3067_Natalie Xie_Short Answer Questions-The Virgin Suicides

Section One

Question 1:

What features of this film clearly result from who directed it?

Sofia Coppola, born May 14, 1971,New York City, USA. Daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola and Eleanor Coppola. She became the first American woman ever nominated for Best Director Oscar. < http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001068/bio

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<> , Sofia Coppola wrote the screenplay and directed a 97 minutes film version, in 1999. <> is a best movie to describe her direct style, which is detailing scenes, used music and character’s mood, movement to represent the scenes. The movie ‘s title ‘Suicide’ really do explain the female director’s style. It’s about a suicide movie, 5 beautiful sisters, teenagers from Lisbon, they all died sequentially in a year. Throughout the whole movie, it does not see too much blood on the movie. It looks more pace and softens style, slow down to push the plot gain the climax, and links the whole movies even it’s all about death, suicide.

In the beginning of the movie, music is softening throughout the following scenes. The music carries out glumness and how bad it can be. Dark Messages which is one of the less musically involving pieces, but for this kind of setting the most effective. In it a repeating electronic beat is occasionally splashed with the paint of what sounds like pianos floating in the air.< http://www.sputnikmusic.com/album.php?albumid=13193>

After directed the <<>>,1999, Sofia Coppola directed another movie which called <<>> 2003, and she won the Academy Award for her original screen-play and three Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Coppola >

In the beginning of the <>, Sofia Coppola used Melodramatic music swells over the Girl’s butt in pink sheer underwear as she lies on the bed. Then title cards over image which shows ‘Lost In Translation’, it leads audiences to the scenes. A funky music raise then cut to Bob sits on the end of the bed in a too small hotel kimono. They both scenes and the involved music show the two main characters get lost in a strange city, country. It also straight down the movie’s title and straight into the main purposes of the movie what to show to the audiences. In this film, the soundtrack features artists such as My Bloody Valentine and Air. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation_%28soundtrack%29>

In the first scene, MR Lisbon’s daughter Lux stands there eating her ice block , and looks hopeless, careless, then following it’s the tree scenes, it’s really imply the following things, it seems like the tree will be part of the important objects on the film. Then the scene’s color changed from the color and more blue into the following scene was in silence the still body of a 13-year-old girl ,Cecelia floats in the pink bath water, stares past us. It straights to the main theme for the movie, ‘suicide’. It used Point of view, Two paramedics look down at her, mesmerized and frightened by her tranquility.>,shows the one of the character shoes suicide.

A clue will be following the conversation between a doctor and Cecilia. In the scene, Doctor said:” What are you doing here,, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets…” Cecilia looks at him, :” Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” That seems like given out some hints, and some answers for the ‘Virgin Suicide’. She‘s the youngest daughter from Lisbon, and first suicide in the family.

In <>, the music raise, a point of view from a car window, the colors and lights of Tokyo neon at night blur by, the main character, Bob, tired and depressed, leans against a little doily, staring out the window. It also seems like give out a hints to audience, he get lost in the strange city.

At the <>, the main character’s Bob conversation with her wife‘s oversea phone call, He answer:”Whatever you like ,I am completely lost”. It explains the issue in this movie. The main characters get lost and feel lonely and bother by the current life style.

Throughout these two films, the features of Sofia Coppola is much more direct with detail, throughout music, character’s close up ,mood to show how the main character’s feeling and much more into audience mind.

Normally, female do things carefully, and prudent. The movie used meticulous within the movies. It’s taking and telling story throughout character’s mood, movement, thoughts, to tell the audiences what have been talked through the movie.

Question 2:

Analyze the main themes of this movie.

<>,Sofia Coppola wrote the screenplay ,and also directed by Sofia Coppola. Genre of the movie is drama/ Mystery , is a American film.

According to the title of the movie, we kind of know get the idea about the movie’s theme, which is ‘ Suicide’. It represents the issue in American.

