Most recent public comments by Evie Horn https://nowcomment.com/users/12961 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339848 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339848 What happened to him could happen to anyone. If I were to get in an accident like this tomorrow, I don't think it would be fair to claim that I was an evil person. No body intends to hurt anybody else when they text and drive, and people don't actively thinks about the lives they could put in danger by doing so. You could say he was selfish, or careless, but he did not have bad intentions so I don't think it's fair to say he's an evil person. Thu, 14 May 2015 23:25:59 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339847 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339847 The fact that companies like Sprint and Verizon were able to step up and support such an impactful film even though they didn't have any stake in it is great. I'm sure cell phone carriers get a lot of flack about texting and driving, so it's nice to see them take a stand and say 'we know this is wrong.' Thu, 14 May 2015 23:23:31 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339846 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339846 It's important to remember that the people in the film probably had the same thoughts. There's no reason that me texting 'I'm on my way' is any different than say Reggie Shaw texting it. These tragedies can happen to anyone. It's not like gun violence where if you live in a bad neighborhood you can be more susceptible to it. Anybody can be a victim, and the invincibility complex is no excuse to text and drive anyway. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:05 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339845 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339845 Now with all of the settings in a car, something like turning on your steering wheel heater or changing the radio station are pretty equivalent to texting. You still take your eyes off of the road and your concentration wanders. Texting is made out to be such an evil, but it certainly isn't the only one. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:05 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339844 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30609?scroll_to=339844 The subjects that are chosen are those from all walks of life. There's an african-american family, white families, brothers, fathers, and children who were affected by texting and driving. All of the families are from different parts of the country as well, and their families were affected in different ways. Though the medium in this film is texting and driving, the film serves as a reminder that no body is safe from accidents or tragedy. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:05 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338897 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338897 There have been a bunch of images floating around the internet that compare a burger to a salad, where the burger is almost 5x the price of the salad at McDonalds. If the assumption is that the people who eat at McDonalds regularly are low-income, they are probably still going to go for the cheaper option. So adding the healthy items wasn't as much as a fix as McDonalds may have thought it was. Perhaps it was just for the image, or an answer to the bad publicity. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:03 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338894 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338894 It would be easy to just give the audience numbers - this is how much we've I've gained, this is how many calories I eat a day, this is my blood pressure before and after, etc - but a film wouldn't be necessary for that. Spurlock could give us a spreadsheet with that data and it would have the same impact. What makes the movie really personal is when we learn about how eating the McDonalds affects him emotionally and personally, especially with his girlfriend. She says that the McDonalds has affected their sex life, and it's comments like these that make the film much more than a spreadsheet. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:04 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338893 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338893 I would bet that no body goes to McDonalds thinking they're getting any nutritional value. People know that McDonalds is bad for them, but they overlook the numbers. Seeing the numbers laid out the way Ebert puts them definitely makes one realize just how bad McDonalds is for them. I think the statistics tied in with the story his his personal weight loss is almost a warning from him personally to stay away from McDonalds. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:04 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338891 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338891 McDonalds has gone through enough with the release of this film, and I'm sure the tons of reviews being written about it. No body is giving McDonalds the benefit of the doubt. What about Pop-Eyes? Burger King? Or even higher scale restaurants... I'm not a nutritionist but I don't think it would be healthy to eat three meals a day for a month anywhere that isn't advertised as a health-food restaurant. The evil here is not in McDonalds, but in the decisions people make. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:03 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338889 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338889 I remember growing up and people would talk about Super Size Me like it was the craziest and most interesting movie, but no body ever discussed the impact it made. I never knew that McDonalds discontinued their super-size me promotion until reading this paragraph, and I definitely think it gave the movie a lot more weight. Suddenly the movie strayed away from just being a guy proving a mundane point, into a sort of social commentary with an impactful result. