Coen Brothers

I had never seen a Coen Brothers movie until now. I had no idea what to expect when I started watching those movies. Lets just say I was surprised in more than one way. In those 3 movies we watched during class. I had never laughed harder in some spots and in other spots in the same movie I was covering my eyes from the bloody scenes. I really enjoyed the Coen Brothers movie style. They have a very unique style. They are funny because they tell the truth a lot of people can relate to those scenes.
Coen Brothers do a great job writing their scripts. They have very clever plots and they surprise you. You never no what to expect when you are watching one of those movies. No one is safe from dying or killing other people.Personally i love unpredictable movies...but they are hard to come by. The Coen brothers do a great job of surprising the audience.
As we watched the movies during class i thought each movie we watch got less and less funny and more serious. In Raising Arizona it was a lot of comedy very little bloody icky scenes. You felt you were watching a comedy not a drama. In Fargo you weren't sure if you were watching a comedy or a thriller drama. There was some funny scenes but there were some very gory scenes, like with the wood chipper. And in No Country for Old Men. I don't think i laughed once. The Coen Brothers got very series with this movie. And at times way too realistic for my taste. When i see a movie i like to be in a different world...but i felt this movie was way to real.

Altman: the director

I really enjoyed the Robert Altman unit in art of film. I loved every movie. Altman has a very distinctive style and i really like it. There wasn't one movie that i didn't like. Yes I even liked Nashville!!! I think that I'm the only one who liked it! I loved that the movie had no plot. I thought that made it ubur intriguing. I thought he made the characters feel very real. Yes he was making fun of them but I thought we got a better understanding of the characters that way.

Altman is very good at giving a realistic feel to his movies. You feel like you know the characters and in a way part of the story. I felt that way in The Long Goodbye and The Player.

My favorite movie out of all of them had to of been The Player. I loved the plot, a movie in a movie. I thought it was very creative and i loved all the celebrity cameos in the movie.

Altman definitely has a distinctive style. In all three films he started the same way. He started with a long distance shot and slowly zoomed in to the story. Most of the time it was in mid conversation on one or more of the main characters. And to end his films he did the exact opposite. He pulls away from characters in mid conversation and then goes back into a long distance shot.

Third and final film...Finally!

This blog is by Shelby and Kate.

What Kate and I have learned through the past three films is that Soderbergh allows the actors to control the film while he just sits back and okays it. We also noticed that most of his films that the good films contain a lot of name brand actors and actresses. For instance he has used George Clooney (5times), Julia Roberts (4times), Don Cheadle(4times), Catherine Zeta Jones(2 times), and Matt Damon(4times). Soderbergh doesn't seem to control his films the actors does. And we think that is why when the acting is bad the directing is bad too. An example of this is his film Bubbles, it had no name actors and it had really terrible film techniques. It seemed like the film was like a documentary and grainy where as the Oceans movies were more professional and had a more old school Hollywood feel to them. More specifically the Oceans movie has really good music that allows you to feel like a spy and it makes you believe that the characters no more then you do where as in the film Bubble he refrained from using music. Music is a key role for making a film good. If you don't have good music then most of the time you don't have a good movie.

Throughout Oceans 11 they never use a gun which is unrealistic and a bit of an optical illusion because we know that it would never go down that way. A lot a "gangster films" use guns to intimidate people but in Oceans 11 they use their minds to intimidate people not their weapons. Which we really liked! Soderbergh also did an optical illusion with the twins, he puts one of the brothers in a monster truck and then there is what seems to be a miniature one next to it almost to imply a little person is in it. But we later find out that its just a remote control car. Yet again using the idea of optical illusions and also another comedic moment in the film. With an "optical illusion" there always seems to be a comedic moment just to tell you that this isn't possible so don't take it seriously. Another interesting dynamic that he uses is that he has one of the thieves played by Don Cheadle, watching the news and they have an exploding hotel on it, but if he looked behind him he could of just seen the same thing happen live. Once again this was a comedic optical illusion.

The Good German

The Good German is different from most of Steven Soderbergh's films. The Good German is about While in post-war Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference, an American military journalist (George Clooney) is drawn into a murder investigation which involves his former mistress (Cate Blanchett) and his driver (Tobey Macguire).

OMG it is in black and white!! I don't mind black and white back when they didn't have color but now why use it. When i first saw that it was black and white I was ready to shut the film off and pick another movie! But I decided that I will give it 30 minutes! And i am glad that i did! I really enjoyed this movie despite critics and most people not liking it! I thought Steven Soderbergh did a wonderful job of capturing the time period and the type of directing of the time period. It is very stylized, if the picture was just a little more fuzzy it could totally pass for being made in the 1940s. You can tell they shot a lot of the scenes on sound stages and back lots. Even though the style of the movie is right on I agree with a lot of critics when they said, there isn't enough character development. The characters I believe are 2 dimensional. You feel like they don't change through out the movie. They stay basically the same, which is really boring for a film. It may relate more to real life, but it doesn't work well for a movie.
I found as i was watching the movie there was a lot of rapid cuts and transitions for dialogue. Which reminded of a lot of old movies of time period. Also there were a lot of medium shots that focused in on characters. When there was dramatic moment Soderbergh would zoom in on the characters reactions.
A major theme in the movie is guilt. No one in this film is completely innocent. Everyone does something bad to get what they want. But the results from this is that everyone feels guilty or they are guilty. Each character feels some type of guilt.
A quote i really enjoyed was said by George Clooney,"ah yes the good old days...when you could tell the bad guy was the one shooting at you!" I thought that was a really good point. Bad guys have become way more complicated. They aren't as simple as they use to be.

In my opinion Steven Soderbergh a lot of times changes his own style to fit the film. The movie is his style. Not his style is the movie. I don't know if you understand what i am saying. But i will try to explain it. A lot of directors have a very distinctive style like Tim Burton. Just by looking at the movie you know that it is a Burton film his style is the movie. But if you look at a Steven Soderbergh's films you can't tell that it is his movie. He becomes part of the movie. I feel he tries to tell that story and he doesn't want to add his own personal flair to it. He becomes part of the film and the movie turns into his style. Does that make any sense?!?!?!
I don't know that is just an opinion. I'm i completely wrong? Or I'm i right?What are your thoughts on that concept?