ENG 225 Acting and Acting Styles Week 4 Blog

For this weeks blog in English 225 Introduction to Film class I will be writing about the movie Edge of Tomorrow (2014) starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt and Bill Paxton. In this movie an officer( played by Cruise) is infected by an alien race with the ability to control time…whenever he dies that is. Cruise gets smarter on how to kill the alien race whenever the day is reset. With the help of a quirky Dr., a few good men and a Special Forces warrior (played by Emily Blunt) the team gets closer to destroying the aliens.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Everyone knows the name Tom Cruise.  And we usually associate his name with the movie series Mission Impossible (1996,2000,2006), which are categorized as Action films. But he has also played in movies such as Jerry Maguire(1996), Top Gun (1986) and Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), which have the genres of comedy, drama, romance, and horror.

Edge of Tomorrow is indeed and action/ Scifi film which we typically are looking for from Cruise. I would classify him as a personality actor, which is an actor with distinctive personalities that manage to click with audiences often wind up playing similar characters in film after film(Goodykoontz & Jacobs 2011).

Actors like Emily Blunt, which this is the first film I have seen of hers, but has played in films such as The Young Victoria (2009), The Devil Wears Prada (2006) could be put in the wild card category, which means she typically does not play the same types of characters in her films.

Bill Paxton who has played in such films as One False Move (1992), Apollo 13 (1995), and a small role in The Terminator (1984) could be classified as a character actor which can fit invisibly into a wide variety of disparate characters, adapting to the needs of each script and director they work with (Goodykoontz & Jacobs 2011).

All of these actors are fantastic and beloved and can play just about any role and be wonderful, but we do as human beings tend to classify them in one particular category which is easily done when directors cast them in such roles. This does not mean I won’t go see any of these actors in different roles!!

Goodykoontz B., &. J. (2011). Film: From Watching to Seeing. San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
IMDb. (2014, June 6). Retrieved from IMDb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/?ref_=nv_sr_1

 

ENG 225 Week 3 Blog

Films use sound in many different ways to capture the audiences’ minds and hearts. This is what we are focusing on this week in Introduction to film.

The movie I chose to write about in this blog is Gravity. This film was released on October 4, 2013 and was written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The major actors are Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. This film is about two astronauts that get hit by debris from another space craft and have to try to get back to Earth.

Films use music, dialogue and sound effects to enhance the scenes and to keep the audiences’ attention. Dialogue which includes any number of memorable lines and helps to advance the plot, explain relationships, and establish characterizations (Goodykoontz & Jacobs 2011). Dialogue can also be described as the words spoken between characters which you see a lot of in this film mainly because they are the two main characters in almost every scene. Sandra Bullock’s character does a lot of voice over which is when a character’s voice narrates the action to help the audience understand what is going on (Goodykoontz & Jacobs 2011).

This film does not have much for music for it would take away from the drama of the outer space location. Instead it relies on the actual storyline and plot of the movie and dialogue from the characters.

 

Goodykoontz B., &. J. (2011). Film: From Watching to Seeing. San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Youtube. (2011, October 4). Retrieved from Youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eP-W0DNmY

 

ENG 225 Week 2 Blog

This week in class we are talking about a lot of great things in how films are made, but we are focusing on lighting in this blog. The film I chose to write about is an all time classic. I don’t know many who have not seen this movie, and if you haven’t, you should!!

It’s the Wizard of Oz!!

Written by: Florence Ryerson (screenplay)

Director: Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited)

Major actors: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton

Release Date: August 25, 1939

This film is one of my all time favorites. It brings back such pleasant memories of being a child.

As we all know (or should) this film is about a girl named Dorothy and how she is swept away in her house in Kansas in a tornado and lands in the land of OZ where she meets the Scarecrow, the Tin man and the Lion, who help her get to the Wizard so she can go home.

