PERFECT FREAKIN SCORE

Perfect Score was about 6 students who create a plan to steal the answers to the SAT exam. Each student had their own significant reason why they needed to pass the test.

At first i didnt particularly like the movie because i thought it was a little corny and stereotypical like most movies in high school settings. The African American character in the movie was of course a basketball player, the middle class white female character was the salutatorian of her class, the Asian student was a computer wiz etc. As i began to watch and analyze the movie more i saw myself within some of the characters and it didn’t quite see it as stereotypical any more. i like the fact that even though the characters were a little corny, i felt like the directer made each student different in their own way ,which is evident in their dialogue as well as costume,to show how the SAT is unfair to students everywhere.

I felt like the themes of the movie were very obvious. there were themes within the dialogue of the characters as well as the setting. for example one of the students says” the teach us to be unique an individuals but yet they give us a standardized test.” there was also a scene in the movie where two students pay a visit to the Testing company and the guard tells the students that hundreds of kids complain about their SAT scores a day. Obviously the director put that dialogue in the script for a reason. he wanted us to see how fucked up the SATs really are, especially if hundreds of kids complain about them.

From watching this movie it just makes me think about how stupid the Sats really are. it pissed me off at the end of the movie, because after all the trouble of trying to steal the scores none of the students used them. why? because the SATs don’t mean shit! The building that the students broke into was hella extravagant with plexi glass windows and shit. do you think if the SAT people were broke their office would like like that? its like we are being pimped and we dont even know it.

 

Sick Nurses

*WARNING- in order to make my points valid, this entire movie had to be dissected and I had to go back and forth from the beginning and the end to help understand. This movie was not too good so I’m not spoiling much of anythig for you.

Sick Nurses was a film which was centered around the theme of jealousy ad betrayal. The story is about these 8 nurses who kill people for their organs to sell them on the black market. One of the nurses decide to threaten to snitch on the whole crew about these activities. The end result…she gets killed. But no one ever stays dead for long. She comes back and seeks revenge on everyone who helped kill her. There is one male out of all of the eight nurses, who happens to have had an affair with EVERYONE. To show the theme of betrayal and jealousy, the director uses color and foreshadowing.

Out of all the girls he was sleeping with, there was one girl who he promised to marry. He got her all sprug on him, and she just makes every sacrifice for him. He ends up sleeping with her sister, and when she finds this out, she threatens to snitch. So, everyone pins her down and her own sister kills her. As the sister is dying, she points to her sisters stomach. Later on it turns out that she is pregnant. The dying sister knew that, and was tellig the sister that she would be reborn as her baby. She gives birth to her BROTHER (explain in a min) as a full grown man whih of coarse kills her. Through out the movie, there are frequent flash backs to the male nurse talking with a “friend” of his. In these scenes the color green is apparent either in the background or clothing, they find a way to use it. The movie takes an ultimate flashback to reveal that his “friend” went through surgery to become a woman so that they may get married. This is the ltimate sacrifice i was talking about.

So the man comes back as a blackish greenish monster woman. She goes and takes revenge on everyone who helped kill her. Of coarse she does, I said that earlier. Before everyoe dies, either black or dark green is in the background. For example, one of the girls she took revenge on was in a lime green room while surrounded by bottles filled with weird dirty green water. She also kills someone in a green tub. In the begining the hospital had more of a blue hue to it, but once the woman dies, it subtly turns green (might have spelled that wrong, it sounds like suh-tle). In the final scene of the movie, he is reborn onto a black and green checkered floor. The man she seeks revenge on is on this checkered floor, which symbolizes that he has no escape from his ex-lover, and he now belongs to him.

I apologize if I ruined it for you if you were coincidently going to watch this movie. It gets 2 stars in my book only for the twist.

 

estan…..Rec?!?!?!?

So i did a Spanish movie called Rec and is Co-Directed By Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza. This movie is similar in some ways to Cloverfield and in some ways to alot of other zombie movies. And yes it is a spanish Zombie movie. this movie was not the greatest of movies but there are still things i can talk about, such as the way the movie was shot, lighting, tha camera angles and how that affected the whole “movie experience”. The movie is about a news team 1 reporter girl and her cameraman who visit a local fire dept. and basically record and talk about all that goes on in a firehouse. On a “routine” call to an Apt. building where someone called becasue they heard screams, the crew and tha firefighters find more then they could ever had expected, Zombies!

