“Well, depression works that way. Movies have given us a skewed idea of how it works, because there, when a character enters his “dark period,” it’s with a montage full of sad music and drinking and moping in dim rooms. Real life isn’t like that. Not only do moods fluctuate, but even when you’re at your lowest you find yourself in social situations where you’re not allowed to show it. If you’re in a dark place but can’t get out of your nephew’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, you’re going to put on a smile for the camera. You feel selfish bringing everybody else down. You put on a cheerful mask.”

- David Wong

What what what what what what the hell?

There was nothing interesting or endearing about anything in this movie.

The only intentions I assume went into the development of this was the hope to capture a slice of life realism, with the mumblecore saturated intensely informal dialogue, at least in regards to scripted dialogue having an “air” to them. Yet they failed to capture any of the raw interest that life holds. That in and of itself is a very impressive feat.

As many others in that class, take almost anyone else, and observe their actually life and they would be far more interesting.

It’s like a feature length neanderthal version of reality TV.

Okay. Upfront I did not like the A Woman is a Woman

The sound design was painful

The characters were annoying.

The plot was frustrating.

Maybe there’s some key factor i’m getting, and there’s a more complex and deeper message than some sort of twisted female equivalent to saying “boys will be boys” but I feel that isn’t a feminist, empowering towards woman, stance as much as it is a statement claiming “Women can do whatever they want, because they’re Women.” Which is not an equality stance

Maybe I’ve been raised on a different style of storytelling, so that when a couple fights and argues in front of me, I feel awkward. And that is what as far as I gather this film is about; the inability of a couple to communicate and the exaggerated levels of passive aggressivism they take to get back at one another, because they “love” one another so wholly? I’ve no idea how the audience reaction is to be anything other than discomfort.

The inalienable human right to pursue happiness does not give one the right to disregard another human being completely. Cheating on a significant other is a pretty big damn deal in my book, still, it feels as if the film is trying to establish that everything Emile and Angela do is because of their feelings for one another, and at some point this translates into Angela sleeping with the other guy? I just don’t get it. 

And perhaps that is why I didn’t enjoy A Woman Is a Woman: I just don’t get it.

I’m not making a stance on topics, nor am I advocating or denouncing support for the cause.

Kony 2012. Holy shit. If you haven’t seen it, you will soon, it’s unavoidable. 

Video here: http://vimeo.com/37119711

And counterpoint article here: http://ilto.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/the-visible-problem-with-invisible-children/

According to Vimeo, the 30 minute video was posted on Feb. 20th.That was 16 days ago, and just over the past dozen hours it has exploded.

Following the Invisible Children page on facebook, at the moment of this writing, has:

1,051,974 Likes, 7,398 Talking Abouts, 2,125 Were here’s.

Wait 1,056,450 likes. 5k in about 5mins.

I have received invites to 2 different Stop Kony based events, and see about 8 other events floating around.

Got distracted reading another article, but 1,065k in under 10 minutes or so

Now I consider this as he said right off the bat, this was an Experiment. And a damn successful one in my book, and I predict it will only swell. Using mass media film has united thousands of people on an international level to a single cause. This is a demonstration of the American people having the power to decide what they want their government to be focusing on, and pressuring the government into doing so.

This is the power of Film and media. And hot damn is it astounding, the rate at which it’s trending just leaves me in awe.

1,072,074 Or approx. a 21k increase over the course of writing this article. And that’s just likes on one page.

And just experimenting myself, every refresh yields about a 130ish more.

1,075,060 and I’m done. 

I saw a video a while back and I thought it was interesting look at the oscars. The video goes through a breakdown of how all the Best Film nominees fair on the “Bechdel Test”, a test which gauges women’s representation in movies for those who don’t already know.

http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/the-bechdel-test-oscars-2012-edition/

Keeping in mind the title is under “Feminist Philosophers” but still I feel the need to comment that imbalance is not an inherently evil thing. Inequality only becomes a social ill when it is paired with an inferior group. (Granted they are usually a matched set, but not as a set rule)

I’m under the persuasion that treating the film industry (or specifically writing) sexist because it is composed of predominantly men, is like calling a sport racist because there’s less of an individual ethnic group presence (I’m just saying, I have never in my life seen an Indian guy dunk.)

