Decisions decisions.

As Sir for saw, after talking to Ms Ward and trawling the internet and library for books I found that Asian cinema is the most prominent in terms of Cult cinema. So as Sir predicted I have narrowed my hypothesis right down to;

'The influence of Asian cult films on world cinema.'

Well something to that effect. Also I am already aware of some films I will be looking at in relation to this topic.

For a start I have the original Godzilla and anime sensations Perfect Blue and Akira and any teachers nightmare(or dream depending on the teacher) Battle Royale.

I already have a overview of how I would like to write it in my head but other the week I will develop it more.

Any way, this isn't a long post like normal because im sorta strapped for time at the moment as tomorrow I take my leave for the sheep haven that is Wales.


So see you in a week with further ideas and posts!

- Alex x

Cult Films.

This bring me back a few months. I remember like it was a few months ago, doing my media coursework on magazines with the almighty 'Alt*' magazine. I had chosen my article to be on cult films. Months later and here i am again in familiar-ish territory trying to pull off the same feat again. But this time i am looking at international cult films opposed to familiar 'commercialised' (if you can call a cult film, commercialised) cult films such as Fight club and Reservoir Dogs and trying my hand at the foreign language world cinema view on cult films.

From Quintin Tarantino to Luc Besson, the leafy suburbs of Donnie Darko to the dystopian neo-Tokyo of Akira and from Tyler Durden to Konstantin Khabensky.

But before i get into more detail on the films in which i am researching into, which i have compiled a LONG list of to sift through, i thought that as i seemed to have defined World Cinema it is probably for the best that i now try to define 'Cult Cinema'.

In a previous cult film article i described it as;

"The word cult refers to a social group who all follow the same ideologies of something out side of the mainstream and which deviates from the norm. Slap the word film on to the end of it and you get ‘cult film’. Cult films are particularly known to of failed commercially at the cinemas (bar a few exceptions such as Tarantino’s ‘Pulp fiction’) and out side of their relatively small fan bases. These fan bases over time become obsessive and slightly obscure as they transcend into the depths of fandom, hence why they are compared to ‘cults’. Simple. Cult Films can be identified thanks to the conventions with in them; they are usually eccentric, obscure, random and go against the traditional narratives found in the more generic genres such as action and drama. These are the ‘alternatives’ of cinema in a way as they at times can be called controversial as they turn their backs on the ‘Hollywood cinema’ that we all know and love and instead tell magnificent stories and highlight innovative exotic topics that no other film would dare touch upon."

I feel that this is a pretty solid basis of what a cult film is. Although upon reading it, it could be possible to label ALL of international cinema as 'cult' films as they as stated, have loyal solid fan bases, the films have flopped commercially, they do not go against the normal genres of the western world, and they are the 'alternatives' for all those who frown upon 'Hollywood cinema'. Also international films tend not to focus on the commerciality of westernised films such as the ever original Hollywood blockbuster film factory.

Pretty straight forward right. Im not going to write about every international film ever, cos i quite frankly just don't have the time, instead im going to choose a select few from a select few countries and analyse the crap outa them. These films will be chosen for many reasons such as their influence and their impact on other cinema. If thats okay. Which i damn well hope it is.


I will post a list of said films up in a later post.


Also to further my research beyond the interwebs i have joined ilford library \o/ and i have taken out a very useful book called 'The cinema of Japan and Korea' which as the name entails focuses on mainly Asian cinema. I will use this book to gather work on the 3 Japanese films i shall be researching. I will search for more international cinema books upon my next visit.

Until the next time


-Alex x

Sigh.

As the title entails. Sigh...

Got to my first lesson of critical research with Mr White told him about my chosen topic of study. I told him of my comic book hypothesis and what topic i was going to be doing. When all of a sudden i was back to square one.

We meet again...

Sir had informed me that my topic of choice and what i had already done and wanted to look at such as blockbuster and Marvel etc were in layman's terms. Wrong. This was due to the Hollywood and American influences that would be involved in my project. Something that apparently is NOT World Cinema. This sparked a discussion on what exactly 'World Cinema' actually is? As far as i thought it was any cinema from all around the world, i.e. English, American, French etc etc. Sit said, this was wrong how ever and asked us to look it up.

To wiki i went!

They described it as;

"World cinema is a term used primarily in English language speaking countries to refer to the films and film industries of non-English speaking countries. It is therefore often used interchangeably with the term Foreign film. However, both World cinema and Foreign film could be taken to refer to the films of all countries other than one's own, regardless of native language."

