Beasts of the Southern Wild

How does this film relate to the previous two films, Crooklyn and Winter's Bone?

Describe the community known as the Bathtub. How do the inhabitants feel about their environment?

How does the character of Hushpuppy grow over time?

What are your thoughts regarding the relationships between reality and fantasy i.e. the Aurochs, the girls' trip to Elysian Fields etc.?

Writing a blog in the bathtub! -Shawn Luzzi

In our lessons about a Utopian society, what better movie to show off this subject than this film. Off the bat, I was a bit confused by this film's idea, what was the point of it? What's the premise or the plot? Is the main character this rowdy young girl or the black man [her father Wink] dying of an illness? However, as the movie went on, I found that this film was more of a "slice of life" film, with just the misadventures of the townsfolk in this society dubbed "The Bathtub."

However, there were some aspects of this film I didn't understand. Firstly, what was up with the random beasts? First, they melt out of the arctic, then all of a sudden they're bashing their way through a village, then all of a sudden they just walk away from the main character near the end of the film. Seriously, what's the point of it? 

While I do think this film shines bright in most aspects, especially with showing the Utopian society, and how the residents of the Bath Tub interact with this environment (as well as their hate towards the society we all know and love. Though, in some other aspects, especially those beasts, it just leaves you a bit confused.  

Kyle Washington jaws

Prior to Introduction to Film I never watched the original Jaws; however, I had seen Jaws 2. Cant front Jaws is dope. It's a old film; it was made in 1975. The director is Steven Spielberg; it was his second feature film. The movie is about a shark name jaws that lives in Amity Beach. It was two sharks living in the ocean and the first shark killed and injured citizens so they killed hi, not knowing it was actually two sharks. After they killed the first shark they hung him and put him on the news stating its safe to swim in amity beach. One day jaws came around swimming and everyone dipped out the beach scared. They made it a mission to kill jaws three gentlemen on a boat to find him and kill him witch leads to my favorite part of the movie. My favorite part of jaws is when they have to kill jaws and hooper getting in the cage to go into the water to stab jaws with poison. The scene was to real hooper drops the syringe to the bottom of the ocean and jaws starts spiting the cage bars open but smashing into it 6 times straight.

AJ Goes Deep with Hooper et al SPOILER ALERT!!!

Jaws
Aj Consiglio
5-6-15

Director Steven Spielberg's sophomore feature film Jaws from 1975 is a movie based on the novel of the same name by author Peter Benchley. The plot revolves a super-sized great white shark that establishes the tourist destination of Amity Beach as its new feeding ground. But Chief Brodie, as portrayed by veteran character actor Roy Schieder, doesn't want that to happen anymore.

After Brody butts heads with the obstinate mayor (Murray Hamilton), he calls this smart guy that knows everything about sharks and who comes from a wealthy family and tries to get him to help convince local power-brokers that the threat is real.

Four individuals must lose their lives, a college co-ed, a young boy, and a man in the prime of his life, before the mayor to finally agrees to sign the contract and get Quint, a local WWII Veteran and shark hunter, to go after the titular creature.

And so this motley crew consisting of Chief Brody, Hooper, and the sea captain Quint go into the ocean aboard Quint's fishing vessel the Orca to kill the shark. Brody who has no sea-legs is relegated to "chumming," dumping guts and entrails into the sea to attract the killer, finally gets his first glimpse of the 25 foot three ton shark, and he appears to be in shock before delivering the memorable line [possibly the tag-line], "We are going to need a bigger boat."

This shark is taking three barrels at a time underwater [explain]. He's taking bullet shots. When the battered boat is halfway in the water their options are running out. So rich boy oceanographer, Hooper, goes in the "shark proof" cage, turns out it is more like "shark resistant."  In the water with the shark and tries to sabe it with his hi-tech medicine. That doesnt work so the shark destroys the cage but hooper swims away and hides. Quint gets eaten by the shark and brody has a gun and has to try to shot the preturised oxygen tank. He shoots it and the shark explodes. The end. I would definitly recomend this movie because its just a great steven spiellberg movie.!!

Winter's Bone-Julianna Migliaro

I would like to begin this post by pointing out a recurring theme in this movie and Crooklyn. That theme being that the main character is a younger girl, in the case of Winter's Bone, the main character Ree is far older than Tony in Crooklyn. But what difference does that make when both characters are fighting to help protect their families as much as they can?

In both movies, it is noted that both families are in very strenuous financial situations, homes compromised. The only real difference is the absence of Ree's father in her storyline.