In the beginning of the movie, the main character ( Lux ) show up ,stand on the street of Town, eating her ice block looking around, looks like doesn’t care about everything at all, lost mind , the camera just like a real mind, hopes, but Lux staring around the other side but camera. It seems like she kind of lost mind, lost interest about life, hopeless. After a few shots about the small town ‘s people life style, Sofia Coppola used color then straight turn to blue color scenes, which give audiences cold ,and unhappy moment feeling. The scenes shows the Lisbon house’s set up, Bottles of drug store perfume, mustache bleach, powder, nail polish ,incense…> then first person to talked about the story about the Lisbon’s family living environment. Then turns into, the still body of a 13-year-old girl floats in pink bath water, she stares past us. It straights give out the idea of the movie ‘Suicide’. It really hits audience’s heart, been pity, how a little girl choose to suicide instead of living well with her family, the question involved to every audiences, also the character inside of the movie. Then movie color turns to color again.

The title begins as we tilt up past Elm leaves to a dreamy cloud filled blue sky:” THE VIRGIN SUICIDES.’’ Through the clouds we see the faint image of a pretty blonde girl’s (Lux) face as she winks at the camera. It given out the idea, Cecilia is not the only daughter from Lisbon want to suicide. It leads audiences mind, consider in the beginning of the movie, Lux will die the next. And throughout the beginning of the movie, we were all thinking how many teenagers girl form Mr Lisbon’ family will die later.

Then a little clues about why the 5 beautiful sisters choose to suicide instead of living which shows out the beginning of the movie and the end of the movie.

In the beginning of the movie, in a quite hospital room, a short conversation between the doctor and Cecilia. < style="">The doctor:” :” What are you doing here,, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets…” Cecilia looks at him, :” Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” > It’s the important clue, theme to show up why Cecelia chose to suicide. At the end of the movie, after the rest of 4 sisters from Lisbon all chose to suicide. In the backyard, under the party glow of lanterns a drunk man, laughing, while he said :”I ‘ve had it! Good-bye cruel world!”, then he tried to roll back into the pool, his friends stop him :” You don’t understand me, I’m a teenager! I ‘ve got problems!” >That’s the theme of the whole movie ,that’s the main theme about the movie. The every single word, sentences reveal the sequent suicide’s tragedy incident.

It remains unclear whom the narrative chorus is addressing. Though it sometimes seems as though the mourners have collected all their memorabilia and conducted their interviews for some official purpose, this is never made clear. In their attempt to understand who Lisbon girls were and why they committed suicide, they never find a truly satisfying answer. But the entire novel, meanwhile paints a poignantly sharp and critical portrait of the suburban American life experienced by the baby boom generation. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_Suicides>

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001068/bio

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/album.php?albumid=13193

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Coppola

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation_%28soundtrack%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation_%28soundtrack%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virgin_Suicides>

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/The-Virgin-Suicides-Wallpaper-the-virgin-suicides-157832_1024_768.jpg

3155_Nattinee_Essay

Section1 - Question2

What special technique or special effects made this film different from other films?

Kill bill 1

Kill bill 1 was directed by Quentin Tarantino. In Kill Bill special movie technique can be viewed as the method Tarantino puts completely different genres together. These genres can be viewed as exploitation films, anime, kung fu and samurai films. A common Tarantino trait viewed in his movies is how he mixes these genres together then adds pop culture references, infamous dialogue and violence. This is seen to be different compared to other movies as these genres are usually played by themselves. For example fights scene where special effects of blood gore, blood splatter and violence were presented in a cartoonist manner.

This is different compared to other martial arts or Kung Fu films as most of these will show a more realistic violence. Kill bill cartoonist technique shows flying and spurting of blood obviously fake, so it was really not representing real suffering and death. But interesting how every time Uma swung her sword after killing people you could hear the blood splatter coming off.

A special effect still staying within the cartoonish area and now introducing anime techniques is the method Kill Bill shows flashbacks as an animation comic. These techniques used in the animation showed a different kind of violence. Within animation a more graphic violence can be shown to viewers such as rape, murder and other gruesome violence that cannot show in real life scenes. Therefore within the animation section of the flash back kill bill was able to show the gruesome past of one of the main casts and then relate it to the present for that character.

Another important technique used is the use of black and white filming. The special effect brought from the black and white filming is usually seen in samurai movies where it shows a different kind of gore. Techniques in black and white filming are not commonly used in films today as they cause movies to have a more historical aspect. For kill bill this is the complete opposite. During the movie when scenes turned black and white, this was used to allow fighting scenes that show large amount of gore and blood to be toned down. With the removal of such colors as blood red and blood stains all over the place allowed the movie to stay as a fighting style martial art movie without pushing over into a horror movie genre.