One of the big things about the movie that relates it alot to Cloverfield is the way the movie is shot. it isnt shot like most movies it was shot… like cloverfield 1st person, from the eyes of the camera man that was in the news crew. One of the benefits to shooting a zombie movie like this is that you cant see alot you can only see what the camera can see so your vision is restricted so you dont really know what to expect next.

One of the things i didnt like about the movie was that it was a very predictable movie. the way they angled the camera or the kind of info they gave you you could kind of make out what was either going to happen or figure somwthing out before the movie even told you which kind of ruined the movie. Oh and the reporter lady was HELLA ANNOYING! i just kep thinking damn why wont SHE die. But she is the main character, we know this b/c she starts of as the only one on the shot in the beginning of the movie.

The movies storyline was like most zombie movies; buncha zombies eating hella people, but there were some interesting twists to it. lighting was a big part of the movie to because whenever they first showed a zombie the lighting was dark and always covered the face of the zombie. the acting in the movie was pretty good though. it was pretty believable and for a couple scenes made me feel how they felt. At one point, i wanted to scream “RUUUNN SHEE GON EAT YOOOUUUUU!!!”.

 

Mean Girlsss

This week I watched the movie Mean Girls Directed by Mark Waters. This is somewhat different from my last two posts because this movie is very mainstream. I like this movie a lot because it shows the transition of someone that comes from a completely different society when they are put into a stereotypical American environment. In the beginning of the film, Cady, Our main character, is thinks for herself and is very intelligent and she doesn’t have a clue about the media and how people are expected to be according to American media. Closer to the end of the film she is completely transformed. She looks like someone straight out of a Teen People magazine. This is because she immediately bought into all of the information that Americans follow everyday. The media and everyone around us shows us how we should look, talk, and feel, and especially the key things we need to attract the opposite (or the same) sex. By the end of this film, Cady is just another clone of what she thinks is going to make a boy like her, and other people like her as well.

A big part of this movie is comparison to animal wildlife and life in high school. They compare and contrast the ways that both parties hurt the people (or animals) whom they feel threatened by. The examples are clear that animals would usually attack when needed, but sixteen year old girls have their own ways of attacking. For example, calling someone’s mother and pretending to be planned parenthood with test results to get back at them for stealing your boyfriend. In my opinion, these comparisons are shallow and meaningless for the movie. They don’t do anything except to magnify the fact that Cady is from Africa.

This movie mostly stereotypes american teenage girls as heartless and shallow. Cady starts to like a boy just because of his looks from the beginning. They also talk a lot of shit about each other behind each others backs. Something I noticed that amplifies this is that as the movie progresses, more and more mirrors are shown. People are looking in mirrors, there are mirrors around the house, ect. Mirrors are a key metaphor for being shallow. The girls are seen in many scenes applying makeup and checking themselves out.

A big part of the movie that I know doesn’t have a lot to do with my previous paragraphs, but I would still like to bring up is that Race plays a big part in in this movie. These kids are obviously in the middle of suburbia, but even for suburbia, this movie is way exaggerated. ALL of the races are segregated from each other, especially in the lunch room. All of the main characters in this movie are white. All of the black people in the movie hang out together and they narrated from the beginning as “unfriendly”. ALL of the Asian people don’t speak a word of English. Also the fact that Cady was white and from Africa was brought up many times. I know that this is suburbia but it is so RIDICULOUS that someone would portray a high school like this. Of coarse not everyone is going to integrate but please, do they really have to make all of the jocks white boys. I thought was terrible and so unrealistic. 

P.S. Did any who has seen this movie notice that the leader of the plastics, Regina Gerorge, was wearing a blonde wig the entire film?

 

DANGEROUS MINDS

The plot to Dangerous Minds is very similar to Freedom Writers. Dangerous Minds is also about a female teacher, Michelle Pfeiffer, trying to teach a class full inner city minorities.

Although the main plot is similiar, there are a bunch of details that make the two movies different. One detail would be how the teachers tried to reach out to the students. Hillary Swank’s character tried to befriend her students and she really tried to get on their good side. She also went out of her way to teach a curriculum that would relate to her students. She went all out for her students. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character is a bit different. Pfeiffer’s character, to me, was a more tough love teacher. She said that being at school was a choice that the students made and if they didnt want to be in school they didnt have to be. She basically called out the students and they stayed. After that, she would reward her students with prizes such as candy. She cared for her students, she visited to the troubled ones home, but i feel that Swank always one up’ed her. Swank gave rewards that were relevant and educational, while Pfeiffer just gave them material things. Pfeiffer offered the students a day in the amusement park, Swank offered a field trip to the Holocaust museum.

