The Birds

At the first look at the title, I assumed this was going to be another boring film. Until someone told me that the movie was about birds attacking people. Now I was interested. The Birds starts out a little boring. It starts with the main character (Melanie) working in a bird shop and a guy named Mitch shows up. It's obvious that they are interested in each other. They talk about different birds and he is looking for love birds. After he leaves the store, she ends up bringing love birds to his house, which is a somewhat strange thing to do in my opinion. Then, when she is trying to go back, a bird scratches her on the head. The reason why is unclear. It seems like it might have been an accident. The characters probably didn't think much about this yet.

At the kids party is when the movie really starts to get more interesting. Out of nowhere, birds start attacking the kids and everyone panics. Once they are all safe, Melanie starts to notice a lot of things happening with the birds and how it can't be a coincidence since the two other previous events with the birds happened. The first was when she was hurt by the bird and the second was when a bird hit Annie Hayworth's door.

Then, it happened again when they were in the house. Birds started swarming in and attacking again through the chimney. Luckily, no one was hurt and they were able to get all the birds out. Now even Mitch agrees that what is happening is strange and not a coincidence.

I'm wondering why the birds are attacking people. What is the cause of this problem? How are the characters going to resolve it?

Psycho: Ending

Unfortunately, I missed the ending of Psycho in class. However, I decided to watch it on my own because I was really enjoying it and had to see the rest.

The ending of Psycho was a huge shock. As I watched Marion's sister sneaking through Norman's house searching for Mrs. Bates the suspense was killing me. I was so interested in finally seeing Norman Bates crazy mother. From the earlier chat Norman and his mother had about her hiding in the basement, it gave me no suspicion that his mother wasn't alive. Then Marion's sister went into the basement and from the back of Mrs.Bates I could tell that it was not a person and then when she turns around we see this:

And then Norman storms in with the knife, dressed like his mother, ready to kill Lila. Fortunately, Sam quickly follows, stopping him. It turns out that Norman had killed his own mother by poisoning her and her lover around 10 years ago and he had dug up her body and kept it. It also turns out that Norman has two personalities, himself and his mother. That is something I had not expected. Norman Bates' mother was really dead and he was even more psycho than I thought. It was pretty creepy and the ending scene left me disturbed, yet interested in seeing more and wanting to learn more about Norman.

I'm curious to know more about Norman Bates' past with his mother. What went on in that house all his life? I know I have heard of a show called Bates Motel and it's like a prequel to Psycho about Norman's teen years with his mother. I've heard it's pretty good. I might start watching it.

Overall, I really liked this movie just as much as I liked Alien. I am also enjoying The Birds.

A Turn for the Worse

When I watched the first portion of The Birds, I thought that it was going to be an easygoing movie. Coming from horror movies such as Psycho and Alien, I was worried that this movie would be boring for me. It seemed so low-key compared to these two previous films at the beginning, so unexciting and uninteresting. But as the movie progressed, tensions began to rise, and I began to retract on my comparison of this movie to Psycho, which were both made by Alfred Hitchcock. Initially, the two films seemed like polar opposites, but they drew closer and closer to each other as time went on. Hitchcock definitely had an affinity for strange, unusual films that include an unexpected plot twist. I love it.

Yesterday, we started off with the scene in which Melanie headed to the schoolhouse. All seemed sane and ordinary, but a concerning sight caught her attention: a massive group of black birds ominously sat on the school's playground. They were nearly motionless, all starting at Melanie as she was smoking her cigarette. She quickly and quietly went inside, shut the back door, and alerted the teacher. She told her students to act as if they were having a fire drill. Knowing that all of those birds were waiting outside, and the fact that they could travel much faster than humans, I wished that the teacher hadn't chosen to evacuate the students. They would've been safer inside, but no one knows how long they would've potentially stayed there. As soon as the birds heard everyone run out of the building, they rushed to attack the young children.

The birds in this film are not your average flying feathers. Usually, birds run away from humans, but this time, they came as close as possible, pecking at their heads and even knocking a girl over. Shortly afterwards, Melanie went into the diner, where everyone was talking about the attacks of the birds. An elderly woman doubts that these birds are even capable of such an attack, but she ends up being horribly wrong. A few birds knock over a man pouring gas in his car, leaving the gas nozzle to stream gas all over the ground. A man lights his cigar, even as everyone in the diner tells him not to, and he ends up causing a massive explosion at the gas station. Now, people are beginning to panic.

