Mulhulland Drive

Mulhulland Drive is all about illusion. Nothing is as it seems. Like the Silencio director explained in his act, No hay banda, this is all a recording. He uses his hands and motions to create sounds a band would make as well as a trumpet player who plays and then stops while the music continues to play in order to convince the viewer that what you you see may not necessarily be reality. You get taken out of the film when the club singer, sings this beautiful balled and even though it's in another language you can feel the message she is conveying through emotion. She draws you in but you realize this is not really happening when she collapses on the floor but the music continues to go and the singing continues even though she is clearly unconcsious.
You must keep a kene eye on the entire film and pay attention to all the details. For example, the actress that "must" be the one according to the mafia guys name is Camilla according to the picture. They force Adam the director to choose her. This is Diane or "Betty's" way of convincing herself that the only reason Camilla got parts in movies over her was because Camilla had a bunch of people threatening the director to cast her in a certain part therefor keeping Diane from all the leading roles.
This film is 90% a dream, a fabrication of Diane's subconscious. The story is based around how she wants life to really be. She is the sought after actress and is seen as the perfect innocent and helpful girl. She is hopelessly in love with Camilla however Camilla is in love with the director Adam who are to be married. I feel that this is where Diane's whole craziness began to unfold and eventually led to her ultimate demise. You come out of the dream when Camilla opens the blue box and Diane is thrown back into reality where she hates and eventually kills herself.

Heathers

The movie Heather's is your typical high school drama film made to appeal to high schoolers social politics. Veronica is a not so popular girl who is trying to fit in and to do so she is hanging out with the Heathers 1, 2, 3 even though she hates them. This is typical highschool, timeless. Every student is familiar with this story in one way or another. Popular kids being evil and the "losers" being treated like dirt, one student in particular treated so bad that it brought them to attempted suicide.
Not so much a popular subject but the film pokes fun at teen suicide event the song of the film is Suicide don't do it. It respect for Columbine this movie would not be so widely expressed and viewed as a comedy. Today's politics are a little more sensetive then that. The rebel "tricks" Veronica into murdering four popular students to try and change school supposidly for the better but much like Veronica found out once one particular evil is gone a new one arises and the vicious cycle just continues on till the next person needs to take over. Veronica seemingly has good interests at heart but is hypocritical. You can not cause one great evil to fix another.
I also believe that this film pokes fun at the legal system as well. You see the police officers smoking marijuana in their police car and in uniform just before they find the bodies of the two football players. And even more so then that there really is not justice for the deceased they just assumed that they were suicides and there was no criminal investigations. This film makes a mockery of the schooling system as well as our legal system. Look at the way the board of education dealt with the deaths of the students. The principal just said lets just look the other way while the hippie teacher wanted to hold hands for peace and love but only when the cameras were around. Only to shed good light apon the schools image.

Shaft

In the film Shaft was asked, "Where the hell are you going?" to which he replied to him, "to get laid, where the hell are you going?". This film is all about conquest. Not neccesarily referring to the action oriented with kicking the bad guys ass as a detective and sticking it to the gangster mafia. No, I mean getting some action by the ladies. Much like today things have not changed much. It seems men are defined not by the bad ass things they do but how much they can achieve in there sexual conquests. It is as if how much sex they have shows how masculine they are and in turn gains the respect of all his male counterparts and wins the hearts of women. Compared to today's films the only difference being is the rock hard muscle men you see as the lead. They tend to blow things up and make big spectacles of everything all at the same time of getting laid and winning the girl. It is as if the men today have more to prove to being the manly man then Shaft ever did. All he needed to do is cross his arms and stand there staring knowingly that he was going to win and it would strike fear into his oppressor or enemy such as the gangsters. Muscle men in today's films are about aggression and with Shaft he uses the intimidation factor. He is more of a man and has less to prove because he has that wow factor that everyman cowers to and every woman falls for. Today's film the men have more to prove in terms of masculinity.

Vanishing Point

Exploitation films generally feature sexual content, violence, drugs, gore, rebellion and a general disobedence to the "man". The reading states, "the film combines the familiar stock characteristics of many such movies, including a disaffected protagonist, automotive destruction, drug taking, hippies, bigoted police officers and small-town thugs..." This type of film making became popular in the 60s and 70s which makes sense for this film to be made. Vanishing Point has everything an exploitation film may need except say for this; true violence. You see the main character Cowalsky taking drugs and driving his car fast to get where he needs to go but never truly hurts anyone. He actually helps those who are in need of it and makes sure those who fall get back up. For example, he saved a girl from being raped in the back of a car and was fired from his job. During the entire cop chase cop cars were going off the road every second. Cowalsky would stop his car and wait to see if the officers were okay and then continue on his merry way again. He has the opposite characteristics of the antihero in exploitation films.
Yes, I do believe that by racing his car at 160 miles an hour and outrunning the police was his way of sticking it to the man and owning up to his freedom. However, I do not believe he was doing so in a mennacing way. He never had a sour disposition in fact, he always seemed to have a smile on his face even on his way to his certain death into the tractors.
Honestly, this film is a complete contradiction. You have a hero that is supposed to be a misfit/ lawbreaking deviant however in truth he is only trying to drive fast much like he was trained to do. Then you have this notion of freedom. Like discussed in class you see Cowalsky just taking what America is supposidly about, freedom. However, you can only have so much freedom according to the government. They say Life, Liberty and Persuit of happiness, yeah as long as you obey their rules you can have that. It's like dangling a steak in front of a dog running on a treadmill. You can only have so much but not the whole thing. It is much like a tease. Like brought up in the reading the highways are for speedier travel and freedom. But if you think about it highways were built by government during the time of the Cold War like we discussed in class to transport prisoners and troops in a timely fashion due to the threat of communism. So, have you freedom on the road but you have to abide by all these driving rules, don't drive to fast, stay in right lane except to pass, pay your tolls etc...