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:03 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338888 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30608?scroll_to=338888 Of course not a lot of people are going to volunteer to put their health at risk to prove a point like Spurlock does, but I strongly believe that things need to be tested more than once. The statement "I know because Morgan Spurlock proves it in 'Super Size Me'" just sounded off to me. It seems rare that now-a-days people will say "I know this because one person said so." People are taught to be skeptical. Even though it's unlikely, it's possible that somebody else's body would react differently to the McDonalds than Spurlocks did. I'm not saying it's probable that if the experiment were tried again with 20 people that there would be different results, it's just always nice a viewer to have some sort of verification. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:02 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338220 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338220 Like Canby says 'if it is a take, it's a marvelous one, and to hell with the signature on it'. Yes, on the surface the film is about a hand full of men who make money by forging famous paintings, but it's also a commentary on the people who care about those paintings. It's amazing to me how easy it is for these men to fake famous paintings, and how easily people will buy into it. If you put one real and one fake Picasso in front of most people, they would probably never be able to tell you which was which. This movie begs the questions, why do people care so much about a signature, but even more, why is it so easy to trick them? Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:01 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338218 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338218 Magic a contradiction of reality and of expectations. It's hard to understand and comprehend and the answers are left up to imagination. Canby is to F for Fake as the audience is to a magician. They aren't totally sure what to think, or how to react, but they do their best to grasp what they've just seen. Canby is unable to completely process how he sees the film as a reviewer. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:01 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338216 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30607?scroll_to=338216 It may be the allusion to Anna Karenina that makes me think of the word 'suave', but the opening paragraphs definitely make me think of a tall, dark, and handsome man in a trench coat with a lot of charm. That's not what Welles looks like, but the image that Canby presents originally. Welles admits to being a 'charlatan', which shows his confidence. He knows what he is and he isn't scared to say it. Also the idea that Welles used a railroad station that 'romantics cherish' makes his charm even more apparent. He's able to play around with the child, entertaining him with the key and coin. Welles doesn't seem like the kind of guy that parents would want their child around, but the child is still intrigued. That just seems like the kind of personality and image that Welles has judging by these first paragraphs. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:47:00 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337062 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337062 Both the Israeli and the Palestinian people believe their land is the promised land. No body can be right if both sides so strongly believe the same thing. The way that Sontag leaves equal voice to both sides shows exactly that. If the film were titled 'Promised Land', there would be assumption that she were speaking for one side or the other. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:58 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337060 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337060 Both Sontag and Reifenstahl's films chronicle war times. Though their films are different, the lack of commentary forces the viewer to really think about the impact of the images/film presented. Reifenstahl's lack of voiceover was powerful, simply, because the power of the following behind Hitler was enough. Since Reifenstahl's film was commissioned, she was showing one side of the war through her film, and did so affectively. Sontag's film is different in the way that she was not trying to instill some higher voice or reason into the viewer. Sontag gives equal power to both sides of the war. She doesn't take sides, but rather, silently, shows both sides via the images she captured. The power is given to the land itself, not her opinions of it. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:58 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337058 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30606?scroll_to=337058 As I discussed in my journal and you also commented on, it's important to make sure the reader is getting a sense of the film that's being the reviewed, not the opinions/life of the person reviewing. The first three paragraphs of this review could have been written by anyone. Instead of giving a subjective point of view, Dennis Lim is giving a somewhat factual, and useful overview of the filmmaker. Understanding where the filmmaker comes from helps the reader to understand the filmmaker and film on a very important level. This ties into 'Promised Lands' because Sontag, much like Lim, somewhat removes herself from the film. There is no 'voice of god' commentary; actually hardly any voice over at all. Sontag's film is almost strictly observational. The first three paragraphs discuss how she is not primarily a documentary filmmaker, which helps make sense of the way that she is able to remove herself from her own commentary, the way a true reviewer does. