The deadline was changed because I personally failed to post my comment by midnight on December 13 and I will not hold you to an expectation I cannot meet.
By
- Watch the 1st movie from your chosen country.
- Watch the 2nd movie from your chosen country.
- Watch the 3rd movie from your chosen country.
- Do at least 2 hours of research about your chosen country and its films using books or the internet.
- Interview someone for 30 minutes or more who lived in your chosen country.
After doing two of the above, post a comment below where you answer all of the following questions:
- Which two tasks did you do?
- If you watched a movie / movies, what were the titles? If you interviewed someone, who was it? If you did research, how long did you spend researching and what sources did you read?
- What did you learn about your chosen country by doing these tasks? Please be detailed. Answer this question with at least a paragraph.
I just barely finished watching my second movie and it is just a minute until midnight. Here is my response:
ReplyDelete1) The two tasks I did this week were watching two movies. I also did about 20 minutes of research but that, of course, is not two hours so that will have to be a deadline I reach next week.
2) The movies were Chennai Express and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The little bit of research I did was on wikipedia.
3) I learned the following about India: that there are a lot of languages there, that class divisions are a big deal and that plays into the struggles faced by characters in movies, and that India is a very big and diverse country. But watching the films also raised a lot of questions for me that I want to answer when I do my research such as: (1) what are the dots that women wear on their heads all about and why doesn't everyone wear them; (2) why do some men also put symbols on their heads; (3) what were all the colorful animal-looking religious costumes all about in Chennai Express; (4) is anyone ever offended by the fact that religious customs are the subject of pop music videos in these movies; (5) why do couples never kiss in Bollywood films; (6) why is there never any sex in Bollywood films; (7) how many people in India know English and is it spoken there as often as it is in their movies; (8) what do Indians think of Hollywood films; and (9) does Shah Ruhk Kahn do his own singing or do they dub in someone else's voice?
So, for this weeks task, I watched a movie and did some research. I did most of my research on Wikipedia but there were some other awesome sights that I forgot the name of but I will look up later, but they were definitely good sites, and if you ever want to research Brazil I would be more than happy to point them out for you.
ReplyDeleteThe movie I watched was Elite Squad, and the country I researched was Brazil, and I honestly found some interesting stuff. About the movie: Elite Squad is a dark crime drama centered around Brazil's notorious favelas. The film is packed full of political intrigue, absolutely amazing cinematography, and a surprising amount of cold and realistic situations and looks into issues that were actually taboo just a few years earlier, like interrogation or the on-going fight of street-drug warfare. I definitely recommend it and I would even say it's among my favorite foreign action films.
Now, I honestly didn't think Brazil would have that interesting a past at all, but in fact it was the exact opposite. Brazil has gone through a lot. Throughout the 70's and 80's, Brazilian cinema was doing pretty good, and putting out at least a hundred films a year. Then, the fire nation attacked. The fire nation meaning some butt-hole politician by the name of *Insert politician name here*. He, for some stupid reason that had to do with conserving money, kicked down the two most important pillars of Brazilian cinema: Distribution and Production. No big movies were made, even less distributed, Luckily for all those Brazilian filmmakers that politician was soon accused of fraud and fired, and Brazil kickstarted it's film industry, an actually very interesting film kickstart widely known as "The Retake"/
And in closing, what I have learned, and to be honest, I am DEFINITELY going to be looking into Brazil into the future, who knows, some of the stuff is so good I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year I'm an absolute fanatic.