A Nightmare On Elm Street

FINALLY! First film we watched in this class that I had seen before and first film that I absolutely love. I might be alone in that category but there is something about this original Nightmare On Elm Street that makes me extremely happy (teenage Johnny Depp's butt in those jeans though). Through all its quirks it manages to captivate my attention for it's hour and a half run time and this is a horror film that never gets old.

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE:

^ NEVER GETS OLD :)

With this film being in the horror genre, it does follow stereotypes that can be seen in all horror films. Sex is a big one. EVERY horror film I have seen involves some scene of sex- and this one does just that. The sex scenes are always in the beginning of the films, and it's between two secondary characters. You will never see the main characters (aka the Final Girl) involved in a sexual act. One reason I always believed that there was sex in a horror film was because they already had an R rating for the scary scenes/blood/gore that came along with the genre. So hey let's throw some topless chick in there too since we can. But there are obvious underlying reasons to this when you think about the role of the Final Girl. Like we discussed in class, the Final Girl is supposed to be some pure virginal spirit, and one of the reasons she is the Final Girl and lives till the end is because she is smarter than the rest- aka she won't be having premarital sex because she's too intelligent and busy worrying about defeating the killer. While the "sluttier" friend is busy distracting herself with sex, she usually gets offed by the killer, including her boyfriend or her choice for one night stand. It also portrays the message that this secondary female character gets killed because she is having sex, telling the audience she deserved to die for doing that. Kind of a scary message to send to a young audience when it comes to sex.



When it comes to our Final Girl, Nancy, she has all the qualities that the Final Girl is supposed to, according to our reading: "she's intelligent, watchful, level-headed; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the patterns and extent of the threat; whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation. We register her horror as she stumbles upon the corpses of her friends. She is by any measure the slasher film's hero". This is true of every Final Girl in any horror film I have seen. The character to survive until the end is almost always a female, not a male, because the killer is male and terrorizes the female in sexual ways. Hence Nancy in the bathtub and the phone with Freddy's tongue coming through it:


 Truly disgusting, as it's supposed to be.
Nancy is the typical Final Girl, and takes on masculinity to outsmart Freddy in the end (setting him on fire and locking him in the basement, yet still screaming to her father for help, telling Freddy she takes back all the energy she gave him). What I thought was interesting is when Nancy figures out that the way she can defeat Freddy is by taking her energy back from him that she put into him, it's an idea that Glen (Johnny Depp in all his sexiness eating a cheeseburger) gave to her in the midst of the film. Instead of listening to his idea, she continues to try to solve the mystery and defeat Freddy on her own. I love the open ending of the film, where you think Nancy has succeeded, yet she seems to be stuck in the dream world of Freddy. It doesn't leave the audience with a straightforward answer, which is something a horror film should do because it increases how uncomfortable we are with the situation, while also leaving it open to making sequels (which is what happened although they all suck compared to the original).

One of the things I love most about this film is that it is hardly scary, and mostly just fun to watch. I enjoy Nancy's hair a lot:

Check out all the puffiness !

And I enjoy this first full picture we see of Freddy in the film with his stilt like arms:



This film is always fun to watch around Halloween and truly gets me into the spirit, along with the 1, 2 Freddy's coming for you song.

WarGames

It's entertaining to watch a film such as WarGames in the year 2014 due to it being centered around the internet. In 2014, the internet is something we all carry around in our pockets and is the size of one's hand, instead of being these big bulky machines with tons of wires and connections. There were a few things about the film that I found interesting, but other than that I think the film is quite absurd.

1) I love the way they characterized David Lightman as a typical "computer nerd" stereotype that we all follow. Just as in E.T., the name of the main characters reflects the plot of the film. The last name Lightman just sounds technological and reminds me of the word 'light speed'. The official definition of light speed is: the speed at which light travels in a vacuum. Not exactly computer related but I think of that every time I read the name David Lightman. Here is a picture of light speed: 
To me, this picture reminds me so much of all the different color cables and wires that used to be involved with computer technology back in the 80's.