And the way i saw it was, 'Well even American films are to be deemed as foreign to Spanish people so what the hell'.

And:

"In other English speaking countries, it would be extremely unlikely to class films made in the U.S. as foreign films, or belonging to World cinema, as American films are reasonably dominant in all English-language markets."

Damn you wiki, you've failed me :(

Also as wiki lists World Cinema as;

"
World cinema

• African cinema
• Asian cinema
• East Asian cinema
• South Asian cinema
• Southeast Asian cinema
• West Asian cinema
• European cinema
• Latin American cinema
• North American cinema
• Oceanian cinema

"
It just confused me more as it says North American it only confused me further. So i found the examiners report for World Cinema last year and to my morosity (i should SO copyright that word) it read that people would lose marks for getting too wound up in Hollywood or more Western films ignoring other films such as Japanese and German etc etc.
The source of my anguish.

So basically i rang OCR to ask if they could help and provide some Deus Ex Machina on this unsatisfactory situation only to be provided with in my words; "The dude that would usually answer this is on holiday". I hope hes having fun... ¬.¬

So i have basically taken it upon my self and deducted that World Cinema is everything that doesn't originate from England and or America. World Cinema seems to have an aura around it more focused on the artistic values and interpretations with more substance to it, opposed to the commercialised superficial block busters that seep from America. So as i was saying back to square numero. It bad enough trying to define my exteremly vague area of work let alone define a topic with in it. Which is why all i am most probably changing my comic book related hypothesis. I came up with another one in relation to this absurd revelation of how 'Japanese anime and manga affects films' or something to that extent, but as the report says; "Other areas of study were Japanese cinema: Manga/Anime and Horror." And i don't want to be just another one of those guys who would fade into obscurity along with all the other i-did-anime-and-manga guys. So i have basically abandoned my comic book origins, yup that does mean my post on Marvel is redundant now. Merely a wall of word vomit on my Mario themed viral.

So i went to ask Madam, [warning: Exaggeration] 'What the hell am i going to do?!!?!?!'
she was as dumb founded as me and we agreed that to avoid the examiner looking at it stamping it with a novelty sized stamp reading 'EPIC FAIL'.

So i have chosen to change it to Cult Status within World Cinema. In other words what are the most famous/inspiring/wonderful/...good cult films with in different areas of World Cinema and why? As well as how have they influenced other films... maybe even western ones. If i dare touch on that.

So yeah, i appreciate Sir's bluntness and nice way of saying 'wrong' as it is best to identify problems such as this one early on. Also it gives me more to write about in question 1 on the exam.

So every metaphorical cloud has a metaphorical silver lining.

- Alex x

Marvelous.

The term comic book is almost synonymous with a certain company called 'Marvel'. Marvel a company so huge searching for it on wikipedia dishes out several possible results;

"

• Marvel Entertainment, a character-based entertainment and licensing company based in the United States of America
  • Marvel Comics, a comic book publisher owned by Marvel Entertainment
  • Marvel Productions
  • Marvel Animation
  • Marvel Studios, the film division of Marvel Entertainment

"

Thats not even the half of it seriously.

What with my research and topic on comic books and their effect on world cinema i thought i would research a bit into the organisation known as Marvel and there break into world cinema. Now i know that Marvel are not the only comic book company which has films to its name as well but none of the other companies such as Dark Horse or DC are going to do something very very special in the coming years that will have fanboys creaming their pants for a while...

Its obvious to everyone that the beginning of the 21st century saw a massive boom of comic book films. As Marvel Studios, a sub-division of the Marvel Entertainment company was formed in the late 90s and headed by Avi Arad. This sudden burst on to the silver screen had come at a profound time for Marvel as in the late eighties up to the early nineties some would say that Marvel had lost its way as they had suffered some severe financial pit falls and abundantly increased their amount of titles from around 40 to 140, their sales were plummeting. Marvel's former boss Ronald O. Perelman would only prove to cause more problems as he made more and more financial moves by implementing failing ideas such as trading cards, sticker collections and collectibles causing major problems for the company already teetering on the edge of total financial melt down and even resulting in eventual bankruptcy.

