Film Review : Blue Velvet

True love’s path is paved with every step. Through the assistance of fanciful elements as well as characters Puck and Oberon, the true message of love in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revealed. The four lovers know the direction in which their hearts are inclined to turn, but when the love potion is administered, the bounds of their rectangle are thrashed without knowledge or consent. The rapid shifts in affection between the play’s “four lovers” is representative of the idea that love isn’t a conscious choice, but a cruel game in which we are the figurines, being controlled by whomever the player may be, relating the characters’ karmic fates.

The Princess Bride was released on October 9, 1987 by director Rob Reiner. The movie

Though some may simply know romantic love as an intense bond between individuals devoted to one another, its effects in reality are not always as beautiful as the concept. Particularly when it is frowned upon by society and the people involved also swim against the current, the consequences of this type of love can be damaging to others outside the romance. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the actions of the young lovers in their desire to be together not only steer the course of their lives, but also those of their friends, families, and other citizens in the city. The unfortunate series of events following Romeo and Juliet’s choice to reach beyond traditional gender roles, a standard courtship, and their established social networks reveal the importance of complying with these norms. By highlighting the chaos in Verona on the path to Romeo and Juliet’s eventual demise, Shakespeare suggests that intense romantic love that threatens relationships and expectations in the established social order leads to tragedy.

Section One: Restating the Understanding Love and Human Remains is a play about how those who cannot find love in a traditional sense usually resort to filling that void through other means. It shows how far some will go to create excitement and meaning for themselves. By doing so, the play also makes a statement on addiction. People can get addicted to the practices they use to eliminate their unhappiness, even if these ways are more harmful than beneficial. They get stuck in a cycle of their methods, not always realizing they are the problem.

In Stephen King's Christine, Arnie's obsessive love to Christine sets up a classical rivalry love triangle between Christine, Arnie Cunningham and Leigh Cabot. While the theme of love triangles are a relatively common and well understood among literature, plays, and movies, King's version of a love triangle in the novel is somewhat unconventional. The protagonist of the novel, Christine, is not a human character but a 1958 Plymouth Fury possessed by vengeful spirits of the LeBay family. King characterized Christine as a female that Arnie loves very dearly. Nonetheless, the female personification of Christine makes the story intriguing because the love triangle incorporates elements of powerful human emotions such as obsession and jealousy,

Both of these lais contain a “ménage à trois,” or a love triangle. As many

Love is officially defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. Yet, many scholars believe that love is such a potent emotion that mere words alone can not entirely capture its beauty. In fact, the ambiguity of love and its many nuances has served as a main motif for many famous literary works--such as Romeo and Juliet and The Great Gatsby, to name a couple. One of the many subtleties of the concept of love is what constitutes as a prosperous relationship. Some may argue that in order for one to maintain a healthy relationship, one must be willing to sacrifice negative traits and/or behaviors. Others will counter that true love is met in the acceptance of any and all imperfections of another, and that any sacrificial attempt made to please the other partner is pointless conformity. The stories of Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote provide an excellent focal point to analyze the arguments above, because the two key characters, Charlie and Holly respectively, both exhibit self destructive behavior that inhibit their ability to maintain a prosperous relationship; however, Holly seeks to retain her self destructive characteristics whereas Charlie instead aims to abolish them.

When watching the 1996 film, “The Birdcage,” the first relationship a viewer recognizes is the relationship between the two main characters, Armand and Albert. They, together, are incredibly dynamic and display qualities of both a good and a bad partnership. It is easy to see how their non-traditional gay relationship reflects the common principles that apply to “typical” traditional relationships. In fact, for the most part their relationship could be categorized as being Pragma. Devito, refers to this as the practical and traditional. The Pragma lover is practical and seeks a relationship that will work. Pragma lovers want compatibility and a relationship in which their important needs and desires will be satisfied (Devito, pg. 260). It

The opening scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet portrays the theme of the entire film. During this sequence he uses a pattern of showing the audience pleasant images, and then disturbing images to contrast the two.

I have truly enjoyed this semester in Blacks in Film this semester. I have been introduced to a wide variety of Black films that I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to watch if I was not in this class. Out of all the culturally diverse, emotional, dramatic, strange Black films that we have watched this semester, my favorite was Moonlight and my least favorite was the original Birth of a Nation.

Sam Bozzo directed Blue Gold: World Water Wars in 2009. The total running time of the film is eighty-nine minutes, and the film is not rated (NR). The film is narrated by acting legend Malcom McDowell. The subject of the documentary is as the title suggests; the subject of the documentary regards the commodification of water. The film provides an overview and history of the issues of commodification and global privatization of water. The film is supposed to be informative. This film is most likely for world citizens that have little or no awareness about the issues of water privatization. The film is not necessarily for experts or other professional or private citizens with advanced knowledge. The film has several purposes, including to inform, but also to motivate and to generate an opinion. The opinion of the film and the filmmakers is quite evident over the course of the film. The film does not necessarily want viewers to agree with the film's position; the film is more concerned with citizens having an education and awareness regarding water privatization and how this industry will grow over the course of the next few decades.

The movie Gran Torino, is an American film directed by Clint Eastwood, who also stars as the main character. The movie was set in Highland Park, Michigan which was a nearby suburb of Detroit. In prior years, Highland Park was populated by white families that had come to the area to work in the Ford car factories, but over time, “the damn chinks” moved into the neighborhood as Walt Kowalski would say. This show was the first American film to show Hmong Americans, which were war refugees that had resettled in the U.S. following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975 (Yuen). The main character, Clint Eastwood is a widowed Korean War veteran who often shows bursts of racism and anger towards people of different race, especially the Asian immigrants in his neighborhood. His neighbor, Thao Vang Lor, a young Hmong teenager becomes a key character in the movie after he gets pressured into stealing Walt’s 1972 Gran Torino in an attempt to be initiated into a Hmong gang in which his cousin is involved with. While attempting to steal the car, Walt catches Thao and is sure to prove a point that he is not going to take any slack from him and or the Hmong gang members.

School House Rock teaches that “three is a magic number.” We see threes all over the place: id, ego, superego; mother, father, child; father, son, holy ghost; reading, writing, ‘rithmatic. One place where the magic of three does not fit is in romance. Sex (conventionally and biologically) only has room for twos: sperm and egg; man and wife; big spoon and little spoon. Groups of three in the world of love create tension for the characters and audience, and the discomfort with the situation and sense of powerlessness leads to comedy. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night has central love triangle between Cesario/Viola, Orsino, and Olivia; the excesses and complications within the triangle causes disorder for the characters and audience, and

Psychoanalytic film theory, which is derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, appears in the discussion of cinema early in the 1970s. As the conjunction of psychoanalysis and film theory, scholars use this theory for textual analysis and different elements like the monstrous-feminine, mirror stage identification, and the Oedipus complex are concluded and developed. To reexamine the mother-child relationship, I will argue that these key elements of psychoanalytic film theory are useful to understand the psychic activities of protagonists of Black Swan and The Babadook. Additionally, they provide some evidence to explain the mode of how a mother gets along with her child. I will begin by discussing the term

In the film, “Two Lovers” was not your typical romantic movie which had no crime elements. Two lovers was an excellent example of dynamic relationships called triangulation. Triangulation is an indirect dynamic of communication and behaviors that involves more than two people. It is an individual attacking, smearing or abusing another person with the use of another person (third-party). There are three traditional parts of the triangle: the persecutor, the rescuer, and the persecuted. Leonard acted as the persecuted, while Michelle acted as the persecutor and Sandra as the rescuer in the film.