A common technique used in the movie is the use of nonlinear narrative. Nonlinear narrative keeps the events of the story out of chronological order and introduces different aspects of the film. This can be viewed as a technique that is not commonly used due the fact that for most movie viewers when there is no order in the movie they get confused on what is happening in the movie. This technique allowed the viewers to not come with up assumptions on what is going to happen later in the movie. This again is different to other movies as the narration of the movie is ongoing but in Kill Bill the narration is very stop start where certain scenes the narration is more eye of god then changes to first person.

During the movie an interesting special effect of camera angle and view played an important part of the movie. In a lot of the scenes the camera view is upward facing. This effect brought the feeling that the person in the shot is in power or an important character. The upward facing camera view on dieing characters was just as important. This is because when the camera movie showed dieing characters with this style it represented the importance of the character death and allows the viewer to understand the movie in greater detail. This is different to other movies as most movies keep the main characters above lower characters and characters that are killed are usually always kept at a lower importance then those that are alive.

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Section1 - Question2

Provide a detailed analysis of one scene from this movie

Kill bill 1

A detailed analysis will be provided of the fight scene played at the end of Kill Bill1. This scene is the final fight for the movie between the bride played by Uma Thurman and O-Ren Ishii which is played by Lucy Lui. The scene starts off with Uma positioning herself in a fighting stance while lucy shows respect by bowing and slowly draws out her sword. It still follows the general theme of the movie where all genres are played out in the single scene. These genres can be seen as exploitation films, anime, kung fu and samurai films. For example exploitation film is usually films that introduce and feature sensational violence, gore and mayhem and this scene introduces all these expectations. Firstly it’s a sword fight where both characters slash at each other where blood is dripping through clothes. Even though the bride is already covered in blood these attacks are placed in places where there is no blood, the back.

An interesting genre such as anime can also be seen even thought the scene is being played out in first person real life scenario. This can be seen as the random bamboo fountain which knocks every time there is a pause in the battle. This is interesting as it’s a common pause method that occurs in Japanese amines within a fight between warriors or important points.

Kung Fu is an important genre in this scene. This is because this scene plays honor to a movie that inspired Tarantino throughout the movie which comes from Bruce Lee’s final film, Game of Death. The biggest way this can play honor to Bruce Lee’s film is the yellow jump suit that is worn by Uma Thurman as this suit was similar to the one worn by Bruce Lee. Other aspect of this scene that go with common kung fu movies which is how the fight scene was longer then a normal martial art fight scene.

Lastly the main genre of this scene is how it follows an older style samurai film. This can be seen easily as it is a sword fight between two great warriors where fighters will start the showdown showing respect to the other fighter then start crossing swords. Similarly to samurai films each fighter will cause damage to the other character Uma first being slashed in the back then Lucy being slashed in the waist. Especially an interesting aspect is how when the bride was cut O-Ren would gloat about her superiority over the bride. Another interesting point to bring up that is common in samurai films is the method the fighter swing there sword. For example the in many sword movies fighters would show more stabbing movement when they fight are finish the battle with a single stab the body but in this scene fighters stay with the samurai film genre by slashing at each other.

The color and contrast is an important to talk about in this scene. Firstly O-Ren is wearing a completely white kimono which matches the background while the bride is wearing a yellow jump suit that stands out. This can also be represented by how the fighter acts during the scene. White usually tends to represent safety, purity, and cleanliness which are the opposite sensation. O-Ren is showing a more dangerous and overconfident expression whereas yellow usually tends to represent a joyful and again the opposite sensation is being shown. On the bride the feeling of anger and disgust come from the character. The main contrast is the effect the blood has on the white snow and the kimono. As being white it stands out well and emphasizes the gore the movie is trying to stay with.

The scene ends with a single slash done by the bride where O-Ren’s head top is cut off which completes the long battle.

References

• TNMC,2003, Kill Bill, Volume 1, viewed 1/6/2010, <>

• Morethings, 2004, KILL BILL, VOLUMES I&II , viewed 1/6/2010,

• IMDB,2003, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 , viewed 2/6/2010,http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266697/