The Coen Bros.

The coen bros.  are some of my favorite directors. One theme I have noticed in their films , aside from the excessive amounts of violence, was the concept of the American dream. In Raising Arizona the dream was having a family, although the main characters in the film took it a little too far seeing as they kidnapped a baby. A second idea of the American dream that was in two of the films was the concept of wealth. The other films we watched were Fargo and No Country For Old Men both films carried the ideology that money is needed to complete one's self. any way thats what o thought of the coen bro movies we watched

Hey Bada Bing A.K.A Director study post 2: The GodFather II

The film proceeds the events that took place at the end of the first Godfather film with the death of Vito Corleone and his son Michael becoming the new Don. I find it interesting that the film ends up telling not just one but two stories. One being the rise of Vito and the formation of his family and the other being Michael ascending into his role as the new Don. The movie opens with a funeral procession in the old country that is interrupted with gunshots and Vito's brother Paolo being killed. Afterwards Vito and his mother approach Don Ciccio the man who is not only responsible for the death of Vito's brother but also his father for whom the funeral procession was for. Vito's mother begs for mercy for Ciccio not to kill Vito because he is weak and will not seek to do any harm to Ciccio. when he (Ciccio) denies the request Vito's mother takes him at knife point and tells Vito to run before being shot and killed by one of Ciccio's men. Vito is smuggled out of their village and ventures to America as a lone child after arriving at Ellis Island Vito is given his new surname Corleone the name of his home town in Italy. the movie jumped of a young Vito sitting in a small room singing in Italian to his grandson Anthony's first communion  and the after party where Michael as the new don giving out favors. Later Michael is seen talking to the senator of Nevada trying to squeeze more money out Michael for his family hotels and states that he hates Italians for coming to this " Clean country with you oily hair and your silk suites it's a disgrace towards to the true American people".  Michael then talks to his younger sister Connie who wishes to have money to journey to Europe and to get married , Mikey denies both of her requests and states that if she disobeys him and marries this man who he knows nothing about she will disappoint him.  More problems present themselves for the Corleone family as Kay reminds Michael of something he once told her that " The Corleone family will be completely Legitimate in 5 years " and she says that was 7 years ago.  Although things to have settled down after the party an attempt on  Michael's life is made and Michael tells his best friend and lawyer Tom Hagens that he, not Fredo will take over as the don if anything should happen to him.  The film then jumps back to Vito 17 years after leaving Italy already having a child his eldest Sonny and gets his first exposure to the life of the mafia while witnessing a member of a mafia group known as the black hand extorting money from a theatre group for protection and again when he is hurriedly handed a bag by his neighbor and finds out it contains a bunch of guns. Towards the end of the first half of the movie Vito is exposed to accepting and repaying "favors" which as we all know becomes a  large part of his mafia family's main attraction.  The movie's first half reaches its last stretch when Michael goes to visit and old associate of his father named Hyman Roth who have made plans to reach of the Corleone's empire. Although at the end it is revealed that Roth was the one who tried to have Michael killed and Michael has something arranged to take care of him towards at the end of the film and to try and figure out who the traitor in his "family" is. Which is foreshadowed but I won't say who.  

PART II 

For the second part of Vito's story it starts out as a flashback told by his wife to Michael who wants to learn what his "Pa thought deep in his heart".  Vito first helps out a widow get back into her apartment by having a by having a conversation with her landlord and is told after a reasonable offer made to him the landlord replies "who the hell are you to come to give me orders ? watch out or I'll kick your Sicilian ass right into the street".  After learning that Vito is the Godfather the landlord is not only terrified by apologizes and hurriedly tries to leave Vito's establishment. The movie then jumps back into the present and a federal trail interviewing Michael and  trying to prove he a mafioso and trying to shut down the mafia.  Later Michael is conversing with his older brother Fredo who is upset that Michael is the don, he isn't and is banished from the family as it is revealed that Fredo was a part of group behind the hit on their eldest brother Sonny from the first movies. The film continues to bounce from the trial against Michael and his family the council takes a heavy blow from one of their "key" witness who ends up screwing them over by completely denying everything he had previously said in a sworn statement and that all the claims against him are false and are fabricated by the FBI. Michael's victory over the council is short lived however as Michael's wife Kay says she "has no love for him" and is leaving with the kids. This was one of my favorite scenes in the movie which happens  about 40 minutes in the second part of the film . I was unable to embed the clip to the scene due computer suckiness but the way to find it it to go to youtube, and enter Michael and Kay-the whole scene in the search bar it should be the video at the very top of the page. Vito's story is continued through breaks in Michael's story and includes events such as buying their first house , having people whacked and eventually killing Don Ciccio, confirming the old man's fears that when Vito grew up strong he would seek revenge against the man who murdered his family 

