Author Archives: Gerouyun Chen

Disconnect: the internet thriller that’s not plugged in

I find this review on the Guardian which talks about Disconnect. It describes this movie as “Finally Hollywood has found a way to explain how the internet is responsible for all the love-cheating, gun/grammar crimes and innapropriate photographs in the world.” And also, this article examines how the Internet ruins people’s lives by analyzing this film’s trailer.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/06/disconnect-not-really-plugged-in

7 Undeniable Signs that Mike Judge’s “”Idoicracy” is Almost Upon Us

I found this very interesting article which indicates that “A more impressive (and depressing) feat than that, though, is that Judge’s view of the future now looks a little bit like the here and now.”

For example, it says,

“A provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.

What exactly explains this decline? Study co-author Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, points to the fact that women of high intelligence tend to have fewer children than do women of lower intelligence.”

This fact is very similar to Mike Judge’s view in Idiocracy.

This article is really interesting to read and then you’ll realize that those dumb scenes in Idoiocracy are not that impossible.

Link:http://uproxx.com/movies/2014/10/the-many-signs-that-mike-judges-idiocracy-is-almost-upon-us/

‘Bulworth’ reinforces rather than undercuts certain racial stereotypes about white men and black women.

I found an article which provides an interesting opinion about this film. The author thinks the cross-race romantic relationship reinforces the racial stereotype than destroy it. He says that,

In fact, white men have been eroticizing the bodies of African-American women, especially light-skinned women like Halle Berry, for a long time. Beatty, in many of his interviews plugging the movie, has been advancing the cause of interracial love as the only way out of the nation’s racial dilemma, apparently unaware that Bulworth actually reinforces rather than undercuts certain racial stereotypes.

Just because a white guy falls in love with, or simply lusts after, an African-American woman doesn’t necessarily mean that he supports racial equality. On the contrary, this sort of interaction among races and genders played a central role in affirming the ability of white men, especially in the South, to call the shots before and after the Civil War.

And he analyzes several well-know cases to prove his argument. It is really interesting and worth reading.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-06-14/news/1998165037_1_bulworth-halle-berry-stereotypes

Broadcast News foresaw a crisis in journalism—and in rom-coms.

I found an article which analyzes James L. Brook’s Broadcast News in a very interesting way. In the author’s opinion, in addition to foreseeing a crisis in journalism, this movie also predicts a crisis in romantic comedies. He says,

“But Broadcast News didn’t just foresee a crisis in journalism; it illuminates the crisis in romantic comedies currentlybedeviling Hollywood, as screenwriters and directors still can’t find a way to make a heroine’s career anything but an obstacle to her heart’s desire. Hunter’s character, network producer Jane Craig, became a template for a new kind of rom-com heroine—the workaholic who must choose between icy careerism and a warm romantic life. But the film’s respect for Jane’s work, and its famously audience-unfriendly ending, are reminders that few of the movies that have followed inBroadcast‘s footsteps have shared its guts.”

And he analyzes the heroine, Jane, in detail. This article is really worth reading.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/dvdextras/2011/02/we_need_more_women_like_jane_craig.html

The Movie “Videodrome” and The Horror of Mass Media

I found this article very interesting since it analyzes Videodrome seriously and talks about the relationship between Videodrome and Mass Media.

Just as we discussed in class. The article says,

“Videodrome was produced in 1983 but one can argue that it was decades ahead of its time. It successfully predicted the growing control of mass media by shady forces, the coming of reality television and the propagation, through various mediums such as the Internet, of all kinds of extreme underground films.”

And then, it analyzes this movie plot by plot and discusses how these plots relate in the context of today. This article is definitely worth reading.

http://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-movie-videodrome-and-the-horror-of-mass-media/

Blaxploitation’s Baadasssss History

In this article, the author details  the background information about Sweetback and talks about the different reactions about this movie when it was released. It says,

“The critical reaction to Sweetback was varied. Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine, penned an article entitled “Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland” that criticized the film for romanticizing ghetto life, for opening with the scene described as the “rape of a child by a 40-year-old prostitute” and for assuming that sexual prowess was synonymous with revolutionary actions. According to Bennett, “f—ing will not set you free.”

Yet Huey P. Newton, head of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, wrote his own lengthy essay about the film in the Panthers’ newspaper. Arguing that Sweetback was a cultural reflection of the same types of political ideas that the Panthers championed, he went on to suggest that the movie was the “first truly revolutionary black film.” Sweetback would become required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party.”

And compares Sweetback with another black film Shaft,

“In July 1971, MGM released Shaft, and it was as though the independent spirit of Sweetback had now quickly spawned a more mainstream successor. Unlike Sweetback, which posited its hero (played by Van Peebles) as “the bad-ass nigger coming back to get some dues,” Shaft featured Richard Roundtree as “the black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks.”

In each case, the sexual prowess and protagonist’s overall swag signaled the emergence of a new kind of black character, one who specialized in kickin’ ass and takin’ names! John Shaft, however, was equally at ease among cops and convicts, gangsters and revolutionaries. He was, after all, “the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about.”

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2011/04/blaxploitation_films_40_years_after_sweet_sweetbacks_baadasssss_song.html

Sweetback’: Does It Exploit Injustice?:’ It’s a Funny Old World’

I found an article which talks about Sweet Sweetback’s Baadsssss Song. Since Mario Van Peebles’s Baadsssss! is based on and salute his father’s movie, it might be interesting to read this review. It analyzes the Sweet Sweetback’s Baadsssss Song’s filming techniques.

The movie is the story of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Flight, accompanied by lots of soundtrack song, a journey made eventually intolerable not only by the hardships and the duplicity (of even white counter-ulturalists like the Hells Angels), but by the simplistic sensationalism of the treatment and the eye-disorienting visual style that substitutes film school technical complexities (such as the superimposition of double, triple and quadruple images) for dramatic content. Instead of dramatizing injustice, Van Peebles merchandizes it. With the exception of perhaps a dozen scenes, the movie is composed almost entirely of the sort of fancy montages with which television the goal.

Fascism, American Style

This review analyzes A Face in the Crowd in detail. It explains why Rhodes could become successful,

“In our media-saturated culture, we’ve grown accustomed to being dished the dirt on our cultural icons. But the 1950s were a more innocent time, and naïveté, willful ignorance, defined the rules of the game as they were played in that era, which enabled a cornpone character with bad intentions like Lonesome Rhodes to emerge unexamined from the woodwork.”

And also, it details the film’s themes,

A Face in the Crowd explores themes of mass media and the cult of personality, and how the ability to shape public opinion had reached new heights (or depths) with the advent of an innovative medium beamed into every home. When Kazan and Schulberg were consolidating their thoughts on the film, they visited Capitol Hill and Madison Avenue. “We got the feeling that people were manipulating in the crudest way [other] people’s thinking,” observed Kazan, “and I feel that still. I think people are … being made to think in a way they wouldn’t ordinarily think.”

Review on DGA

I found an article on DGA, which stands for Directors Guild of America, talking about Elia Kazan and his film, A Face in the Crowd. Director Jay Roach analyzes Kazan’s film from a professional perspective. Roach looks at how Elia Kazan’s film foreshadowed today’s political culture and influenced his own films.