And the winner is....

     Im not sure if we are going to be picking and discussing our favorite films in class on monday but i figured after all this blogging i should at least talk once more about the movie that I enjoyed the most this year.  So my vote for best movie we saw this year is split between Memento and The Atomic Cafe.  I know that neither of these films were the most symbolic or visually impressive movies we watched this year but as far as pure entertainment they were my favorite.  The Atomic Cafe gets my vote because i really just enjoy learning about that particular time in american history.  The two world wars and then the cold war are always my favorite part of whichever social studies class we are taking each year.  So seeing the atomic bomb from a different slant then the one presented in our history textbooks was entertaining, informative, and humorous: Three things that make for a very good film.  

   Now I know that many of you would advocate Runaway Train or in Mr. Bennett's case The Seventh Seal as the "best" movies we watched.  Personally, I liked Runaway Train but i don't think i could really appreciate  it as much because in the end i didnt agree with its message. As Mr. Ferrigno can confirm though, i did enjoy it enough to base my physics project on it. Two trains colliding makes for a fairly complicated physics problem and a pretty cool explosion.  The Seventh Seal was a bit too symbolic for me.  I liked the message and the visuals and camera work were both fantastic but it got a little slow at times.  As a product of 21st century society I can not stand such a thing.  Its not my fault really.  Ive been taught to find beauty in violence and explosions not a corny fight between good vs. evil.  Im joking of course and if i were to rank the movies The Seventh Seal would be near the top.  But only one movie we saw kept me interested for the entire length of the film.

        For me, there wasn't any point were Memento bored me, tried to preach to me, or attempted to become overly symbolic.  It did what movies are meant to do: entertain.  The movie industry is after all well, an industry.  Its main goal is to get people to sit down and watch a movie.  Yes almost every movie has some bias, main idea, moral lesson, or some kind of agenda but in the end making movies comes back to the almighty dollar and pleasing audiences.  This dooms many movies but it is also one reason that movies like Runaway Train were included in this film class.  They wouldn't sacrifice story line or dialogue for profit. And thats what made them great movies.  We may not have agreed on everything but thank you Mr. Bennett for opening my figurative eyes to these genres of film.  I enjoyed many of them.  I think some of them should never have been created. But hey, thats my opinion and if our blogs have enough of one thing its opinions..  But thats what made this class great. Its been fun guys and all in all id say weve been very lucky around here.  Nothing to do now but wait for orders from the authorities and relax. Until next time... 

milk, no uranium please

     Despite what my title would suggest, one of the things I didn't understand about the Atomic Cafe was its title.  I  do understand it sets the mood by showing that the movie is not completely serious but im not really sure apart from that.  Is it showing how we treat the whole thing like a game that we can just order whatever we want without consequence?  Although the movie has an underlying anti-war / anti-bomb message it is not told straight to you by a narrator.  When Mr. Bennett first said that i thought he meant there was going to be no speech at all, just visuals.  I think for a movie about atomic bombs visuals could actually be the only thing necessary, but in this case the words of people during that time was extremely important.  It was not just the words themselves but the context they were shown in that changes the message of the film.
    I also thought that the way and order that visuals were presented in was very interesting.  When we first watched the sequence of the couples falling in love and then getting married I didn't really think much of it.  It was interesting when Mr. B slowed it down and you could see the clear path of the ideal American couple. Apart from that scene, i think the single most interesting part of the entire film was  about the bomb experiments in the bikini atoll.  Ive actually never heard of this area until this week.  I found this description of the area and its history on numerous website but none of them cited the speaker : "Through its history, the atoll symbolises the dawn of the nuclear age, despite its paradoxical image of peace and of earthly paradise."
             That quote really symbolizes the paradox of the bomb itself and the madness associated with it.  I found this experiment to be fascinating and really a disgrace.  From the research I did and what was made evident by the the Atomic Cafe its inhabitants were unfairly robbed of their homeland.  They had know idea of the consequences of the United States experimentations.  Ive never heard about any of this before, yet its considered part of "the dawn of the nuclear age".  Its amazing what they don't put in textbooks.

Strangelove

     Today my mom came home from the library with a stack full of movies as she often does.  Usually they are romances, corny western movies, and other genres I'm generally not very interested in.  Today though i was pleasantly surprised when I was reading through the movie titles and one of them was our very own Dr. Strangelove!  Now Im not sure of the movies popularity outside of high school film classes but i was surprised when I found out my dad had been the one who recommended it because he had seen it before.
     All of this reminded me to go online and share my thoughts on Strangelove.  I must say i did enjoy the movie but I wish it had been serious rather than a comedy.  The movie is funny, but as someone who enjoys learning about history, and is fascinated by the Cold War, I would have liked to have seen the original serious version of the film that they tried to make.  The concept of the Cold War is really quite ironic though as Mr. Bennett pointed out.  The missiles we created would ultimately fail if they worked "correctly".  Its a paradox really.  I remember our A.P. World History textbooks titled the chapter on this era in world history as "The Bipolar World".  That title is certainly fitting as anyone over the age of about 55 can tell you.  Thats a reason that I've always enjoyed learning about the Cold War so much.  Its one of the only wars that really wasn't a war at all. It was a standoff with the highest stakes in human history.  It was a display of human madness, and ultimately the power of diplomacy to overcome conflict.  It was something that happened relatively recently and a conflict that really defines a generation of Americans the way our generation will always have 9/11.  Not that they are things to be proud of, but they are literally world changing events that we lived through (especially 9/11 because it happened in NYC).
      Because of the extreme seriousness of the Cold War it is often hard to see just how absurd it was.  Its a war that no nation could ever "win".  And I think thats the message of the film.  It is clearly an anti war movie and although it is a comedy it still has a strong political voice.  Although the people who produced Strangelove are not naive enough to think that all wars can be ended (because they have accepted the faulted human element that they constantly emphasis throughout the movie) they still make a call for peace in our still bipolar world.