But enter Avi Arad who swung in like some hyped up super hero and rejigged everything by taking control of Marvel Studios with co-company Toy Biz. With the release of Batman films through the 90s from Marvels rival leading comic company DC comics, Avi put the wheels in motion to convert Marvels hottest properties, its characters into film by latching onto Marvels then wasted licensing potential by setting up films such as Spider-Man and Hulk with distributors such as Universal and New Line Cinema. Following the success of Marvel Studios first major motion picture Blade in 1998 which saw takings of over 130 million dollars world wide and studios began to churn out more and more comic book titles with 18 films since Blade burst onto our screens in 1998. But these films were made by companies that hadn't any thing to do with Marvel and thus rendered with some of them being total flops financially, such as Ang Lee's original Hulk or just plain terrible, point in case;

At least being blind meant he didn't have to see such a terrible film

But recently Marvel have decided that they will start to produce and distribute their own films in the years to come with Paramount Pictures as they regain the rights to their characters. A bold move and a very highly lucrative one that paid off very well with their first release of Iron Man in 2008 which had an opening weekend of over 100 million dollars world wide, damn. Not only that but has gathered mainly positive reviews! Some thing quite uncommon of Marvel films of late what with Fantastic Four 2, ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3. But what may be one of the best things about Iron Man could be the short scene after the credits in which Samuel L. Jackson comes into the screen announces himself as Nick Fury and informs Tony Stark of the 'Avengers Initiative'. This is followed closely by Marvel's second self produced film, a reboot similar to that of DC's Batman Begins directed by Edward Norton him self of The Incredible hulk, a film that is laden not only with intense action, Liv Tyler in a wet shirt but also many references to World War 2 and a super soldier serum, which all act as indirect references to another of Marvel's upcoming films, that of Captain America. The third member of The Avengers reference in film so far.

The Avengers, widely known as one of comics greatest show case of super heroes consisting of Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and Thor and Ant-Man. The latter 2 films are also soon to be in production which will finalise The Avenger's singular character films before getting them all together in the on screen debut of Earths mightiest Heroes, The Avengers which is said to be released in 2011.

"And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth's mightiest heroes and heroines found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, the Avengers were born — to fight the foes no single super hero could withstand! Through the years, their roster has prospered, changing many times, but their glory has never been denied! Heed the call, then — for now, the Avengers Assemble!" — Prologue from The Avengers


If this film isn't awesome,there is no hope for any of us. Ever.

Marvel are looking to monopolise the comic book film market in the future, and if the recent success of their current films shows any thing, maybe even world cinema as a whole. The pending films will most definitely dominate our summer block busters for the years to come. And thats JUST from Marvel.

Ill be posting more about different comic book industries from different sections of the world etc, but i felt that this post at the moment was appropriate what with Iron Man and Hulk coming out within a month of each other and causing such a kerfuffel. There are so many comic book films out there, some of which you wouldn't even know originated on the glorious technicolour pages of a 1 dollar 25 magazine. and i hope to inform you more of these soon ;)

-Alex x

Newww Toooopiccccc

So year 12 is over. Well technically any way in that we've finished all out year 12 courses and exams. Everyone returned to school gayly anticipating a month and a half of coasting their way to the summer holidays to the upbeat sound of The Beach Boys like some typical American high school film. But our teachers have other ideas.

First lesson back off media and the gauntlet has already been thrown down. We are know knee deep in a new topic of study that involves critical research and an abundance of independent learning. We were given a list of options from our teacher with things regarding the media such as 'crime in the media', 'women in film' and 'sport in the media' and other such items. Immediately i noticed the 'crime in the media' section and the nerdy neurones in my brain connected that with my previous knowledge of video games and how video games are portrayed in the media for being a catalyst of violent related violence. Bingo i thought. 15 minutes into year 13 and i already know what im doing in the exam. I mean, hell, i had already done a entry into this matter here.


But all was not to run as smoothly as something really smooth...

I told madam my idea and received a resounding, 'hmmmmm, mehhhh'. I had told her that i would implement many different things into my hypothesis that "Violent games are said to cause violent crimes". Things such as the controversy surrounding the recent release of uber game GTA4, the recent published Byron report on video games and the story of a teen on teen murder that was apparently inspired by 'Manhunt'. But i was informed that this would be hard to do as most of the games are American developed and the Byron report was more to the psychological side of things opposed to the media side of things.

