Nora Martinez’s HUM210 Blog

The chapter mentions that foreign films have a difficult time in the U.S while on the other hand U.S. films seem to dominate foreign markets. Foreign films rely a great deal on Plot and storylines while American Films use special effects and genre films. Not to be anti Hollywood but it seems like their approach to film making is more economic and less artistic. The chapter had a quote I found related very well to my impression of the chapter. “You can’t understand a lot of Japanese movies unless you understand Japanese culture. You don’t have to understand American culture to understand our movies.” (Sydney Pollak, Speaking on Think Tank, 2000) It seems that foreign film makers are still concerted at least little more with story telling than maximizing profits. The U.S. film industry on the other hand holds the bottom line at least a littlie higher than that of artistic expression designing their films to appeal to the largest audience possible.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001, Peter Jackson) When this movie came out I wasn’t that interested in it but a friend who had read the lord of the rings books insisted that I go see them. I really enjoyed watching it again, this time I watched the 4 hour long extended version on 2 different discs, if I recall the theatrical version was around 3 hours. I found the longer version to include a lot of interesting details, I don’t think that they were necessary to understand the story, but after seeing the other 2 the extra details helped me understand other small parts and helped explain more about the story though it may have taken some of the suspense out of the other two movies.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee) I had not seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon before, I found some of the plot difficult to understand but it seems like the main theme is that a great hero is trying to retire and stop fighting in order to be with the woman he loves. When the object of his heroism his special and mystical sword is stolen leading him on a search that ends tragically for him, but manages to save one last person spiritually rather than physically. I think the special effect awesome, but at the same time a little hard to believe.