Be a thinker, not a stinker: How Sylvester Stallone flouted his own dialogue
Thesis - 4 pages - Film studies
Rocky (1976), written by and starring Sylvester Stallone and directed by John G. Avildsen, grossed $225 million worldwide after being shot on a paltry $1.1 million budget. Although film critics and historians, like Peter Biskind, often seem to classify Rocky as a ?post-New Hollywood feel-good...
Juno: What's good for you?
Thesis - 7 pages - Film studies
Sex, sex, sex, and more sex. We're so egotistic in this country. I remember my adolescent issues teacher in high school raising a question to the class that still resonates with me: “Does the media dictate the people in society, or do people in society dictate the media?” Sitting in her...
Edward Cullen and his To-Be-Looked-At-Ness: Reversal of the cinematic gaze in Twilight
Thesis - 6 pages - Film studies
Twilight is the unabashedly melodramatic, vampire-meets-girl love story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, and despite its clear success it still seems to be strange material for the first huge literary phenomenon of the twenty-first century. The author Stephenie Meyer has a tendency towards the...
Essay about sin city (Franck Miller & Robert Rodriguez)
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
I am going to talk about Sin city, an action, detective and all in all fantastic film released in 2005, directed by Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino (but only for the sequence in Dwight's car, in which he talks with the policeman Jackie, while he (Jackie) is dead). Sin city...
The American TV series as an entertainment product (2007)
Thesis - 4 pages - Film studies
In September 2006, the traditional film du dimanche soir was deposed on the first two hertziennes French channels by three TV series. These three TV series are American ones: CSI (Les Experts), Without a Trace (FBI, portés disparus) and ER (Emergency Room, Urgences). After having being seen as a...
The US cinema industry (2005)
Thesis - 3 pages - Film studies
When I try to imagine a typical American family, the first image which comes to mind is that of a perfect family with beautiful (their teeth have to shine) and rich parents and beautiful and healthy children, who live happily in a small house somewhere in the countryside in a small village. A...
Ambivalent London: "Match Point", Woody Allen
Thesis - 8 pages - Film studies
Match Point is a movie which was directed by Woody Allen in 2004. It was shot in London. This movie tells the story of Chris, a man looking for a new life. Throughout the movie he seems to find it. As a coach in a private tennis club, he becomes friend with Tom Hewett before going out with his...
Modern Times (1936), directed by Charlie Chaplin
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
First, I will talk about the historical context of the film. Chaplin goes around the world during sixteen months. When he comes back to Hollywood, in 1932, he observes the economic and social results of the Great Depression, which made, in two years, seven million unemployed in the US. Indeed,...
Movie review: Trainspotting
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Many films deal with drugs. Among those, there are - Scarface, The Godfather, Revolver and so on. This theme is popular in Anglo-Saxon cinema. Trainspotting directed by Danny Boyle is a film which deals with drugs in a blunt way. A group of friends, in the nineties, in Edinburgh, are only...
Hollywood film genres: Melodrama
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
“Something else besides a mother” this was Stella Dallas' excuse to her daughter in order to alienate her bond with her daughter and secure the latter's marriage into the upper class society. Discussing the key-scenes of the film that reveal the two contradictory roles Stella...
National cinema and tropes of horror: Guillermo del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone" - Representing fascism through hauntology
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
Horror films, rich in texture, are capable of interpretatively referencing specific national contexts. Using the supernatural, these stories can aid in understanding national themes by correlating particular social ills or historical periods with the uncanny: the film's meaning-making, acting...
The murderers among us: Post-War German rubble films. The complexities of thematic and visual meaning
Thesis - 9 pages - Film studies
This paper will discuss the first post-world war II film to be made in Germany. The film, entitled The Murderers Among Us (Die Morder sind unter uns, 1946) was directed by Wolfgang Staudte. It is the first in a series of films, which are collectively entitled (Trummerfilme) which means postwar...
From Cagney and Lacey to Law and order: Women in the workplace as seen on TV
Thesis - 8 pages - Film studies
“Do you have kids, Detective Benson?” asks the pleading face of a father, guilty of murdering his son's rapist. Detective Olivia Benson's eyes glaze over with a familiar look of longing, and the audience sees her softening to the man, letting out a breath while muttering “No.”...
I'm at the 'Window':A look at voyeurism in the cinema and society
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
We all carry certain expectations with us when we go see a film at the theater. We expect the room to be dark, though we make exceptions for the beam from the projector behind us, the track lights showing us to our seats. We expect quiet, hence the ads preceding the feature presentation that...
