Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is the story of a little girl, Ofelia who accepts a quest in order to become the rightful princess that she should be. Her and her mother move in with an evil man, Vidal in the middle of a big war in Spain. One day Ofelia wanders off and finds a labyrinth where she meets a faun and some fairies. The faun gives her three tasks to complete that will test her to see if she will be able to serve as princess of this magical other world. She needs to complete these tasks before the full moon, but she runs into some obstacles such as her pregnant mother and the evil Vidal who is leading the big war. The war is a whole different story that conflicts a little with Ofelia and her quest, but for the most part is not related. This part deals with the conflict of Vidal and Mercedes, who works for Vidal but is really undercover for the people Vidal is fighting. When Ofilia's mother dies Mercedes is the one who takes care of her. Carmen, Ofilia's mother was pregnant with her and Vidal's son and they are able to save the son before she dies. Vidal is obsessed with having his son and doesn't care about anyone else. It is the son who in the end of the film ties in the war segment and Ofelia's quest to complete her tasks. This was a great movie with some amazing imagery and imagination from the director and other creators of the film.
The director of the film is Guillermo Del Toro. He is very interested in fairy tales and has a great imagination. All of the imagery and characters are amazing in this film. They are fairytale but not the kind that you would normally think of. They have a very dark feel to them, from the giant frog to the evil monster with eyes in his hands. Even the faun who is good and helps Ofelia looks extremely dark and evil. Guillermo's imagination was influence by fairytale authors Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielson, and Edmund Dulac. It is with these author's illustrations and his own imagination that Del Toro was able to create these amazing fairytale creatures.
Along with having a great director this film also had some great actors. Sergi Lopez played the villain, Vidal who was a horrible and very violent man. Sergi captured Vidal's controlling and evil personality perfectly making him seem like a very real person. Lopez loves acting and has done it all of his life. He was born in Vilamova which is a small village near Barcelona. He had his own acting troupe there and then went on to study acting even more in Paris. It was there that he started his career with a role in La Petite Amie D'Antonio. As he continued acting he became known to play dark roles as the villain of the film. He acted in many films that all led up to his greatest role of Vidal the villain. Another very interesting actor in this film is Doug Jones. He played the role of the faun in Pan's Labyrinth and did so in a different way. Doug was born in 1960 in Indianapolis, IN. He studied acting and miming at Ball State university in Indiana. He played in many other movies before Pan's Labyrinth, most notably in Batman Returns. To play the role of the faun he need only to mime him. Jones just moved his body while a puppeteer moved his head. These two great actors really helped make the film very interesting and real.
Pan's Labyrinth is a very creative and interesting film. Even though it is in Spanish you can understand and enjoy its creative plot. The great director Guillermo Del Toro really helped make this fairytale like movie into an amazing work of art. Also the great actors contributed in helping to make the story come to life. Pan's Labyrinth was an amazing film and if you haven't seen it I would recommend watching it right away.

article reflection

This article has a lot of interesting things to say about westerms. It talks about how the western was struggling for a period of time and almost died out. It is certainly less popular today than it was back in the mid-90s, but films like 3:10 to Yuma have kept it alive. The western has also changed alot from when it was originally popular. In attempts to acheive a greater audience westerns now will contain more modern ideas like the issue of Iraq. The appeal to most people is that westerns are very natural, what you see on the screan was really acted out and there is not much fancy technology to alter the film. Westerns are making a comback and don't plan on dying out any time soon.

