Christmas Vacation

For this final blog I figured that I would talk about one of the greatest Christmas classics and mention some of the 70's and 80's comedy classics that were a staple for that era. Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase takes the witty comedy of the original movie and throws it right into the Christmas genre. Movie stars such as Chevy Chase and Bill Murray were key components to the new comedy scene in the 1970's. There were a lot of classics such as Caddyshack, Stripes, and National Lampoon's vacations series.

What are some of your favorites?

Orlando Takeover

In Chapter 14 the book talks about Disney Studios and Universal Studios and how much they have done since the mid 19070's. Universal and Disney have taken over Orlando, Florida and made it into a fun family environment. The two major Corporations have built their own theme parks within 15 minutes of each other; and Disney World is the number 9 tourist destination in the United States. It is fascinating to see two major Corporations/Studios take over an entire town and transform it into such a huge destination. For every successful movie you can find a just as successful attraction at one of the many theme parks!

So who else loves Disney?

Australian Film Industry

For my third response paper I decided to go with Australian Film Industry and I was really glad that I did. This was the first of the three papers that I actually enjoyed writing. I learned a lot writing this paper and did not feel like I was "forcing" anything. The first two papers were really complex and complicated and at times I had no idea what I was supposed to write about. This was mostly my fault for not keeping up with this class as often as I should, but I enjoyed reading Chapter 12 and put in a lot of effort writing this third paper.

Did anyone else enjoy writing this third paper? What film industry did everyone choose?

Blockbuster Screening

In Chapter 10 of the text book, the end of the chapter discusses the beginning of the "blockbuster" film. The two movies and directors mentioned in this small segment were Stephen Spielberg with Jaws and George Lucas with Star Wars.
I wanted to focus on Jaws because I think that people underestimate the power of this movie. I screened this movie last week and realized how much fear this movie puts into its viewers. I remember watching this movie as a child, and to this day I am absolutely terrified to go out too far in the ocean. I even have a fear that Great White Sharks hide in large waves as a sneaking mechanism. Jaws is well acted and directed doing its job almost perfectly; that job is to terrify people and provide the viewers with a story that has come true in many places around the world.
How about you? Were you terrified watching this movie as a kid? As an adult?

Chapter 9

I read through Chapter 9 of this book over the past week and noticed that one piece of information really stood to me. I read that when the television industry became popular; the movie industry in a failed attempt tried to take over creating a few of its own networks. Once Hollywood realized that the Television networks were too big to compete with, Hollywood decided to sell some of its movies for release on Television. All of this was happening in the early 1950's and it is amazing to see that all of this started over 60 years ago.

Now when you turn on the TV you could probably find 20+ movies being played on a variety of channels. You can even buy movies on your TV! So this creates my question for you bloggers out there; did Hollywood eventually succeed?

I think in a way they may have succeeded a little bit. I view channels such as "HBO", "Showtime", and  "Starz" to be "movie channels. These channels in fact did the opposite of most regular TV networks have done. They started out as channels that strictly just show newer released movies and then gradually integrated TV shows.

Essay 2

I wanted to blog about the latest essay we had to write for this Film History class because I enjoyed writing this one much more than the first one. The first one was really difficult to find information about  current events on my Birthday in 1914. I found the second essay much easier because we were able to use all the information from the book to help write the essay. It was also very interesting to be able to compare Hollywood to another Film Industry such as France.

I was wondering what everybody else thought? Maybe I just enjoy doing a compare and contrast essay?

We are in a class!!

I have noticed that a lot of people have gone off the beaten path with their blogs and it makes it difficult to make comments and learn things. The point of these blogs is to talk about things you have learned and relate them to current events or just talk about what you have learned.

To get myself back on track, because I myself am a culprit of getting off the beaten path, I will talk about the interesting things I have learned so far from this class.

I have learned a lot by perusing through the Chapters and watching some of the screenings posted each week. Before this class I had no idea how film started or how filming worked before sound. Learning about silent films and the 75 man orchestra that played through film was fascinating to me. I think that it must have been really difficult to film and act for a silent film because there is no dialogue it is only actions. I have also learned a lot about the different film industries and it was interesting to find out how Hollywood dominated the film industry. Hollywood films were being exported to countries especially France because France was showing a lot of Hollywood films in their theaters.