Cinema in the 90s

Unforgiven (1992)

 Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Forrest Gump (1994)

The Matrix (1999)

Thelma and Louise (1991)

Strange Days (1995)

Clerks (1994)

 Schindler's List (1993)

Philadelphia (1993)

 Dances with Wolves (1990)

Senior Final Exams

Welcome to the end of senior year. I hope your time in film class has been enlightening. You have just one more task to take care of before you go...your final exam.

Your task is to thoughtfully and thoroughly analyze a single frame of film. You should include everything we've learned this year: camera angle, mis en scene, color, contrast, staging...you know, everything. Use your notes. Go all the way. Too much is just enough. Along with the nitty-gritty film elements you've recorded in your notes, you may want to cover the following topics:

• What is the subject of the frame, and how do we know?
• What is the tone of the frame, and how do we know?
• What story is the frame telling, and how do we know?
• If possible, include the context of the frame as well as the minute and second the frame in the film occurs.

What frame should you use, and from what film? That is totally up to you. If you would like to capture your own frame, just be sure to either e-mail it to your instructor or print it off and turn it in along with your essay. Or you may select one of the frames provided below. Some are from films we have watched in class, some are from films with which you are familiar regardless, and some are from films you have never even heard of. The more familiar you are with the film, the easier the task is going to be, but the choice is yours.

A hard copy of your final exam essay is due AT THE START OF CLASS on Wednesday, MAY 30. You must personally turn it in. Emails will not be accepted. 

I've written an example of what I'm looking for. It can be found HERE. Here are some links to a few more examples crafted by past students:

• Fight Club
• Can't Hardly Wait
• Zombieland
• Shutter Island

And here some frames you may wish to choose from:

 Boogie Nights

 Cool Hand Luke

 The Descent

Gladiator

 The Grifters

 House of Flying Daggers

 The Maltese Falcon

 The Matrix

 Memento

Mississippi Burning 

 Pan's Labyrinth

 Pulp Fiction

 Rear Window

 The Shawshank Redemption

 Speed

 Sword of the Beast

 Touch of Evil

 Unforgiven

 Walk the Like

Return of the Dragon

The History of Sci-Fi Cinema Part IV - The 1980s & 90s

In a nutshell, here is the difference between the 70s and 80s:

COMMON THEMES

of Science Fiction of the 80s & 90s

danger of technology/computers

escapist/entertainment value





dangers of commercialism and corporate attitudes

TYPICAL STYLES

of Science Fiction of the 80s & 90s

spectacle, animation/digital technologies, and visual detail

QUINTESSENTIAL TONES

of Science Fiction of the 80s & 90s

action/adventure oriented




focus on pathos - emotional connection between audience and characters





Family audience oriented

2001: A Slow-Paced Odyssey

While director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is commonly regarded as one of cinema’s greatest achievements, this adoration is often focused on four specific aspects of the film: (1) groundbreaking special effects, (2) the use of classical music in lieu of a conventional film score, (3) a philosophical dilemma in which science fiction becomes a question of “what if?” instead of merely “what next?”, and (4) the deliberate, almost painfully slow pacing.

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to focus on the latter…Kubrick’s pacing. Film critic Roger Ebert attended the film’s premiere in 1968 and recalls the screening:

“To describe that first screening as a disaster would be wrong, for many of those who remained until the end knew they had seen one of the greatest films ever made. But not everyone remained. Rock Hudson stalked down the aisle, complaining, ‘Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?'’ There were many other walkouts, and some restlessness at the film's slow pace (Kubrick immediately cut about 17 minutes, including a pod sequence that essentially repeated another one).”

Needless to say, not everyone is pleased by the pacing of the film when they first see it. Many people think it’s slow and boring, never getting to the point. The truth is, however, the pacing is the point. The slow pacing is what the film is ‘about.’ Ebert describes the purpose of Kubrick’s pacing:

“The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, 2001 is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.”

And that’s the key. Kubrick is not simply telling us a story; he is allowing us to actually participate in a story. Scratch that. More than a story. A cosmic event. And as we all know, when you participate in anything - a family picnic, a volleyball game, Thanksgiving dinner - there's always a lot of waiting between climatic happenings. Most of life is waiting, in fact, but that’s what makes the happenings so interesting – we’ve been anticipating them, waiting for them to occur. And when they finally do, we feel what Aristotle called a 'catharsis'; we have an emotional reaction to the events. We feel 'fulfilled'.

There’s no denying that Star Wars, The Matrix, or Terminator 2 – great films all – are more action packed and thrilling sci-fi adventures than 2001. And there’s no denying that each of those films contain interesting philosophical dilemmas: What makes a hero? How credible is our perception of reality? How are we contributing to our own destruction? But none of them – in fact, probably no science fiction film before or since – has cut to the core of and debated mankind’s central dilemma more thoroughly: “Who are we, and why are we here?”

