Theatre 40: Introduction to Film

Here is a list of every film we've seen in class this semester. You will be responsible for one reflection per unit. On Wednesday, your six reflections, plus journal response 3, should be collected, in order, inside a thin folder.

Road Films:

It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934 USA)

Thelma & Louise (Scott, 1991 USA)

Sports Films:

Rocky (Avildsen, 1976 USA)

The Wrestler (Aronofsky, 2008 USA)

Musicals:

Moulin Rouge! (Luhrmann, 2001 USA/Australia)

Dancer in the Dark (von Trier, 2000 USA/Denmark/German/et al.)

Documentaries:

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Gordan, 2007 USA)

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father (Kuenne, 2008 USA)

The Cove (Psihoyos, 2009 USA)

Gay Film:

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Minghella, 1999 USA)

Transamerica (Tucker, 2005 USA)

Science Fiction:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Jones, 2004 USA)

Cube (Natali, 1997 Canada)

Here are the terms to know for your final this Wednesday:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS): Based in Hollywood and sometimes called “The Academy,” they are the organization responsible for the annual Academy Awards (or Oscars).
Avant-Garde Cinema: Traditionally, Avant-Garde Cinema’s agenda has been to tear down traditional film conventions. Through a variety of techniques, Avant-Garde Cinema strives to push film to its limits. It is sometimes offensive, sometimes preposterous, but always challenges Hollywood’s status quo.
Black Comedy: Sometimes called a “dark comedy,” it is a comedy in which the laughs are derived from subjects for which humor is usually considered unsuitable, such as death, war, suffering, and murder (e.g. Dr. Strangelove, The War of the Roses, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Mr. and Mrs. Smith).
Blockbuster: A movie that has a box-office of more than $100 million upon release in North America.
B-Movies: A generic term given to low-budget, second-tier movies. Traditionally, B-movies have been made quick and cheap. They are also often sexually exploitive and/or gratuitously violent, catering to the lowest common denominator. The name comes from the tradition of these films often playing second in a double feature. Today, B-movies are often called STV’s (Straight-to-Video).
Bollywood: A nickname given to the film industry centered in and around Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. This region, known for its over-the-top musical productions, produces more films per year than any other nation, including the United States.
Camp: A form of comedic parody where drama is deliberately exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness (e.g. Moulin Rouge).
Documentary: A non-fiction narrative without actors. Documentaries are a journalistic record of human issues, chronologies, events, real people, social concerns, political movements, and values. In its most general description, the documentary serves the purpose of conveying factual data.
Fanboy: Originating in the world of comic books, the term has come to describe a type of fervent film fan (typically male) that not only follows film, but is often vocal (typically via the Internet) in his approval or disapproval of upcoming sci-fi or fantasy projects.
Film Adaptation: A film adaptation is a screen translation of a novel or short story (e.g. Brokeback Mountain).
Film Noir: A French term literally meaning "black film," though no single convention encapsulates what is meant by this generic term. The primary motifs include the formidable dark side of human nature. These films can be characterized as cynical in their outlook regarding characters, social perspectives, and human nature. Themes within the films emphasize the brutal, unhealthy, shadowy and sadistic sides of humanity; the inhumane within the human; people's inhumanity toward one another. The film medium itself lends itself to this exploration as it can experiment with and control the amount of light and shadow cast on a particular scene. Gothic in texture, the golden age of Film Noir was from the early 1940s to early 1960s. Subsequent noirs (from the 1970s to present) are often called “Neo-Noirs.”
Gaze: The concept of “The Gaze” derives from a seminal 1975 article called “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist. In essence, she posits that film is an “instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view.” Her theory further holds that part of the pleasure people gain from watching films is voyeuristic.
