Apocalypse Now

When it was released, most critics and viewers found The Age of Innocence ( see the film info ) to be a major diversion from what they expected from a Martin Scorsese film.  This is what many thought a Scorsese movie looked like: Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. Or  this scene from Goodfellas , which preceded Age of Innocence by three years.  Scorsese's milieu was New York City, all right, but the New York of small time Italian-American gangsters and psychologically disturbed men like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver .  No one, at the time, thought Scorsese would make a period costume piece— without a trace of physical violence —about the socially well-to-do in New York in the 1870s based on an Edith Wharton novel.  Not surprisingly, if just for that, The Age of Innocence was a commercial failure when it was released.  The critical appraisal of the film has always been positive. But first... Melancholia .  Here is the review in The New York Times —please read it.  Here's a

Here is the pertinent information for Melancholia . Melancholia was made for $9.4 million and returned $15 million.  It won several awards: The U.S. National Film Society named it best picture for 2011 and was third in the Film Comment poll for best film of the year.  Here is the trailer for the film . 1.  Your reaction to the movie?  Like?  Dislike?  Why? 2.  What do you think is the connection between the wedding scene and the impending destruction. Why open this movie with that ? 3.  Justine and John: natural antagonists.  They both are smart; they both have access to the same information.  One is sure that Melancholia will miss the Earth; one knows that it will hit.  Why is this—why does Justine know and John doesn't?  4.  Finally, after all these movies, we get something definitive—the earth will end.  No mystery.  Right now we're seeing how these characters respond to this.  John commits suicide.  Claire wants to have a glass of wine and sing a song on the pat

Here is the pertinent information for Take Shelter .  Well, that was crazy.  In a good way.  Clark and I were both happy how involved you all got into this movie, and happy to see you pulling for Curtis.  The last fifteen minutes of this are incredibly intense and gripping.  The ending is thoroughly ambiguous, something we should be used to be now.  Great movie. We think. Here is the New York Times review of the film —please read it.  Here is the New Yorker review —please read it too.  1.  What did you think of the film?  Like?  Dislike?  Why?  What about it particularly struck you, stayed with you—a scene, a moment, an image?  And why? 2.  The apocalypse that Curtis sees coming—it's there and not necessarily in the clouds and storms and birds.  What other apocalypse can we see coming—or present—in the film?  Or apocalypses plural?  And how do they fit our understanding or definition of the apocalpyspe? 3.  Curtis—hero?  Madman?  Prophet?  One of those—a couple of thos

Here is the information for Dr. Strangelove .  The video messed up at the worst time obviously.  This is the complete bomb run scene , the most famous scene in the entire movie—and it evokes the laughter of doom.  Please watch it. Here is the rest of the film.  We'll watch it tomorrow, but go ahead and watch it now here and here .  Make sure you watch these before you answer the questions.  Dr. Strangelove is loosely based on a 1958 novel Red Alert by Peter George (who helped with the film script along with Kubrick and Terry Southern).  That novel is so similar to a later book Fail-Safe that the authors of the later, Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, were sued by George.  The film version of Fail-Safe was released the same year as Kubrick's satire.  It was a hyper-serious addressing of the same themes and topics of Kubrick's film; we'll look at a clip or two from it tomorrow.  Not surprisingly, Kubrick got no assistance from the Department of Defense when he m

As we said in class, The War Game was commissioned by the BBC; when they saw it, they decided it was too horrifying to show to a television audience—although new information makes clear that the British government played a role in its censorship.  It was not shown in England until 1985.  However, it did the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1966—which makes no sense for it was not a documentary at all, but a fictional film with locals playing roles in the film.   1.  Reaction to the film?  What stuck with you since this morning's viewing—and why? 2. We've been talking about the how's and why's of these films; so what happened to the world to cause the ecological disaster of The Road ?  What created the undead in Dawn of the Dead ?  What specifically created the waste land of Mad Max ?  And how did that C-whatever get released into the atmosphere?  Well, The War Game addresses these questions and answers them.  So do the answers change the way you view what happens in

 Snowpiercer is an adaptation of a 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige .  At $40 million, it is the most expensive film made in Korea; it earned $87 million in theaters, and received much critical acclaim, appearing on many top ten lists for 2014.  The cable network TNT is developing it as series.  1.  Isabel, you raised a terrific question a the end of class today.  We're deep in the apocalypse at this point.   We've been given several landscapes to endure -- the road, the mall, the train.  As Isabel asked, "Where do you want to spend the apocalypse?" 2. Another provocative idea: Moey said that Snowpiercer proposes that it is better to leave conditions as they are rather than change them.  What do you think about that idea? 3.  Does the movie offer a way out of the situation?  If so, what is it?  If not, is this necessarily a negative statement?