So there i sat, in dismay. My idea shot down in an instant. So i was thinking of more and more ideas Becky had nabbed the one on how youth culture is portrayed in the media, so i spoke to Josh and how he was doing world cinema. Then all of a sudden like a 9 iron to the head i was struck with an idea. I had noted how a plethora of films being released over the next few years are comic book films so i pieced lots of different things in my head and came upon a new hypothesis of "To what extent are comic book films affecting world cinema". I had decided that the area of media in which i was studying would be 'world cinema'. I have chosen this area of study as i felt like i wanted to detach my self from the video game side of the media to try to broaden my horizons, also i felt that it goes hand in hand with my film studies course. I chose comic books because i have a keen interest in them and how they are converted to film especially. I want to investigate the effects that all types of comic books from all over the world have on the world cinema, in particular the block buster.

In terms of primary research i would watch certain comic book films of late and early origin and read comic books and graphic novels. For secondary research i would take into account other peoples views on this such as film reviews and box office taking etc etc. 

I felt that this had a wide scope as i could write about comics from all over the world such as Japan, America and the UK and the different types of comic book styles and where they originate from such as Manga, Anime, Graphic Novels and comics. Then how they are being constantly converted to film.

So there you go.

Super hero films, only 'popcorn movies'?

I feel i already have a pretty sound knowledge on a lot of comic book films already out and as this summer is set to be riddled with them it will allow me to be constantly updating with reviews and trivia on them.

Also, i may try to continue to add in NMT video game related stuff as well from time to time.

So far things have been going well in that i have seen an abundance of comic book films and have my own views on them and know many other peoples views on them already. And as more comic books/films come out it will allow me to further my research.

Lets hope it carries on going well hay =]

-Alex x

Oh Hai!

Its, been a while. But im back bb. But not with a vengeance... with a desire to write about the games industry!
Over the course of my time off between my last gruelling psychology exam and my media exam tomorrow i have had some time to think and ponder the state in which the gaming world lies. It has come to my knowledge that my blog is basically 20 or so posts about how awesome it all is. As undeniable as that is, i think that its time for a change, i think i should write about some of gamings, down sides. Down sides that have only really come about thanks to the introduction of more and more new media.

Remember what Sir said, the M in media, is for moneyyyyy! Everyone in the industry is out for what they can get, which is moneyyyy! And to do this they have utilised many many ways in which to get this out of us. And i just thought id run down a few ways, ill most probably get a tad distracted on the way, but you know.

Above: Money

As games are now pretty much always utilising the online facilities available for it a few games have started the selling additional features for the game for an additional charge. Games such as Call of Duty and Resistance sell new map packs for their consumers for a tad more cash. Sure thats fine, if you buy them you get a new map and a bit more added on to the game, but if you don't, no harm done.

Until now *dramatic music*, Battlefield: Bad Company, the latest in very popular series of war games that specialise in lots of people killing each other online, have a great idea in that people can buy guns in the game with real life money, essentially adding an instant advantage to who ever wants to shell out for say, a new shotgun (pun intended). Skill, schmill. This is at the height of realism, money = power dammit! Capitalism ftw!

But these guns are also already on the disc, yes, the one you paid for, fully. Inevitably this has caused confusion and outrage. You own this game, its yours, just you can't use certain things on it. Think of it as... buying a house, but the estate agent keeps the keys to the spare room until you pay him a bit more...

Numero... two. World Of Warcraft is a massively popular mmorpg that ive written about before. The company behind this game is Blizzard and in a rather cold move (ahaha again, intented!) in a method to stop its 9 million plus subscribers from cheating they have programmed their servers so that the online games download a client worm thing to scan your computer and ensure your not using a cheating programme. That seems like an awful lot of effort to stop what could be one of the worlds most pathetic past times, cheating at online games.

Any way, heres something that this scanner thing does;

"... COMMUNICATE INFORMATION BACK TO BLIZZARD, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION YOUR ACCOUNT NAME, DETAILS ABOUT THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM DETECTED, AND THE TIME AND DATE THE UNAUTHORIZED THIRD PARTY PROGRAM WAS DETECTED; AND/OR (b) EXERCISE ANY OR ALL OF ITS RIGHTS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE TO THE USER ..."

The scanner will scan (duh) your computer in search for unauthorised programmes and will report back to Blizzard what these programmes are, but what does it consider unauthorised? Credit card numbers, addresses, chat logs? Right, although Blizzard hasn't actually done anything to this equivalent (that we know about ¬__¬) this is exactly the type of thing that is giving other NMT facilities such as social networking like facebook a bad rep, ala BBC.
Also whats there to stop the scanner being altered? Hmmmm you'll need a scanner to find a scanner.