Independent Cinema: Sometimes called “indie” cinema, it is a term used to refer to films not produced by a mainstream Hollywood studio (e.g. Paramount, Twentieth Century-Fox). With indie films, audiences often see stories that mainstream movies avoid; it is for this reason that many filmmakers say independent cinema is more liberating and satisfying as an artist. Still, independents, often produced on dramatically reduced budgets, typically face an uphill battle as they are generally not as well financed nor distributed as a Hollywood-produced feature. Nonetheless, there have been some remarkable indie successes in the past few years including Pulp Fiction ($108 million gross), The Blair Witch Project ($140 million gross), and My Big Fat Greek Wedding ($241 million gross).
Mis-en-scène: from the French term for “staging,” the proponents of mise-en-scene understand, accentuate and celebrate the importance of the individual frame of film and what it contains. It is the sum total of all factors affecting the artistic "look" or "feel" of a shot or scene. These can include shot selection, composition, production design and set decoration, as well as technical camera properties.
Mockumentray: A “mock” documentary, these are fictional films utilizing the stylistic techniques of documentaries. They are often comedies (e.g. Best in Show, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), but the technique is also seen in horror and sci-fi fairly often (e.g. Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity)
Narrative Charge: The film character or thing that drives a film’s narrative. In other words, it is that force within a film that drives the story’s direction (e.g. the “myth” of the Blair Witch in The Blair Witch Project).
Pastiche: A work of art produced by borrowing fragments, ingredients, or ideas from other sources. It is creating new art from pieces of other art (e.g. Dancer in the Dark).
Pitch: The initial presentation of a script or concept to prospective producers, such as studio executives or directors
Post-Modernism: Post-modernism is the aesthetic approach dominating contemporary art in the second-half of the 20th century. Often, post-modern films: 1) recycle earlier genres and styles into new contexts (e.g. the hard-boiled, 1940s detective style of the very futuristic Blade Runner), 2) represent history through nostalgic images from the past (e.g. the hyper-romantic 1900 Paris of Moulin Rouge), 3) celebrate of pop culture/mass media at the expense of high art (e.g. the overabundance of pop culture references in Pulp Fiction), and 4) are multicultural, drawing back from the West and embracing a diversity of cultures (e.g. Bride and Prejudice). Post-modern films sometimes show little regard for the expectations of genres, so the experience of watching one of these films can sometimes be jarring because time, cultures, and styles do not always add up (e.g. Dirty Dancing, Dancer in the Dark).
Queer Cinema: The term originally referred to the fringe cinema created by gay directors (e.g. Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith) and aimed at gay audiences. It was, in large part, a response to the negative portrayal gays and lesbians traditionally received on film. Today, Queer Cinema (or “New Queer Cinema” as it is often called today) has come out of the “celluloid closet” and crossed into the mainstream.
Subtext: “Subtext” refers to an unspoken, underlying, and or implied theme, in a narrative. In film, this is not explicitly stated (it is content underneath the spoken dialogue), but is nonetheless “understood” by viewers. Gay cinema has often utilized this technique to explore often-forbidden themes of homosexuality. Films, such as Hitchcock’s Rebecca, has used subtext to relay to audiences a secondary layer to a character or plot.
Spoiler: Information that, if revealed, will “spoil” key parts of a film. In the age of the Internet, spoilers are much more common. Some online film sites will post “spoiler alerts” if the information might ruin a film. Recent Internet spoilers have included revelations about films, including The Village and Million Dollar Baby.
Storyboard: A sequence of pictures created by a production illustrator to communicate the desired general visual appearance of a film. Resembling comic book panels, storyboards detail a film’s visual framework.
Studio System: Between the 1920’s and 1950’s, a handful of film studios ran the entire filmmaking industry in the United States. The major studios were: Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., MGM, Paramount, RKO, Universal, Disney, Columbia, and United Artists. The system included the owning of properties and the contracts to actors, actresses, directors and producers. The corporate leader of a studio would control all aspects of the production of a film which limited the control employees of the studio had. In essence, all performers were governed by the studio.
Three-Act Narrative Structure: Based on Aristotle's "Poetics," this is the foundation on which most films’ narrative structures are based upon: Act I: The Set-Up, Act II: Confrontation, Act III: Resolution.