Anytime I hear of The Social Network, I think of this clip. Although this is meant to be funny, this is actually the first time Zuckerberg and Eisenberg met. Its interesting how Eisenberg keeps mentioning that he is “interpreting a fictional character in a movie script.” But how would you take this? Anyway, it is a funny SNL opener.

I think most of us in class found this documentary distributing but very true.  As I can see from most of the comments on here, it seems that we are all agreeing that we can’t multitask nearly as well as we think we can. For example like its taken me 20 minutes to write these few paragraphs because I currently have Facebook, Netflix, and my email open. But I digress…

The most frightening part of this film for me was The Army Experience center that was opened at the Franklin Mills Mall. Although they had repediatly mentioned that they are not recruiting young boys for the Army, essentially that’s what they are doing. Most of the people who were playing games their that were interviewed said that they understood it was just a game, but I don’t see how that is.

What are your thoughts on this method?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/waging-war/a-new-generation/the-army-experience-center.html

After Bulworth decides to hire a hit man out on himself, he changes immediately. He goes out campaigning  and tells it like it is wherever he goes, being racist but not untruthful. I almost wish in current politics, politicians were as blatant and honest as he was. How do you think America would be if it were like that?

When we had first watched “Videodrone” last Monday, I was thinking the same thing everyone else was, what the hell did I just watch? I was already questioning the fact that the cast included Debbie Harry from Blondie, and that I had never heard of it. The film was unmistakably really strange, but after discussing it in class it made sense.

We talked about how the film showed what was believed to be false violence and how audiences ate that up, but if they would have realized that it was real, they would have been disgusted and outraged, such as how we watch game of thrones.

Andy Warhol had described this film as  “A Clockwork orange of the 1980’s”. In this film, Alex acted out ultra-violence for sheer pleasure and was later shown clips of violent acts as a way to cure him.  I didn’t see the comparison until I had looked back on A Clockwork Orange.

Do you feel that this is an accurate comparison or what other films do you think of when you watch this?

For those of you who haven’t seen the film a synopsis and the trailer can be seen here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/

Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasss Song is said to have started the Blaxploitation film genre. As we had discussed in class, this film inspired movies such as Shaft. It also spawned a lot of parody films. This is what I had first thought of when I had viewed this, in particular Django Unchained. The Blaxploitation films had started a new era of African-American representation in film. Do you feel that the parody films undermined the initial message of the Blaxploitation films?

From the second talk radio started, I knew it was going to be intense. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, the music and the choice long, continuous shots kept me anxious the entire time.

However, I would really have liked to have seen the film as a play, like it was originally. I feel that it would have been more powerful staged. I found the music in the film incredibly distracting and sometimes misleading. I also would have liked it if they had only focused on one of his broadcasts, not two of them. What are your thoughts?

Also, What do you think the impact was of Kent pulling the camera out on Barry?

Someone had posted a link to an article by Rodger Ebert on Ace in the Hole. It proved to b very helpful and raised some really interesting background on the film. One of the most interesting things that was mentioned was the change of title to the film. It was originally called “The Big Carnival” but producers had later decided to change the name to “Ace in the Hole”. In my opinion, the name should have been kept “The Big Carnival”. Chuck Tatum had lead a literal media circus in the film, I felt that the title fit perfectly. What are your thoughts?

As most people have already stated, most of Capara’s films seem to fit a certain format. They are all politically charged and all deal with the issue of populism. Most people are drawling comparisons between Mr.Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe, but what about Capra’s other films? One that I can’t really seem to draw any comparisons between are “It Happened One Night” and “Meet John Doe”. It seems these films were made by two completely different directors. For those of you familiar with the film, what are your thoughts?

One of the things I do before I start watching any movie is to look it up on IMDB, so when I saw we were watching “Park Row” in class, I had immediately looked the film up. One thing that had struck me was that none of the actors were very well known. This had surprised me considering what a well known and big-time director Samuel Fuller.

Until I realized that this was an independent film.  Most people have already pointed this out and have drawn comparisons between Samuel Fuller’s life as a young journalist and Park Row, but I have a question about the casting. According to the article someone had posted from Turner Classic Movies, Park Row was originally going to be a musical with big time actors such as Dan Dailey and Mitzi Gaynor. The article “Read All About It” by David Jenkins had also suggested that Gregory Peck could have been a perfect fit for this film. 

Do you think that the impact of this film would be lessened had Samuel Fuller decided to go with more A-list actors?