Film Class

[eurydicebound]

So my one sort of elective this semester (my other two classes, Research Methods and Rhetoric and the Teaching of Writing, were mandatory) is Intro to Film, taught by Professor Robert Spadoni. I looked over the list of things I could take, and this was one of the few in the department that a) interested me, b) didn't conflict with another class, and c) had the prospect of being actively useful to me, as I haven't had a good basic film theory/criticsm class, and it's a good thing to know going forward. You never know what kind of texts you'll teach, after all. I find my presence here kind of amusing, if only in the respect of "how often do I watch movies of my own accord again, really?" Truth is, though, that I actually do like movies. I just don't like watching them on my own, so I didn't.

Thus far the only film we've watched (and which I missed, so I have to see on my own) is La Jetee. I'm missing an accent mark there, but such is life. It's apparently a classic and the film that 12 Monkeys is based on. It's also available streaming over Netflix, so if anyone wants to join me in my film watching journey, I recommend it.

Tuesday night is Groundhog Day, working into the section on Film Narrative. I've seen Groundhog Day, but never with an eye to critically viewing it. I would ordinarily hem and haw at the idea of critically viewing it, but if quality isn't really an obstacle to critically viewing a text, it certainly won't be to a movie. I may make a post about it next week. We shall see.

The other one I need to see soonish is The Third Man. See, we get to write a paper on some aspect of a given film of our choice for this class; for grad students, it's a research essay of 15 pages, which is fine. My problem is choosing a movie I want to work with. When your choices are "anything you want," it's sort of hard to cut it down. That said, I really do love The Third Man, Matt hasn't seen it, and there's got to be something in there that I can work with. It's worth seeing again in any case. Others on the shortlist, as it happens, are the new Sherlock Holmes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Quiet Man, The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Shakespeare in Love (or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead), Glengarry Glen Ross... and a couple of others I'm not thinking of right now.

So that's my class! Until next time, the balcony is closed. :)

Comments

[shadist.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm prob going to watch La Jetee later. . . Thank you.

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Matt hasn't seen The Third Man?!? Good heavens. Glad you're going to help fix that for him.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

The Philadelphia Story is my favourite movie ever. &hearts

Hope you have fun with the class -- I kind of miss film studies...

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Is La Jetee supposed to be a slide show all the way through?!?!

I'm still a bit unsettled by the exploitation of women in Groundhog Day's subtext.

Did you watch Dumbo with your kids? It has some very grown-up things to say about racism and other kinds of bigotry, and a very strongly anti-alcohol message for its time.

[anaka.livejournal.com]

I did watch Dumbo, though the scenes with the crows still sort of bother me if I think about them too much. They didn't like Dumbo, though... the pink elephant scene and the part where he misses his mom were hard for them to watch.

And yes, Groundhog Day has a lot of... shall we say very 80s sorts of attitudes about women? And it's not an accident Andie McDowell is dressed in primarily masculine-style clothes.

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Oh, and yes, La Jetee is a movie made of still shots, which is less descriptive than it seems like it should be.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I did finally sit down and watch "La Jetee" closely, and there is at least one motion shot. Where the girl is in bed, she begins to blink and the sound seems to be represented as well. I think this is a comment on the nature of perception and how falling in love makes things seem more real, or at least more immediate. It was also probably much, much cheaper to make the rest of the movie this way, justified by taking advantage of the themes of suspended life and historical nostalgia.

(For those playing at home, "the girl" is about thirty, and other scenes in the film are in a natural history museum of the time with thousands of taxidermied animals. Talk about your outdated attitudes.)

[effrenatus.livejournal.com]

Does it have to be a single film? I'd like to read a paper on three very different kaiju films:
* Gojira.
* Godzilla vs. Megalon.
* Godzilla, Mothra, & King Gidorah: Giant Monster All-Out Attack.
That middle one could be swapped for just about any crappy mid-span Godzilla film, but Gojira and GMKG:GMAOA are fantastic anchor movies. OK, maybe you shouldn't write a paper on it, but it's amazing how different these three films are when you consider they all include a guy in a rubber lizard costume.

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Has to be about a single film, darn it.