Thursday 28 February 2013

Criminology and Mass Media

Criminology and Mass Media

 
 
Source: www.guardian .co.uk
 
 
Recent research in criminology has indicated that the media may influence people’s attitudes toward criminal justice policy. This paper examined attitudes toward gun control among a student population using both ideological (attribution styles) and instrumental perspectives (fear of crime), and then tested whether viewing the film Bowling for Columbine influenced those attitudes. The study employed a classic experimental design. Results from the pretest indicated that there was some support for ideological and instrumental perspectives in attitudes toward criminal justice policy. Results from the posttest indicated that participants in the experimental group reported significantly more support for gun control policies, and were more likely to assign dispositional attribution to criminal behavior. Results therefore suggest that students are susceptible to suggestion from the media when formulating opinions about criminal justice policy.


Acknowledgement:
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol12is2/robbers.pdf


Do movie critics matter?



Do Movie Critics Matter?


It’s always good year for the movies, even if the great films can be counted on a fingers and never get mentioned at the ANY Awards.


Source: www.tumblr.com
 



As Armond White said, "That’s why we need film critics—to help us understand the state of movies, our cultural life, and our general moral and political being. "



Acknowledgement:

www.thatdogwillhunt.wordpress.com

Sunday 24 February 2013

If Adventure has a Name, it must be Indiana Jones...


If Adventure has a Name, it must be Indiana Jones...



Adventure films are a genre of film. Unlike action films, they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way.
Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in 'The Temple of Doom'
 
The subgenres of adventure films include, swashbuckler film, disaster films, and historical dramas - which is similar to the epic film genre. Main plot elements include quests for lost continents, a jungle and/or desert settings, characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic journeys for the unknown. Adventure films are mostly set in a period background and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure heroes within the historical context. Kings, battles, rebellion or piracy are commonly seen in adventure films.  Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres such as, science fiction, fantasy and sometimes war films.

 
Acknowledgement:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_film
 


Top ten war movies


Top Ten War Films
In some ways, it’s a natural subject for cinema. It has scope. It packs inherent drama. It has all the swagger, the allure, and the blood-spattered spectacle that makes the visual medium so viable. Yet the war film—an indirect derivation of the thriller, action effort, and (sometimes) critical commentary—is often foiled by the very elements it has to cater to. Offer up too much realism and the audience looks away in dismay. Play up the arrogance or the attraction and your motives are questioned. Human conflict is a tricky concept to completely nail down. Some want nothing but the immoral aftermath, never once addressing the equally depraved aspects that brought us to this point. Many crave a helping of clear-cut heroics and villainy, the better to secure their hegemonic/sovereign/patriotic stance.

 Top Ten War Movies

#1: Apocalypse Now

#2: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

#3: The Thin Red Line

#4: Saving Private Ryan

#5: Platoon
Video of official trailer of 1986 war film 'Platoon'

#6: Grand Illusion

#7: The Battle of Algiers

#8: Letters from Iwo Jima

#9: The Big Red One

#10: Das Boot

 

Acknowledgement:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/141690-the-ten-greatest-war-movies-of-all-time/

 

 

Old school publicity: film posters



Old School Publicity: Film Posters
 
Poster of Mehboob Khan's "Mother India"
Source: en.wikipedia.org

A film poster is a poster used to advertise a film. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. Prior to the 1990s, illustrations instead of photos were far more common. The text on film posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tag line, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, etc.

Film posters are displayed inside and on the outside of movie theaters, and elsewhere on the street or in shops. The same images appear in the film exhibitor's pressbook and may also be used on websites, DVD (and historically VHS) packaging, flyers, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, etc.

Film posters have been used since the earliest public exhibitions of film. They began as outside placards listing the programme of (short) films to be shown inside the hall or movie theater. By the early 1900s, they began to feature illustrations of a film scene or an array of overlaid images from several scenes. Other posters have used artistic interpretations of a scene or even the theme of the film, represented in a wide variety of artistic styles.

Acknowledgement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_poster

Modern documentary films

 
 
 


Modern Documentary Films
Official trailer of the documantary "Searching for sugarman'.
It won the Best Documentaty film award at the 85th Oscar Awards,


Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Food, Inc.,Earth, March of the Penguins, Religulous, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.

The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinema verité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as the late Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) andBlack Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.

Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986 – Part 1 and 1989 –Part 2) by Henry Hampton, Four Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee, and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morrisincorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore'sRoger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director. The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda." However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.

Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive. Within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.

Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.

Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.

 
Acknowledgement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film

Historical epics: films to be revered

Historical epics: films to be revered


Poster of Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic "Gandhi"
Source: www.moviezadda.com

An epic film is an epic genre that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure film. Epic historical films often take a historical or imagined event, or a mythic, legendary, or heroic figure and add an extravagant, spectacular setting and lavish costumes, accompanied by a sweeping musical score, and an ensemble cast of bankable stars, making them among the most expensive of films to produce. Some of the most common subjects of epics are royalty, superheroes, great military leaders, or leading personalities or figures from various periods in world history. Epics tend to focus on events that will affect the lives of many people, such as cataclysmic events, natural disasters, war, or political upheaval.
Epic films are expensive and lavish productions because they generally use on-location filming, authentic period costumes, action scenes on a massive scale and large casts of characters. Biographical films are often less lavish versions of this genre.
Sometimes referred to as costume dramas, they depict the world of a period setting, often incorporating historical pageantry, specially designed costuming and wardrobes, exotic locales, spectacle, lavish decor and a sweeping visual style. They often transport viewers to other worlds or eras, such as classical antiquity, biblical settings, the Middle Ages, the Victorian era, the American Frontier, or the Gilded Age. Films involving modern battle sequences (war films) are also common settings in the epic film genre, as are westerns, and science fiction films set in space, on earth or other planets, with science fiction-oriented battle scenes on a massive scale or with a futuristic backdrop.
 
Historical epics
Historical epics are epic films that take place in the historical past, often focusing on people who alter the course of history. A number of historical epics, especially those made in the 1950s and 1960s, are set in ancient times, particularly in Rome, Greece, or Egypt. Historical epics typically are more grand-scale than other types of epics, featuring elaborate sets and large numbers of extras.
 
Trailer of the historical epic "Ben-hur"
Examples of historical epics include Intolerance (1916), Gone with the Wind (1939), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Cleopatra (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Barry Lyndon (1975), Gandhi (1982), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), Joan of Arc (1999), Gladiator (2000), Troy (2004), Alexander (2004), and Kingdom of Heaven (2005).
 
Acknowledgement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_film#Historical_epics
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