The Departed Comparative Essay

In the book Into the Wild, characters Chris McCandless, Gene Rosellini and Everett Ruess are all characters with similarities and differences. Each character has a different family background and personality. Every character also had a different experience in the wilderness and way they documented it. Lastly, McCandless, Rosellini, and Ruess all had different ways they died.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is short story of speculative fiction written by Washington Irving, published in 1820. It follows the journey of Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones in their attempt to win over Katrina Van Tassel. Many adaptions have been made of Irving’s original story with one of the most known being “Sleepy Hollow” a 1999 American horror film directed by Tim Burton. The movie follows a different but similar plot to the original story with the murders of the headless horseman being the main focus of the movie. In both versions it can be clearly seen how the setting has a huge impact on all aspects of the book and film particularly the themes, values and characterisation.

to have you on the edge of your seat the whole way through. The black

Zombies, as we know them today, have mortified movie viewers for the last forty six years. Modern zombies first appeared in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These zombies were the slow moving, staggering ghouls that one has seen in countless films, but in 1985, Return of the Living Dead featured a new kind of zombie, the first fast moving and talking ghoul. Both Night of the Living dead 1968 and Return of the Living Dead 1985 feature the zombie as its villain, but Return of the living dead’s fast moving, talking zombies are a more modern take on the movie monster.

Recently while watching two old film classics, Vertigo and Notorious, I found myself thinking of other movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Most of his movies have many things in common, while remaining completely independent of each other. These two films have different plots, actors, and most obvious one is filmed in color the other black and white. Which leads me to believe that Alfred Hitchcock really knew what he was about; as a result his films all a have a distinctive theme about them. Both films keep you in a state of anticipation as the stories unfold and reveal the twist and turns that Alfred Hitchcock was famous for. Notorious was written in 1946 a year after World War II came to an end and the

Whenever someone experiences a traumatic event, especially at a young age, they tend to experience severe mental challenges including PTSD, and many other symptoms. In most cases such as war and the holocaust “the trauma quite obviously, did not end at liberation” (Bettelheim). Through the use of frightful imagery, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, and Night by Elie Wiesel, express the demand to become impervious to human emotion in order to survive barbaric and savage events.

The difference between the 1934 and 1959 version of the Imitation of Life is how they gave more emphasis on the African American side of the story. At first it started with Lora’s story as a struggling actress trying to make it big, but towards the second half of the movie it became apparent that the focus was on the Annie and Sarah Jane story. This movie is known as melodramatic because it contains a lot of emotional scenes and with this it causes the audience to be fully engaged in the movie.

Slaughterhouse-Five: The Novel and the Movie In 1972 director George Roy Hill released his screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (or The Children's Crusade; A Duty Dance With Death). The film made over 4 million dollars and was touted as an "artistic success" by Vonnegut (Film Comment, 41). In fact, in an interview with Film Comment in 1985, Vonnegut called the film a "flawless translation" of his novel, which can be considered an honest assessment in light of his reviews of other adaptations of his works: Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) "turned out so abominably" that he asked to have his name removed from it; and he found Slapstick of Another Kind (1984) to be

The movies describes a major theme of “The Departed” as one of the oldest in drama—the concept of identity—and how it "affects one's actions, emotions, self-assurance, and even dreams.” Many years later, an older Sullivan, now in his mid twenties, (Matt Damon) is finishing his training for the Massachusetts State Police with classmates, including fellow cadet Barrigan (James Badge Dale). In another class are Cadet Brown (Anthony Anderson) and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio). All four men graduate to become state troopers. Sullivan is a sergeant, and has just passed the state trooper detective test. He goes in to meet with the calm and collected Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen), and the aggressive and

Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock, was shocking for its time. Made in the 1960's when film censorship was very tight to today's standards, Hitchcock pushed the limits of what could be shown and did with psycho things that had never been done before. The cinematic art, symbolism and sub-conscious images in this film were brilliant for the time and still are now. Realised for this, psycho has been copied in many ways and the things that made it great have become very clichéd.

Recently, our class read the book and watched the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book is written by Arthur C. Clarke and the movie was directed by Stanley Kubrick. The book was written as a framework for the movie, so the two are mostly the same. But, while there were similarities, there were also some major differences.

Shaun of the Dead is a 2004 British-French-American horror comedy film directed by Edgar Wright. Throughout the movie many characters are introduced which are, Shaun of Shaun, Ed, Liz, Pete, David and Diana, Parents Barbara and Phillip and Zombies. Shaun is an electronics store manager whose life is going nowhere. Shaun is not very unique but gets placed in unique situations throughout the movie. He has a mission he must accomplish. Ed is Shaun best friend, and his partner, he acts as a helper making sure Shaun achieves his goal. Liz is Shaun ex who Shaun is still in love with. Pete is Shaun co-worker .David and Diana are Liz friends who tag along and helped throughout the journey.

   In the opening scenes of the documentary film "Hearts of Darkness-A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," Eleanor Coppola describes her husband Francis's film, "Apocalypse Now," as being "loosely based" on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Indeed, "loosely" is the word; the period, setting, and circumstances of the film are totally different from those of the novella. Yet, a close analysis of character, plot, and theme in each respective work reveals that Conrad's classic story of savagery and madness is present in its cinematic reworking.

Researching Edward Albee’s scandalous play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962), my case study will focus on the adaptation from stage to film, outlining the issues faced with both the original artists and my own group as artists. This specific piece of work from playwright Edward Albee is “arguably the best American play of the 1960s” (Leff 1981, p. 453), which encouraged Warner Brothers’ to gain the screen rights and recreate it as a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. On Broadway, Albee’s play had been critized for its “lack of clarity” (Leff 1981, p. 456) however, when creating the film adaptation, Ernest Lehman, Jack Warner and Mike Nichols faced other issues regarding the release of the movie due to it’s profanity that would be subjected to the public, and

The Convention of a Thriller Film It is difficult to state a clear definition of a thriller as they cross over many genres, however the single most characteristic of a thriller is the obvious one, it "thrills" the audience. The plots are scary, the characters are at great risk and the films are constructed in a manner that makes the watcher really want to know what happens next. There is no formula for a thriller, other that that most thrillers follow one of a few common narrative structures. For example, they may use the Todorov theory, where the narrative structure is comprised of three main parts: order and normality, then something happens where disorder occurs and finally equilibrium is