Pulp Fiction Review

I chose to watch and review the film Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino. There are many great actors in this film such as John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, and of course Bruce Willis. The screenplay was written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. The director of photography was Andrzej Sekula, and Karen Rachtman was in charge of the music. The producer of the film was Lawrence Bender. And finally the editor was Sally menke, and the costume designer was Betsy Heimann.
This movie greatly reminds me of another great movie, Sin City. Both movies have almost the exact same format. In both films there are three stories that take place during the course of the whole story. Not all of the main characters interact with each other but we can see as the film goes on how each story is related to one another very closely. The setting of Pulp Fiction is in California and mostly in Hollywood. There are five main characters in this film. First there are Vincent and Jules who are two gangsters working for another main character, Marcellus, who is kind of the head gangster. Then there is Mia who is Marcellus' wife, but who also falls a little bit for Vincent. Then finally there is Butch, who is a boxer who crosses Marcellus and has a big fight with him. There is not just one main source of conflict, there is one for each of the three stories that is told in the film. The first story is about Vincent and Mia. The conflict is for Vincent to try and take Mia out with him to a nice dinner, keep her safe and happy and return her to Marcellus unharmed. He encounters some problems though with some drugs and must think quickly just to keep her alive. Next we have the conflict between Butch and Marcellus. During a boxing match Butch killed his opponent when he won the match, but this upset Marcellus who began to chase Butch. Butch received a very important watch that got him into trouble with Marcellus and almost killed. The third story is with Vincent and Jules, who get into some trouble with some people that they have killed. The conflict is them struggling to stay out of trouble but also for Jules who is now starting to realize that what they are doing is wrong. These three stories and conflicts get intertwined with each other and work together to create this great masterpiece.
The Plot of Pulp Fiction is very complicated and can be very confusing to the viewer at times. It is probably realistic for a small portion of people who are involved with the world of crime. they would probably use the same language and act very similar to the characters in the film. This film had some very big names in it to capture each character perfectly. John Travolta portrayed Vincent, the gangster who didn't have any morals whatsoever perfectly the way he made his character not seem to care at all if someone died or even if he almost died. Samuel Jackson and Bruce Willis also portrayed their characters perfectly and made the film seem very real with all of the great acting. A theme that i saw in the movie was the challenge of overcoming evil. This applies mainly to Jules who realizes that he can't just kill people through a moment of clarity in the coffee shop, but also to Butch who takes a big step by helping out Marcellus even though they are trying to kill each other. One very important symbol in the second part of the story with Butch is his gold watch that he owns that used to be his father's. This watch is extremely important to Butch which we see in a flashback and symbolizes something to fight for and a reason to keep going for Butch as he goes through a hard time in his life with boxing and his fight with Marcellus. But the gold watch also symbolizes a big conflict that is about to happen when Butch goes back to his apartment to get it and finds Vincent waiting for him. The sets and costumes really helped set the time period witch seemed like it was back in the seventies. There had to be a lot of make-up used in the multiple bloody scenes. Also at one point in the story Vincent and Jules have to change out of their suits into T-shirts and shorts. When this happens it makes them look ridiculous and it makes them seem less powerful. There were many camera movements used in this film. Most of the movement was tracking to capture all of the action in the film, but there was also some tracking and pan shots included as well. There were also many close-ups used in the film. Some important ones were close-ups of the needle before the shot of adrenalin was administered, Vincent and Mia's handshake for the secret that they would each keep, and when Butch slowly opens his apartment door with his key. There is almost always a low angle on Vincent and Jules to show how powerful and important they are. Also there is a high angle shot of Butch and Marcellus when they are strapped to chairs to show how weak and helpless they are at that time. There are many deep focus shots used to show the viewer everything that is happening in a scene. One important instance is when Butch and Marcellus are tied up like I mentioned a second ago, you can see them tied up and also what their capturer is doing in the background. There is a nice distorted image when Vincent takes some drugs and decides to drive home while he is high. I noticed in the restaurant there were many quick cuts back and forth to Vincent and Mia while they were having a quickly moving conversation. Also there was a fade out when a story would end and a fade in when one would begin. When Vincent meets Mia there is some happy non-diegetic music playing to show that the two people will probably like each other and get along. And then later there is some diegetic sound with the dance music that Vincent and Mia dance along to.In Pulp fiction there are tons of elements of film that help make this a great movie. From the great acting to the amazing cinematic effects every second of this film is a masterpiece.