La Ruta Natural

Innovation in cinema comes and goes ,but in the case for La Ruta Natural, it's shown subtley. Never have I seen narrative and visuals work so well with each other. The director was definatley conveying a hidden message, and by doing it with limited dialogue made the expierence all the worth while. Every shot in the movie had purpose to it whether it be to the plot or the overall theme of the film. The quick cuts in the beginning olny show how important the editing is to this movie. Not to mention, the story is told in reverse which means the editors had to make everything that was shot in reverse in post production. The character anaylsis of Divad is interesting considering his personality is one big question mark. We seem him drawn away from family values, and enter his own fantasy world where he reminices on the glory days hence the whole plot of the story. The flashbacks of his younger years show a side of happines that I think he trying to search for in this entire movie. The lighting was dark for most parts which olny contributed to the dark, omnious tone of the movie. It funny, the son is showned in two ways as a motif throughout this film. In the beginning, his picture is burnt and it shows his casket symbolizing sadness but when it shows the married couple in their later years, the tone of the son seems to bring joy in the couple lives as they are showned happy while constructing their son's bedroom. The wardrobe was essential since it had to do with the couple being in different time periods, and to me, the costumes fit the time period where they were. It's interesting how the audio in the background stays at the same pace within the movie. It signals how dull the character life is by slowly fading in and out throughout the movie. In terms of mise-en-scene, the image of the broken flower pot showed how well the couple in their older years got along by breaking such a delicit item. Theres alot of stuff going on in this movie that it's hard to give one spefic theme to it all. This is a movie that really makes you think about the things around you that you take for granted. When movies have impacts on the minds of their audience, it seperates them from the pack. La Ruta Natural blends surrealism along with some new age techniques to provide a plot structure that is very unsual to see in movies.

Intute-Film Posters

http://www.all-film-posters.com/

To be perfectly honest, the reason I picked this topic was I was rather interested in something I didn't know too much about. Right off the bat, I had a connection to the author of this article because I too have a bedroom surrounded with posters from movies I really enjoyed. Never have I ever stopped and took a chance to admire the rarity of this posters, especially for the vintage ones. To me, I think the older posters have more value to them is because you had guys like John Alvin and Richard Amsel spending a staggering amount of detail and hours illustrating the design of the posters. The time spent on drawing the poster out painting it truly showed through it's quality in some of the older posters such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars: A New Hope. Now a days, the majority of the posters are done through computer graphics which requires a handful of time, but never the notion that people spent months at a time on a single poster. This same ideology can be transferred into film as well. A prime example of this is Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars series. In the original trilogy [4,5,6], you know that all of the characters such as Yoda, R2D2, and Jabba were made of puppets which took much detail to create. When you see the the prequels [1,2,3], much of the characters that you grow up watching were replaced by the wonders of CG. I'm not saying CG is bad or anything, it's just, in my opinion, the same when you compare the both examples. Switching back to the topic at hand, posters are way of showing not only the coming attraction of a film, but the reason that makes you want to go see this given film. I knew when I saw the poster for ZombieLand with Woody Harelson's face on the front, a certain drive was instilled in me that made my want to go see that movie. Well as you can see, posters have certain sentimental value to some people while other simply admire the creative sense that go into them.

Paranormal Activity

I decided to do a movie that was fresh from my mind and the more recent film i watched. Paranormal Activity, by director Oren Peli, is a film about a young couple, Micha and Katie, who document their expierences with paranormal activity occurring all around their San Diego house. The cinematogrophy in my mind was pulled off very well bringing back the handheld camera view to theatres. In my mind when Cloverfield tried to pull this off, it was ruined by seeing the actual monster. In this movie, it has you on your toes from scene to scene that you know something is going to happen but your not sure what it is or for that matter, what it looks like. The wide screen bedrooms shots were done so elegantly because as soon this shot came up, the audience knew they were in for a thrill ride. This was done by slowing increasing the hype [ex. footsteps, doors closing by themselves, mysterious sounds] from beginning to end. The editing believe it or not was also key for the progression of this movie. In order to move the stuff around the house without being seen, the blue screen effect was put into place so it would appear that for example that the chandelier would move by itself which I thought was an impressive move. The acting was another major priority in this film. By casting unknowns in this film distinguish them from well known actors , which made the audience believe these were ordinary people. For me, these two people made me believe we were simply watching the reality of a couple living in San Diego, and because of that, that's what makes the acting so believable and great at the same time. The camera movement was shaky due to the fact that the camera was either held by the woman or the man. Whenever something shocking would happen, the camera would shake due to panic of the character and this only contributed to the realistic factor that this movie had on the audience. In every horror movie, the lighting has got to be a important key factor. Throughout the whole movie, your trying to guess what this monster looks like. In only one scene, you see the shadow of the monster walk by the door which i thought gave respect to beginnings like Nosferatu. In many horror movies, you gonna have those moments where a random thing might pop out and try to scare you. With this movie, it uses that effect but with a new twist. Just when you think things are alright and nothing could possibly, something pops out leaving you frighten. The audio is a huge contributor to this and in some instances in the movie, there would be no audio at all. By hearing the footsteps and thumps all around the house, that put more suspicion in the mind of the audience. Whenever a horror movie can make you have a phobia of something [Jaws:water, Psycho:showers] and for this movie, the unknown, you know it established itself as one of the greats. This is definably one to check out if your fan of horror movies in general.

