Kung Fu Hustle

Being the first kung fu film I've ever seen, Kung Fu Hustle is just outrageous with some of the references, the action, and the plot...not to mention the soundtrack was pretty cool. I really enjoyed how the kung fu genre provided the general structure of the film, but references were built right in. In the asylum, seeing the door to the cell opening and blood pouring out (The Shining) was fantastic, and while it was a parody, it also sent the message of how powerful and deadly the prisoner in the cell was...but even then, there is lots of humor, such as when the cell door is opened and we see the kung fu master sitting on a toilet reading a newspaper. I found the matrix-style fighting to be a good reference too, considering it was choreographed by the same person that worked on The Matrix.

Kung Fu Hustle was full of postmodernism. The copious amounts of references, and some of the extreme action that they had all referred to other movie references, which was fantastic. The film itself isn't very original...which just as postmodernism points out, is almost the point! Having a film like this shows that we are pretty much at the end of originality, in terms of film innovation. Orson Welles was original, and mastered his techniques. Today, the most original you can find would be a Tarantino film, which are all very very unique in there style...you can pick a Tarantino film out of a pile of films from a mile away. Even then though, a lot of his films are full of postmodernism. Death Proof is a great example...it points directly at Vanishing Point, and plays with a few other genres.

Mulholland Dr. (Or how Lynch fried my brain)

David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. is a dark thrill...it's full of blank parody, unexpected plot twists, and excitement. After watching it in class, I was pretty much as clueless as I could possibly get, so I watched it again. Before taking any sound postmodernist approaches to the film, I'm going to attempt to analyze it. I might be reading further into this than absolutely necessary...or I might not, but if I'm right, then Lynch is pure freaking genius (as well as one hell of an artist).


Seeing the beginning of the film again connected a lot of dots. It starts off with a somewhat psychedelic jitterbug scene, which is really complex...visually stunning with the layers of film being viewed at once. Toward the end of it, we see Diane and the two older folks coming in and out of focus. Given the fact that we later learn that Diane wins the contest in Canada, and her parents are in Canada, I think that the old couple is actually Diane's parents. This is key to the rest of my analysis of this film...they play a bigger role than what it initially seems. After seeing Diane and her parents, it cuts to a less explicit scene...one that make very little sense until seeing the film again. It's Diane's bed, and she's going to sleep. Right after that, we see the Mulholland Dr. street sign, which is the start of a dream that Diane is going to have. Assuming that what we see between seeing the Mulholland Dr. sign and seeing The Cowboy [in his second appearance] waking Diane up from her dream is actually all 100% dream, then the film is revolving around Diane's struggle with her love for Camilla, who contrary to her role as Rita, is in reality a really mean person.

So, given all of that, here is my proof for why it was a dream...aside from the scene where Diane goes to sleep, there is a scene near the end of the movie where Diane is at Winkie's talking with the hitman. Instead of the waitress being named Diane and our dream-world protagonist being Betty, it's the other way around...the real-world protagonist is Diane, and the waitress is Betty. Diane explicitly says to the hitman "This is the girl", referring to Camilla. That line is used over and over and over in the dream, as the Mafia tells Adam (to his extreme displeasure) that there is an actress that will be getting lots and lots of lead roles. In the dream, after Betty's successful audition, she goes to the set of a film that Adam is directing, and Betty and Adam stare at each other for almost a minute before Betty becomes very disheartened and leaves without auditioning. This is a reflection and possibly a rationalization of why Camilla was cast as a lead and Diane was not.


Earlier in the film, at Winkie's, there is a seemingly irrelevant scene in which a man describes a nightmare he has been having. This didn't initially serve as a clue that everything was Diane's dream, but it kinda ties in...only a little bit. I think it might be just a blank parody, and possibly Lynch thwarting our expectations of this scene being explained by not explaining it at all. It was interesting though, and the slightly unnatural mannerisms the characters have hints that it is in the dream-world. Yet another clue that Diane is dreaming is when the really really really really tactless hitman is attempting to steal a little black book from a guy who may have been involved in the car crash that erased Rita's memory. The lack of skill that is demonstrated by the hitman is Diane subconsciously hoping that the hitman hired to kill Camilla doesn't succeed, because although Camilla is rotten to the core, Diane is infatuated with her and ultimately wants to be with her, which is what the entire dream reflects.

