MYST Reservoir Dogs #3

For my formal film study I studied Quentin Tarantino and I thought that his films were very interesting and since they were rated so high on the IMDB I decided to watch another one of his films. This time I watched Reservoir Dogs which was released in 1992. This movie is about eleven years old now but I still find it very interesting. If I had to give this movie a grade I would give it a 8 stars out of 10. This was one of Quentin Tarantino's first films and this is what made him famous. What I found interesting is that he even played a part in his film even though most directors do not.

Quentin Tarantino has a very specific style that I am getting used to seeing. At first you do not notice it but as you watch more films from the same director you start to pick up things that they do more or less then other people. And of course for him the thing that he does well is blood and violence. The movie is basically the story of six guys that are going to rob a store but one of them is an undercover police officer. This guy basically gets shot right away and is bleeding all over the place the entire movie. Once they get to the safe house they are trying to find out who is the undercover guy because there was already police officers waiting for them at the store and since he was shot they do not think it is him. Mr. Blonde kidnaps a police officer and then basically tortures the guy by cutting off his ear and slicing his face many times. This is not a new thing to Quentin Tarantino because torture and blood and violence is used all the time. At the beginning of the robbery they are given fake names and that is what they are called through out the movie and the police officer is called Mr. Orange.

Mr. Orange then convinces Mr. White that he is really a "good guy" meaning that he isn't the police officer and he believes him. At the end of the movie there is a part where the boss and his son are trying to kill Mr. Orange because they know that he is not a real thief but Mr. White is stooping them from killing him and goes as far as to point his gun at his boss to defend him. Mr. White is against killing for no reason and really does not want this but in the end everyone has their guns pointed at everyone and then they all shoot as the police is running in. It ends with Mr. White holding Mr. Orange in his arms while they are both bleeding out and Mr. Orange whispers to him that he is in fact an undercover agent and the screen goes black and we hear a gun shot. This means that Mr. White shot Mr. Orange and basically screwed everyone over. I found that last part of the movie very interesting and well done. Another thing that I thought was very interesting after reading about this movie is that Mr. Blonde is actually Vincent's brother from the movie Pulp Fiction which is another one of Quentin Tarantino's movies that I watched.  

Trailer

MYST #2 Memento

The movie that I have recently watched is Memento. We watched part of it in class and I thought it was really good so I went home and watched the rest on netflix. If I had to give it a rating I would give it a 9 stars out of 10. This is a film by Christopher Nolan Nolan who also directed the batman movies. All these movies have the film noir feeling where one man is alone and trying to figure something out and he doesn't always do the morally right thing. They all have the dark feeling to them and they all question what is really the right thing to do.

In class we talked about the femme fatale and I believe that there are actually two of them in this movie one being a man. Natalie and the police officer teddy use him to get whatever they want done. They use him to go kill people that they need erased. You could even say that maybe even he uses himself to get whatever he wants. I really enjoyed this movie and when I thought I understood everything an other part started and again I was lost like the main character. Like the main character's memory the film is told backwards in little parts at a time. The editing is done super well because just like our guy you do not know why he does what he does. He feels so confident why he does things while he really shouldn't. For example he really believes there was a Sammy even though there probably wasn't and when he believes that the car is his because he was wealthy but we find out that it was not the case and that the car actually belonged to a drug dealer. I guess even some of the things he tattooed to his body were wrong even though he believes that they are facts.

One scene that I thought was really good was the last one when he writes down the license plate number of Teddy's car. He just found out that Teddy has been using him many times and so he tricks himself and writes down that John G's plate number is actually Teddy's. He does this so that when he forgets once again and tries to find out who killed his wife he will find this "fact" and start hunting down who ever has that license plate and kill them. This could go along with a quote that he said in the movie that goes something like I do not need to know what revenge feels like as long as I get it. I guess this time he is trying to get revenge for himself.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vS0E9bBSL0