Overall I enjoyed the film  and i found Michael to be a rather interesting character who valued the mafia family over his actual one where as his father was incredibly devoted to his family his real one.  Also found it interesting that although Vito became very attached to the world of organized crime but only got into on order to create a better life for his family whereas Michael forsake his family in order to improve the situation of his organization.

 

ENOUGH CROSSOVERS ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright so during thanksgiving break i was watching t.v and i found Alien vs. Predator and not only was it god awful and i mean REALLY god awful I'm pretty sure it gave me diabetes. Not only did it ruin two decent movie franchises but the plot seemed like it was just thrown together at the last minute. And apparently the producers decided to piss even more people because the first one didn't piss enough off already they decided to create a sequel known as Alien versus Predator Requiem, yeah........... Well any who I'm pretty sure i went on a rant about three lines ago so I'm going to wrap this up. Alright i lied I'm not quite done yet this afternoon i remembered another crossover movie that pissed me off FREDDY V. JASON i mean come on now it wasn't bad enough that the producers of the movies made more than what was necessary to the point where the plot of both the movies was so convoluted that no one could figure out what was going on was jason really dead or is freddy really dead yes no wait they came back wait now they're dead oh no they're back now they're dead jk they're back and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on  and on and on and on...... wait what was I talking about? well I should be hitting the old dusty rail.

Film Noir

Film Noir, or black film takes a interesting leap in the film genre in the early 40's and 50's. Westerns and Screwball comedies dominated hollywood and even they were just barely making by the the hayes code in effect. Now enter a world where the most brutal of crimes are done on just a whim, this is the world of the Film Noir, a world where even an insurance salesman can be twisted into murdering a person all for a deadly lady a Femme Fatale, a woman who is both seductive and deadly, willing to do anything(or anyone) to accomplish her goals. Now some of you may agree with me that the dialogue in some of these movies both the phrases and the speed of which they are said may seem a little ridiculous but in the end I feel they help in both adding a hard-boil dialogue to the movie and even  the time periods phrases and culture. And rest assured the boys at Family Guy didn't miss a beat with that concept.  

Gonna Need a Montage

The montage has been a highly used cinematic technique. The montage is usually used for training scene for sports films to show the audience the person or persons improvement from a humiliating defeat early in the film from the main antagonists. The television show South Park made a parody of this method in the season six episode entitled Asspen when stan goes through some supposedly rigorous training in order to beat the antagonist of the episode in a skiing contest, throughout the sequence to the song "Gonna Need A Montage". Though in the final race of the episode stan's skill is still roughly the same as it has been throughout the episode, but with the help of the "hot nerdy girl" stan is able to win the race despite being incredibly far behind. Another example of the use of the montage method would of corse be the Rocky movies in which rocky always appears to be the underdog and losses early in the film and goes through numerous training sequences and usually ends up winning, aside from the first movie.  so these are some examples of the montage technique.

My favorite films

I have set genre of films that I enjoy they are horror, comedy and action. For horror movies my favorites are those that involve and animal of some kind attacking people for no reason  like Jaws and any kind of monster movie. My preference for comedy movies are usually spoof movies my favorites being the Scary Movie series aside from Scary movie 4 which made me physically ill and was just plain terrible. And finally for action movies I prefer those that are based off the super hero comic books the best I have seen so far would be DareDevil, The Punisher, the Spiderman trilogy, and the X-men series.