The social commentary of anarchy and romance
Thesis - 4 pages - Film studies
The “modern” comedy can trace is roots back through a number of places. From as far back as Ancient Greece comedy has been one of the most pleasurable forms of entertainment. From the plays of Shakespeare, to the vaudeville era, and all the way into Hollywood's silent era, comedy...
Rocking the boat: How NBC's 30 Rock is subtly stirring things up
Thesis - 15 pages - Film studies
In the summer of 2006, Tina Fey announced her departure from Saturday Night Live after six seasons as the head-writer of the legendary late night sketch show. She had decided to pursue a new ambition, a primetime sitcom based in part on her experiences working at SNL. That show would become 30...
Alienation in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Happy Together"
Thesis - 5 pages - Film studies
The turmoil surrounding the ending of a relationship is universal. For this reason t is well-covered territory in popular culture. Tales of heartbreak and reconciliation are a staple of the Hollywood film industry. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Happy Together (1997) both...
Leaders of the New Wave: An essay on Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard
Thesis - 4 pages - Film studies
Jean Cocteau once wrote, "true realism consists of revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing." But where do we find this "true realism?" Since our reality is blinded by our habit, daily rituals, obligations, and preconceived notions, it seems fruitless...
How does the 1976 film network accurately reflect ideologies and practices of modern television?
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
The ideologies and practices evident in modern television are succinctly foreshadowed in the 1976 Hollywood classic, Network. This prophetic Oscar-winning film satirically dramatised a series of predictions, most of which were fulfilled in modern television. The film shows that ratings have...
Formulating nationalist conversations: An investigation of the function of West African Cinema
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Traditional African filmmakers, considered themselves part of an emerging third world cinema and used film as a tool of revolution, a means of political education to be used for transforming consciousness, however now there is a new generation of filmmakers that have been supposedly "freed from...
Film Critique: The Asphalt Jungle
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
The first wave of urgency to escape the world of corruption, greed, and immorality inside the shady underground of the urban city ("the jungle"), is brought forth by protagonists Dix Handley and Alonzo Emmerich in two scenes of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. The first scene takes place in...
Spike making Malcolm his own
Essay - 7 pages - Film studies
Despite intentions to stay true to an original source, a director's view will almost undoubtedly change certain elements of the film. This happens in the case of Malcolm X. Spike chose not to tell the story chronologically, as the autobiography mostly does, and this adds to the film in many...
Analysis of do the right thing, spike lee (1989)
Essay - 4 pages - Film studies
Do the Right Thing was released in May 1989 in Cannes. Spike Lee directed, produced and wrote the screenplay for the film. It tackles the subject of race relations by depicting the ethnic communities of the Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where Spike Lee grew up. Spike Lee plays the...
What makes a popular soap opera?
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
A soap opera is a work of fiction taking the form of a serial, generally televised or radio phonic. They made their appearance with the radio in the Thirties. When the large networks started to develop, naturally these series followed .This designation comes from the fact that the first American...
Comments on "Thank you for smoking" by Jason Reitman in the light of business ethics
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
“Thank you For Smoking” is a movie from 2005, about a tobacco industry lobbyist, Nick Naylor. As the negative effects of tobacco on health are no longer easy to deny, the tobacco companies join in the creation of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. The purpose of this academy is to prove...
Shrek
Essay - 5 pages - Film studies
Shrek the ugly, antisocial Ogre is happy living by himself in his swamp, frightening away any visitors, until he rescues a non-stop talking donkey and then gets invaded by a host of displaced fairy tale characters, evicted by the evil Lord Farquaad who wants to chase away all different and...
The African-American cinema: Between protest and integration
Thesis - 4 pages - Film studies
The invention of cinema happened at the very same time as the establishment of the segregation in the South. This social and political system, which advocated prejudices and inequality of races, is definitely going to stigmatize the nature of the relationships between the American cinema and the...
Sound in two Hollywood films: 'singin' in the rain' and Thelma & Louise
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
Singin' in the Rain is a musical created in 1951 by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, Thelma & Louise a road movie created in 1991 by Ridley Scott. These two works could sound different; nevertheless they have a common point, which is the important role of sound, and especially music, within the...
Olivia Ruiz in concert at the Bataclan on 3 and 10 of April 2006: From "the real TV" to "the real artist performer"
Essay - 3 pages - Film studies
In France, the Loft Story TV programme paves the way for the real television. Now, lots of viewers watch “ordinary” people eating, sleeping, and arguing… Overnight these stage actors become famous just having talent to be on television. Andy Warhol was right when he said “In...
Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliette
Essay - 6 pages - Film studies
Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge are two movies directed by the eccentric Baz Luhrmann. In these love stories, Baz Luhrmann especially stake on the visual and the abundance: the abundance of decorations, the abundance of colourful visuals (Moulin Rouge « uses the colourful musical setting of the...
