Voyeurism

The Blair Witch Project

The Power of Internet

How many times have you linked something to your friend from YouTube? And how many people made money due to this process?

The internet has been host of stars, advertiser of products scene of big events, opportunity for screening videos and much more.It made popular such film as The Blair Witch Project (1999), which lingers somewhere on the border of documentary and fiction.

Some others made famous with music videos.
The Gangnam Style (2012) made #1 on iTunes having published exclusively in the internet. The country of origin didn't approve the screening on television, because it mocks the higher social class and elitism.

The big craziness is usually around urban legends such as 'The Slenderman', who, according to the myth, is a tall businessman with no face and drags people to the forest to torture and kill them.
A creative group of students used the urban legend to make a series of videos and upload it to YouTube under the title of 'Marble Hornets' (2009). The trick is that if you start watching you get hooked on so much that by the time you realise you have watched five-ten videos looking for some scary supernatural stuff. The whole feeling of searching for the ghost is like a horror version of the good old 'Where's Wally?'game.

The narrative is fragmented: the non-diegetic texts mirror the thoughts of the narrator who watched the tapes three years after the events, through the videos we learn more about this mysterious figure and the person who encountered him.

 

 Although none of the appearences recorded are real, they led thousands of people to believe they were. Clean example of the viral power.

Lifestyle

You can actually bid on the table which was in the film for one second

What is sold to us

In many ways we live in postmodernism. Everything is a mixture of fantasy and reality. We can walk into a teapot in Disneyland, watch five videos at the same time on YouTube, kill people on a computer screen, sit in a bathtub in a pub  or see the pyramids without even leaving the house. Everything that  we see in movies becomes an item for marketing from the little round yin-yang coffee table in Fight Club to Sauron's ring of power. Therefore reality is a product of our imagination, a necessary result from which none of us can escape. Everyone buys and anyone creates.

New Tarantino movie coming up!

Lovers of Tarantino listen up!

Try and spare some time in the Christmas-January cinema craziness and watch this.

Django Unchained is mainly western / hybrid whatever we usually expect from the director.
Employs such great actors as Leonardo diCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz.

Check out full cast & crew on IMDb.
Click on link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/

Representation of Characters

Representation of Characters in Christopher Nolan's movies:

• His films often have obsessive protagonists with a troubled past, who are obsessed to gain justice by any means in life

e.g: in Memento, Leonard wants to revenge his wife's death, although he won't remember it (cafe scene)
"The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?"
- or in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne becomes a masked hero because of the pain he felt over the loss of his parents (Ra's al Ghul's training lessons)

• Often casts actors in roles contrary to their usual screen persona

Tom Hardy, who previously played Eames in Inception, now appears as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises

• Lonely troubled protagonists who are unwillingly forced to hide their true identity from the world.

• Frequently in his films the protagonists, at some crucial moment, feel let down or betrayed by their mentors whom they have been following blindly and with respect.

e.g.: in Inception, Cobb disappoints Ariadne by endangering the project (Ariadne meets Mal)

• Characters who are unreliable narrators
  (e.g. Borden, through his Journal, in "The Prestige",
  the Joker through his conflicting monologues in "The Dark Knight",
  and Leonard through his memory problem and 'conditioning' from "Memento").

•  His Films almost always end with the characters fate open to interpretation

The famous spinning top in the end of Inception

• Villains in His films often threaten to harm the Hero's friends or family

• His Antagonists are often motivated by a philosophical belief rather than Money

• Recurring Theme of Betrayal (Friends and mentors often turn out to be untrustworthy or outright treacherous)

Ra's al Ghul (Liam Neeson) who from mentor becomes Batman's opponent 

Nolan's narrative techniques

Narrative Techniques in Christopher Nolan's movies: 

• Begins his movies and introduces his main characters with a close-up of their hands performing an action.

           e.g: Memento opening sequence (2000, actor Guy Pearce)

• When shooting a dialogue scene, the actors are often framed in wide close-up with a shallow depth of field to blur out the background.

