Brandon's Blog

  Netflix trailer: https://youtu.be/qFqgmaO15x4       All Quiet on the Western Front was released on Netflix October 28, 2022. The war drama takes place in Germany during WW I and follows the main character Paul Baumer. Paul is 17 years old and decides to fight for his country with his friends. Paul and his friends are all excited to join the army but they all soon realize how terrifying war is.     First off, this film has great cinematography. The shots are very detailed and shows the gruesome elements that surrounded the soldiers. There is one shot that shows the complete destruction of what was once a forest but is now covered with bomb shells, trenches, and bodies. There are other scenes in the movie that showcase the peace and calm of snowfall on the other side of the battlegrounds where there is no war. I believe this was signifying how there was two complete opposite sides of the war and also signified how war can...

    Something that I have always been fascinated by growing up and still am are war movies. I have always been interested in history, especially American history growing up. I remember watching war movies with my dad on the History channel. Some of my favorite war movies are Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, American Sniper, and Lone Survivor.      The movies showcase the unpleasant and horrifying things that have and can happen in war. It also shows how civilians and soldiers are affected in the moment and when the war is over. Now that I have learned more about psychoanalysis in this class I think that it could be interesting to look at some of these films from a psychoanalytical point of view. Within these films the characters and people are tasked with some difficult decisions. As a viewer it makes you think of what you would do in their position because there are moral and ethical situa...

    The term scopophilia refers to the male gaze of Hollywood which objectifies women into mere objects to be looked at. The male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents women as sexual objects.      In class we discussed the male gaze from the reading and how it has played a role in many films. Before going into this discussion, I had a little bit of knowledge about the male gaze from a marketing stand point since I am a marketing minor. However, in marketing it isn't called the male gaze it is called sex appeal and they have some similarities. In one of my marketing classes we discussed how advertisements tend to sexualize and objectify women specifically. An advertisement that we discussed in that class was the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's commercial where they use half naked women to pose with a burger. This makes no sense because what do...

    "La Jetee" is a unique film that only uses still images and narration to tell a story. "La Jetee" is a film that gives the illusion of time travel. It also showcases the idea of how movement of the film can be perceived by the characters and the audience. While the characters in this film are trapped in time the audience views them as being still on screen. This is an interesting way to tell a story without movement in each scene.     Relating this film to what we have read, this can be seen as a counter-cinema piece as it is uniquely different from what mainstream Hollywood was. The film is different because it uses still photos to tell a story. It was regarded more as a photo novel. While it uses still images this does not mean it takes away from the film aspect of telling a story with editing. This film also relates in some aspects to Eisenstein's Soviet montage theory. This theory is about how films rely heavily on edit...

     Counter-cinema developed around the 1960s. It rose to the occasion to bring light to the fact that Hollywood was directed towards a certain audience and didn't cater to everyone or every genre. Counter-cinema is not a single concept. It addresses many genres, script writings, camera angles, race and culture aspects, and gender ideologies. Counter-cinema focuses on a wider audience and emphasizes minorities.      Peter Wollen as described in the reading "drew a schematic distinction between the "deadly sins" of mainstream Hollywood cinema and the "cardinal virtues" of his proposed counter-cinema (p. 99)." I am not entirely sure what this means but I think the idea Wollen is trying to get at is Hollywood at one point was too mainstream and and becoming more of a "brain wash". Wollen further said in the this chapter that it is possible to dismantle Hollywood by replacing its conventions with a different set of conventions. This is an intere...

 https://frenchculture.org/events/9921-breathless     This week during class we watched "Breathless" directed by Jean Luc Godard. This film had many surprising and questionable actions by the main character Michel. The first scene begins with him calling himself an "asshole" and we see later why he calls himself that. From the start of the film we see Michel steal cars and kill a cop. Michel's actions do not stop there as he steals money from one of his girlfriends and would leave restaurants without paying.      The scene that shocked me the most was Michel's reaction to Patricia saying that she is pregnant. Michel responded quickly by telling her she needs to be careful and that it definitely isn't his. Michel's treatment of women, especially Patricia, is uncalled for and makes for cringey moments.      There was one scene where it reminded me of a Bonnie and Clyde where they steal the car from t...

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/psychpics/3428948856     A couple weeks ago in class we discussed Hugo Munsterberg and his philosophy behind photoplay. There was also a great YouTube video that better explains the theory of photoplay and how it can play a key role on how an audience may see something. Something that stood out to me during the video was the psychological answer and the aesthetic answer. The psychological answer, is the mental functioning of the cinema spectator and is distinct from that of the theater spectator. The aesthetic answer, is the aesthetic properties and techniques of the cinema are distinct from that of the theater.      After watching through the second act of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I would say that this film used aesthetics to make certain shots look the way it did. One of the more repetitive  techniques used in this film was the darkening of the sides to create a focus on...