Also http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreMale , They say write what you know, and I don’t think it’s too farfetched to assume that most men don’t know what it’s like to have a vagina.

Finishing, I’d like to use the movie “Easy A” as an example of the exception, a personal favorite primarily because of the writing, snappy dialogue, clever lines, etc. features a female protagonist, written by a male Bert V. Royal (Whom also wrote Dog sees God) ((Which I only just learned from this past google search))

I’m posting this a little late, but nonetheless: I am easily amused, it is a trait I developed to pass time in solitude. Having watched City Lights, to simply state it, I was in love.

I feel that a large portion of my own humour, at the very least whilst writing, derive from wit and dialogue posed in a verbally cartoonish manner, in the sense of exaggeration and unrealistically established situations.

Now I find that slapstick comedy is somewhat childish in that it is more enrapturing for the short attention span as it connects to the visual processing element primarily rather than the intellectual and cognitive, thus making it perfect for a more youthful and innocent or ignorant audience. This of course is almost entirely what City Lights is composed of.

Also of note is the long shots, with each unique series of gags being in a single shot. It is remarkable considering the precision and effort that must have gone into the rehearsal process to have gotten the takes right.

But as I mentioned before, City Lights being mostly the “childish” slapstick humor as I called it, what makes it so intelligently appropriated were the practical breaks of comedic influence, primarily regarding The blind woman,  allowing for the audience to develop a greater emotional attachment, creating that sympathetic nature for the Tramp rather than having him be just another schmuck the audience laughs at, (Goofy from the old disney cartoons is brought to mind)

Which leads into my next thought; Comedy creates indifference. We laugh at characters and not with them whilst in media and film, another difference between film and stage, as there is a difference in personal connection that simply isn’t present when not viewing live actors, in that we laugh WITH characters on stage, they can hear our laughter and play off it, an interaction between performer and audience which does not exist in recorded media.

As were going over various shot types in DC’s class, and we started talking about the “Rack Focus” Couldn’t help but think of this.

One could make the statement that consistently, shots have a direct and intentional purpose, or as with the Citizen Kane example a subverted, or dual application, and now that leads me to wonder how might the end result be, if a film were to intentionally subvert the intended atmosphere of each and every shot, presumably something that may be jarring and discomforting, and downright physically difficult to watch, which could plausibly find home in a film dealing with mentality or psychoses trying to disturb the audience on a deeper level, or perhaps a comedy? So silly it can’t even take it’s physical media seriously? 

Just pondering aloud.

Also; the minimalist approach has a startlingly profound effect on the levels of realism when it comes to shots.

Okay, so I got some weird looks today in DC’s class when I said that the film we watched made perfect sense to me, or at the least I processed a possible interpretation with ease. But I just wanted to share with you what I got from it:

It was a chapter of a story of betrayal, the Man with Books confiding in a close friend (Giving away the books) And the Man with Guns promptly used his secrets against him (The books turning to guns) As it turns out what he confided in the friend were feelings of affection for a woman, who can be assumed was stolen by the Man with Guns from the Man with Books (The act of the woman vanishing from his grasp) And that she was stolen in such a way that left the Man with the Books wounded and publicly humiliated (The cutting to the field upon the shooting, and the people coming to gather around his body.)

This is for all of you in 3900, earlier I commented on how one way of looking at Stage v. Recorded performances could be seen in such a way as past(Has already been performed and executed before reaching audience) and present (Is a living, spontaneous performance happening In the “Now”). Now the natural progression seems to beg the question; “Then what is the performance of the future?”

Also, digression; I’d like to thank Mercedes for helping me to indulge in my pondering later in that evening allowing me to explore this train of thought further. A lot of this may be my synaesthesia speaking but I’ll try to make it make as much sense to you as it does to me. (TLDR after jump)

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