So, since I didn't realize exactly what was going on at the beginning of the movie, Betty's over-the-top happiness threw me off, as did the extremities shown by a lot of other characters (Coco, who confirms the dream by saying "Well just call me Coco, everybody does" both in and out of the dream). However, nothing tops the scene where Betty invites Rita into her bed, and Rita becomes nude. At that point, it was so out of left field for me that I couldn't even try to figure it out...but rather just accepted it, given the film's zany and eccentric track record thus far. The movie hadn't gotten dark or unnerving yet either. It eventually became clear that the relationship Betty and Rita had was Diane wishing she and Camilla had a fun and loving relationship.

Near the end of the dream, Rita wakes Betty up saying "Silencio! Silencio!", and says that they need to go somewhere. Rita takes Betty to an illusionist's show, where after it is stated that everything is an illusion, a woman begins to sing a love song. However, halfway through the song, the singer passes out while the song goes on. Just before the love song, the illusionist appears to be controlling the lights, and Betty begins convulsing. At first, I thought 'oh dear, she's epileptic', but seeing how she recovers, and the dream goes on, I realized that it was at that very moment that she realized she was dreaming...and the dream became a lucid dream. Given that, the next sequence with the little blue box makes much more sense. Before I realized that it was all a dream, I was really confused as to where Betty suddenly disappeared to when she was holding the box. I suspected that there might actually be magic at work, and that reality was not what it seems. When Rita also disappears into the box though, and The Cowboy tells Diane that it is time to wake up, the dream ends. Generally speaking, dreams are very realistic, despite how unnatural they can be. This explains why there were so many strange things going on in the dream, and why some parts of it were irrelevant.

Waking up from the dream and returning to an unhappy life is not what Diane wants. Her neighbor stops by for her belongings (which is referred to in the dream). Based on how her neighbor acts in the dream, saying in a cold tone that she and Diane had switched apartments, and also based on how the two women interact in reality when she stops by to get her belongings from Diane, I'd say that the two of them used to be in a relationship, which ended on bad terms. We see the blue key that the hitman says will be there when Camilla is dead, and Diane looks very distressed. After this, there is a flashback to when Camilla invites Diane to a party at Adam's, which serves only to shove it in Diane's face that Camilla is done with her, and with Adam. Camilla further makes the point of being done with Diane by kissing another woman, right in front of everyone. It's incredibly sad, and makes Diane more of a protagonist...and victim. The scene at Winkie's with the hitman follows, and another dream-like scene with the monster from the first Winkie's scene is seen with the blue box. It drops the box, and the old couple (Diane's parents) crawl out of the bag. After that, we see Diane staring at the blue key. She looks really tired, sick, scared, and generally not well. When the old couple crawls into her apartment, and the knocking begins, Diane starts to freak out. Suddenly, her parents are back to normal size, and chasing her into her bedroom. Typically, people view their parents as being just, virtuous, and part of their conscience. Growing up, it means a lot to someone to have their parent's approval of something. Obviously, hiring a hitman to kill Camilla is not conscience-approved, so the parents chasing Diane represents her struggle with the choice she made. Ultimately, she is driven to suicide by her own guilt.

