Topic: paper is a custom topic picked by my professor. details are below in the order description
The topic must be chosen from one of the ones listed below. Choose whichever is most comfortable for you but please let me know which one that is. Thank you!
This essay is intended to be an ?academic? and objective examination of some feature of a film, or two films. I do not want a ?review? telling the readers why they should run out to see the movie. Whatever position you are ?arguing? for, support it with observations from the film and films you are discussing.
1.
-Brazil- and -The Big Lebowski- employed the ?special effects? capabilities of modern film to create ?fantasy? sequences that were very vivid. Compare how the two films employed these ?recent? technological developments to help the films achieve their artistic impact.
2.
Films sometimes illustrate the lives of working people and the less privileged. Of the films we have seen Potemkin, Sullivan?s Travels, On the Waterfront, and The Big Lebowski fall into that category. Describe, by comparing two ot them, how the life of the poor differs fundamentally from that of the more well off. Other films that you can use include: Modern Times, City Lights, Metropolis, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Meet John Doe, East of Eden, Midnight Cowboy, They Shoot Horses Don?t They, Fat City, Taxi Driver, Blue Collar, Coal Miner?s Daughter.
3.
Network looks critically at Television and how it works, both practically and politically, to ?set? its action. Examine how this ?location? is dramatized in the film by citing specifics about what the film shows, not just how the plot works. You could also contrast it with another film that dramatizes the world of TV. Examples: A Face in the Crowd, Broadcast News, Good Night and Good Luck, Anchorman, Bamboozled, Quiz Show, The Truman Show, Wag the Dog, The King of Comedy.
4.
-Brazil-, as I briefly mentioned in class, is an instance of a ?Dystopic? film, one that imagines the future, or another world, as an example of a very unpleasant place to live. Examine how Gilliam has used that environment, both in the text and in what he portrays visually, to speak to the audience about the present, to make that ?unreal? world relevant. If you can use another example of the ?genre? to bounce it off of, that would be really useful. Examples: Blade Runner, Metropolis, The Time Machine, 12 Monkeys, A Christmas Carol, The Planet of the Apes, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, A Boy and His Dog, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Quintet, The Tenth Victim.
5.
-M*A*S*H- is a recent classic of the war movie genre that focuses not on the battle with ?the enemy,? but on the struggles among factions within the military itself. Explain how Altman uses the specific terrain of the military to stage this struggle, which might be considered an instance of ?class conflict.? If you can compare it and contrast it with another film of this type, so much the better. Examples: From Here to Eternity, The Naked and the Dead, No Time for Sergeants, Paths of Glory, Private Benjamin.
6.
-Memento- uses the uncertainty of memory to help charge its plot and characterizations. Compare it to another film that employed similar tactics. Hitchcock?s Vertigo and Spellbound come immediately to mind. Recent films that have explored this include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Inception, Overboard, Regarding Henry, and Terry Gilliam?s 12 Monkeys.