We didn't just make this up: Dawn of the Dead is a critically regarded film.  Here is a quick assessment by Dave Kehr .  It'll take you a minute to read it.  Here's a longer review by Roger Ebert ; read it too... And from Slant Magazine. So... 1. Go back to last night's blog and read Sofia's post (it's the ninth one).  What do you say in response to what she wrote?  Agree?  Disagree?  Why?  2.  Clark said after class, "The fate of the characters in Dawn of the Dead is much worse than the fate of the characters in The Road ."  Now why would he say that?  What makes living in a shopping mall worse than living on the road?  And would you agree with him? 3.  Who is the hero of Dawn of the Dead ?  And how so?  200 words: seriously.  Tomorrow we will talk for 50-60 minutes.  Then in a change from the syllabus, we will begin Snowpiercer . Here is the trailer.  See you all tomorrow. 

Here is all the information you need to know about Dawn of the Dead . Dawn of the Dead is a sequel to Night of The Living Dead (1968) ( check out the trailer ), and the second of what became a series of six films about the takeover of America by zombies.   George Romero made Night of the Living Dead for about $114,000, shooting it around Pittsburgh and using friends as the cast; it went on to make $18 million worldwide and has become the template for zombie apocalypse movies ever since.  Without Romero, there would be no Walking Dead .  The sequel was filmed again in Pennsylvania, for around $1.5 million.  It made $55 million worldwide and is considered by many to be the one of the best horror movies ever made.  It was remade in 2004 (written by James Gunn, writer/director of The Guardians of The Galaxy ).  Since Dawn of the Dead , Romero has made Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2010). Check out the trailers

So, after our discussion today about ethics, morality, good people and bad people, "the fire" and other heady issues about existence, let's move on to the BIG question (the question we raised about these kinds of films on the first day and the question we will continue to pursue on down the line).  What is the revelation that this apocalyptic story leads its viewers to see?  Think about this in terms of the film's final scene.  What do you make of the ending?  What does the arrival of the family mean for this story that pretty clearly indicates that living in this dying world will be excruciatingly painful both physically, emotionally and spiritually? This merits at least a couple of hundred words, don't you think? 

Here is the information for The Road from IMDB . As Clark said in class, The Road is based on a 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  The film was made on a $25 million budget and shot in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Oregon in the winter on 2008 (hence the browns and grays that are the color palate of the movie, helped no doubt by CGI).  Commercially it was not a great success, barely making back its initial costs with a box office of $27.6 million.  Not exactly a date movie, is it? 1.  Your reaction so far to the movie?  Like?  Dislike?  What has stayed with you these hours later, what scene or moment—and why? 2.  How would you compare or contrast this post apocalyptic vision to the one in Mad Max: Fury Road?  Forget the explosions, the cars: think of how John Hillcoat's image of the world after some cataclysm reflects or doesn't reflect the one presented by George Miller.  Do they appear the same—and if so, how?  Is this one diffe

Here is the IMDB page for Mad Max: Fury Road , containing all the information you will ever need for the film.  Mad Max: Fury Road is a sequel/rebooting of director George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy's previous three films about Max Rockatansky, an Australian policeman some time in the future who survives some sort of social, political, and economic collapse that turns Australia (and maybe the world)  into a wasteland of roving marauders scratching for whatever food, gas, and shelter is left.  Mad Max was released in 1979 (view the trailer) and starred a young Mel Gibson as Max, who loses his wife, child, and sanity to a vicious motorcycle gang.  It earned  $100 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful Australian movies ever.  Mad Max 2 ( The Road Warrior in the US) followed in 1981 (view the trailer), picking up the action years after the events in the previous film, and Max is now a leather clad loner in a black supercharged V-8 muscle car, his only