All That Jazz Film Analysis

Based off Charles Webb’s 1963 novel by the same name, The Graduate is an American romantic comedy/drama released in the United States on December 21, 1967 starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, and William Daniels. The film was directed by Mike Nichols, produced by Lawrence Turman and the screenplay written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham. The film was produced by Lawrence Turman/Mike Nichols productions starting in March of 1967. Mike Nichols has also directed other well known films such as Catch-22 (1970), Working Girl (1988), and more recently Closer (2004). The film was distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures nationally and United Artists internationally. AVCO Embassy Pictures studio, founded by Joseph E. Levine, the films executive producer, also claims production/distribution for other hit films such as Godzilla, King of Monsters! (1956), The Fog (1980), and Prom Night (1980). The movie was well received due to its $104 million dollar box office opening tab. The score was produced by Dave Grusin and the songs written by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

The Graduate, a film directed by Mike Nichols in 1976, is a film that has influenced the way I view the world. It is a story of a college graduate, Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman), who finds himself trapped in the superficial or “plastic” world around him. Because of this, he feels trapped, depressed, and insecure about his future. This makes him an easy target for Mrs. Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft), the middle-aged cougar and wife of his father’s business partner. At Ben’s Graduation party, Mrs. Robinson manipulates Ben into driving her home and coming into her daughter’s bedroom, supposedly to look at her daughter’s picture, where she appears before him naked offering herself to him. Ben refuses her at first, but when Ben feels like he cannot escape the pressure of his future, he decides to start an affair with Mrs. Robinson as a way to mentally escape. Ben continues to meet Mrs. Robinson at night until he realizes

The mise-en-scene does a lot for this scene and it starts as soon as he settles in. When we first come to the setting of his new room the usage of high contrast lighting in his quarters followed by low lighting in the old and decaying backyard is important. It is just so because it sets up the tone for just how this house is going to be to live in and how that directly will reflect on the characters who live in it. It also ties in to exactly what the theme tries to depict about the larger picture: a dark and sullen image of "the life" in general. When Joe first looks outside of his room one of the first things he sees is shown through an eyeline match to a close shot of some scurrying rats. This here more than likely foreshadows the death coming later in the film, which is one of the three times it does this in the scene. The next time is the burial of the monkey, which also shows a correlation to him replacing it in Norma's life, just as Norma was replaced in the industry when her time was up.

In today’s society, is the media mirroring our behavior, or are we mirroring the media’s portrayal of us? That question was posed in the documentary “The Merchants of Cool”, narrated by Douglas Rushkoff. This program examined the teenage culture and how the media is used to manipulate and portray our generation. With examples from Sprite, MTV, WB, and other massive media outlets, evidence is shown that our media-teenager relationship is tainted with sex, music, rebellion and a broad image of what it is to be “cool”. Most of the images portrayed of teenagers aren’t the best. With TV shows such as “MTV Spring Cruise”, teenagers are shown as sex-driven, reckless kids. TV corruption is just one of many examples of the blurred line between reality and perception in media and advertising.

A Class Divided This documentary showed an experiment of how discriminated people might feel by the way society looks at them and treats them. In the 1970s, Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher, wanted to teach her students about discrimination and the impact it has on a person. She divided her class into two groups based on eye color; brown and blue. When she split the kids up, the brown eyed children received collars so their classmates would be able to tell them apart from the blue eyed. She told the class, “It is a fact that blue eyed children are better than brown eyed children.”

In Paul Schrader’s “notes on film noir” essay, he was carefully to describe a very vagueness to the almost genre of film noir. He made it clear that it is a genre that cannot be specifically pinned down to a single black and white definition. For example he very wisely described it by saying, “It is a film “noir”, as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white”. This explains how there is this subtle thing, or a je ne sais quoi, that belongs to film noir that makes it film noir. While this “thing” that belongs to film noir is a feeling, it is something that also is very specific to a era in time. Schrader says how it is “period of time in film history”, which goes to show how strange film noir is. How can something that is so nonspecific belong to something so specific at the same time?

