Small Scale Research Project

Incomplete Annotated Catalogue
How is the issue of race dealt with in contemporary American cinema?

Item One: A Time To Kill (1996)
Currently this film is my chosen focus film, unlike similar films this film is set during the time it was made and so intends to represent its themes with the cultural opinion of the mid 1990's. It can be liked very closely with another one of my film choices, To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as showing differences which should lead to interesting discussion. It clearly portrays racism throughout a community through the uprising of the KKK which, due to its controversy is not seen often in more modern day cinema.

Item Two: To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
I have chosen to use this film for my research in hope that it will bring about interesting comparisons and discussions from the differences in social opinions of the different eras. The comparisons will come about through the fact that this film was 40 years apart from my focus film however it was also set 30 years before that; during The Great Depression. Similarly to my focus film this is about a court case which will help me to discuss the question in detail in terms of how race is dealt with in terms of American communities and the law.

Item Three: Still Pending....

Samuel L Jackson Interview

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/samuel-l-jackson-tarantino-racism-and-the-nword-8452821.html

http://listverse.com/2012/02/01/10-outstanding-neo-noirs-of-the-2000s/

Les Misérables

Use Les Misérables to discuss:

• Famous Director

Tom Hooper won best director Acadamy Award in 2010 for The Kings Speech, but missed out on awards and nominations in this catagory for Les Miserables. Before 2009 Hooper mainly focused on TV movies and shows up untill he directed The Damned United.

• Accolaids

Anne Hathaway sweeped up awards season with the Golden Globe, Oscar and Bafta for best supporting actress accumulating huge amounts of advertising for the film, other awards include:

Nominated for 8 Oscars (Won 3)

Nominated for 4 Golden Globes (Won 3)

nominated for 9 baftas (Won 4)

• British Talent

Famous britsh director as well as known british star Helena Bonham Carter, also more upcoming performances from Eddie Redmayne and Samantha Barks.

• Release Date

Released Christmas day in USA, January 11 for UK. Faced competition at UK box office of other accolaided films including, Zero Dark Thirty as well as quartet and Ganster Squad.In the US it faced Tom Cruises, Jack Reacher released Days before and Django Unchained released on the same day. In the US the film took a Christmas Day record of $18.2 million

• Soundtrack

Achieved high sucess and has made it to the second best selling album of 2013 so far.

• Famous before release

Started out as a highly accliamed book by Victor Hugo in the 1860's. Was adapted for the west end stage and overcame bad reviews by word of mouth turning into one of the best selling stage musicals ever. The film already had it's market avaliable and audience who would be willing to go and see the film when it was released.

• Marketing

Released UK promos and trailers around early november time in order to create a "hype" around the film. Character posters were released of about 6 of the major stars within the film, appealing to a vast audience. Posters shown on buses throughout its release, as well as up to the time of DVD release. "The Making Of" DVD was given out freely along with the daily mail on the day of the films release, creates an extra "hype" and acts as a tie in.

Past Paper Question - Section C

How much has contextual studies helped to understand similarities and differences within the films that you have studied for this topic?

The two American films which I studied for this topic were Badlands written and directed by Terrence Malleck and Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone. These films were made with 20 years apart, with Badlands made in 1973 and NBK in 1994, however both based on the real life killing spree of Charles Starkwheather and Carol Anne Fugate. This is the main contextual reference needed for the understanding of these films as although they both portray these murders they are shown in very different ways  due to the time difference as well as the issues within society during the making of these films. 

Lets start off with Badlands, the story of Starkweather and Fugate within this film is portrayed in a very clear way, and anyone with understanding of this real life event will easily see the representations that it shows. Throughout Badlands, there is reference to Martin Sheen who plays male lead, Kit, looking like James Dean: Starkweather himself styled his hair on this screen icon because of the rebellious characters he tended to play in his films. There is a contrast between the two films in this case, as in Badlands Kit idolises the rebellious screen star whereas the male lead Mickey in NBK has an idolisation of more violent serial killers. Although both of these men look up to and begin to base their life around the aspects of these people, Mickey’s is much more violent and disturbing. 

The change in who the male character idolises begins to show a key theme within these films, the media, as well as showing the society context of the times in which they were made. Kit looks up to a film star, this show that within the 1970’s (or 1950’s in which it was based) film stars were very prominent elements within the media and who had much influence within that time in society; this is also shown through Kit and Holly reading through a gossip magazine together whilst in the car in the film and discussing film stars. However, as the time frame of the same story basis chages so does the society, Mickey is influenced by serial killers and so shows that within the 1990’s because the media tends to focus on the acts of such people this begins to influence society in a much more disasterous way than in previous years. Overall, the changes in the people the male leads idolises shows how, in the 1970’s the media had a much smaller an unimportant impact on society than it did in the 1990’s.