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:57 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30604?scroll_to=330816 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30604?scroll_to=330816 The marching scene starts with teenagers marching, and the expert says "youth... I forgot how impatient they can be." This means that the start of the march is because the youth of Plymouth want to see change. They are marching of their own free will, not the will that a dictator has instilled in them. They want to rebuild, and are carrying signs that say things like "a theater" and "a classroom," showing the things that THEY would like to see happen. The marching in Triumph of the Will is marching that is instilled in the people. They are marching for a different cause... for a dictator and the start of a terrible war. It's almost as if they are marching for destruction in Triumph of the Will, and reconstruction in The Way We Live. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:51 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30604?scroll_to=330813 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30604?scroll_to=330813 People sometimes go to the cinema to escape from their world for a little while. The reconstruction of a town in one's own country, though important, does not serve as any sort of escape or entertainment. In some cases it may have even brought the issue closer to them than had they not even gone to the cinema. This is a pretty serious film and is mostly for informative purposes, so somebody seeking out entertainment would not be enthralled when the chronicling of post-war reconstruction pops up on the screen. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:52 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30603?scroll_to=323350 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30603?scroll_to=323350 By contrasting the sounds of "evocative thunder of the 1000 horse power Rolls Royce Merlin engines and spitfires and Lancasters... tank factories, steel works, steam trains" with "the egalitarian free classical music concerts, and radio; Workers' Play Time" he creates a feeling of hardship but also happiness. Even through the intense setting of war, music can help lift some of that intensity. Music may give both the soldiers and people some kind of escape, showing how not all life during war has to be bad. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:42 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30602?scroll_to=321635 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30602?scroll_to=321635 Capra discussed how Triumph of the Will "fired no gun, dropped no bombs. But as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal". I think this idea was equally as terrifying as it was inspiring for Capra. I believe he borrowed, among technical things, this idea from Riefenstahl. His film is not riddled with blood and murder, but with the spirit of democracy. He tries to instill a positive, loyal feeling in the audience, just like Riefenstahl tried to instill a positive, obedient feeling in her audience. This is the main similarity I see in the films, but some visual things were similar as well. There are certainly a lot of shots in both films where the audience feels like they are in the crowd, in the car, right in the middle of the action. Both directors make a conscious effort to make sure the audience feels a part of the experience (which seems very important in propaganda filmmaking). They're not trying to create someone else's story for you to watch, they're trying to show you a story that you can be a part of. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:34 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30601?scroll_to=319898 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30601?scroll_to=319898 If the US was launching a Why We Fight propaganda campaign, I'm sure they said a lot of negative things about Hitler and Nazi Germany. I believe this is a case of actions speak louder than words - the US can say what they want about Germany but it is having the people really experience Hitler firsthand that will bring a real reaction. Screening Triumph of the Will puts the people of the US in Germany, experiencing Hitler as close to first hand as possible, which makes the US views of Hitler more genuine and easier for the people to stand behind. Without the power of the media during that time, the US citizens would have to rely solely on the word of the US government, which may not have elicited such a powerful response. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:31 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30600?scroll_to=315407 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30600?scroll_to=315407 If silent films didn't have music scores, which some don't, it would be easy to get bored. Only one sense, sight, would be stimulated. Having a music score not only will also give the audience something to listen to to keep their attention, but will make the film more interesting and emotional. People usually have emotional responses to music, therefore having the music playing would tap into that side of them. Also music can help make a scene more intense, sad, scary, happy - whatever the scene is trying to portray. With music the meaning of the scene or shot can be made much more apparent and enjoyable. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:21 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30240?scroll_to=313700 https://nowcomment.com/documents/30240?scroll_to=313700 The mere fact that Flaherty was so far up north shooting footage in the 1920s was impressive enough. Had the footage been shot today then there may be a higher standard for the staging of the scenes and choices made while shooting. However, the time and place that Flaherty chose to document almost feels revolutionary. He was documenting a real life style in a time when no one else was, and that's pretty hard to critique. Anything that is tried for the first time isn't going to be perfect, and "Nanook of the North" is a perfect example of that. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:46:16 -0500