Another detail would be the students. In Dangerous Minds, the class acted like a class. There wasn’t any serious separation and for the most part the class got a long. Instead of 3 or 4 main students, in Dangerous Minds there were about 2 only. The problems the students faced in Dangerous Minds were also different. The problems were more individual than gang related. Unlike Freedom Writers, not everything is a happy ending. Some students had problems that couldn’t be dealt with.

There are more details that make the movie different, but that would just make this a list. Overall, i felt that Dangerous Minds was a good basis to build a better movie off of and the people of Freedom Writers did just that. Freedom Writers took more time and made sure they tied in everything and made everything perfect, almost. They basically used Dangerous Mind as a rough draft and almost everything in Freedom Writers was better. Dangerous Minds had a couple of things that just left kind of unfulfilled. I’m not sure if its the narrative, but it felt kind of rushed to me.

 

The Perfect Score

Perfect Score directed by Brain Robbins is a movie about a group of high school seniors that attempts and successfully steals the SAT answers from the ETS. The whole plan to steal the answers started as an idea Kyle shared with his best friend Matty, but as words travels quickly, the group of 2 people became a group of six people. A movie that close to all teenagers, especially high school seniors, can relate to, this movie was pretty easy to emotionally understand.        

The first person shown on the first shot was Kyle taking the SATs, proving that he is the main character of the movie. Throughout the movie Kyle was the leader of the group gathering people and setting plans for the SAT scores robbery, but what confused me at the end was that the narrative voice throughout the movie came from Roy, not Kyle. From the consistent shots involving Kyle’s presence and voice in the movie, it is reasonable to say that Kyle is the main character, but wouldn’t the narrative of the robbery come from Kyle’s perspective of the whole thing because he is the main character. It is hard for me to say who is the main character is either Kyle or Roy. From Kyle in every scene and shown first, Kyle’s the main character, but the narrative voice came from Roy giving his opinion throughout the movie, making him main character also. But in the end after this confusion, I choose Kyle as my main character.

The planning of the robbery and the robbery in it itself, told us straight out that SATs are unfair. As a teenager myself and a former high school senior, all I thought about the SATs were “I gotta take it and do well to get into a good/well-known college!” I knew that SATs didn’t test my knowledge but ability to solve problems, but I didn’t think it was biased until (first Damon pointed it out) and hearing Kyle argue for that point. This movie didn’t use a creative way or discrete way to get the message across that the collegeboard only cares about the money and not individuals’ score(s), they simply said it out loud word for word. Saying it right in front of our face gives us the cold blunt truth, just like the meetings we have on Wednesdays. If people looked for more information about the SATs, they could easily find out it is biased but from the pressure in taking the SATs and need to score high, people could have been blind folded from what’s in front of them. (Because I sure was like “I gotta score high or I won’t get into UC’s.”)

Another thing the movie showed is that different people surrounding us is similar in some sort of way. In this movie 6 different people shared the same interest in the scores because of their own reasons but there are a lot more ways people are similar in the end. Through the clothes that each character wore, plus their brief background given by Roy, it showed us that each member of the group was part of a different clique in high school. The costume change I noticed from before and after the robbery was Anna’s wardrobe. As a top student in her school she dressed conservatively and acted the way she was expected from her parents. But taking part and after the robbery, changed Anna’s insight to things she have a control in and she completely changed her wardrobe to be more “slutty”, as Francesca said in the movie.

 

she’s the man.

She’s the Man directed by Andy Fickman is a film based off William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The movie begins with a montage of Amanda Bynes, Viola, playing soccer with her boyfriend. She is a very good soccer player, but becomes discouraged when her girl’s soccer team at Cornwall gets cut because not enough girls signed up. Luckily for her though, her brother, Sebastian, is going to London to pursue his musical career and asks Viola to call his new school and tell them that he is sick. Because Viola wants to crush her ex-boyfriend’s soccer team, she decides to dress up as Sebastian and go to the rival school, Illyria. At Illyria, she tries out for the soccer team, but makes second string. She makes a deal with Duke, her roomate, that if she tries to help him get with Olivia, he would help her make first string so she can play in the game against Cornwall. Throughout the movie, she gets caught up in all this drama, while still trying to court Duke.

