A2 FilmStuides

Fight club was made in 1999 and directed by David Fincher. The film is made in a very different way to the typical hollywood films and to proplery understand the meaning of the story, in my opinion, will take more than one viewing.

For my small scale reserch project, i will be focusing on the star/performer Jim Carrey. My focus film is ‘The Truman Show’ and my two other related films are ‘Man on the Moon’ and ’Bruce Almighty’.   The title of my reseach is:  At what extent does Jim Carrey show diversity in different film genres.

 Annotated Catalogue

Internet

www.jimcarreyonline.com- I found this site very helpful for my research on Jim Carrey. It contains a biography, filmography, images, videos, guest appearacne and so on. It also has links to reviews on what people thought about films I found a link to the Truman show which i found very helpful.  It also had lots of different magazine articles that Jim Carrey has been in. Although this site is fan based site, and is a little confusing, i found it very helpful for my research.

www.uk.movies.ing.com- Although this site is not fan based, it seemed quite ammature. In saying this though, it  helped me fairly well with my research. I found a very long interview with Jim Carrey about the films he has been in and what it means to him. It was quite a personal interview with him so i was pleased i found it.

www.imdb.com- This is the site for the  internet movie datebase. I found lots of different pages with information about Jim Carrey and a lot of things about the movies he has been in and about his personal life. I also found a section with lots of personal quots from Jim Carrey in which he talks about him being a comedian and how he is the man responsible for duming down america.  Furthermore, this page also gave the information how much money some of the films he played in made. The Truman Show, Man on the Moon and Bruce Almighty were all on this list which was very convenient for my research. This web page was very helpful as well as very interesting.

Internet Sites that were not helpful

www.britannica.com- This site was not very helpful at all. Although it did contain some background information about Jim Carrey, it did not show any of the movies he played in, and there was no pictures or videos. The information it did show was not enough for me to use as reseach and was not very in depth.

www.infoplease.com- Again, this website was not very helpful to me in my research. Although it did tell you some of the past movies he has been in, and the film that Jim Carrey is best know for, Ace Ventura, it did not give me any information about my focus film,or my other chosen releated films. It also did not give any information about Jim Carrey being a comic actor.

Tsotsi is a South African film about a boy named David, nicknamed Tsotsi  that lives in the run down areas of South Africa. At the start if the film, you see David and his gang target an older man at a train station and rob him. In doing so, one of the gang members stab the man in the stomach and kill him, leaving him dead on the train floor. As soon as I saw this, I thought that it was just going to be another typical gang film about killings and rape. As I continued to watch though, I was pleasantly surprised that it actually had deeper meaning and had, what I thought, a proper story line to it.

As the film moves on, you see David as he approaches a wealthy lady trying to enter her home. As he does so, he pulls out his gun and shoots her in the stomach to steel her car. You see the wounded lady scream and shout with everything she has to try and stop David from stealing her car. As he carelessly sped away into the distance, you hear a babies cry from the back seat. This instantly hooked me in with shock and made me realise as to why the mother of the baby was trying so hard to stop David from taking the car.  Whether or not, you enjoyed the film, I think that at this stage, everybody will have been shocked to see what David had just got himself into. Also the thought of what David was going to do with the baby was very unsettling as he did not seem to be the most caring of people.

As the film develops, you see David struggle to cope with the harsh realities of the environment he is in, and also the fact that he now has a baby to care for. During David’s story, he meets a lady who he forces to feed the baby. As his relationship moves on with his lady, you see how he becomes quite attached to her, often coming back to feed the baby. I believe the relationship grew because he saw her as a mother figure. This may be due to the lack of mothering he had when he was a child as during the film it shows you flash backs of how his mother could not care for him as she was ill.

I really liked this film. For me it had the most in depth story line and was not like your typical gang crime film. Although all the films that I have seen in film studies have given me emotions, they have all been fairly the same. For example, all the films have been shocking and horrific. This is why I liked this film so much. It has given me different emotions.  Although it has been shocking at points and horrific, it too brought out other emotions that I did not have in any of the other films.

The film ends with quite a typical ‘Hollywood ending’. I believe that if it did not end like this, it would of one as many awards as it did. I believe that the ending of the film really made me enjoy the film out of happiness, whereas the other films I have seen, I have enjoyed because it had been so shocking.

I would defiantly recommend this film other people. It is like a gang crime film with a twist.

City of God is a 2002 Brazilian crime drama film directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. Just like a lot of the other films we have seen, it is about different gangs that live in the slum areas of their country. The film is very hard hitting and displays some horrific scenes. For me, the one scene that really sticks in my mind is when  Lil Ze shoots a very young boy, about the age of 5 in the foot.  Once he had shot the boy, you see the young boy start to cry uncontrollably as you would expect. But because he was a part of a gang that did things you would never expect child of that age to do, I did not really see him to be a young boy, but in fact just like one of the older boys. For me, it was only until I saw him cry the way he did that it hit me that he was only very young and should not be a part of any gang.  

This film has a lot of story lines to it. Because of this, I found it hard to enjoy the film and really understand what was going on. Although I have now seen a few films with subtitles, City of God was the hardest to follow.

 Although this was not my favourite film, I would recommend it to other people as it is a film worth watching, and although you may not like it, it leaves you walking away talking about it. Whether that is a negeative comment or not. 

La Haine is a story of three friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd struggling with the harsh realities of living in the rougher areas of Paris. At the start of the film you see thousands of people protesting and fighting with the police. This  introduction shows you the kind of enrivoment that the rest of the film will be set in. I personally cannot decied whether i liked the film or not. The concept of the film was not very indepth, and for me, did not really have a story line other than following round a group of friends and seeing how they cope in the rough areas of paris. On the other hand, I liked how you got an insite to how these people live their lives and how the decions that they make are affected by the enviroment that they are in. This film has a similar link to the last film we watched ” Once were warriors”. Both films are showing the rougher areas of the country and how the people in the film cope with it. I really liked the different use of camera shot and was filled with a good collaboration of different camera angles. Even though i am still undeceive about whether i really enjoyed this film or not, I would recommend this film as it is not your typical hollywood style film and is worth watching.

Last lesson we watched the film ‘Once Were Warriors’. The film is set in New Zealand and is a story about the rougher areas of the country and shows how the people cope living in these conditions. Right from the start, you see the contrast that is portrayed as the beginging shot shows a billboard of what a typical person would describe New Zealand to look like. It is only until the camera slowly zooms out and pans across to show the kind of place this film is set in. Although i really enjoyed this film, it is filled with extremly violent scenes showing rape, abuse and depression. Even though the scenes that were presented in this film were horrific, i could not get myself to look away from the screen. Showing these very real scenes were so shocking to me and knowing that these kind of things actually happen, really grabbed my attention and led me to watch right the way through to the end of the film. I would definatly recommend this film because it shows you a real insite to how people in very deprived areas, live their lives, and how the actions that they make are strongly influcened by the place and people that they live with.