of documentaries and all the information they give about a subject or person. Documentaries are usually focused on a person and goes through the events of that person’s life or events that have occurred. The documentary that was assigned and we had watched was called “The Thin Blue Line ” which is a Errol Morris documentary. A short summary of this documentary is that it was about two men Randall Adams, David Harris and the death of a Dallas Police officer. David Harris was a 16yr boy and Randall Adams was in his late 20’s. Randall Adams was wrongly accused and sentenced to death for the murder of that Dallas Police Office and the film takes you through the events that lead up to that conclusion. Throughout this documentary, they had many people give their side of the story of the events and many witnesses as well that told what they perceived was the truth in the situation. The general story of the murder was that 1 or two men were, driving without their headlights on, passed by a police officer that was off to the side of the road. In the police car there were two officers and the male officer pulled them over to make them aware that they had been driving with their headlights on and then he was going to let them be on their way. When the cop approached the driver’s side of the vehicle, the driver immediately shot him 3 times and sped off and that led to the death of the cop. Now the female officer was also there and shot at the blue car that drove off but she could not tell the license plate but she allegedly knew what kind of car it was. This is the basis of the story and I must say it is a good watch.

We spoke in class about mediation and how it pertains to films and more specifically documentaries such as this one. Documentaries are aimed to document reality and to be factually accurate in their portrayal of people, places and events. However it is almost impossible to construct a 100% reality documentary without some kind of narrative involved. I enjoyed Morris’s documentary because it was a truth/ minimal mediation, meaning that it did not have all the fluff, dramaticness, and narration to it like you see in other documentaries.  He kept it focused on the people and the events and what information he got from this event itself whether it was people’s perspective or their side of the story. Also, as a side note, I think as though it was imperative to the film that they exposed the death of David Harris’s older brother in the film because it connects all the other motives for his actions. And lastly, Morris used the organizational tool of a “plot twist” at the end which he borrowed from narrative.

This is a photo of David which is one of the main focus of the documentary. Again, great documentary and is a fictional film and Morris did a great job of putting it together.

The Story of Ed Wood

This week we zoned in on the topic of Auteur Theory and viewed a film called ED Wood, directed by Tim Burton, that displayed this concept. The Auteur Theory is when the director is the author of the film and they have certain characteristic of style that is their signature and is known. This theory originated in France but ended up finding its home in the United States which was mentioned in class. Also, as I mentioned before, I got the pleasure to watch the movie Ed Wood (1994), by Tim Burton, and might I say… I liked this movie a lot. It This movie was shot in black and white and stars Johnny Depp as Ed Wood. It is based on a true life story of a wild filmmaker in Hollywood. So in the movie, Ed Wood is a filmmaker and is trying to make it big and the film world and he can’t seem to catch a break and is looked at the worst fimmaker of all time. He exposed that he liked wearing women clothes to his girlfriend who later broke up with him and he even did a movie about just that and it was still labeled a really bad movie. Bella Lugosi also played a big role in this movie as well.

Tim Burton, the director of this film, is a prime example of Auteur. Tim Burton films is easily identifiable visual style. Almost all of his films revel in the gothic imagery and he sculpts almost of his films in almost a cartoonish way to emphasize his gothic features that he portrays. I feel as though it is an overall feeling he tries to get across to his audience. He is said to be a true Auteur because he makes his films the way he wants it done and it is also relatable and identifiable.

I really enjoyed this movie and it was defitnitly worth a watch !! The storyline off of this movie was interesting as well. As wacky as Ed woods films were he kept powering through and just kept driving no matter how bad they told him he was. Again, definitely worth a watch.