 Also, as stated in the reading "The WarGames Scenario", "Lightman spent much of his life exiled in his locked room, unsupervised by his parents, playing on his home computing system, unmotivated by high school academic and extracurricular activities." These are all stereotypical characteristics of a computer nerd. David doesn't have any friends, is late to school because he's busy playing an arcade game and then receives an F on a test, and his parents are so clueless to everything going on in David's room.

2) The film foreshadowed the ending which angers me! When David first comes across Joshua and the computer "games", he types in Global Thermonuclear War, and Joshua replies with "Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?" In the ending, after Joshua learns that there is no way to win the global thermonuclear war game, he suggests again a nice game of chess. This computer system is supposed to be so complex and so it is during the film, constantly learning from it's mistakes and it seems impossible to stop. But then the way to stop the machine and save the world is through a game! It angers me that the solution is so easy yet no one thinks of it right away.


3) The reading also points out that WarGames famously concluded that the "only winning move" in Global Thermonuclear War was "not to play". I thought this to be quite interesting that they threw this message into the film, considering the time this movie came out was when Reagan was president and a lot was at stake with nuclear war. While WarGames introduced many to the world of the internet, it also was influencing audience's thoughts on war.

That being said, I never felt the danger from this film. While watching it, I was never unsure about the conclusion of the film, that David would somehow stop Joshua from creating World War III and everyone would live happily ever after. That took the excitement out of the film for me as well. I didn't like these characters or sympathize with them ever, so I honestly didn't care what was to happen to them. I related to Falken in the movie when at first he really did not care that Joshua was going to blow everything up. In many ways I didn't like this film, and thought that overall it was stupid and that the events occuring in the film were stupid. As I stated, WarGames just seems too absurd to make an impact on me.

Blade Runner: Tourists off the bus visiting a film noir ride

This was my first time viewing Blade Runner and as a video production major I loved the cinematography and set design of the entire film as everyone else seems to be impressed with. The film takes place in a world that looks pretty badass, and I wouldn't mind taking a visit to that world. But to live there permanently as Harrison Ford has to? That, I'm not so sure about.

The reading discusses the motivation behind the city, and some people actually hope that one day L.A. will look like Blade Runner. The city is a work of art, and many artists, environmental designers, illustrators, photographers and filmmakers all tend to use this film as a means for future designs and developments. The reading states "But the hum of that Vangelis score against the skyline of L.A. in 2019, as the film opens, continues to leave a strange impact on artists and filmmakers". The score against the cinematography was my favorite aspect of this film. The story didn't impress me so much, as there have been many robot movies before and the pace of the film was slow. But I enjoyed looking at the film and just taking in the entire look and feel of the world it's set in, over what was actually happening between the characters.



The only part of the story line that interests me is that fact that we never actually know who is a Replicant and who is human. In many ways, Harrison Ford's character is the most "robotic" of them all, and that most of the replicants have more human feelings than he does. I don't think the replicants were exact robots, but I do think that they are clones of other people, seeing as they bleed and could feel and do many of the things that humans can do. The glint in their eyes every now and then is one of the only suggestions of actual mechanics being under their skin. I could see Harrison Ford's character being either replicant or human. As the hero in the film, he is a pretty dark and depth character, and I think people take that as he is a bad guy and isn't human. Just because he isn't the nicest, warmest person, does not mean he is not human. The love scene between him and Rachel showed me the internal struggle he was having with himself and his feelings. He clearly was conflicted about his job and his emotions towards this replicant. His job is to kill all replicants and instead he is falling in love with this one. That makes a guy become a little angry within himself and his conflictions came across in his aggresive actions. I don't think he forced Rachel to do anything that she didn't want to, as some others seemed to believe that. Also, if you have seen Harrison Ford in his other films, he is never portrayed as a romantic guy so don't set those standards up for him.



Blade Runner is a beautiful film, but that is one of the only things it has going for it. The story isn't that impressive, but the set design, lighting, and cinematography is one to never forget.