Postmodernist thought might disagree with my analysis, so I'm going to look at this with a more shallow approach. There is definitely a lot of blank parody, such as film noir style, typical detective film references, and the big Hollywood cliche where someone goes to Hollywood to make it big as an actress. In her article, Martha Nichimson states that "the blue box, empty, does not represent anything, the questions a rationally trained audience will puzzle over." That's postmodernism in a nutshell...and it would make sense for Lynch to have a meaningless blue box for the audience to ponder over, since he is good at playing with the expectations of an audience. I don't think that this is completely true though. It might be meaningless in the scene where Diane's parents crawl out of the paper bag the box is in, but even at that point, it might still represent the fact that dreams and the conscience both reside in the head. The box could represent the portal into Diane's mind. In class, we talked about the protagonist of the film being Hollywood, not Betty, Diane, Camilla, Rita, or any other character. I disagree with that, and view Hollywood as more of an enabler, making it possible for dreams to come true...as well as dreams to be crushed. "Hollywood often plausibly referred to as the 'dream factory,' makes a perfect setting for the drama of the lethal implications of the loss of creative freedom."

I think I ran out of things to say now. So that's that, I loved the movie, and I loved trying to figure it out!

Heathers

Heathers is an atypical high school drama - one filled with suicides, violence, romance, and a lot of really really stupid adults. It was pretty clear at the beginning of the film that the Heathers were the epitome of society's class-A bitches, for lack of better terms. They were popular, and they knew it. Although they carried themselves with charisma, they had characters that came off as being completely ditzy! However, they knew the rules of the society they lived in, and knew how to stay at the top of the food chain. Because of this, and also because of how ruthless they were at achieving this, J.D. decides that there is only one way to end the injustices and inequalities many suffered: by stopping it at the source. How will he stop the source?? Well, as he puts it, "the extreme always seems to make an impression."

Veronica, who is for the first part of the movie the Heathers' lapdog, becomes infuriated with how Heather Chandler treats her. She even wishes her dead, and J.D. swoops in as the romantic man ready to grant that wish with a morning mug of drain cleaner. Veronica initially is upset by this, but moves past it quickly. As J.D. goes on a murder-trip, he drags Veronica in deeper and deeper...and even though she wants out eventually, he is still in control (until the very end, of course, where he comes to an end in an explosion). Veronica goes from being bullied and pushed around by the Heathers to being bullied and pushed around by J.D., so not much changes there. Where Chandler forced Veronica to write the fake love note to Martha, J.D. essentially forced her to write the fake suicide note for Heather. Sick, right? Well, what's even worse is how the 'adults' in this society are reacting to it. Veronica's parents don't seem to care that people are killing themselves, until J.D. mentions that Veronica may be suicidal...and even then, when Veronica's mom finds her dangling in her room, she says some of the stupidest things! I honestly wanted to scream at her for how unnatural and incorrectly she was reacting as a parent to her dead daughter! God forbid Veronica was actually dead at that scene, would they parents have just gone on with their lives normally having lost their only child? It seemed like they would...which is exactly how the school handled the numerous 'suicides' happening. The only real suicide attempt was Martha, and people looked at her as though she did it to become POPULAR! The students, parents, teachers, and even the marijuana-smoking police (at least it seemed like they were having a clam-bake in their cruiser...) were incompetent and useless. At the scene of the crime where the two jocks were found dead at an alleged 'double suicide', the police officer picks up one gun with a stick and grabs it with his other hand.

Veronica's resistance to how things were going is shown over and over as she resists the Heathers, J.D., calls her father an idiot twice, and dreams of seeing Heather Chandler at Heather Duke's funeral (both Chandler and Veronica bathed in red light). The way things were going, it really seemed like J.D. was going to succeed at blowing the school up...but he suddenly has a change of heart at the end. The reason for this was because he did legitimately love Veronica at one point, and she had proven to him to be much stronger than he expected her to be.

Shaft...he is a "bad mother ******"

At the beginning of Shaft, it's very clear that the protagonist is going to be a complete badass.

"Where the hell are you going?"

"To get laid, where the hell are you going?"