In this movie, the main plot focuses around the fact that the main character's father put a bond on the house, forcing the family in danger of losing their home once the father goes missing. It is then up to Ree to find him, and once she does find him she has to prove that he is no longer alive in order to save the household.

One moment that really stuck out to me in the movie in regards to the theme of the young girl fighting to help their families is when Ree went to try to join the army. She would've done anything to have gotten that $40,000 instant cash in order to save her family, but she wasn't old enough. However, she went into that recruitment station and even asked to bring along her younger siblings just to take care of them and get them in a better environment.

While this wasn't my favorite movie to watch, I would happily recommend it's viewing. It is a well-paced movie, with almost never a dull moment.

The Boy Who Cried Shark

An American classic, Steven Spielberg's Jaws definitely left a good first impression on me. For so many years I have been reluctant to watch this film, thinking, "oh it's just some movie about a shark, what's the big deal? People get eaten by some sharks, and they die. Ok." I've always known it for its signature soundtrack, the rapidly increasing "dun dun," almost to the point of annoyance. This all changed once I viewed it for the first time yesterday. Almost immediately after it began, I could feel a bit of tension in the air since I knew that someone was going to be devoured. However, I did not know when, or who.

After some establishing shots of the teenagers' summertime party, two of them broke off from the rest of the group to go for a sensual swim. Having drank too much booze, the boy (Tom) passed out on the beach while the girl (Chrissie) was in the water. Right when everything was eerily quiet, a shark latched onto her body and pulled her down into the dark, cold ocean. Spielberg did a great job setting up this scene: the dark atmosphere coupled with just two out of the numerous teens, who were alone, conveyed an uneasy feeling to the viewer. You could just tell something wasn't right.

The morning after, two police officers named Martin Brody and Jeffrey Hendricks went searching for Chrissie, who was reported missing. Hendricks had stumbled upon the young teen's corpse lying on the beach. That's definitely not something you they see everyday. And with that being said, Brody became deeply concerned at this horrible sight. Just think, a shark attack in New England? When does that ever happen? Realizing the severe threat that this situation posed to the residents of this beach community, Brody wasted no time in shutting the beach down. At this point Brody was met with a colossal amount of opposition from the town's mayor. His main concern was the most evil force in the world: money. Amity was a beach town, and it would absolutely kill their tourism business if word about a shark attack got around. He seemed to think that Brody was crazy for even considering that a tragic event like this happened. "She was probably just hit by a boat," he said. Yeah right.

A few days afterwards, Brody visited the beach and sat in a chair on the sand. As a swimmer teased him about being afraid of the water, he nervously stared at the ocean, worried that there would be another shark attack. Once again, Spielberg did a great job when he added two teasers: an elderly swimmer with a cap that resembled a shark's fin, and a few people playing below the water's surface, screaming. Since both Brody and I were on edge, we mistook these teasers for shark attacks. But this all changed shortly after a group of kids went into the water. The oceanic beast tried to attack them, but luckily they were able to get out, except for one little boy named Alex. Nice job, Mayor. Way to keep your people safe.

During a meeting with the townspeople and the mayor, the decision was made to close the beach for 24 hours. A fisherman offered to capture the shark for $10,000, but no one was willing to spend that much money. That night, some local fisherman tried to take on this task, but they almost ended up killing themselves. The next day, a scientist from the Oceanographic Institute came in, and proved Brody's theory to be correct. It was a shark attack, not some boating accident. When a shark was captured a few days after, the scientist identified it as a tiger shark, saying that its bite radius did not match that of Alex's laceration. In other words, they didn't catch the shark that bit him, or Chrissie. It was still out there, waiting to take its next victim.

The Breakfast Club by Walatsebi Lomotey

Huh... I really did not like this movie. I felt like it didn't have any meaning at all. I would never voluntarily watch this movie again... it would be a waste of my time. I don't even get why they call it the Breakfast Club. The movie had nothing to do about breakfast and it was barely a club. Even though I hate this movie there are a few things that I found interesting. One thing that was interesting was Brian. From the beginning, I wondered why he was in detention. He didn't seem like a bad kid and he was an A student so I was curious of what he did. When he said he brought a gun to school because he got a bad grade on a project, I was dumbfounded. Then when he said it was a flare gun I started laughing like the rest of the "Breakfast Club." Another thing I found interesting was the last scene. When Bender is walking through the football field at the end of the movie and throws up a fist pump. I didn't know that that same fist pump is the notorious fist pump that I have seen in various places on the web and heard about many times.