Reality and Paradox

In my opinion, the film could be broken down more through a psychoanalysis perspective rather than analyzing each of the film techniques (lighting, editing, acting etc.). Going into the initial viewing of this film, Un Chien Andalou, you had to have the right mindset to watch this film no matter how irrational it might be. For example, when the cyclist is in the corner with books on opposite ends of his hands, Brunel is referencing the discipline methods that teachers used back in the day on misbehaved students. Brunel really test the minds of the audience with his images representing his "unconscious" mind. The question I certainly had throughout this movie is could this all have been a series of dreams he had previous or maybe the images that were represented in this film had meaning to them. Surrealism tends to make the viewer second guess every detail that is being showed and I believe that the more you analyze this film, they more conclusions you can come up with whether they be intentional by Brunel or not. One thing for sure that I noticed throughout this film is the mise-en-scene that scattered all through out this film. Although I may not understand the full meaning of the work of Dali and Brunel, I know that whether it be image of a eye being slit or the way a camera has been positioned, all of this has purpose.

Un Chien Andalou

The intial viewing of this film had me with a handful of questions in my mind due to the incoherent explanation of the plot. Salvador Dali really questions the audience's sanity with the surreal visuals he expresses in this film. Whether it's a eye getting stabbed or maybe ants crawling out of a hand. I wondered though throughout the film that maybe there were some connections to Dali's life in this film. Such as the man and the woman constantly arguing may have some sort of reference towards the conflicts of love Dali experiences on a day to day basis. Although I was drawn into the creepy, surreal moments of the movie, I was more or less interested in the message Salvador Dali was trying to convey. If his paintings can say a lot without spoken word, what makes this film any different. I knew going into this movie that it was gonna be surreal so I wasn't too deprived of my sanity. This uneven storyline only questioned my mind even more as to what the purpose was to put that certain shot in. For example, the camera pans to a bed with a man on it then pans back to the lady where she suddenly moves to a certain direction out of the frame from which she enters a totally different setting of a beach where she walks with a different man. I was also curious why there was such an emphasis on hands in the films, maybe the hand was a symbol for something in Dalis life. Alls I can say is this film is needed to be seen more than once to fully understand what the director was trying to say to his audience that you might have not gotten the first time around.

The Critiscm Behind the Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

As I read the New York Times articles, The Screen, A Cubistic Shocker, and Brought Into Focus, I began to notice the cultural impact that this movie has on the rest of the world. Since the articles were dated around the 20's, the genre of horror was relatively new to the world. The articles depicted that German cinema focused on moving pictures rather than in America, were it was growing out of silent films. In German films such as Caligari, you didn't need that much subtitles due to the acting potrayed in the films which instantly grabs you in the story. The Cabinet of Dr.Calagari is an example of a film that is so terrifying, so surreal, so interesting that you can't resist being glued to the screen watching it. The film does an excellent job of expressing the thoughts and visuals that came out of the German Expressionism movement at that time. Like how the Journeymen have stated, during this time German cinema was headed towards the advancement of moving pictures as an art form and because of this, it influenced many directors in America to film in a similar style. In my experience watching the film, I was still a little spooked even by today's standards with the horror films that have been produced. This theme of a madman's devotion to his creation (Cesare) has duplicated too many times to count making this film way ahead of it's time. One thing that i liked is that you didn't know what was gonna happen next and when you did, it made the experience even more thrilling. You could notice how the focus shots where it would show one person in front followed by another person behind him followed by another person behind him all in one shot was elaborately used in Citizen Kane. I wished they shined more light on Cesare for example when he was about to kill the woman when he suddenly stops himself from doing it. To me, Cesare just wants to be accepted, monster or not. I can go on and on about how this film influenced other films but if there's one thing this film is, it's without a doubt a film you must see.

The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an example of how delusional visuals can produce a quite chilling thriller. It uses many innovative techniques such as lightning and score to tell a story of a madman. Since it was a silent film, the actors may it their mission to describe a scene through exaggerated body language which i thought was clever and humorous at the same time. The setting isn't something you would find in Germany so this lopsided architecture for sure had an effect on the future films of Tim Burton. They way the set up the score so that it would fade in and fade out leaving the audience on the tip of their toes as to what was going to happen next was brilliant. The tempo of the audio was key in that whenever there was a moment of suspense, it would gradually increase which by today's standards is a common technique used. The character of Dr. Caligari played by Warner Krauss was great in that the guy had so much personality to him not to mention the makeup job on him was very believable and impressive. Everything from the setting to the credits were surreal which i can't say enough definitely caught the attention of directors like Terry Gilliam, who uses surreal aspects in his films. The lighting is something that has been imitated many times in which it shows how the audience knew something was coming through the shadows, but the other character didn't. Tinting was also used significantly throughout the film in which it not only showed the setting of the scene but the general atmosphere of the characters in the scene. If you look at the character of Cesare, you could see he's type of character whose life is controlled like a puppet. He performs the actions that Caligari wants him to do and to me, that makes me think of Cesare altogether. All he wants is to be loved but his appearance and the fact that he is a sleepwalker is only attributing to his loneliness. This is definably a movie you should go see without reading the reviews first because at the initial viewing, you will be shocked yet amazed at the same time as I was. It shows how a film doesn't need to have audio to be accepted to be great and shows how visuals can make people second guess the film's genius.