1935 Movie

The Postman is the story of Thomas Carlson who works at a small post office and who wants to do something with his life. One day he ran into his old childhood friend betty lou and after talking for a while Thomas decided to try and run for mayor. He met many people over the ten years that he worked at the post office in Nebraska and they all think he really has a chance to win it. When Thomas talks or gives a speech he always quotes authors from books because he does a lot of reading as a mailman and always keeps up with the latest news. The other person that he competes against is Charles Lee. The Lee family has been running the small town since it was first founded and they do shady things because it is easier. Thomas will try to win the hearts of the people without lying and by using his good values. The message that we are trying to send is that if you try your hardest and work hard you can reach your goal but it wont be easy. The genre that we are going for is a political drama but most important a feel good family movie. This fits well with our story because there will be a lot of drama with lots of unexpected things happening as well as a political story because he is running for mayor but at the same time the whole family can come watch it and everyone will enjoy it. The studio would be Columbia because they are known for good writing and good directing. Columbia would also help us get Frank Capra as the director since he works there. Frank Capra would then help us get our lead actor James Stewart which would be perfect for this movie. This would be a big budget movie since our cast will have so many good actors and props. Clark Gable will also be in our movie but we will have to pay a fee to MGM for him but it will be worth it in the end. The Hays code will have a tiny affect on our production. It will stop Mr. Carlson from having a love interest and there will be no swear words in the heated debates. Even though swears would be perfect to show how much emotions would go into these debates and show how much this means to him we will remove them. We will be using Gregg Tolland as our cinematographer because he does great work and because we want people to be amazed by the camera work that we will be doing. We want this movie to last the test of time and we want people in the future to see how advanced our style was.

Formal Film Study

Quentin Tarantino

For my Formal Film Study Project I have decided to do "The Films of a Director". The director that I have chosen is Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino has directed many famous movies such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglourious Bastards, and Django Unchained. For my project though I watched Pulp Fiction, Inglourios Bastards, and Django Unchained. When I was watching all these movies I thought that they were all very good and you could tell that they were all directed by the same person. Although all these movies were somewhat in the same genre with adventure and drama in common for all there were some things that were done alot in the movies that you do not see in other movies as much. Some things that you notice right away when you watch these movies include all the swearing and blood everywhere. Another trait of Tarantino is probably violence. In every movie there is always someone fighting and guns. Although many movies have this as well the way Quentin Tarantino does it is different because of the words he uses are always the same. His characters always say the same type of swears over and over while others use different words and variety. Although other movies also have lots of blood in them I believe that Quentin Tarantino probably has a set amount of money put aside just for red paint because he is not afraid to splatter blood EVERYWHERE. For example in the movie Django right after they make the purchase of the girl a fight starts and Django kills so many people and everyone gets shot as blood goes all over the walls and people. Not only living people are getting shot but also the dead people are getting shot again for more blood. A very interesting fact that I read about on the internet while researching for this project is that the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio puts his blood all over the girl slave was his own real blood. This was not in the movie at first and that he cut his hand while hitting the table too hard. While he was smearing his blood all over the girl's face you can only wonder to yourself if she was acting or just screaming of terror because she was getting real blood all over her. In Inglorious Bastard there is a scene at a bar where everyone is shooting everyone. In all his movies there is always at least one scene where everyone is dying or there is blood everywhere. In Pulp Fiction when they are in the car with the guy that they took along Vincent accidentally kills him by shooting his face and blood goes all over the car. The car is covered in blood and I am not even sure there is that much blood in one person. Durring these movies I noticed camera shots and angles that we talked about in class. An example of this would be in the movie Django whenever someone is whipping someone else you always look at the person with the wipe looking up and who ever is getting wiped is always looking down. This shows power how we discussed in class. As far as the movies go individually I liked them all. Inglourious Bastards was a World War two movie from the point of view of the Allies. In this movie a girl's family was killed in front of her and she barley got away and later in life she has a movie theater were she will trap many Nazis and kill them for revenge. Django was a movie that was kind of a western but in the south that followed Django as he tries to rescue his wife. He teams up with a white bounty hunter and together they plan out a plan to buy his wife back but that doesn't go well for him so in the end he needs to use other means to get her back. The movie that I thought was the most interesting though was Pulp Fiction. At first I didn't understand it because unlike a normal movie it is not told in the right order. Another thing that was not normal about this movie was the fact that it was broken up into chapters. This movie tells the story of 3 main people two hit men and one wrestler and how their lives connect. All the movies had some funny parts that relax you a little from all the action and tense scenes. In the movie Django all the KKK people complain about their uniforms and it relaxes the audience from so much drama. In the end I believe that Quentin Tarantino is a good director and he makes very good films. I would watch his next film and I think I am going to watch more of his films. I would recommend all these films to a friend to watch without a doubt.

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/2013-golden-globes/leonardo-dicaprio-real-blood-django-unchained-scene-201237591.html