Both of these films show contrasts in the female character, Holly in Badlands is a much more reserved character who does not get involved with any of the killing that takes place whereas NBK shows Mallory as just as involved in the violence as her husband Mickey, if not more. They both contain differences to what was believed to have happened in the real life story. When  Badlands was released, the influence of the real story was still very much in the air of the society at the time; and so I think that they portrayed Holly as a much less violent person than Fugate because of the people within society at that time not being able to face the fact that a 15 year old girl could commit such crimes (whereas in real life she was 13) this age difference also shows this. Society was not ready to accept such crimes from a young woman and so she was shown to be more of a victim lead astray by an older man. However, NBK, Mallory Is so much so involved in the killings you could even say that it begins to compensate for how little Holly was: this is because of the time which it was released. In the 90’s girl power was very much a global phenomenon and strong women playing a huge part on society, this is why I think NBK was able to get away with showing the female character as more violent as it wasn’t such of a controversy as it would have been in the 70’s. This girl power phenomenon is backed up by the use of the L7 girl grunge band’s music being played in the opening sequence of NBK.

Clearly, a deep understanding of the context behind which these films were made helps to explore the similarities and differences which these films have and with such a time difference between the two films and the controversial story which they are both based on: these contrasts could not be seen without this knowledge.

Past Paper Question - Section A

State reasons for the popularity of US films to a UK audience

The main target audiences for many films within the UK is people between the ages of 15-25, due to these being the people who have the most disposable income willing to spend on going to the cinema. People within this age groups tend to be more interested in Hollywood blockbuster films, rather than foreign or independent films because Hollywood films are portrayed as more “popcorn movies” and don’t contain many deep set issues or controversy, these types of films are watched more by more middle class society and cultured people. And this who each of these films tends to be targeted towards during the post-production stages of the film e.g. Marketing.

The marketing is a huge factor in the popularity for any film, in the case of Hollywood films, many of them contain huge budgets with the marketing for them in some cases being half of these multimillion dollar budgets. Marketing can consist of teaser trailers and posters, tie-ins and social networking, with huge amounts being spent on things like these with American films it helps to create a “buzz” around the film and its release building the films popularity. Without a strong advertising campaign from an US film then the production company is already setting itself up for a fall, as with such large amount of money at stake, without a large audience to watch the profits will not come rolling in. This can be shown from Disney’s 2011 release of John Carter, this film had difficulty raising an audience as the marketing companies changed half way through resulting in uncertainty with any audience that may have already been there. However, as a result of this, and obviously other factors, the film lost over $160 million. Whereas the 2012 release of A Good Day To Die Hard which opened up in the UK on Valentines day managed to take $16 million, due to a highly anticipated release of the newest instalment of the franchise. This shows that much of the popularity surrounding US films within the UK is due to a high marketing budgets and more successful campaigns compared to foreign language films which do not have the budget for large advertising UK campaigns and so there is no knowledge of there release.

This also brings out the point that the popularity for US films may in fact not come from necessarily good US films, but because of the little awareness that people have of other options, (such as British independent films or foreign language films,) demographic inertia or even inability to go to see other forms of movies.  Nowadays it is not part of the working class culture to visit an arts centre to watch a foreign language film, with most of the UK population being working class has a huge impact on the audiences for US films and foreign films. The working class are not necessarily open to the change of going to visit an arts centre, which is more than likely a much larger journey for them than the average multiplex cinema, and so tend to stick with what they know and settle for US films shown in mainstream cinemas. Personally, I think this is a huge factor on the popularity for US films, as they are mainly all that are shown in the average cinema, and so, for families, or 15-25 year olds for instance wanting to go spend an evening out watching a new film, they are limited for choices between anything but American films and so they go to see them anyway: increasing the demand for US film. This is an endless cycle which, without changes to what does actually get shown in mainstream cinemas, will we actually be able to see whether this is in fact the case.

Although, this is actually just personal opinion, and there are also many other reasons which contribute to the high popularity of US films within the UK. Including the roles of stars: the use of famous American stars such as Tom Hanks or even Bruce Willis (usually in type cast roles) usually leads to a US films being even more successful than usual due to audiences who will go and see that film just to watch the star. US stars are the most well known across the world, so with the use of them in US films automatically create popularity for the films that cannot be achieved without them. Take for instance, comparing John Carter and Die Hard 5, both American films, one with a massive global star (Die Hard with Bruce Willis) and John Carter, with... Non. The difference as stated before, meant a loss of $160 million for John Carter but $16 million for Die Hard 5 in the UK box office alone.

And so, it can be concluded that there are factors within the production and post production stages of a US film which entice UK audiences and create the large popularity that they have, but there are also more issues with society that could in fact be behind this dominance of the UK cinema market that the US blockbusters currently have.

Lovers on the Lam - critic review

http://thecriticjohnsimon.com/reverse-angle/lovers-on-the-lam/