He is the stereotype of a 1970's black cop, bound to the law, but still somewhat lawless, in the legal sense. His confidence and masculinity played a big role, and sometimes his intimidation was what really made a scene awesome, not necessarily the action. In Matthew Henry's article, there are comparisons to the remake of Shaft, done in 2000. The 2000 version was more about a man with a 'personal vendetta', whereas the 1971 version was more political. It was about a man trying to "navigate a tenuous position between the highly politicized black and white worlds, the one defined by law and the other largely by crime." I haven't yet seen the 2000 version, but the 1971 version has more cultural relevance, and the film itself therefore had more to say than just telling a story.

Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point is the film about pretty much everything I wish I could do in a car. Drive really really fast. As discussed in class...going really really fast is fun, and that's the reason some people might want to do it. There were references to things like Vietnam, and Kowalski's rough past, which formulated an idea of Kowalski as being a hero. Super Soul also contributes to this idea, and really builds him up to being more than he is...which is basically just an 'Average Joe', with some realy really sick road skills in a really sick Dodge Challenger. The plot of the film is that Kowalski makes a bet with his drug dealer that he can deliver a car in less time than he actually is required to deliver it in. However, flashbacks to when Kowalski was a cop, a soldier, a racer, and in love (with the blonde hippie archetypal woman), which definitely give us some background on who Kowalski is, but it doesn't glorify him to the point of heroism. For me, the best part of the film was the driving. It's intense, nobody gets hurt, and the car is pure American muscle.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It seems perfectly clear to me that the only way to prevent nuclear war is through mutually assured destruction. Either we all live or we all die. Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is a critical comedy on the Cold War...critical in the sense that it is criticizing some of the absurdities of the Cold War (come on people...build more nukes to prevent a war???), and comical in every other aspect! The Charles Maland article says "Edmund Wilson's warning in 1963 that our spending on nuclear weapons may be one of mankind's final acts, and H. Stuart Hughes' impassioned challenge to deterrence strategy and his support of disarmament in the same year" hinted at how some Americans in the 60's were not so satisfied with the solution to preventing nuclear war.
The idea itself is funny to me...not so much from the sick sense of humor, but more because to the paradoxical nature of the concept. Let's make peace [and build nukes]. You can't win for losing! The film mocks this in a critical tone. General Jack Ripper is the man responsible for activating the 'Doomsday Machine', which Kubrick uses as a metaphor representing Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Ripper shows the flaws in the logic of MAD through the film's version of the American government and military. Ripper is obviously psychotic, and the government was so intent on preventing nuclear war that it took made irrational decisions which led to what they had hoped to prevent. Kubrick also adds a lot of humor to the tense situation by making reference to female genitalia (President Merkin Muffley), and having him say things like "Gentlemen, you can't fight here! It's the war room!", which is as logically contradictory as building nukes to prevent war. Also contradictory is the sign at Ripper's base that reads 'Peace is our Profession' while a violent gun-fight is taking place around it. Generally speaking, there were multiple references to the insanity of MAD, such as when Merkin Muffley is talking to Dimitri Kisov (Kisov, playing on the saying 'Kiss off!!') and the two men are trying to be 'sorrier' to each other. It really doesn't matter who is the sorriest, sorry doesn't cut it when we're all DEAD!!!!

Maya Deren Experimental Films

Maya Deren's experimental films show examples of how the camera can be used to bend reality. In her article, she mentions Kodak's slogan, "You push the button, it does the rest," which at the end of the day sums up the camera. However, making films is more than just the click of a button...it's how the juxtaposition of many other images, and the ideas they create in the audience's heads. Deren made a scene at the beach turn into a dinner of some sort, and creates the illusion that the tree at the beach leads to one end of the dinner table. Deren explains that "a leap in the air can be extended by the same technique, but in this case, since the film action is sustained far beyond the normal duration of the real action itself, the effect is one of tension as we wait for the figure to return, finally, to earth," thus producing a different reality than what we would otherwise perceive in our reality.

In At Land, the first scene has the waves rolling out to sea, rather than crashing into the beach. It is merely being played backwards to create that illusion, but it still looks somewhat natural. Seeing the waves filmed and played back in reverse shows us a different perspective. Deren's experimental films succeed in showing different realities that are almost believable.