This Film is Not Yet Rated

As a kid, I was able to watch rated R movies as long as I was with my parents. If they didn't want me to see a particular scene, they would cover my eyes. They would let me view the violent scenes, but whenever someone was about to lean in for a kiss and then some, that's when they would tell me to shut my eyes. Thus is the type of "censorship" similar to the MPAA that I had growing up, in regard to movies.

Being the first documentary I watched in this class, I enjoyed learning about something I haven't ever really given thought about. I never would have thought that the MPAA is like an elite top secret organization that rates and changes movies before we are able to view them.

What I don't like about the MPAA, is that it seems very biased and hypocritical of themselves. They break all their own rules of who can or cannot be on the board. I feel that the members of the MPAA are very "conservative" in their beliefs, and that reflects on their ratings of films being biased on homosexual versus heterosexual sex content. Having the same type of scene but on opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to sexuality, and giving the heterosexual film the beloved "R" rating while the homosexual film gets the much hated "NC-17" is very unfair, and I feel like they should reevaluate the board and the way they rate movies.

The documentary itself also posed some other issues that came to my attention. The director of the documentary seemed to focus mostly on sexual content within movies. He gave abuse and violence less attention within his study of the rating system, and was a bit excessive in his numerous sex scenes shown back to back. He seemed to focus on one issue that showed fault within the MPAA, instead of the many other things that they also rate, thus making the MPAA seem completely devious. There has to be good in it somewhere, I believe, but the director did not show so. Then again, I just remembered that the documentary is his own uncensored view of the MPAA, not anyone else's.

This leads me onto another problem I find with the MPAA. They act as movie editors themselves instead of just being the simple movie raters that they are. The job of directing, cutting, and editing a movie is not theirs, but they are still able to have control over films in those aspects. I find this offensive to the art of film itself and sympathize with the plight of all the directors who have had to change their original works to appease the rating system.

Overall, I enjoyed this documentary. I was able to learn something new, and now when I view any movie, I'll look out to why the MPAA gave it the rating that it has, and wonder what filmmakers had to remove in their movies in order to be released to the general public.

Imitation of Life

One of the films we have recently watched in class was Imitation of Life by Douglas Sirk. Overall, I found myself enjoying the film and its message, which was acceptance of oneself.

Imitation of Life portrayed the aspects of melodrama very well. There were many internal conflicts among the characters of the film in which one huge problem was mother-daughter relationships. The characters were either overdramatic, over gracious, or just extreme in any emotion to the point of annoyance in some cases. For example, when Annie was showing gratitude for every little thing, it seemed a little superficial. It made me ask myself, is she really that nice to never have any ounce of anger in her? I thought of the word “imitation” being in the title of the film at this point, and thought maybe she was hiding her real emotions, especially when Sarah Jane did things that upset her.

Apart from that, I thought the actors to be well-casted except for Sarah Jane. It was peculiar for me to believe that she was actually Annie’s daughter. I think I would have appreciated the film more if she was at least a small percentage black. I feel as if the filmmakers overemphasized her “whiteness,” to the point that made her character as a black woman’s daughter unbelievable to me. The director clearly exhibited the difference in the quality of life between the film’s white and black characters, making Sarah Jane’s entire persona a bit more believable, although I find myself hating her in the end for the way she had abandoned her mother.

Blog Prompt: Singin' in the Rain

In Singin’ in the Rain, there are scenes that draw the attention of the audience away to other spaces that do not buttress the diegesis. The use of other spaces in this musical function differently from Mary Ann Doane’s theory in that they do not support the credibility of the first. One example would be the sequence of flashbacks at the beginning of the film. In this flashback sequence, the main character, Don Lockwood, takes us back in time to view his development of becoming a rising star. The non-supporting second space is revealed to the audience, and we are able to see something the people within the film do not, which would be the visual truth behind Lockwood’s exaggerated dialogue. Lockwood is able to make his rise to fame sound more luxurious than what the audience sees. There is no evidence for the third acoustical space playing a major role in this part of the film.

This use of the second space opposing Doane’s theory of first space support works within the narrative since this film is meta-filmic or meta-musical, so the point of this scene shows us the superficial characteristics of a typical Hollywood actor that make up the film world. Lockwood is lying straight to his fans faces, or rather he is acting for them, but we as the audience know better, since we are able to view his actual “mental images” of his past put on display for us.  This would also be known as the truth.

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo was a psychological thriller that hardly psychologically thrilled me. From the beginning, the plot was too hard to comprehend on a sensible level and as the movie progressed, Jimmy Stewart's character started to become too creepy for my taste.