Just a short while after, Melanie and Mitch head to the schoolteacher's house, in which they find her lying on the front steps, dead. The birds killed her, which left his sister Cathy hysterical. They all headed back to Mitch's house, where he readied for another enormous attack. He boarded up every single window and door, just as if there was going to be a hurricane. Foreshadowing came into play here, because there was a huge swarm of birds flying around the mainland of San Francisco. Uh oh.

Within a few hours, when everyone was inside of the fortified house, the birds came. They pecked at the windows and boarded up door, fighting Mitch to get inside. It was clear that they would stop at nothing to attack Melanie, Mitch, Cathy, and Lydia.

My biggest question, however, is why? Why did they attack to begin with, and why did they follow Melanie? At the diner, a woman had accused her of being the cause of the bird attacks, since this was never a problem before she came to Bodega Bay. How did they even know where she was? It was as if they had planted a tracking device on her. Everywhere she had gone, they attacked. This gave me the same feeling as with Psycho: I was a little freaked out, and confused at the same time. You've done it again, Hitchcock.

Dramatic vs. Lighthearted

Both Pyscho and The Birds are films created by Alfred Hitchcock, yet they differ in terms of theme, plot, and even color. Pyscho is in black and white, while The Birds is in color, although the colors are very subdued.

In a nutshell, Psycho is about a woman who attempts to steal $40,000, but ends up in the deadly Bates Motel, in which Norman Bates killed her. He vainly tried to hide the evidence from this murder, but this did not work out well. It was revealed that Norman acted as two different people: himself and his mother. But it was beyond just playing dress-up, he actually was both of these people. However, his mother's personality trumped his own, especially towards the end of the film. To be completely honest, this final part of the film freaked me out. It was just plain weird, there was definitely something wrong with him. I was confused because I thought that him and his mother were two separate characters, but they were not. He even hid his mother's corpse in her fruit cellar (basement), complete with clothing and a wig. It was absolutely terrifying, regardless of the fact that it was only a movie. In addition, there was another frightening scene: when Norman stabbed Marion in the shower. Dramatic irony was used here - the viewers could see that a dark figure was ominously standing in front of the shower curtain, yet Marion was unable to see it at this point. With no escape, she was stabbed by Norman's mother. He stuffed her body in a car trunk, and drove the car into a swamp. What an awful way to die. 

The Birds, however, is much less gruesome. While I have not seen the entire film yet, it is very easy to tell that it is not a scary film, and even if it ends up being one, it will be nothing like Psycho. It starts out with a woman, named Melanie, at a pet shop. A mysterious guy comes in and tells her that he "saw her in court", and she proceeded to track him down. She went all the way to Bodega Bay, an island off the coast of San Francisco, just to find him. I'm still curious as to why she was so determined to find him. Was she really that disturbed by the fact that he recalled seeing her before? I missed the viewing last class, so I'm not really sure.

Clearly, there are plenty of key differences between the two films, but on the other hand, there are also plenty of similarities. The style of both films, from the lengthy introduction to the unrealistic graphical effects of the 1960s, is very similar. It is easy to tell that they are made by the same director. He seems to have had a liking for unusual characters: in Psycho, Norman, and in The Birds, Melanie. They both were extreme in one way or another. 

The Lone Survivor

After finishing Alien in class, I was very impressed by the cinematography and suspenseful plot. I expected the movie to be very mediocre visually because it was filmed in 1979, but surprisingly, I found myself flinching and shifting in my seat during multiple scenes. The plot was unpredictable and kept me on the edge of my seat. There was absolutely no point in the film in which I was bored. The two aspects of the film that resonated with the most were Ripley's integrity and leadership, and the conflict of human morality v. biological perfection.