No one really recognizes the line between what is offensive and what is not. Everyone has different opinions particularly about racial issues, yet there are some things that can’t be tolerated. Iggy Azalea is an Australian white hip-hop artist who uses “blaccent (the black accent) in her songs” (Guo). Al Jolson was an American singer and actor best remembered for his performance in the movie The Jazz Singer – the first talking picture. However, in the movie he performs the song “My Mammy” in blackface which is something that would not happen today because it would be horrendously racist. What Al Jolson did back then is basically the equivalent of what Iggy Azalea is doing now. They are both singing and mimicking a culture not of their own. Al Jolson puts on blackface while Azalea puts on a verbal blackface.

I completed the Human Rights and Social Justice Pathway. From the courses I took for Pathway, I was able to make several connections with my fellow classmates. Especially for the classes that required working with groups, I got along with several of my classmates and have been able to create social networks. Even after some of those classmates have graduated and moved away, we still keep in touch to talk about social issues that occur, events that may interest one of us, or just to help one another through difficult times. Personally, I do not think I would have been able to make these connections if I had not joined Pathways. I originally was only a psychology major, but after joining Pathways, there were several sociology classes that interested me, therefore, I added sociology as my minor. Many

The Stories We Tell is a documentary film directed by Sarah Polley. The film follows the story of her family up to the discovery of Sarah’s true parentage from an affair that her mother had in Montreal. The film uses contrastive organizing to present various viewpoints on the life of Sarah’s mother, Diane, through interviews. One interesting aspect of this film is that it tells the story outside of the directors perspective but it is ultimately centered on the directors life. Sarah is interviewing the friends and family members of her mother but she never actually answers any questions herself or describes her accounts of her childhood or the discovery of her biological father. She remains investigative and unsentimental. The Stories We Tell

Set in present day London, Guy Richie’s 2009 film, Rock N Rolla engages narration, close up, lighting, and diegetic/ non-diegetic music, to examine the uniquely British affliction termed English Disease or English Patient.

Ordinary is the best and the worst word to describe August 4th, 1992 in Grand Haven, Michigan. Ordinary was the Coast Guard Day festival going smoothly just as it did every year. Ordinary was the townspeople celebrating at the festival or staying home and enjoying their day off. In the Borne house, ordinary was the children watching their cartoons in the living room. It was Carolyn finding some way to occupy her time by cleaning. It was Kevin being the normal workaholic at his desk with the smooth jazz records playing loudly to keep him company. It was Erin starting on her history assignment due the next day, despite having the past two weeks to work on it. What happened that day, though, was decidedly the most unordinary occurrence to

This paper will examine the following; the description of Loss, Grief / Bereavement faced by the main character from the film, an indebt analysis of defined concepts/examples, theories and models connected with the main character, as illustrated in the film, the summary/developmental issues of loss, grief/bereavement, the distinction of common, normal and anticipatory grief, different stages/models of grief, cultural response to grief, the application of relevant theoretical concepts/ framework in the course to the main character’s grief, loss bereavement issues, the application of appropriate intervention, adaptive coping skills/ adjustment and the implications of the approach to social work practice.

Produced by Ken Burns and co-produced by PBS and BBC, Jazz features hundreds of rare and classic moments, recordings and live performances taken from a whole century of jazz music, plus exclusive interviews, rare footage and previously unpublished photographs. With over 12 hours, the acclaimed Jazz tells the story of jazz music, from its roots in the nineteenth century to the present day. A musical journey started in blues and ragtime, passing through swing, bebop and fusion. In 12 episodes, the documentary relates music to the life of the American people and the United States history over the past 120 years. Some of the characters you'll find in various mini-biographies: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles

LISTENER RELEVANCE: Since film scores are such an important part of movies, it makes sense to learn a little bit more about them.

Throughout this class, various discussions and blogs have been used to analyze the different elements of films such as theme, cinematic techniques and genre. It is time to bring all of these separate elements together in the analysis of one specific film, according to class text, “analyzing levels of meaning below the surface story can greatly enhance enjoyment as well as understanding of a film” (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014. p. 10.03). There are several different approaches to film analysis including formalist, auteurist, and generic or any combination thereof. Utilizing a genre theory lens, the 1956 film The Searchers will be analyzed addressing contextual information, story/plot, aesthetic choices, social/personal impact and how these areas come together to develop the film.