CSCL/SCMC 1201W-001. Visual & Performing Arts Movie Review

CSCL/SCMC 1201W-001   Cinema:  Fall 2019    Essay #3 Prompt 
 Final Essays Due:​ ​In Class on Friday, Hard Copies, Stapled, 12/06 Office Visits and SUBMITTED DRAFTS to Michelle and/or  Discussion Section Leader ENCOURAGED UP TO THE LAST  WEEK Encouraged!  Included  information about the Optional Rewrites at the end of this  Prompt. 
 Length:​ ​850 words minimum. Please include computer-generated word count at the bottom of your essay. Format:​ 12 point times new roman font, 1” margins, double-space, staple. Title Page with your own title that pulls the reader into your essay. Citations:​ See MLA Guidelines on our Moodle Site   After Your Title, again Please Write down any Critical  Thinking or Grammar/Writing Issue that you most worked to  concentrate on in this essay. You want to specifically  address this problem, along with your other sharp writing  and thinking skills.   Please:​ ​Describe your scenes in your own words. If you point out what you actually see on the screen, you are a film analyst.   Do: --Telegraph  --​Limit passive voice​  (‘to be’ verbs) to five per page.                      --Start with a detail; start narrow --Remember that ​every sentence needs a subject​.  --You may use first person (‘I’), but choose what’s most comfortable for you. Stay in the same voice (1​st​,2​nd​,3​rd​) throughout your essay and in the same tense (past, present, future) as well.  --As always, ​read your writing aloud  aloud so that you can ​hear​ it ​after you are  finished. Make sure that you like what you  have written: that it is clear, and that it  communicates​.    ​We cannot ​overstress​ this!    PROMPT: Please choose ONE of these three options,  and cite only ONE film per option.    1)   If you choose Pedro Almodovar’s ​Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ​ , USE BELA BALASZ’S WONDERFUL ARTICLE, “THE THEORY OF FILM SOUND” to support your thesis that discusses no more than THREE scenes (ONE is best) describing how the soundtrack supports and intensifies the images that compose the sequence’s action: how does the film sound create a mood, intensify suspense and comedy, or comment on the characters in the sequence you use?  ​This is a  close-reading option ​and a popular, often ​successful one as it depends on your description of a sequence and any of Balasz’ terms are applicable to almost any sequence is the film!  
PLEASE KEEP THIS NARROW AND DESCRIBE IN DETAIL THE SEQUENCE YOU CHOOSE. 
 2) Please choose ​EITHER​ ​Jordan Peele’s film ​Get Out ​ OR​ Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums.  Both of these films explore how family and identity are altered by racism and class (​Get Out ​ ) or social/familial expectations (​The Royal Tenenbaums) ​ .   --If you choose ​Get Out ​ ,​ please describe one of two (​one​ is always best) scenes from the film: remember the dialog the camera shot-length and angles, the editing/pacing, and the musical score or sound effects. How does your scene describe to the viewer how racist perspective actually attempts to, or ​does​, change a character’s identity? Be very very specific and please bring in the power point from class and Dyer’s, “The Matter of Whiteness.” Try not to cite time-stamping: you can describe where we are in the film. 
 --If you choose ​The Royal Tenenbaums ​ ,​ please describe one of two (​one​ is always best) scenes from the film: remember the dialog the camera shot-length and angles, the editing/pacing, and the musical score or sound effects. How does your scene describe to the viewer how social/family expectations actually attempt to, or ​does​, change a character’s identity? Be very very specific and please bring in the power point from class,  Jones’ “Movie of the Moment...Family Romance,” and Baudrillard’s “Structures of Interior Design.” Please do not cite time-stamping: you can describe where we are in the film.  
 3) Shoot the Piano Player ​ is specifically a French New Wave film and so it proves very easy to apply the genre’s terms to any sequence. 
 --Please choose any two of Wollen’s seven CINEMATIC VIRTUES and apply them to any two ​sequences in the  film: for instance, we clearly experience ​ESTRANGEMENT whenever Charlie/Edouard sits and plays his piano or “thinks” in voiceover about acts that disagree with what he actually does; we experience ​APERTURE ​ when Clarice talks about television and Hollywood or the kidnapper goes on about the import products he owns during the kidnapping; we notice ​MULTIPLE DIEGESIS ​ and ​NARRATIVE INTRANSITIVITY ​  throughout the movie, especially when “random” scenes cut into the action, and ​REALITY ​ (vs. verisimilitude, of the ‘fantasy of reality’) throughout the film from the beginning, to the knife-fight,  and certainly in the end. And we see FOREGROUNDING ​ in the double-subtitled cafe performance of  the “Raspberry” song, the songs on the radio, the compact mirror (to see the men following Charlie and Lena), the mother dropping dead, etc, and ​UNPLEASURE ​ ? That’s up to you!  Try not to cite time-stamping: you can describe where we are in the film.  
 -​--Remember for all options, ​that a sequence is an idea or concept that ​starts and finishes i​n a brief series of scenes and which can re-emerge in different form later on in the film. Think of a SHOT as analogous to, or like, a WORD; a SCENE as analogous to, or like, a SENTENCE, and a ​SEQUENCE as analogous to a PARAGRAPH​, that introduces and concludes an idea. 
 THE REWRITE OPTION.   REMEMBER THAT THIS IS AN ​OPTION ​AND NOT A REQUIREMENT.  YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO REWRITE ONE OF YOUR ​FIRST TWO​ ESSAYS  FOR A HIGHER GRADE IF YOU INITIAL GRADE WAS AN 85% OR LOWER,  THE REWRITES ARE DUE ON THE LAST DAY OF CLASS. MAKE SURE THAT  YOUR REWRITE IS ACTUALLY ​REVISED​. PLEASE  STAPLE THE ORIGINAL  ESSAY TO YOUR REWRITE WHEN YOU HAND IT IN.