Dr. Strangelove

This movie was a large joke. Not that the message it is sending is a joke but the entire movie made fun of the American's approach to nuclear war and how one person could blow the world into oblivion. As discussed in class and the meeting you see exactly how destructive one person who has the right amount of power and a trigger happy brain who is paranoid and crazy that could send this world into destruction. The film emphasises how we might not have the right people in power and they are either overly excited to go on a killing spree or like the president is shown that he doesnt have enough "balls" to make a decision. This is successfully depicted in the scene where the president is talking on the phone to the leader of Russia. They talked to each other like five year old's would. Like, "no your not as sorry as me", they make my stick is bigger then your stick arguments the whole time. Which brings me to my next point about the vulgar penis and genetalia references made throughout the entire film. The male superiority complex that send these men into their basic demise. The president himself has the name Merkin Muffley which is a reference back to female genitalia which signifies that he is like a female and completely insufficient and has no backbone or ability to stand up for himself throughout the entire film. Then you have Jack the Ripper who is responsible for all the D-day mess in the first place. This is ironically placed because Jack the Ripper is an infamous murderer of prostitutes back in the day and Mandrake is a sexual stimulant of aphrodesiac if you will. Referencing to another sexual connotation.
Yes, the film deals with the larger picture of the possibility of destruction and what could happen in a nuclear war and the wrong people in power. But the underlying messages are what show out over anything else.

Maya Deren

In her reading Maya Deren says, "A major portion of the creative action consists of amanipulation of time and space...The kind of mapipulation of time and space to which I refer becomes itself part of the organic structure of a film." As we discussed in class Deren does this by manipulating the stairs. She uses the same set of stairs but makes them look like different stairs by taking different perspectives. As well as making the stairs to not look like stairs for example when the camera is upside down and it looks as though she is crawling on the ceiling and you can not tell that she really truly is not. Also she manipulates time by the repetition and looping of the events in the first short film we watched. She is manipulating time by the main character watching herself out the window walk toward the nun, walking up the stairs as if in a dream like state watching herself go through this routine over and over as if it were truly manipulating time. You also see Deren manipulating space in the beach/dinner scene when she is crawling up the tree of some sort but then cuts back to the dinner table where she is crawling acrossed it. Making it as though there is a break in reality what she sees and what we may see is not necesarily the same thing.
The best thing about Deren's writings on her creative use and reality is that she practices what she preaches. Everything she goes over in her writings she uses in her films and is influential to many other filmographers.

Last Year at Marienbad

As discussed in class, it was difficult to not analyze this film and just watch it for it's illustrious shot sequences and dream like qualities. I found it to be an oxymoron as a whole. For example, it was brought up in class the photograph in the reading. The picture of the garden where the people have shadows due to the placement of the light from the sun but the statues and the trees have no shadow at all. The director seems to do this throughout the film especially with his main character X. "X" doesn't seem to have a clue as to what is really, real. He claims to have met A a year earlier and he has been waiting for this whole time as per her request. He makes outrageous claims of raping her and her maybe husband shooting her but after realizing this is not what he wanted to come out of his story he retracted those statements and rewrote in his head what "truly" happened.

What really intrigued me about this film was the repitition. In the beginning of the film you hear a man repeating dialogue about the never ending hallways and the emptiness. You also see a bunch of repitition in the shots being taken for example the shots of the gardens and the rooms that A stays in. I feel as though this plays in part of X's psychological state. You know the saying that if you tell youself something enought times even if it is the farthest things from the truth you will start to believe it. Well I believe this is taking place with X. He is telling this story over and over in different sorts and versions like he is trying to convince himself that they truly happened or even more so trying to convince A that they really happened. I feel like this whole film is a maze trying to be figured out. You do not see the shots in sequential order, or like the reading states "linear fashion". As well as, the scenes and actions of the actors don't happen in compelete order or sense.

This story is truly dizzying, however, it was beautifully shot and the effects were stimuluating. No matter how dizzying the storyline it forces the viewer to continue to watch and figure out what the director is trying to say or get accomplished.