I also did not like the way women are portrayed in this film. I found it highly annoying when Judy agreed to Scottie's every word just to change for him to love her. Her desperation for love in combination of letting this man create an image out of her was less than favorable in my opinion. There was an underlying message that men had the ability to control women. This was also apparent when we find out that Gavin Elster dressed and made Judy Barton act like his soon to be dead wife, Madeleine. Judy was a puppet to both of these men.

The ending somewhat had me on the edge of my seat. I was unsure of what Scottie was going to do to Judy, actually. Was he going to throw her off the bell tower in his deranged state or try to change history and save her from a fall? A lot of ideas started coming to mind and I thought he was going to do the latter. In no way did I expect a nun to come out of the corner and frighten Judy, having her fall to her death. The lack of emotion from the nun and Scottie after Judy died was quite laughable to me. It just made the film seem even more unbelievable. This twisted ending was surely not expected on my part.

Vertigo was just not my cup of tea I suppose. You can’t win them all, Mr. Hitchcock.

Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run directed by Tom Tykwer was a very exciting film for me to watch. My first thought of the film was that the effects were just really in my face. I actually liked it a lot because of the film's various effects and editing. There were a lot of fast cuts even within short scenes, which made the movie appear really fast paced along with the upbeat Euro-trance music. I can only remember the times when the music slowed down were during the "red flashbacks" and when Lola got shot.

My favorite scene because of the visuals was when Lola was running to Manni near the store when he was about to go in and rob it. There was a split screen that showed two views of the same scene. On one side you can see Lola running to Manni in the distance and then on the other side you can see Manni walking towards the store with Lola running in the background. I thought it was cool that you could see two versions of the same thing.

Also with the visual aspects of the film, the lighting was very bright in every scene except for the "red flashbacks." Just from watching it the first time around, it was obvious that red was a really important color scheme used in the film. There were red lights, a van, the telephone, the money bag, and even Lola's crazy hair. To me, it was pretty ironic since she won the 100,000 marks at the casino on 20 black.

This is probably irrelevant, but I like to use the word "scheisse" every now and then since I've watched this movie.

The Rules of the Game

Today in class, we discussed The Rules of the Game directed by Jean Renoir and how it related to Bazin’s concept of space and time in verisimilitude. We said that the time in the movie matched realistically to the amount of time things would take to do in reality. Also with the concept of space, we discussed the house and the camera walking us from room to room as you would in a real house.

There was something else I realized about the film that I didn’t get a chance to bring up in class. It deals with space and verisimilitude. I was thinking about camera shots. I noticed that many of the shots showed a bunch of different things in each. For instance when the actors would be standing in the hall or some other room, we as the audience would see the stands and vases in the foreground of the actors being focused on, and then the other actors and things happening in the background. It was as if the camera acted as a spectator looking in at everything that was happening which allowed us to feel like we were there, instead of being just a camera focusing on one part of the whole which would have showed us a limited range of what was going on.

My favorite scene in the film could also relate to my idea of space and verisimilitude. It was replayed again today in class as well, but for a different reason than why I like it so much. This scene was when one of the servants was carrying the tray from the kitchen (after gossiping) and the camera follows her out but looks up at Christine and another woman on the staircase without any interruption in the shot. There were a lot more pans and seamless shots in this film, making it much different from the others that we’ve viewed in class with all the fast paced cuts that created collision-like montage. It made The Rules of the Game seem like a “smoother” film.

Man with A Movie Camera

Man with a Movie Camera was actually the first movie screening I went to for this class since I enrolled a week late. I know most people in our class enjoyed the movie and there were a few that didn't, but I surprisingly found myself enjoying it. I've never seen this film before so it was still like watching a new movie, even though it was an old black and white Russian film. 

Before the movie, Beth told to think about this question: Is it really random? Throughout the movie I was watching for signs to see if it was really random or not and I came to the conclusion that it's not really random at all. The theme was about the daily lives of people living and working in Russia and there was also a common use of the element of opposites such as birth and death, marriage and divorce, etc. Even the shots with the camera lens opening and closing couldn’t have been random. Someone had to mechanically force the camera lens to open or close in order for it to “act” as a transition between different scenes.

I especially enjoyed the scenes where the woman was editing the films because it gave me a chance to see how older movies were put together. The soundtrack was amazing and the movie experience wouldn’t have been the same without it. The music in addition to the fast cuts in scenes made daily life in the city seem more exciting than usual.