I would say that focusing on the lighting when watching this film this time around, it is done in high-key lighting. The textbook says “high-key lighting design has very bright light over everything, with few shadows and relatively low contrast between the lightest and darkest parts of the scene. This style of lighting is typical of comedies, happy scenes, institutional and office scenes, and the like” (Goodykoontz & Jacobs 2011). Even when the film is in black and white you can tell there is a lot of lighting around the set. It is bright and you can see the characters facial expression clearly. When it turns into color, you definitely see the reasons why the cinematographer chose this type of lighting. If he had not, The Wizard of Oz would not have been as bright and cheerful. Even when filming in the Wicked Witches’ castle, it is a darker scene, but you can see everything that is going on because there is so much light. It makes for very good contrast and depth for the scene. If the cinematographer had done this in any other lighting, I do not think it would have had the same effect on the film and the audience. The high-key lighting gave the film a cheery, happy go lucky feeling to it which complimented the films storyline and genres.

References

Goodykoontz B., &. J. (20011). Film: From Watching to Seeing. San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/?ref_=nv_sr_1

 

 

 

Eng 225 Blog Week 1

My Review of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

Movie Title: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: Melissa Mathison

Producers: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy

Major Actors: Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore

Release Date: June 11, 1982

The Story and Plot:

This magnificent Sci-fi film is ultimately about friendship. Friendship between two unlikely beings: a boy and an alien. It starts off by showing that the alien gets left behind by his fellow aliens and a young boy,  named Elliott, played by Henry Thomas, leads him out of the woods with Reeses pieces candy. Elliott tries to tell his family about the encounter but his brother is too busy with his friends and when he does tell them he gets made fun of and no one believes him. The alien, quickly named E.T. finds Elliott by way of the trail of Reeses pieces candy. Elliott hides E.T. from his mother and the government. The kids try to teach E.T. human things like talking and names of things. It is relatively fast known that E.T. wants to go back home.  Elliott and E.T quickly become friends and share an intense connection.  So intense that when E.T. is left alone at the house he raids the refrigerator and gets drunk, meanwhile Elliott is in school intoxicated from the beer E.T. has drunken and lets all the frogs go from the lab.  E.T. is smart and finds things around the house to make a device to send a signal back home.  In one of the more famous scenes in the movie, E.T. is watching television and learns that a telephone can bring people closer together and comes up with a plan. He tells Elliott “E.T. phone home”.  Elliott’s brother, Michael, played by Robert MacNaughton and little sister, Gertie, played by Drew Barrymore, help Elliott on Halloween to try and send E.T. home by going in the woods and setting up the device. Elliott stays there through the night and when is woken can not find E.T. anywhere. Elliott goes home thinking that E.T. will be there, instead there are police and Elliott’s mother, Mary, played by Dee Wallace, is frantic about Elliott. She soon realizes that Elliott is sick.  Elliott begs his brother to go find E.T. in the woods. Michael goes off with Elliott’s bicycle and finds E.T. by a river barely alive. He brings E.T. back to the house and decides to tell their mother. This is when the government invades and quarantines the house. They are very caring for Elliott and E.T.. They figure out that Elliott and E.T. are connected emotionally and spiritually.  At this point it is touch and go and Elliott begs and pleas for E.T. to stay with him, after a touching scene, they separate their ties and  E.T. dies after great efforts by the doctors. Elliott is left alone to say his goodbyes, he tells him he will never forget him and that he loves him.  Elliot starts walking away and sees a flower pot of dead flowers coming back to life, and Elliott knows E.T. is alive! The kids including Michael’s friends, scheme up a plan to get E.T. to the woods so he can go back home. Meanwhile the government along the the kids’ mother are chasing after them.  They manage to get to the woods and notice that E.T.’s device is still working and that E.T.’s ship is coming in. The government and Mary, the kids’ mother arrive in time to see a heart felt goodbye between Elliott and E.T.

This film is presented linearly, which means it was in chronological order. I think with this film being presented in this way it made it more dramatic and easy to follow along. It was able to build on the relationships between E.T. and the kids in a stronger, deeper way if it was done in flashbacks or foreshadowing.

Elliott appeared to be sad and almost invisible to his family being the middle child. His mother paying attention to her own sufferings and more to the older brother Michael and Gertie, the youngest child. Elliott’s character develops into a happy go lucky young boy after finding E.T. and developing a friendship with him. Then back into a sad scared boy when E.T. gets sick, and eventually goes back home. I do believe that Elliott and his family and every life E.T. touched, is better off now that he invaded their lives and hearts.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=pictures+from+E.T.+movie&id=95297279FA3B568461CC1854A93A96768E443DA3&FORM=IQFRBA#a

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/?ref_=nv_sr_4