Bane (Tom Hardy) and Batman (Christian Bale) in The Dark Knight Rises

• Non-linear timelines
  e.g.: Memento

• Crosscutting several scenes of parallel action to build climax
  e.g.: the spectacular gravity fight in Inception

• His films usually revolve around characters that are afflicted with some kind of psychological disorder. (phobia, dual personality, insomnia etc.)

Joker (Heath Ledger) in Batman The Dark Knight 

• The storyline in his films usually involves a determined character seeking vengeance over the death of a loved one.

The hero of Inception punished himself for the suicide of his wife

• Frequently uses hard cuts when transitioning to the next scenes.
   This is most prominent in his films from 'Batman Begins' onward, especially in 'The Dark Knight', where, in some instances, the hard cuts he uses will go as far as to nearly cut off character's lines in order to quickly and efficiently get to the next scene.

• All of his films contain a major reference to the film prior to it.

Posters of Batman The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010) 

• His protagonists will often resort to tactics of physical or psychological torture to gain information (ABJECT)
  e.g.:
  - in Batman Begins, Batman uses the hallucinagenic fear compound on Jonathan Crane in order to gain information about his "boss"- in The Prestige, Angier buries Borden's assistant alive in order to get Borden to talk;
  - in The Dark Knight, Batman throws Salvatore Maroni off a building, breaking his legs, in order to gain information about The Joker
  - in the same movie, Batman beats up Joker in prison (''good cop - bad cop routine")
  - in the same movie, Harvey Dent puts gun to one of the Joker's henchman and flips a coin for his life every second he doesn't talk to scare him into talking
  - in Insomnia, Dormer drives into oncoming traffic in order to scare victim's best friend into talking

Harvey Dent vs. Two-Face

• Employs non-linear storytelling techniques, often flipping around the three acts of a movie to tell the story in an interesting fashion
  e.g: Memento, Inception
• His endings have a recurring theme of justified dishonesty
  e.g.: in The Dark Knight, Batman decides to become the public enemy instead of Two-Face, in order to protect the image of Harvey Dent. Watch YouTube video here. 

• Films conclude with the two central characters discussing the preceding events and the results which have stemmed from said events.
  e.g.: in The Prestige (2006), where the ending reveals the truth behind the magic tricks

• Typically ends his films with a character giving a philosophical monologue
  e.g.: The Prestige ending monologue with Michael Caine

• Often ends his films with a jump cut to black and displays the title before the end credits
  e.g.: Batman, Inception hook-up

If you're more interested dig yourself into IMDb or YouTube.

Intertextuality

Inglourious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino (2009)

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Brief summery:

  The movie is divided in 5 chapters. The first four is an introduction of the numerous characters such as the team of the Basterds, Shosanna, Colonel Landa and the “Bear Jew”. In the last chapter these storylines run together towards the end, in which the whole Nazi leadership is going to explode. The irony of the ending is that the audience knows it wasn't the historical way Hitler died.

Inglorious Bastards (1978)

Based on:
  It is a remake of the 1978 Italian comedy-drama war film Inglorious Bastards by Enzo G. Castellari. However, apart from the title the plot had been slightly changed as well. 

 Music:  

There are many soundtracks in the movie, however, especially significant is the one in a climactic scene. The lyrics start when we see the first image appears on screen and each line is synchronized with the change of shots. 

The song Cat People (Putting Out Fire) by David Bowie (who wrote the lyrics and sings the lead vocals as well) had been already used in the history of film.It was the theme music of the American remake of 1942 film 'Cat People' about a female were-cat (played by Nastassja Kinski) released in 1982.

Le Gamaare:

The cinema's name in the movie.
In India: A housewife's 25 young lover, Ganare. They both planned to take revenge on the husband and his family by stealing their money and then disappear. The police caught them before it happened.
 You can also read an article about the story on the website of Daily News & Analysis.
If it was the resource for the name, it can be in parallel with Shoshanna's love for Marcel and their revenge on the Nazis, and then Shoshanna's death by the German soldier who was in love with her.

What did the German think?

