Andrea Paul

Really really great article. Thought you may be interested in this given your interest in Nicki Manaj and your reading of hip-hop/culture. My cousin wrote it a while back! http://www.racialicious.com/2012/02/23/nicki-minaj-the-flyest-feminist/

I recently got a degree in cinema studies and find this topic to be SOOOOOO valid. It almost frustrates me that I can’t watch cinema in the same way anymore. I used to watch specific films just for their plot value or entertainment factor or acting and that is nearly impossible now. Great article!!

In case anyone is interested, this week is Gump Week on AMC! http://blogs.amctv.com/movie-blog/2014/04/run-forrest-run-be-sure-to-catch-him-on-air-and-online-during-gump-week/

Really really love that you did such an indepth analysis of an episode of The Office. I will say that these life lessons at the end of sitcoms now-a-days have become somewhat trite in my opinion. They no longer seem particularly sincere since they aren’t much more than a “fill in the blank moment” in a very structured sitcom plot. You always hear the music start playing at the end of a Modern Family episode and expect some sort of voiceover telling you what you should learn from the earlier happenings. However, I think that the post commercial snipit at the end of all these sitcoms actually redeems things, leaving us usually with a chuckle, and (hopefully) providing a bit of originality.

great breakdown of film noir… especially for someone that is not so familiar with the “genre” (If one can truly call it that….) I have not seen double indemnity in many years and this most definitely makes me want to revisit the classic!

very interesting to see this film viewed through western perameters. although i never thought of it in this way it is extremely valid and forces me to reevaluate my conception of the film, which usually stems from it being a representation of the time period in American filmic history.

Although I agree with the basis of this article, I don’t really feel like anything was particularly glamorized in the film. The camera work didn’t necessarily focus on the possessions as something to appreciate or envy. They were just “things” possessed by and inhabited by people that you didn’t necessarily like. That being said, I do think it is unfair to attack a film or a director for glamorizing a particular lifestyle (even if I don’t agree that this was Scorcese’s objective). I didn’t necessarily enjoy three hours of watching people I failed to identify with (and in fact despised) but that doesn’t make The Wolf of Wall Street a bad movie. In fact it was quite a good movie in my opinion.

Totally agree that genre is becoming less and less relevant in the postmodernist film world. One thing that I found interesting was that these filmmakers that you wrote about, as well as some of those which were touched on in the comments, seem to me to be classic auteurs. No matter the genre… or mix of genres.. that they produce, there is something about them either stylistically or content wise that truly sets them apart. I think the auteur mindset will disappear far later than a genre one.