Week 15

     My favorite screening we watching in class was Pans Labyrinth. I've never seen the movie before we watched it in class. I found the movie very entertaining and I liked how the movie was in Spanish also. I don't mind reading subtitles and I think a movie should always be played in its native language. The movie also had the one scene with the food that is iconic. I have seen the scene before but I didn't know it was from the movie.

    One thing I discovered about myself as a film spectator is I learned that instead of just watching a movie for entertainment I can watch and imagine what it was like for the actors and even the filmers. After we made our own films in class I saw what it was like for actors and film makers and now when I watch a movie I can imagine what its like for them.

    One movie I saw over the pandemic was Scarface and I want to watch the movie with my friends now because it is my favorite movie now. I think watching a movie with others is a very different experience because you can see their reactions and talk about what you think after. I think Scarface would be a great movie to watch with my friends and I think they would enjoy it.

    I think next semester you should show the class "Knives out." Its like a murder mystery movie and I saw it a couple years ago and its a very good movie. 

Week 14

     This week I watched The Social Dilemma for homework. I thought this film was very interesting and relevant. It talked about how we are addicted to our phones and we pretty much rely on them for everything. Recently I have been trying to not use my phone as much. I am realizing that social media is pretty much pointless and you don't get anything out of it. It is pretty much just a waste of time and yet everyone spends so much time everyday on it. We know we are addicted but there is nothing we can do about it. Day after day we spend hours and hours on social media. 

    After watching the film only helped me realize more how much of a problem it really is. The parts that really stood out to me were the parts when they were in the command room and they were taking data on the kid and created a model of him. I feel this is actually accurate and its actually what happens. People don't realize that all the things we search and like and even look at is being tracked. Another part of the film I found interesting was when the kid had to try to not go on his phone for a whole week. I think this would actually be a good challenge to try because I am curious if I could do it. One time I did do a 24 hour no phone challenge with myself and I was able to go 24 hours without going on my phone. This wasn't actually that difficult for me to do.

    In conclusion I think the film was very informational and it really makes you think and do some self reflection. Social media is the problem that we don't think is a problem. It leads to depression in young people because they see other people and compare themselves to these perfect people on social media. I think people should really start to limit the amount of time they spend on social media every day. Live life and live in the moment without looking at your screen. 

Week 13

     This week in class we got to watch Jaws. I've seen the movie before but its been a while. The last time I watched it I was just a kid. Watching it again was a great refresher for me and it was a different experience watching it as an adult rather than just being a kid. As a kid when you watch movies you don't really understand what is actually going on, you just watch for the action. Watching as an adult you can actually understand the dialogue and understand more of the plot and interactions between characters.

    I think Jaws did a great job at its story telling and plot. It was very engaging and entertaining. I felt very locked into the movie and invested and next thing I knew class was over. Jaws was such an iconic movie for its time and I think one of the main reasons why is because of the special effects, especially the shark itself. It looked very realistic for its time and even still looks realistic. The movie was made in 1975 and the shark looks more realistic than some things created by CGI in more recent movies. If it looks realistic to me now I can only imagine what it looked like back in 1975 when people first saw the movie.  I've always been a fan of practical effects and costumes over CGI. I think that practical effects look more realistic than CGI does. 

     Overall I enjoyed watching Jaws in class and I thought it was very surprising that some people have never seen the movie before. Even if people have never seen the full movie before I bet they have seen clips or scenes from the movie. One of my favorite quotes from the movie is where they are on the boat and the shark comes and he says "Were gonna need a bigger boat." Another one of my favorite scenes was when they finally kill the shark and blow it up. 

Week 12

 This week we Watched the movie called, Me and You and Everyone We Know. I've never heard of this movie before we watched it in class. I thought the movie was interesting and showed things you don't usually see in movies like kids experimenting with different things and trying to figure things out in the ways that they know how. It also showed the awkwardness of meeting new people and trying to break the ice and the awkwardness of relationships. 

    The movie did a good job of showing things from a child's perspective. For example the scenes where the little boy was talking in the chat room. He had no idea what was going on or what the person on the other side really wanted. He was just going off the things that he knew and he was exploring in his own way.

    Overall I thought the movie was decent, It wasn't bad but it also wasn't great in my opinion. I was however entertained by the movie and It didn't make me feel bored at all. I was interested to see how things turned out for all the characters and that kept me engaged and watching. I think the movie did a good job of showing the things it meant to show and what it was made for.

Week 11

     This week we got to film and present our fascination project. We filmed our movie in the business building and the whole time we had pretty much the same setting of just one room,. The ending we shot in the hallway. It only took us about an hour and a half to film our movie and things went pretty smoothly. We pretty much stuck to the plot I laid out in my last post and added a few scenes so it would make more sense. We came up with a lot of our ideas as we were filming which was nice and it what we expected to happen. 

    The class seemed to like our movie and enjoy it. I think they were able to pick out every part of the business, horror, and comedy in it. After we answered questions we went and watched other peoples movies. I enjoyed all of them but I think the best one in my opinion was the horror one. It was short but they had lots of cool shots and good filming of the shots including one with a train. 

    When I think of blockbuster movies the first thing that comes into my head in Marvel movies, Especially the Avengers movies. Avengers Endgame is the highest grossing film of all time and I saw it twice in theaters. There was lots of good action in the movie and it had a great plot and the ending was amazing. One of the best and most surprising scene was at the end of the movie when the hero's are fighting the villain and they are losing and a portal opens and all the dead heroes come to save them. I put the clip below. 

Week 10

    This week we started really coming up with ideas for our business, comedy, horror movie. We figured out who was going to play who in the movie and more of a plot/scenes for the movie. My role isn't very big in the film, I just sit around the workplace and run away from the killer. At least I get to live. The plot is that there are some workers in a office and one leaves for some reason and ends up being killed. The others wonder what happened to him and someone else goes to check and they end up being killed also. Then in the end we will have a chase scene almost with the survivors running away from the killer. 

    I'm not sure if I've ever seen a movie I would consider to be a business, horror, comedy movie. I think the closed movie I can think of is American Psycho. This is a horror movie with scenes of business and comedy. there are also a lot of jokes that have come from this movie so that helps the comedy side of it. And most of the characters in the movie are business people. I heard lots of things about the movie  but only watched it fort he first time last year. I enjoyed it and thought it was interesting, especially the ending. 

I put a picture of American Psycho at the bottom because that is almost how I imagine our movie as.

Week 9

    The start of this week was still fall break so we had Monday off school which was very nice. Its always good to have a break to just do what you want and relax. Also, this week we got assigned our fascination project and at first I wasn't really looking forward to it because we have to create our own movie as a group. I'm not much of actor but when I started to think about it I figured it could actually be fun. 

    My group is going to be making a Business, Comedy, Horror movie. I'm not really sure if any of us have any idea how we are going to make it work. We came up with a couple rough ideas which don't seem great but they also don't seem bad. We figure we will just mess around and figure stuff out as we are filming. No one really cares about making an actual serious movie with good acting anyway which will go with our comedy idea for the movie. I guess we will just have to see where this movie goes when we start thinking more.