Tag Archives: movie

Interesting Movie

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Last Thursday, I went to see “Aferim!”, a movie that was about Gypsies. Since I did not read the description, I thought the movie would be more of a documentary and was prepared for some dry movie. However, it was completely not what I expected…

One thing I learned from this movie was how possessive and sexual men were in the 1800s, especially those of Eastern European decent. While people today tend to marry whomever whenever they want, our culture has become less centered around family. However after watching the movie, I observed that marriage was taken more seriously and was considered a necessity for survival. In other words, conducting adultery or being unfaithful towards one’s mate was punishable by death. Especially for women, wives had to be obedient towards their husband. This movie made me realize how much our culture (or at least that of European heritage) has drastically changed over such a short period of time.

While foreign films tend to be more difficult to understand, this specific movie was pretty simple.When I first figured out that the movie would be in a foreign language and in Black/white, I thought that I will eventually drift off to sleep. However, because the story was not complex and had a smooth flow throughout, I found that I was able to stay engaged throughout the entire movie. I think this showed (at least to me) that life (at least from the perspective of the movie) in the 1800s was more simple and slower moving. While people did have hardships and conflicts, the average person’s lifestyle appeared to be more simple and thus less complex. In other words through this movie, I observed that while life on earth has become “advanced” through technology, it has also added numerous complexities. However, I know it is not good to judge form one movie and thus conclude that in this specific situation, people appeared to have simpler lives.

This movie therefore has given me a new understanding of how life has changed and evolved over time.

Free Movie

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Learning about how a movie theater works has been more fascinating than I thought. We learned about the tedious process of obtaining newly released films as well as how the actual movie was projected on the screen.  We were generously given free access to any movie by Rose house. Therefore I thought this event was definitely worth the time to come to Ithaca.

The first thing the movie theater manager talked about was the process of obtaining a newly released movie. Up to two years ago, Hollywood still used films which took a long time to travel across the country. This was quite interesting because as a person from Japan, newly released American or European movies took a year or two to make their way over to Japanese movie theaters. As you can imagine, that was quite frustrating for many people including myself.  However, over the years I noticed that this delay of new releases was getting shorter and shorter. According to the manager of the movie theater, movie theaters have stopped using film altogether due to the large size and limited supply and are now using large flash drives instead. This conversion has allowed movie theaters to easily get the new movie on time.

Like most people, I have been to movie theaters many times without knowing anything about what happened behind the scene. I just assumed that there was a man in a back room with stacks of film, managing the projector and everything else that had to do with the theater. However, I was wrong. When we went into the back room, there was a large box with a projector on top. This box was the computer that scheduled  and played the movies, controlled the lights, managed the room temperature, and everything else that is associated to  the theater. I found this extremely fascinating and realized how much computers have changed our world.

Visiting a movie theater was more interesting than I thought. Before visiting, I did not have high expectations and thought that there would not be much to see other than the theater itself. However, I found that a movie theater has many more parts to it other than showing the movie. I would definitely go again!

 

Operation Hot and Bothered

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Last Thursday, I went to go see Chi-raq and it was surprisingly good. From online reviews from non-critics, I went into the movie expecting it to not be very good, and some other scholars brought up some points after the movie about the absurdity, oversimplification, and breadth, but not depth, of topics presented. While I understand those viewpoints, I don’t think it did a terrible job of bringing up important topics of conversation.

 

First of all, I wasn’t too bothered by the absurdity of the movies premise because 1) it’s movie and 2) it’s supposed to be satirical based on another work of satire. I actually thought the use of a narrator and speaking in rhyme was a nod to the play the movie is based on. I think it also serves as a good reminder of how the movie isn’t an accurate reflection of reality. The whole plotline was grandiose, but I don’t think the intention of the movie was ever to be a realistic portrayal of what could happen. I mean, “Operation Hot and Bothered” is clearly not supposed to be the proper response to a group of women in a federal armory.

 

All that being said, I definitely felt weird at certain parts of the movie. I think the scene that was the most unsettling to me was actually the funeral service. I haven’t been to any large services, so I’m not sure how they normally go, but it seemed odd to have dancers and all of this upbeat music. While I don’t dispute the fact that guns played a role in the death of the child, I found it sort of disrespectful to the mother to turn the funeral service into a charged speech about gun violence. Especially during a time of mourning, the last thing I need is for someone to be yelling and everyone else around to be cheering. I don’t know why it stuck out so much to me, but the scene was definitely memorable.

 

One thing about the movie that could be considered both good and bad was the number of issues it brought up: gangs, gender, guns, race, poverty, etc. It was definitely hard to try and figure out the main point of the movie, but perhaps that was the point the whole time. Instead of focusing on one issue, it used a lot of buzzwords and names that are starting points for conversations. While the overall message of the movie was muddled, I think it got across the point that there are lots of issues facing American neighborhoods that some people don’t view as big problem, whereas we focus our attention on outside “threats” that don’t have tremendous impact on our daily lives.

 

I completely understand those who think that the movie failed to provide good solutions and a clear message for change, but I wouldn’t go as far as to discount the whole thing. If there was a definitive and relatively straightforward way to fix all of America’s problems, there would be no need for political discourse. To me, the movie simply brought up some issues, and encouraged people to look to the past and to think creatively about how to approach solutions for those issues.