'Momento' Opening.

Conventions:

Immediately, there is a presentation of death and blood. Also, the timeline appears to be going backwards which creates several enigmas.

Camera:

There are several extreme close ups and close ups, which creates a certain hazy type of focus. It's unsettling.

Editing:

The first scene is edited to go backwards, so the photo appears to be 'undeveloping'. It is also in black and white in some party, creating a muted and dark atmosphere.

Sound:

The non-diagetic music is somber and melancholy. Sound echos at several places too.

Mise-en-scene:

Black and white scenes, adding a monochromic mystery.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

No Country for Old Men

No Country For Old Men is a an adaptation by Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen, of a novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy.

No Country for Old Men is a great movie with a slow plot and a great cast and a horrible ending. For a reference to all the men in the house, the ending is exactly like the Sopranoes (unresolved to a heinous degree), and unfortunately for both, that’s not a spoiler. The film starts off with hunter Lewelyn Moss (Goonies’ Josh Brolin), discovering the site of a herion deal gone wrong deep in the Texas sand dunes deep off the beaten path. He snatches the satchel loaded with two million dollars, and soon finds himself being chased by a maniac with a compressed air cattle gun, Anton Chigurh (an amazing Javier Bardem), and a local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). 

Josh Brolin stars as the redneck Moss, a good old country boy who still stays at the crappiest hotels despite having millions in cash on his lap. Brolin was unemotional yet endearing, a must for such a simplistic character. But the main force behind the film was Javier Bardem as the menacing, sociopathic, darkly dressed Chigurh, a role that should be ranked alongside the all time villains of cinema history. 

With a horrifying stare and odd accent, Chigurh becomes the personification of a constant fear, an pursuer that can never be stopped. Furthermore the air cattle gun is decidedly awesome, and probably the greatest weapon used by a single antagonist in a film. 

The film opens with a voice over from the Sheriff, reciting this monologue:

"I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "Okay, I'll be part of this world.""

The majority of this scene involved non-diagetic sound, aside from the occasional cricket chirp, car door shutting, and driving. The voice over and its content secures the theme of the film as well as initially grasping the interest of the audience: 'who is the man getting into the car? Why is there someone in as sheriffs uniform? What's in that metal canister? Who's speaking and why?' being questions that the audience may initially feel inclined to ponder over.

While other thrillers usually begin with introducing the protagonist, possibly sitting in some boring nondescript bar, a perfect victim for fate to attack with the events that a Thriller movie entail, this movie introduces the antagonist first (and his awesome choice of weapon).

Overall I enjoyed this movie, if we just forget the horrifically handled ending even existed, the movie was wonderful.

Preliminary Task Evaluation.

On the whole I am reasonably happy with how my Preliminary task turned out.

It featured many of the required elements, such as two examples of Continuity Filming, no breaking of the 180 degree rule during conversation, it was edited to my satisfaction also.

The only thing that I can think of that could constitute improvement would be that it was slightly short, it could have been slightly longer, however, considering this, it does not seem rushed and the shortness of it seemed to work best, even though it would have been written to be a bit longer.

Duck Amuck.

Duck Amuck was a cartoon by Chuck Jones, released in 1953, and is decidedly my favourite piece of cartoon television, ever. It features Daffy Duck. I'm featuring it in my blog, because it breaks every single rule that this cartoon previously ran on.

Imagine in Road Runner: Wile E. Coyote catches the Road Runner, eats him, he stops using Acme poducts, he is now in Central London, talking to everyone in a civilized manner. This breaks every rule of Roadrunner right? Well, Duck Amuck is the 'Merrie Melodies' equivalent.

Duck Amuck is an incredibly postmodern Merrie Melodies short directed by Chuck Jones in 1953, in which Daffy Duck finds himself tormented by a sadistic animator. Seen as a large pencil or paintbrush coming into frame to make alterations, the animator screws around with the backgrounds, erases Daffy, paints him absurd colors, replaces his voice with random sound effects, redraws him as a bizarre four-legged creature, and so forth.

The short was an audacious experiment — which has since come to be regarded as one of the all-time great cartoon shorts

It illustrates a good dose of Modern deconstruction finding its way into the industrial cartoon industry. Daffy is faced with zero narrative cohesiveness, noises are linked with totally illogical images, the world is turned upside down. The cartoonist exposes the fragility of storytelling, of one’s own place in narrative cinema.

It does not so much break the fourth wall, as it does shatter it with a monumentally large bulldozer.

Why do I like it?

The whole premise of this episode is the proof of being able to deconstruct a character with there still being an identity to the said character. Daffy ends up in various places and in numerous situations where his body, face, or voice are either nonexistent or modified completely. All of that went against his will. By the end of the episode we leave him in that sort of nightmarish place where everything can be almost instantaneously changed to work against his best interest. He’s stuck in that reality for an undetermined amount of time, forever at risk of ending up hitting bombs with hammers inadvertently and becoming weird flower monster things and having black curtains appear to basically snuff out his life:

 It lead me to fear a capricious, omniscient, and omnipotent being, one with so much power, and it occurred to me that this cartoon has expressed that if such a power exists, it may not necessarily be good, but malevolent. Although, coinciding with the problem of evil, maybe the cartoon’s not far off the mark from human existence; the inexplicable, bad things that happen at inconvenient times could very well be part of the good fun someone— or something— else is having. Plus, for the fact that Daffy sometimes was on board for things presented to him, or at least willing to roll with what he had to work with, but eventually grew to resent them all, shows that good can come from bad and vice-versa.

