Casa de mi Padre (2012) Pantelion Films 1 hr. 24 mins. Starring: Will Ferrell, Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Genesis Rodriguez, Pedro Armendariz Jr, Efrin Ramirez, Manuel Urrego, Nick Offerman Directed by: Matt Piedmont MPAA Rating: R Genre: Comedy Critic's Rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars) Nobody knows how to grind out lifeless comedies in conveyor belt fashion such as Will Ferrell. Nevertheless, the ex-SNL star continues his consistency with the latest ethnic dud-of-a-laugher Casa de mi Padre. Sadly, Ferrell's "hombre loco" act wears thin on the nerves and the overall movie is about as hollow as an empty piñata.
In 1999, Tom Hanks was arguably as big as any movie star had ever been. He was coming off of Oscar-wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, plus Apollo 13 (nominated for nine Oscars) and Saving Private Ryan (nominated again for Best Actor). Following in the footsteps of great actors like Daniel Day Lewis, Hanks chose a character with a crippling physical affliction for his next role in an Oscar contender. Unlike any character other than Beavis and Butthead in that episode where they forgot how to pee, that physical affliction was painful urination. Well there's your problem right
This film was written by a first-time director, Billy Morrissette, and depicts the familiar story in a surprisingly different form. The premise of the plot is held intact, but the setting is shifted several hundred years, to the 1970s. The result, however, is one that initially seems to deviate from the general feel of the original Macbeth, as the movie is much more comical, and has many over the top characters and events, such as the pothead witches, and killing Duncan by dumping him into a fryer. Shakespeare's Macbeth was originally a very serious, dark play, but Scotland, PA almost seems to make light of it. However, Scotland, PA manages to keep true to the original Macbeth, even while introducing dark comedy throughout the story.
Ultimately, The Birds short story by Daphne Du Maurier had the best carried element of suspense at the point in humanity when horror was less prevalent. Intermittently, the plots of The Birds, film and story, touch base rarely and the anecdote reels the viewer in much stronger than the movie. Daphne Du Maurier ushers one through her world with three strengths that Alfred Hitchcock did not have, partially because he was too focused on the plot, and partly because he did not read the piece- he skimmed it. As an artist, one can say that both had strengths and weaknesses, however, The Birds short story planted suspense thoroughly in the mind of the perceiver in ways the movie didn’t. Blatantly, Alfred Hitchcock introduces his movie with a shot of cawing birds, establishing suspense, and then drops the audience on their rears, stranded with a few shots of squawking birds.
In 1962, we got to see The Beverly Hillbillies for the first time. The rags-to-riches saga of Jed Clampett and his family kicked the Western out the door and held the #1 position in the Nielsen ratings for its first two seasons, but we still had quite a mixture of programs. There were comedies like Mister Ed and Get Smart; cartoons like The Flintstones and The Jetsons; spy series like Mission: Impossible and I Spy; a few lingering westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza; and programs like the gritty, realistic drama East Side/West Side, which lasted a single season opposite Sing Along with Mitch, and the satirical That Was the Week That Was, which was pulled early in the 1964-1965 season due to the upcoming election and vanished after viewers switched to Petticoat Junction. Not much was really "serious," however, even after the fifteen-minute news disappeared in the fall of 1963. On November 22 of that year, the world got no TV for one day when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a twenty-four-year-old marine named Lee Harvey Oswald.
‘Titanic is often seen as economic triumph, and is of little aesthetic, social or technological interest to the film historian’ With the distinction of being the top gross box-office hit of all time, with gross revenues of over $600,000,000[i], there is little argument against director James Cameron’s 1997 ‘blockbuster’ Titanic being an economic triumph. However, many critics were scathing of the movie. Kenneth Turan, film critic of the Los Angeles Time, dismissed it as ‘a witless counterfeit of Hollywood’s Golden Age…’[ii]. This essay shall evaluate the argument of the title by considering the movie from the perspective of various approaches to film history in turn. Aesthetic, social and technological.
Noir To The Core According to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), 1949’s The Third Man is the only non-American film to have made the American Film Institute’s top 100 films of all time, and ranks number one in the British Film Institute’s BFI 100, a similar list compiled in 1999. The Third Man was not only well-regarded decades after its release, but was a commercial and critical success in its own era. Shot in black and white, and set on location in the ruined post-war city of Vienna, the film explores conspiratorial themes alongside a well-paced espionage narrative. The film is an excellent example of visuals both perfectly serving the narrative and atmosphere and at the same time alluding to something more. The film’s genius is in its success at playing out its themes using each mode of cinematic expression (story, image, sound).
But among all these, The Last Samurai [Zwick 2003] received the most positive Japanese audience reaction. This film, about an ex-Civil War American soldier who takes up arms to fight with the last of the samurai, played to mixed reviews in the U.S. but enjoyed a wildly popular reception in Japan. Judging from Japanese online discussion posts and media articles, many Japanese audiences read the film differently from the American critics. Why and what do these reviews tell us about Japan in the beginning of the 21st century? By being a foreign film, The Last Samurai allowed Japanese audiences to celebrate the nationalist messages taboo in a domestically produced film.
How strong is the Samsung brand? Samsung is the only Korean brand on the top 100 list and were the fastest growing of all 100 brands in 2002. In 2003 SEC was ranked the world’s most valuable brands in Business Week. Samsung was ta third-tier commodity brand with very little product differentiation but now it is known to be a premier brand. In 2003 Samsung ranked 25 from number 34, which shows that it was able to compete and be successful in the market with its new products.
The photographic paper market similarly declined from a peak in 2003 to about 60% of the size by 2011 (4). In short Kodak lost ground in its shrinking primary market which had been a much better revenue generator than digital proved to be (5). Kodak belatedly declared a digital strategy in 2004; eight years after its revenues had peaked. This strategy was still based on photographic prints as an end point for consumers, which proved flawed. Kodak both invented and successfully marketed professional and consumer digital cameras.