And that is a question one simply cannot rush.

So Kubrick’s pacing of 2001 is slow and deliberate. And it’s not a great film despite its slow pacing; it’s a great film because of its slow pacing.

Here are two questions for you to discuss: (1) In what specific moments of the film is Kubrick’s slow pacing particularly effective, and why? (2) What other films can you think of that use similarly slow and deliberate pacing for similar dramatic effect?

Metropolis and the Uncanny Valley

As I was watching Metropolis yesterday, an intersting thing happened. A shot of the 'Machine Man' came up, and I thought, "Say, that looks pretty real."

But by "real" I didn't mean, "Say, that looks like a real robot." What I meant was, "Say, that cgi almost like it exists in the real world." Of course, the reason the 'Machine Man' looks like it actually exists is because it did actually exist - it was a pliable wooden costume made roughly sixty years before computer generated effects would even be used in films.

I'll say this one more time to be clear: I was watching a silent movie from 1927 and my reaction was that the computer generated special effects looked pretty good.

If you’re familiar with the “uncanny valley” theory, skip this paragraph. If not, here’s a pretty cool idea: In 1970 Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, published an article in which he describes a hypothesis he termed the “uncanny valley.” Basically, it says this. The more a robot or human facsimile looks like a human, the more familiarity we have with it, and the more we respond warmly towards it. (For example, for the most part people have warmer feelings towards baby seals than they do towards snakes, because baby seals look more human-like. And we like apes even more than seals, etc.) But there comes a point where this familiarity becomes too great, and instead of warmth, we feel repulsed.

According to Mori, people think that a little robot toy that hobbles around on two legs is cute, but the more super-human-like robots become, the more we’ll get creeped out by them. If one were to chart out this phenomenon, that dip where familiarity becomes repulsion is called the “uncanny valley.”

Star Wars = cute and cool. Back in the late 70s, this was a picture in a calendar hanging on my bedroom wall.

I, Robot = disturbing. This guy was never hanging from anyone's bedroom wall.

Polar Express = very disturbing. The only reason you'd hang this on your kid's wall is if you hated your kid.

But this still doesn't explain why I thought the robot in Metropolis looked "pretty good for cgi." I'm wonder this...The reason the uncanny valley exists is because our brains know we're being tricked, and our brains don't like it. When you're watching Star Wars, and you see a guy in a robot suit, your brain acknowledges that it’s a guy in a suit, and then your brain says, “Okay, so there’s a robot. What’s next? How’s that robot going to figure into the story?” But when we are presented with an image of a subject that we know can’t exist, but we’re being told does, our brains put up a fight. They resist the untruth. A paradox thus arises. The more realistic a fake character becomes, the less real it seems. When the filmmakers can’t get it just right, if there’s just one little movement off – the direction of a pupil, the weight of an arm, the bounce of hair – our brains yell out “Fake! Don’t believe a word of it! Liars!”

So what does this have to do with the 'Machine Man' of Metropolis? I have a theory. See if you can follow me, here. We as filmgoers are getting so used to being tricked, so used to being tossed down the ‘uncanny valley’, that we’re constantly trying to figure out the new rules of existance. This is where we live, now, but we don't like it. Things might seem pretty real, but our brains are being trained to look for mistakes, even when they don’t exist. It's like a magic show. We know that we're not actually seeing a woman defy gravity or get her head chopped off, so we spend our time trying to figure out how they pulled it off. And we're okay with that, because we bought the tickets and went to the theater to see a magician. But imagine walking outside the theater after the show and then seeing a woman get her head chopped off or flying through the air. Our brians woudn't be comfortable with not knowing where the game ended and reality began.

So while I was watching Metropolis, instead of seeing an actress in a mask, my brain saw a computer generated woman in a computer generated mask – because that’s what my brain is used to seeing. And my brain is trying to help me out. It doesn’t want me to be tricked, even when it’s not. So my brain flashed a red warning light: "Look out, dude. This is probably not real. We can't tell exactly why, but it's better to err on the side of caution."

So here’s my question: Is this new existence of ours in the ‘uncanny valley’ retraining our brains? Is this the boy who cried wolf? We’re so used to being lied to (in terms of digital images), that we’re don’t accept the truth even when there is no lie?

One of these two futuristic cities actually existed in the real world - at least in terms of being a model made of wood and glue and paint - and the other existed only as data, as a series of imaginary ones and zeros. And our brains are being trained to work very hard to tell the difference. Maybe too hard. Are we starting to see ones and zeros even when they aren't there?

I guess I’ll call this hypothesis the “wolf in the valley.” So, do you agree? Am I right? Or am I over thinking things? To what degree, if any, are modern digital special effects ruining our ability to appreciate the non-digital special effects of yesteryear?