Did a cartoon from the ’50s make me ask myself if there could possibly be a god?

Yes.

According to director Chuck Jones, this film demonstrated for the first time that animation can create characters with a recognizable personality, independent of their appearance, milieu, or voice. Although in the end, the animator is revealed to be Daffy’s rival Bugs Bunny, who famously declares “Ain’t I a stinker?”, according to Jones the ending is just for comedic value: Jones is speaking to the audience directly, asking “Who is Daffy Duck anyway? Would you recognize him if I did this to him? What if he didn’t live in the woods? Didn’t live anywhere? What if he had no voice? No face? What if he wasn’t even a duck anymore?” In all cases, it is obvious that Daffy is still Daffy; not all cartoon characters can claim such distinctive personality.

It's probably the only example in cartoon history that portrays stripping back what makes a character fundamentally them, and replacing them with crude caricatures, yet still being able to see that a character is inherently them.

I enjoy the deeper meaning of this particular piece of animation.

Cartoon Rules + Road Runner Rules applied to a 'live-action' show?

I'd like to make something clear before I start this blog post;

I love cartoons. I love them an inexplicable amount. They instil a certain type of nostalgia within me, and I can clearly remember every single episode of Loony Tunes, Sailor Moon, Dexter's Lab etc etc...

So forgive if this post is less than formal, as I will probably be wildly, obnoxiously (albeit eloquently) fangirling throughout it.

Road Runner Rules

Dialogue - or lack thereof.
This cartoon managed to enthral me countless times as a child, it was so, befuddlingly entertaining, that I managed to overlook it's lack of dialogue for a good 10 years without noticing it. When someone finally pointed it out to me, I remember shooting my best incredulous look their way and mentally ripping apart their soul, because it did not matter. This show is brilliant! Dialogue is of no import.
So with this in mind, at my current age of 16, I went online and re-watched a few of my favourite episodes, and it occurred to me rather strikingly, that it still does not matter. Even as a considerably more intelligent human being than I was at around 9 years old, the lack of dialogue in this specific animation is such an inherent aspect of the show, that I am completely happy with inferring everything that I could ever want to know, purely from the character's wonderfully animated expressions.

But actually, did you know that Wile E. Coyote could talk? He usually speaks by holding up signs. However, in some cartoons, especially in cartoons where tries to catch Bugs Bunny (e.g. “Operation: Rabbit”) instead of the Road Runner, he can actually talk. He has a British accent and he refers to himself as “Wile E. Coyote: Super Genius”.

The Coyote never catches the Road Runner...except when he does that one time.
We all know that these two are condemned to be in a perpetual cat&mouse chase for the rest of their lives.

The Coyote never ever catches the Road Runner, right?

WRONG - allow me to elaborate:

Allow me to draw your attention to the episode of which I speak - 'Soup or Sonic', aired May 21st 1980, here is some picture evidence:

Okay, so granted, he does 'capture' the Road Runner's right leg. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT. This episode is well known for this fact, and also followed by the Coyote's breaking of the fourth wall with this ingenious act:

I digress.

Gravity will be his downfall - oh...wait.

Our friendly doomed Wile E. Coyote spends as much time running as he does falling off of very high cliffs, getting blown up, and just generally having his dreams crushed (I could find something profound about this fact but I'm afraid it will taint my entire childhood if I think upon it too much)

Here are some examples:

                           

And my personal favourite :

              

But it will always be his own stupidity and mistakes that cause him to never achieve his lifelong goal of being able to eat that stupid Road Runner (really I don't think if Wile E. got the actual opportunity, that he would eat him, they'd probably be best buddies after the years they spent chasing each other)

Acme Corporations.

No matter if he is flying, using a giant magnet, an anvil, a bomb, you can guarantee one thing; it will be provided by Acme Corporations.

The company name in the Road Runner cartoons is ironic, since the word 'Acme' is derived from Greek ακμή/acmē,  meaning the peak, zenith or prime, and products from the fictional Acme Corporation are both generic and failure-prone.

The Anvil is one of my favourites.

Other well-loved tropes.

One of my favourite tropes of this show are the ever-changing variety of parodic-scientific names given to the characters within almost every episode:

Running with a knife and fork/bib is also one of my favourite things, also a body-shaped hole in a cliff, bird sounds at a head injury etc etc...all of this will never get old!

What if these rules were applied to a 'live-action' show?

Well, they have been!;

But now, I'd like to talk about a different show, the show 'Supernatural'. It's a popular show, and my absolute favourite show ever. Recently, they aired an episode titled 'Hunteri Heroici' (inspired by the parodic-latin names in Roadrunner), in which their episode followed all of the rules of an episode of Road Runner, brilliantly, I will give examples:

Anvil:

Cliche' 'heart-beating-out-of-chest' deal:

Suspended in midair before dramatic fall:

Drawn Black holes on walls lead to the other side:

No actual gunfire happens:

And of corse, actual cartoon! In the South-American setting of Road Runner:

The odd, made up Latin names mid-chase:

Do I even need to name this one? It's brilliant:

With this episode of Supernatural, I can argue that,cartoons are arguably highly influential, and their idioms and tropes are timeless and very nostalgia-inducing. I love cartoons and everything about them.

I do in fact have a favourite ever cartoon episode, which will feature in the next post, but for now: