Check out these two video clips. The first is a trailer for a documentary about the stereotyping of Asian actors entitled The Slanted Screen.
The next is a short montage of Asian characters who have been played by non-Asian actors. (The practice is often referred to as 'Yellowface'. This term comes from the term 'blackface' - the practice of black characters played by caucasian actors.)
Now check out this clip from Breakfast at Tiffany's:
Question: How racist is Mickey Rooney's portrayal...
I know we're only a few minutes into it, but for me, this shot says it all. Holly Golightly's world is elegant, lonely, lovely, haunting, full, empty, sophisticated, charming, enviable, tragic.
For today, let's examine how we as audience members are supposed to react to three characters...
...Holly...
...Paul/"Fred"...
and, of course, Mr. Yunioshi...
What are we supposed to think about each of them? How much are we supposed to like them? Are they funny? Sad? Tragic? Happy? Fulfilled? What do they seem to want from life? Any thoughts?
(Remember, one thoughtful, thorough comment is required for a grade. Any additional comments will be counted as extra credit. So feel free to comment on your peers' entries.)
The final film in our History of Sci-Fi Films unit is going to be Terminator 2 - a sequal, obviously, to the original The Terminator. Here's the trailer:
And here's a plot summary from Wikipedia:
In a post-apocalyptic 2029, artificially intelligent machines seek to exterminate what is left of the human race. Two beings from this era are transported back in time to 1984 Los Angeles: one is a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a cyborg assassin programmed to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The other is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a human resistance fighter sent to protect her. The Terminator stalks Sarah by killing all of the Sarah Connors listed in the telephone directory one by one.
Kyle explains that in the near future an artificial intelligence network called Skynet will become self-aware and initiate a nuclear holocaust of mankind. Sarah's son John will rally the survivors and lead a resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines. With the Resistance on the verge of victory, Skynet has sent a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before John can be born, as a last-ditch effort to avert the formation of the Resistance. The Terminator is an emotionless and efficient killing machine with a powerful metal endoskeleton, but with an external layer of living tissue so that it resembles a human being.
In the end, Sarah leads the terminator into a hydraulic press, which she uses to crush it, causing it to deactivate.
Some time later, a pregnant Sarah is traveling through Mexico. Along the way she records audio tapes which she intends to pass on to her unborn son John. She debates whether to tell him that Kyle is his father. A young Mexican boy takes a photograph of her which she purchases — it is the photograph that John will later give to Kyle. She drives on towards approaching storm clouds.
And here's the police station scene, where the terminator comes to kill Sarah Connor and Arnold becomes world-famous for saying, "I'll be back.":
Keep in mind this film is also where and when James Cameran of Avatar fame became a cinematic force. Some people argue (like me) that the original The Terminator - which cost something like $6 million to make - is also Cameron's best film...even better than Titanic or Avatar. But as good as it was...it was still a low-budget, midnight feature. Terminator 2, however, changed the way the world made movies. Expensive. Special effects and action driven. Total spectacle.
The following is a review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, originally published in 1968 - the year the film first came out. Ebert rated the film four out of four stars. Read his review, and then check in with me at the end.
It was e. e. cummings, the poet, who said he'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance. I imagine cummings would not have enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," in which stars dance but birds do not sing. The fascinating thing about this film is that it fails on the human level but succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale.
Kubrick's universe, and the space ships he constructed to explore it, are simply out of scale with human concerns. The ships are perfect, impersonal machines which venture from one planet to another, and if men are tucked away somewhere inside them, then they get there too.
But the achievement belongs to the machine. And Kubrick's actors seem to sense this; they are lifelike but without emotion, like figures in a wax museum. Yet the machines are necessary because man himself is so helpless in the face of the universe.
Kubrick begins his film with a sequence in which one tribe of apes discovers how splendid it is to be able to hit the members of another tribe over the head. Thus do man's ancestors become tool-using animals.
At the same time, a strange monolith appears on Earth. Until this moment in the film, we have seen only natural shapes: earth and sky and arms and legs. The shock of the monolith's straight edges and square corners among the weathered rocks is one of the most effective moments in the film. Here, you see, is perfection. The apes circle it warily, reaching out to touch, then jerking away. In a million years, man will reach for the stars with the same tentative motion.
Who put the monolith there? Kubrick never answers, for which I suppose we must be thankful. The action advances to the year 2001, when explorers on the moon find another of the monoliths. This one beams signals toward Jupiter. And man, confident of his machines, brashly follows the trail.
Only at this point does a plot develop. The ship manned by two pilots, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. Three scientists are put on board in suspended animation to conserve supplies. The pilots grow suspicious of the computer, "Hal," which runs the ship. But they behave so strangely -- talking in monotones like characters from "Dragnet" -- that we're hardly interested.
There is hardly any character development in the plot, then, as a result little suspense. What remains fascinating is the fanatic care with which Kubrick has built his machines and achieved his special effects. There is not a single moment, in this long film, when the audience can see through the props. The stars look like stars and outer space is bold and bleak.
Some of Kubrick's effects have been criticized as tedious. Perhaps they are, but I can understand his motives. If his space vehicles move with agonizing precision, wouldn't we have laughed if they'd zipped around like props on "Captain Video"? This is how it would really be, you find yourself believing.
In any event, all the machines and computers are forgotten in this astonishing last half-hour of this film, and man somehow comes back into his own. Another monolith is found beyond Jupiter, pointing to the stars. It apparently draws the spaceship into a universe where time and space are twisted.
What Kubrick is saying, in the final sequence, apparently, is that man will eventually outgrow his machines, or be drawn beyond them by some cosmic awareness. He will then become a child again, but a child of an infinitely more advanced, more ancient race, just as apes once became, to their own dismay, the infant stage of man.
And the monoliths? Just road markers, I suppose, each one pointing to a destination so awesome that the traveler cannot imagine it without being transfigured. Or as cummings wrote on another occasion, "listen -- there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go."
Mr. Cowlin here again. So you've just watched this film, and I'm wondering what you thought of it. It's considered probably the best science fiction film ever made, and one of the best films ever made in any genre. Those are bold words for a world with literally hundreds of thousands (?) of films to call 'the greatest.'
So here's your task: Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with Ebert. Be sure to select specific claims made by Ebert and discuss in detail whether or not you agree with with each specific claim/idea. (These will be your body points.) Your thesis should be something along the lines of, "To what degree do you agree with Ebert's overall assessment of the movie?"
Please be sure to refer to specific moments of the film in order to give support to your claims. Your final product should be typed, double spaced, and a minimum of five thoughtful, thorough paragraphs in length. Good luck, and have fun.
One last thing. Here are a couple treats from Sesame Street. I grew up with these, even though I had no idea what they meant.
In the comments section, please post as many (at least one) questions you have regarding 2001. (These questions could be about the story, symbolism, special effects, mis en scene, cinematography, characterization, what the hell was that, etc.)
Interested in some extra credit? Take at look at this old entry I made on the pacing of 2001, and make a comment.
Here are a few trailers from some 1950s sci-fi classics. Take a look, and then I have a few questions for you.
What themes and stylistic choices do these movies appear to share with Forbidden Planet? You might wish to consider man's fear of knowledge, fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of communism and homsexuality, pro-military attitudes, conservative attitudes, etc.
Also, how do these movies come across as different from Forbidden Planet - visually, tone, budget, acting, etc.