With great new technlogy comes great new graphical improvements which comes with great new scams. Advertisements come preloaded with pre-rendered (in normal people terms, awesome graphics) which make the game look as dazzling as the second coming of christ. But there are a few games that try to sneak pre-rendered sequences into their advertising and unveiling of games. The guilty include well known games such as Killzone 2 which at an E3 show displayed a sequences with amazing visuals boasted to be in game, only to find out that they were pre-rendered for that one segment. Deceit indeed. But that games not out yet.

Everyone knows about Call of Duty 4, but before that according to the laws of continuity was Call of duty 2 which was advertised like thisss;



Needless to say people were flabbergasted at the thought of playing a game that looks that orgasmic. Cutscenes are usually shown for advertisements and a disclaimer usually comes up saying 'Not in-game footage' but this pre-rendered sequence was created especially for advertisements and the adverts were even pulled by the Advertising Standards Authority forcing Activision to remove the adverts from British TV before more people succumbed to the prettiness.

Finally, well for now comes the segment of the article i have been meaning to write about for a long time, and that is the state of games reviewing. any clued up gamer should of heard about Kane & Lynch: Dead Men a game that came out to much hype only to fall at the first few hurdles in that it was shit. GameSpot a trusted reviewing site reviews many of the latest game and boasts an impressive database of information on the gaming world. How ever on November the 13th of 2007 (sadly it wasn't a friday, sigh) a review was posted by senior GameSpot writer Jeff Gerstmann in which he gave the game a 'meh' inducing 6.0.

Evidence!

The good news was it was a pretty solid review the bad news is the games publishers had recently bought an abundance of advertising space around the site.... awkwarddddd. Imagine slagigng some one off only to find there standing right behind you. And poor ol' Jeff was fired.

Jeff vs. The Man

To kick him while he was down it was found that Jeff's score of 6.0 was considerably higher than that of the users aggregated review, so he even gave it a generous review and paid the price. so much for journalistic integrity.

The message from Gamespot's management was clear: a good review is part of what the advertiser pays for. Jeff being fired sent this message to every reviewer on the site.

So there you have it, a reviewer paying the price for honesty.

But not only did GameSpot lose Jeff, they also lost the trust from many many visitors [including myself]. People would rethink whether or not to trust the internet.

Which nicely brings me on to my next point. Everyone who is everyone has heard of GTA hell i even hyped it up majorly in my last post. GTA has perfect score across the board and a metacritic score of 98% out of 56 reviews. But many reviewers have boasted how GTA4 is in fact not worth a perfect 10 and the reason why it has obtained many perfect scores is similar to that of the GameSpot controversy. Companies want new game exclusive reviews and developers and games companies want perfect reviews. I think you can see where im going with this. So, in turn for a new exclusive review which would generate lots of visitors to their site or get lots of people to buy their magazine and more money/popularity/traffic the game makers expect a certain type of review, a damn good one. Considering the metacritic score for GTA4 is only 8.1 from a users perspective it leaves all that remains to be rather suspect.

Game sites such as GameDaily gave the score a perfect 10 but recently published a post entitled; "Why We Stopped Playing GTA4". Highlighting the games flaws, surely a 10/10 game means its perfect and in turn should mean, it has no flaws?

For me i find it increasingly harder to trust game reviews from the web, i now only trust one man, and his name, is Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

Warning: here be strong language.

Described as "hilariously cutting ... first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory". Gamers love it and developers fear it, how things should be.

This post was incredibly inspired by the amazingly amazing website Cracked! Go here! Your boredom shall be decimated!

Any way, thats pretty much all i wanted to write about for like a while, Cracked beat me to it but also provided alot more detail for this post in general such as the Blizzard bit. Thats not to say there haven't been over developments in the gaming world, such as;

Playstation 3 is looking to get a new firmware upgrade 4.20. This is no ordinary stability increasing firm ware, this firm ware has... IN GAME XMB!!! Oh yeah, the gamers have moaned and Playstation have delivered. Also coming is trophy support, so like Xbox achievements. Some are even hoping for a surprise release of Playstation Home.
Lets bloody well hope so.

I just wanted an excuse to use that face really

Also there has been talk of motion controllers for the PS3 and the 360 similar to that of the wii. At the moment these are just rumours circling the web, but hey! so was the hundreds of 'Bioshock is coming to the ps3!' rumours and look how that turned out. It is!

Exclusivity, pffft.


- Alex x