Letters from Iwo Jima

This film incorporates a new perspective not told in history books about the battle of Iwo Jima and the Japanese soldiers. It is not all that surprising that Clint Eastwood would do a film like this of a war tragedy. But it is interesting that he didn't take the perspective of the " great American hero war story" type he portrayed an unwillingness by both the americans and Japanese soldiers who both did not want to fight and especially over a stupid island. He also has the element of family which seems to be prevalent in all his films. For example, the division between the General and his Family at home or all the husbands and wives. He really seems to have issues with wars and places a lot of significance on family and the peace between all of humanity in this film and i believe he does a good job of this by showing such atrocities that happened on Iwo Jima.

The perception of a story can be altered by putting it in a different context, and or other cinematic uses. The movie Mary Poppins is a happy classic Children movie but in the youtube clip below shows a trailer that portrays the original children s classic into a horror terror movie. It does this by adding in scary music and a montage of freaky weird things that marry Poppins actually does in the film. This example shows the significance of all the small minute details that makes a viewer might not notice.

Caddy Shack Meets the Military.

The 1981 film Stripes staring characters like Bill Murray and John Candy is a good old fashion guy humor. Like the movie Caddy Shack. The plot is based around John and his chance to regain his life by joining the military to get himself on track. The platoons characters cover a gamut of personalities from all walks of life. In both films Bill's character was the comic relief to a normal everyday situation. Bill's role in Caddy Shack is more of a dumb free minded character while in Stripes his humor makes him more of an approachable leader in the platoon. The general humor used in both is the same but the way it is applied in Stripes seems to be a more sophisticated and composed like the Military.

Body of Lies

">
In Ridley Scott's most recent film Body of Lies made me think of what our government migh actually be doing on this "War on Terror". The character DiCaprio played was an front line CIA agent who dealt with the the dirty covert jobs on finding intelligence relating to the terrorist group. Crowe, DiCaprio's boss is depicted as a typical DC politician who has no idea what is going on but is going to make all the decisions because he is the head honcho, which in turn screws things up for DiCaprio and almost gets killed. I enjoy these types of action suspense filled movies and this movie fit category like a charm. I really enjoyed this movie. It had it all, a girl big name actors/director, and a solid story line from a book by David Ignatius. The movies title i am not too sure of but if i were to speculate the (Body) is for the death all due the lack of trust (Lies) between the US and the Middle East. This movie is one of my favorites.

Mongol Opening Scene

The opening scene to the Film Mongol by Sergei Bodrov really catches my eye. The shot starts with a rainy day in a mongolian marketplace and using a crane shot flies over the market buildings and leads us to Genghis Khan before his rise to power in a publicly displayed prison cell with a sign saying "Mongol who wanted to destroy Tangut Kingdom". It does a good job to show what the mood of the situation of our main character is in (a bad one). later on in the movie Sergei brings us back to this setting and has one of the coolest shots i have seen. It is a slow motion shot of the rain falling into Genghis's cell. The symbolism is that he has the god "Tengri" (God of the sky very very important God) on his side of the situation. There is too many interesting well put together scenes to talk about, i really enjoyed this movie and will be looking forward to more of Sergei Bodrov work.