The Wave (2008)

It is interesting that just a year before Tarantino's remake, in 2008 a German movie was made concerning fascism, called Die Welle (The Wave) by director Dennis Gansel. The film expresses feeling about fascism, morals and the possibility of a dictatorship in the modern Germany. In the story a teacher tries to explain to his student what fascism is by brainwashing them and making them try it themselves. By the end of the week the soft emotions of connection between young people turn to a violent catastrophe.

Art & Music

Sometimes the results are just complete madness especially in music videos and photography, but art uses many unorthodox elements as well.

For example a song by Red Hot Chili Peppers Can't Stop.

Well if you've noticed the closing credit says "Inspired by the 'One-Minute Sculptures' of Erwin Wurm". Who the hell is that? some of you might ask.

Let's see.

Erwin Wurm

Himself

Homepage and other information is available on the web.

Briefly: He's an Austrian artist who puts everyday objects in unusual positions, poses himself or his models in unexpected relationship with them. Most of his sculptures are spontaneous and temporary, so they have to be captured in film or photos. By using such other medias he re-defines the meaning of sculpture. His aim is too find "the shortest path" in creating a sculpture.


Let's see a few examples of his work:

'Think about what it consumes before buying'

Philosophy

2010 - Christopher Nolan

One of the main areas in this style concerns serious subject matters of philosophy. One of the biggest questions of life is that what we perceive from the world and how we perceive them. A question that pretty much exists since Aristotle. Is that the real world that we see, smell, taste and feel? Or is there a different one beyond that? Is the truth what we live or what we dream?

The questions which humankind could never really give an answer to concern life, death and  beyond that. The skepticism which view doubts everything incuding our very own existence had been discussed by such great authors as Descartes (18th century). In modern art and literature there is also a significant amount written about psychology (Freud), especially those on the fragmented mind, the unconscious, the schizophrenic double/triple/etc. personality and the animal instincts of humans. These revolutionary thoughts and discoveries shocked the contemporary audience.

Fight Club (1999)

And the boomerang has flung back quite recently in the last few decades. Many movies (even blockbusters) were built around the subject such as the Matrix Trilogy (by the Wachowski Brothers), Fight Club (1999, David Fincher) or Inception (2010, Chrisopher Nolan).

 They all cover subject matters such as the connection of public and individual, morals and instincts, conscious and unconscious mind. A strong criticism of 'American dream' life can also be discovered in them.

Start of postmodernism in movies

Let's start at the beginning.

 Many people say it was in the 70s, some even believe James Dean and his unconscious, careless attitude was the first sign.

1994 - Quentin Tarantino

   In my mind, Tarantino was the landmark. 1994: the internet culture lived its childhood, still even the most innocent viewer noticed, that the videos became fragmented, nothing made sense as it did before. That's when Pulp Fiction was born. A weird child in the history of cinema, what gained popularity almost overnight and became the Bible of filmmakers ever since.

  The classic gangster movie turned to drama, comedy and social criticism of the average American's life at the same time. The use of flashbacks and -forwards is just brilliant. If you haven't seen it, you have definitely heard of it or experience(d) its influence. From this a whole lot of movies started out including some by Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Rock 'n' Rolla) or Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass) or even influenced street artists such as Banksy, in the sense of giving a general criticism of the average narrow-minded middle class citizen.

Defining Postmodernism

From Wikipedia (for those who feel lost hearing this word):

Postmodernism is a general and wide-ranging term which is applied to many disciplines, including literature, art, economics, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. There is no consensus among scholars on the precise definition. In essence, postmodernism is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality. Postmodernism is therefore skeptical of explanations that claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, arguing that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain or universal.

Conclusion:
See, it didn't help at all explaining what postmodernism is. (We will shortly call it pomo). Don't worry about that, because in fact - we all know it by heart. That's what surrounds all day everyday: that cynical, skeptical state of mind which tries to doubt or change or fight against the whatever. You will realise how vast this subject is when you learn to appreciate its qualities. 

This blog will mostly talk about films but all comments are welcome. What's the best in pomo?It never stops at one subject, but flows on and changes like the air we breath.