From the beginning a lot of scenes and narrative foreshadow Viola’s dramatic impersonation as Sebastian. One of the opening scenes shows Viola walking home and Monique is following her calling out Sebastian’s name. When she finally realizes that it’s not Sebastian, she says  “Sometimes it’s scary how much you and your brother look alike”. From this beginning scene, I immediately thought that something about role changing between them might happen. I thought even more about this when their mother says something along the lines of “I could have sworn I just saw your brother…god sometimes you gusy could be interchangeable”. By the end of these short narratives, I knew that Viola would impersonate Sebastian.

A common theme throughout this movie is the concept of girl power and girl’s impact in a “guy’s world”. In most teen movies, the guy is portrayed as an asshole, but in this movie, the guys come off as soft guys, except on the soccer field, and the girls are pretty dominating. Viola breaks up with her jock boyfriend and even slaps him in the face. The fact that Viola dresses up as Sebastian, shows that she is determined to be on a soccer team and kick her ex-boyfriend’s ass. This shows her dominated character and how she wants to be accepted in “the guy’s way of life”. Monique, Sebastian’s ex-girlfriend, is extremely persistent in trying to get back with him throughout the whole movie, even when Viola is impersonating him. Even after they break up, Monique tries to constantly get back with him.  

The costume of girls and guys also show the dominating aspect of the girls in this film. For the most part, girls, even Sebastian, are always in bright colors that stand out, like yellow, red and light blue. The guys wear dull colors such as gray, black, and white. Although there isn’t much to talk about because the costume is pretty straight foward, it’s very significant and parallels with the theme.

p.s. i HATE amanda bynes because she kissed channing tatum…practically the hottest man alive. =]

 

Want to Argue??

 Inspired by a true story, “The Great Debaters” chronicles the journey of Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington), an outstanding and inspiring debate coach who uses the power of words to shape a group of underdog students from a small African American college in the Deep South into a historically elite debate team. Directed by Denzel Washington and a supporting cast of Forest Whitaker, Jermaine Williams, J.D. Evamore, Jurnee Smollett (my future wife) Nate Parker and Denzel Whitaker.

This movie really interested me because it is inspired by a true story and shows how African Americans were treated. The graphic images shown in this movie shows the rough road this debate team had to through. Also the relations between the members on debate team are very realistic in the lives of today’s youth. For example when the team has it’s first meeting together you can feel a connection between Samantha (Jurnee Smollett) and Henry (Nate Parker) but also the can sense the crush James Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) has on Samantha. And things like this always happen all the time now-a-days. Also the relationship between Professor Melvin and the members on this team is similar to the Adult-Teen relationship now. The Teens don’t really believe that the Adults understand us but we look up to them to have all the answers to our questions.

The Great Debaters touch on a few themes that are express from the beginning of the movie. The first one that became clear to me was the power of communication. The whole movie all there do is debating but debating is art of communicating a point that you are trying to reach. The relationship this team had with each other is very strong and is all due to the communications they had with each other. The biggest theme I caught in this movie was the power of speech. The people on this team are only kids but the meaning behind their words and their debates makes them powerful. Especially in the last debate in the movie, this debate shows how strong their voices are. Your voice makes all the difference.

 

Huh? Spider what?

The Widely Acclaimed Marvel Movie SpiderMan 3, Directed By Sam Raimi, was the third part of Stan Lee’s Spiderman. The Story picks off with Peter Parker living his life finally happy with the girl of his dreams, Mary jane Watson. Everything in the movie is going great because he can finally focus on MJ and his job, being a superhero. A meteor falls from the sky and makes its way to peter parkers casa. The Suit when it attaches itself to peters suit, it enhances his powers and brings out the worst of his personality.

One of the themes in Spiderman 3 is Supressed emotioin and how Venom brings out how Spiderman really feels in the movie and his deep emotions. When the movie starts the feeling of the movie is all nice and like thrying to show that he has like the perfect life because he has his girl and his superhero job is going great. When the Venom shows up and finally gets to spiderman, the feeling of the movie becomes more dark and he feels powerful and then wants revenge on the man who really killed his uncle. not only do ou know that everything turns black because his suit turns jet-black but because the scenery changes and the music changes. when hes in the suit the setting is always dark and secluded like a sewer and always during the night.

