Friday, December 19, 2014

The Theme of Dodgeball

     I think the theme of the film "Dodge Ball" is to not give up and don't let people push you around. The reason why I think this is because throughout the film a bigger and better gym was trying to get them to get rid of Average Joes so they could build more parking spaces for their members and Average Joes kept on coming back like a cockroach. Peter Lafleur the owner of Average Joes actually didn't want to try and stop Globo Gym from demolishing his gym to make a parking lot for their members because he thought that his gym didn't mean anything and he just stopped caring bout it and the people in his program. White Goodman The owner of Globo Gym thinks he's better than everybody and no one can tell him how to do things and he can and will always get what he wants.
     These 2 gym owners have a brief history between them that has caused White Goodman to hate Peter Lafluer and willing to do anything to get back at him. The turning point for Peter Lafluer was when he was sitting at the bar of the airport and Lance Armstrong shows up and recognized Peter and asked him why he wasn't at the dodge ball game. When Peter told him why Lance inspired him to go back and play the game so he could win his gym back and also his friends. But Peter had a plan in how he was going to do this. His plan was to bet on his team with the money Globo gym gave him for Average Joes and that proved to his team that he believed in them.
     Steve the pirate thought that he had to change who he was because Peter snapped on him for acting like a pirate. So he left his friends and tried to change who he was and actually did it. But as he showed his friends who he turned into Peter asked him who is he going to share this buried treasure with and he turned back into his old self. So the point of that part of the movie is trying to show that you don't have to change who you are just to be liked by other people.
     White Goodman the owner of Globo Gym thought that everyone had to like him because he was rich and (he thought) had a nice body. But as he later found out it doesn't matter what's on the outside its the inside that counts. At the end of the movie he flips out because he is a spoiled man that got everything that he wanted from his father and thought he was better than everyone. But since he lost the match he got angry and started to get really fat and turned into an jerk. So the theme of that part of the film is that you don't have to be a jerk for people to like you. 

Are They Similar

     The films I will be discussing today are "Its a Wonderful Life" and "Family Man" and I will tell you how are they similar and how are they different and so on and so forth. These 2 films are similar because they both get a chance to see how life is different with or without something. like with George Bailey an angel named Clarence gives him a chance to see how life was like without him being even born because he thinks that people will be better off without him. With Jack Campbell he is given the opportunity by another angel to see what his life could of been like when Jack went to London but came back the next day and stayed with Kate and ended up marrying her instead of becoming a rich business man.
     These films are different because they get to see different things that changed there views on life. Like George Baily got to see that he is a very good and honest person that has led a wonderful life. While Jack Campbell is given the opportunity to see what his life is missing and that their are things more important than money and power. Another thing is that George Baily was poor and had a hard time paying for things and Jack Campbell was filthy stinking rich.
     The character elements are the same because they have the same ambitions in the beginning to get rich and do whatever they have to stay that way. They are different because George Baily cares for other people throughout the film and Jack Campbell only cares for him and his business. Yes the themes are the same because in the end they both learn valuable lessons and try to fix the wrong they have done or the pain the may have caused people.
     They compare to Charles Dickens work by how they both are mad about something or don't realize what they are missing or have spirits visit them and try and tell them what they have or what they are missing and once they realize it they both try and fix it just like Scrooge.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

     In both the movies "Reign over me" and "Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud" they both tell the stories of 2 different people in what happened before and after 9/11 and after 9/11. They both tell about how they lost their families or family member the difference is that they are told by an adult and the other story is told by a child.
     The first movie I'm going to talk about is "Reign Over Me".  This story takes place in New York City and it makes the most sense of 9/11 and its effect on people by showing the effect years later. The story begins when Alan was dropping off his daughter at a friends house and see's his old friend Charlie driving around on his little scooter. Alan tried to talk to him but Charlie couldn't hear him because he was listening to music. He disappeared for a while then Alan saw him again and stopped him and had some lunch with him. After Alan had some lunch with him Charlie wanted to hang out with him some more and from that point on he has been trying to help his old friend out.  But helping him isn't easy, Charlie has a few problems like how whoever brings up his family he explodes on them or if someone tries to get him to do counseling he'll think that his step-parents are trying to get his friend to try and make him do counseling so he'll explode.
     The final movie I'm going to talk about now is "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"  The movie also takes place in New York City and it start with Oscar and his dad having a good time with each other. But the next day wasn't such a good one because 9/11 happened that day. After 9/11 Oscar started to go down a long hard slide where he disrespected his mother and hurts himself when whenever he gets frustrated. One year passes by and then he finally gets the courage to go in his fathers closet and goes through his stuff. He finds the paper his dad gave him before 9/11 as he is pulling the box down a blue vase falls and shatters. as it shatters a paper sack falls out and he picks it up in the sack there is a key and that is what started the search.
     "Reign Over Me" appeared more powerful to me because the story of losing his family was very eye opening and the fact he took it so hard.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

   Both the films "Saving Private Ryan"  and "1941"  that we have watched  are about war but have different ways of showing the seriousness of the war. The only difference is that one is a comedy and the other is a dramatic film. The meaning of "Saving Private Ryan" at least what I think it is that its supposed to show how the men in world war sacrificed their lives to protect there country and the brotherhood they developed to try and help one another in the most serious of cases. The meaning of the movie "1941" I think is that fear is a bad thing because fear makes us do some really dumb things sometimes.
     Now I'll talk about the films, like how in "Saving Private Ryan" Capt. John Miller was given the orders to bring a random guy that got to come home back so he could go home.  Through that time of the 8 men walking across the country to finally find Pvt. Ryan. He refuses to go home until reinforcements come and help his comrades finish their assignment which was to protect the bridge. After they developed a plan to protect their assignment Pvt. Ryan was reloading and didn't notice the tiger tank getting ready to shoot so another Pvt. ran out and pulled him behind  a building just before the tank fired and saved him.
   In "1941" There was a boy named Wally who didn't want  to join the military because he thought that they were just a joke. But when he visited his girlfriends house the father was talking to soldiers about putting a gun in his back yard. The soldiers were saying that it is for the dense of the U.S.A. Later on Belushi who was apart of the U.S.A. air force was following a plane he thought was a Japanese plane and started firing on that plane causing it to crash into the tar pits.
     The main reason why I think that "Saving Private Ryan" is a lot more powerful in meaning is that since I'm going to the military after high school it really opened my eyes to what could really happen to me.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Racism in Movies

     The three films that we watched and the 2 films that I have actually seen out of them I think that the directors would make the movies different if they were a different race. Like in the movie "Schindler's List" I would really think that the directors would really tell the story differently if he was a German catholic. If he was a German catholic he would probably try and make the Germans look like they are the good guys and the Jews look like they are the bad guys.
    
     The movie "42" (which was directed by a white guy) would probably have been told a whole different way where Jackie Robinson would of been a hero who took no ones crap and always stood up for himself and fought for the colored peoples freedom to play baseball with the white people.
    
      If the director for the movie "Remember The Titans" was a different race I'm pretty sure they would try to make the white people a little less rude to the colored people like how the white guy threw the brick through the coaches window. They probably would of changed it to the white guy knocking on his door and telling him he didn't like the way he coached the football players making the colored boys on the first line instead of the white boys that were already there.