As I have described in my previous post, from the beginning, Ripley showcased a strong sense of intuitiveness and leadership by fervidly trying to prevent Kane from going back into the spaceship with the alien attached to him.  Although her protests were futile, she was dead-on in predicting the chaos that would eventually ensue on the ship, leading to the deaths of every crew member except herself and Jones the cat. The ending scene of the movie was a testament to Ripley's intelligence and bravery. With the horrifying realization that the alien had hidden aboard the shuttle, Ripley put on a space suit and  opened the shuttle's airlock, forcing the alien into the open doorway. Ripley propelled the alien out into space by shooting it with a grappling hook, but the hook caught in the closing the door, allowing the alien to hold on to the shuttle. In a life-saving move, Ripley activated the engine, subsequently blasting the alien into space.

Although the ending of Alien is triumphant, there is still a significant amount of unfinished business. Earlier in the film after Ash brutally attacked Ripley and the entire crew, it was revealed that he was a robot created to ensure that the alien was returned to Earth by all costs. Ripley found out that Ash was acing upon secret orders to, "Bring back alien life form. Crew expendable." This revelation shifted the entire dynamic of the movie from just "human v. alien" to "human v. human." Not only was the alien trying to destroy the crew, but a larger, more powerful outside force was as well. But, this outside force is never revealed and leaves myself and surely other viewers, wondering what will happen, if and when, Ripley returns to Earth.

After this startling revelation, I was wondering why it was so important to bring the alien back to Earth. The conflict of human morality v. biological perfection that I mentioned above ties right into this question. After the crew members finally put down Ash's attacks and dismantled his body seeking information, Ash talked in a stoic, yet subtly reverent tone about the alien, saying, "I admire its purity... A survivor unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions abut morality." This quote was profound because it raised a powerful question about whether or not the human conscious is an advantage or severe detriment. In my personal opinion, the answer falls somewhere in between. Yes, logic is intrinsic to making prudent decisions and achieving important goals. But, a sense of compassion is just as important to connecting with other individuals, and feeling in touch with one's self.

Psycho: Thoughts for the beginning and middle

The movie Psycho is really great so far. I am enjoying it almost as much as Alien. The first class we started watching it I was confused as to why Marion had stolen the money in the first place. Then I was wondering what she planned on doing now that she had committed such a serious crime. When she arrived at the Bates Motel it seemed very suspicious and creepy. The guy who was running the motel, Norman, seemed a bit suspicious at first and turned out really creepy when he introduced his "special" hobby, taxidermy, which was stuffing birds. I was wondering why she didn't feel like she was in any danger because this guy was clearly creepy. Also he had said that "a boy's best friend is his mother," which means he probably has never left that house which adds to his creepiness. I felt the actor who played Norman performed really well in the film so far.

The next class when we continued watching it we got to the good part.

The famous shower scene. I wasn't expecting her to die yet; however, when I saw that she went to take a shower I knew this part was coming. I wondered afterwards who it could be that had killed her. Then when Norman just covered it up I still hadn't suspected that it was actually his mother who committed the crime. I was really shocked when the detective was stabbed by the crazy mom. I'm curious to see what's going to happen next and what's going to happen to Norman and his psycho mother.

Psycho - My Impressions

I enjoyed director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho very much! It took surprised me very much [It took me by surprise (he's not considered the Master of Suspense for nothing!)], and I didn't know that it was going to end like that. The only problem with the movie was that I thought it was very short [it in fact runs 109 minutes, about twenty minutes longer than today's standard movie fare], that may of just been me but this is what I saw.

I really like the main character/protagonist, Norman [at what point is Norman, as portrayed by Anthony Perkins, revealed to the main character? And how frequently does it take a storyteller forty-five minutes to introduce her protagonist?]. He is a very interesting character. Just the way he acts and talks, makes him very different. Also how he almost cracks under Sam. It was also interesting how he loved to talk about birds. Birds usually resemble peace or freedom, so what does that say about him? [Awesome; very nice analysis of the use of symbol and irony]  Maybe he wanted peace from everyone. Maybe he wanted to be free from the little Motel he worked at. He didn't seem to mind the Motel, but I bet living in the same place for your whole life could get very boring and uninteresting.

Another thing I liked about the movie was when Sam and Lila [Crane] go to the Motel. They try to pull off a couple look, and it seems that Norman doesn't even notice a resemblance to Marion and Lila. Did he try to forget her or just not notice? Or maybe he did notice, but didn't say anything. Then again, a lot of people can look similar, so he could've just brushed it off. I wonder what was going on in his thoughts as he saw her?