Another thing i noticed is that when he realizes that the suit is turning him into a “bad” superhero” the music becomes more mysterious. also its really noticable that once Venom comes into the picture and takes over spidermans suit everything connected to Peter parker starts to go downhill. his relationship with Mary Jane becomes more distant and she starts to pull away. when his friend Harry Osborn, starts to pursue him for thinking he killed his father, in the balck suit, peter doesnt take it easy on him because he thinks he can prove his innocence anymore, he just goes all out because the suit brings out the anger in him. in this movie i liked how they connected alot of diferent peoples lives and how becasue of this division, friends who used to be foes now partner up with eachother do defeat the new formed partnership of evil.

camera angles arre key in this movie also with the special effects becasue oyu have to make it believable that Spiderman is Swinging through the air. also at the end of the movie theres a scene where Spiderman and Harry have defeated the bad guys and Harry is on his last breath and spiderman and maryjane are there for him. When he finally dies, the shot is him laying on the floor in MJ’s lap and Spiderman is is on the other side and the shot shows the view of the city and the sunset which symbolizes that even though a close friend has died, it shows the end of all bad things in the past and whats good to come in the future for everyone who was attached  to Harry Osborn.

theres a way that this movie fits in kind of to what weve been talking about becasue Flint Marko the man who actually killed Peter Parkers Uncle had a reason for robbing the bank in the first place which is revealed later. The reason that Flint Robbed the bank is becasue he needed money so that his daughter could get some kind of procedure done becasue of an illness she had. this reflects what we said about the guy taking the ipod, people are doing it for specific reasons and Flint Went to his house and the house was an apartment that looked pretty bad. maybe its not exactly what we talked about and yu can say if im wrong but i feel like maybe the director wantd to put that in the movie for a reason. He could have said he just wanted the money, but he decided to give him a daughter and make her sick so that shed need a procedure. which i think you can compare and contrast both of these ideas. good movie but not better that the first or second.

 

No Reservations

“No Reservation”, a family drama directed by Scott Hicks is about Kate’s (played by Katherine Zeta-Jones) life as a single woman who works at an upscale restaurant and holds the kitchen together. Handling hundreds of orders everyday by the perfect appearance and taste of each dish, plus demanding other chefs to follow her directions, she intimidates others but is also well respected for her expertise. Her predictable life starts with waking up at the crack of dawn to go to the fish market for the fresh catches, then go to work, then go home and go to sleep before midnight. Kate had a boring lifestyle and it wasn’t until the death of her sister and addition of her niece, Zoe, and her competitor, Nick, where her life became enjoyable.

            The first thing I noticed in this film is the theme of the stress for perfection with the belief that there’s only one way to do things right. From the 1^st scene of the movie with Kate in mandatory therapy, you can tell right away that something is wrong with her if her job mandates it. As she is in the kitchen, Kate takes time to put on her apron, showing how she wants everything in perfection. Other than her appearance in the kitchen, she orders everyone around so the job, or dishes, gets done without any flaws. From her need of perfection and belief that the food she makes is perfect, she doesn’t take the time to listen to complaints. As the movie progresses with Zoe in her life, the stress for perfection didn’t go away. When Kate comes close to messing up, for an example: when she over slept Zoe’s first day of school, Kate rushed Zoe in a loud voice so she won’t be late, even though the whole time Zoe was ready and the only one that was wrong was Kate. It didn’t seem like anyone really eased her stress for perfection until the last scene of the movie.          

            To make the theme easier to notice, costumes made it pretty obvious that Kate wasn’t perfect herself. To hide the fact she isn’t perfect she makes things she can control as close to perfection as she can. The movie began with a black screen with her speaking and after that Kate appeared in the middle of the shot wearing all black. Wearing all black in therapy, there’s a problem in her life. Other than wearing white in the kitchen, anywhere outside the kitchen Kate wore black. Throughout the majority of the movie the black costume remained and it wasn’t until Zoe and Nick entered her life her costume changed in dark purple, dark red and dark grey. The change may have been to dark shade but it got brighter than before. From the little change in costume, it also showed how it is hard for her to change.

            Throughout this movie Kate didn’t want to be wrong and if she was, she would defend her case. Giving her 100% focus to “her kitchen” it became her sanctuary, ignoring other factors in life. To make her happy she excelled and work her way to the top, but spent close to all her time for and in “her kitchen”. An important thing in life is to balance everything out, socially, academically and with family, but this movie showed how the need for success in Kate’s life didn’t allow distractions such as a relationship. People (not all) want to become rich and successful following the American dream, but in the process people may accidentally and/or purposely tune out people. Individuals, like Kate, may become successful as top chef, but other than work individuals would be alone. =(