Apr
1
Overview of Span 404
Posted by: Brian | April 1, 2009 | Comments Off on Overview of Span 404
This class had a topic of things I’m interested in life: film and Spanish, and Mexico. I liked that we talked about film, because I need to continue expanding my knowledge of movies and how they’re put together and why they’re made if I want to continu…
Mar
31
Closing post
Posted by: Brian | March 31, 2009 | Comments Off on Closing post
Honestly i didn’t anticipate getting much cinematic terminologies and concepts from 404, but i feel that it brings me staffs way more valuable than those, and for sure this post is gonna be the most tough one to draw.Due to geographic reasons, there ar…
Mar
31
I’m really glad I had the experience of seeing the movies in this course, because the only Mexican movies that I had seen before the course started were The Three Amigos and Nacho Libre. Other than those, the only movies from Spanish speaking countri…
Mar
31
Class Response
Posted by: Brian | March 31, 2009 | Comments Off on Class Response
I really enjoyed the first half of the term because I found the films more interesting. However, I will be honest, this class made me watch films I would never consider watching, such as The Wild Bunch. Then again, after I read the articles and had a h…
Mar
31
Summary Con’t
Posted by: Brian | March 31, 2009 | Comments Off on Summary Con’t
Mecanica Nacional: I think this movie was all about excessiveness. Excessive consumption, sex and alcohol. What this mirrors though, and is in a sense another way of portraying, is the excessive representations of mexican identity. This excessiveness w…
Mar
31
Not having taken a film course before, I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t know much about film theory nor do I have a technical background. That being said, I usually always watch films for entertainment. I think watching them in a classroom con…
Mar
31
I’m just going to go through the movies we watched and what I thought was most notable of each of them.Aguila o Sol: What I noticed most about this film was Mexico’s own satire of their people, seen most clearly in the act of Cantiflas and his friend. …
Mar
30
I have never been in a film class before, except for a Literature and Film class in High School in which we talked about how books were adapted into films, but I didn’t get much out of that class. I am totally the person who will watch a film quite passively, as entertainment. I will […]
Mar
30
I have never been in a film class before, except for a Literature and Film class in High School in which we talked about how books were adapted into films, but I didn’t get much out of that class. I am totally the person who will watch a film quite passively, as entertainment. I will […]
Mar
30
summary of the class
Posted by: Brian | March 30, 2009 | Comments Off on summary of the class
I had never taken a film class before, and I think I learned a lot in this one. I was expecting the class to be completely in Spanish and to be about all of Latin America, not just Mexico. However, I still enjoyed the class, most movies, and the disc…
Mar
29
smegtoad 2009-03-30 01:50:18
Posted by: Brian | March 29, 2009 | Comments Off on smegtoad 2009-03-30 01:50:18
Well,
I wasn’t really involved in the first half of the course. Sorry Jon.
I thought the whole class was in Spanish. I don’t speak spanish.
I was happy to find out discussions were in english though and I’m sorry I wasn’t there from the start.
As a film major, I’m constantly watching and appreciating films from a technical, theory based and content driven perspective.
I think it’s safe to assume that many moviegoers watch films to be entertained as opposed to challenged.
And that’s sad, because layers of meaning can be found within even the most banal films.
Three Amigos for example.
I was completely taken off guard with this film and the layers of "meta" acting and realism shown.
Also the use of comedy as a method of presenting this film within a film seemed to be the optimal way to deal with that idea, unless you treated it as a psychological, horror film with no escape. This isn’t a fully fleshed out idea, but regardless, the film made me think.
And so, I was very happy to take this course and gain a feel for how Mexico is represented in film.
I’m glad this course exists for students who are not in the film program so as to promote more interesting thinking on the medium.
I also feel like now I have much less of a grasp on my vision of Mexico then when I came into this course because the country is so varied and cannot be lumped together into one idea of representation.
I will not stop using the term "stereotype" but I’ll think more about what it means in the future.
Anyway, really enjoyed the class and the discussions.
Mar
29
Looking back
Posted by: Brian | March 29, 2009 | Comments Off on Looking back
Taking a look back at the class, I can enjoyed it very much. There were some movies that I would rather not have seen, but in general, it really gave me a pretty big scope on mexican cinema, and more importantly, it got me triggered on learning more ab…
Mar
27
Closing post
Posted by: Brian | March 27, 2009 | Comments Off on Closing post
Honestly i didn’t anticipate getting much cinematic terminologies and concepts from 404, but i feel that it brings me staffs way more valuable than those, and for sure this post is gonna be the most tough one to draw.Due to geographic reasons, there ar…
Mar
26
Summary 404
Posted by: Brian | March 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Summary 404
I wasn’t sure what to expect coming into Span 404. I have always had an interest in watching movies and figured it would be kind of interesting to be able to learn how to analyze film. At first I found it a little intimidating to express my own thoug…
Mar
26
Even though we were supposed not to learn anything about Mexico I did. I learn about Mexican history, especially about Porfirio Diaz dictatorship and the mexican revolution. I think that was useful for the understanding of the movie as a lot of the mai…
Feb
6
General Question/Statement
Posted by: Brian | February 6, 2009 | Comments Off on General Question/Statement
I have a general question/statement: I don’t understand why different aspects of Latin American culture are so contrasting. So many of the movies and novels have such twisted plots that include prostitution, drugs, homosexuality, murder, etc….and the…
