Brandon's Blog

      Over this past weekend I went to one of my good friend's apartment with a couple of other friends to hangout and catch up. We decided to watch the movie, The Departed, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Jack Nicholson, and Brad Pitt as one of the producers. I had never seen this movie before and I think it is one of the best crime dramas I have seen in a while. The movie keeps you on your toes the entire time and is very engaging. It keeps you guessing of what is going to happen to the main characters due to all the lying and back stabbing that is going on during the movie.      Near the end of the movie, it throws everything at you. At this point you don't know who to trust or believe and while you think the movie is about to end, it continues because more issues crop up while one problem is solved another is created.      While this movie is long (2h 31m), it still k...

      Even  though I did not get to finish the film,  Swiss Army Man, I did still enjoy it. The opening of the film was very different from what I've seen before. It starts out depressing and unsettling. A man named, Hank, is stranded on an island trying to kill himself before he sees another person wash up on shore. He tries to revive the man but fails to get any sort or pulse back. Hank leaves the man and goes back to trying to kill himself but sees the man jolting uncontrollably. Hank runs over to the man again and uses his bodily gases as a jet ski to escape the island. At this point I knew that this movie was some sort of comedy because it was too funny and bizarre to be taken seriously.      When they eventually make it to another island, Hank carries the man with as he explores the island for other survivors. Hank finds a cave and places the lifeless body on the ground. Hank begins to talk to himself and the body. Hank b...

  Chapter 3 Questions  1.  Cinema reinforces dominant ideology because there was a lack for counter-cinema. Hollywood would please the mainstream values and social behaviors rather than diversify the ideology. The most important theoretical tool for analyzing cinema's ideological function is through counter-cinema because it allows for a different perspective to be told. It also opens up for different theories to be explored and it diversifies the audience.     2.  Theorists stress the importance of developing a counter-cinema because it provides a oppositional style of film making. Jean Luc Godard is someone who amplified the views of counter-cinema. The text states that "his general distinction implies rudimentary binary logic, the implication being that it is possible to dismantle Hollywood by replacing its conventions with with a different set of conventions" (99). 3. Theorists draw attention to how groups are represented on film because there are certa...

    After watching the YouTube video on Giles Deleuze and Film Theory: "The Cinema Books", it was interesting to see the break down of movement-image and time-image. Movement-image is the time subordinate to action and movement as time-image is movement and action are subordinated to the flow of time. Movement-time is associated with classical Hollywood cinema, Soviet Montage, pre-war French, and German Cinemas as time-image is associated with Post-WWII European cinema, Italian Neo-Realism, and French New Wave.      An interesting point that was made was that image does not mean picture. Just because a picture has movement does not mean that it is a  movement-image. Deleuze says the image itself is the system of the relationships between its elements. To him it is not just a stand alone image it is more of a system that is interacting with our eyes and ears. The characters in films help play a role in this as well. Th...

    The fascination projects over the last few classes have been very enjoyable to listen to. I think it brought up some interesting conversations and made me also think about things I have never thought about before. I think the idea of promoting bad people in films and how it affects the viewer psychologically was an interesting topic.      One of the people that was brought up in the presentation was Jefferey Dahmer and the new series that is on Netflix about him. When this first came out people started to post a lot on TikTok about the new series and people were starting to become obsessed with the Jefferey Dahmer character and began to fall in love and act like him. There were a lot of people dressing up as him for Halloween or were just acting like him for fun. It is actually sad that people go this far and become fans of people who did horrible things.        Another example that is older but a lot of people did the...

      I had never scene the film Primer prior to the showing in class. I did see the trailer and it got my attention and I was very interested to watch in class. The opening of the film seems to start in the middle of something which threw me off. I think for a good majority of the film I was trying to figure out what was going on. I thought originally they were making some some sort of gravity machine in the garage because the object they were using was floating but I was completely wrong.      It wasn't until the end and the class  discussion until things started to make more sense. I really had no idea that there were body doubles let alone more than just one pair. I think the scene where the two main characters were in the field watching the storage units was a vital scene when they saw the body doubles.  The confusion that I am left with is how many body doubles are there? It seems like they go into the machine multip...