Why I Hate School But Love Education||Spoken Word

This is the second Suli Breaks poem Sam sent me.

The poem discusses what is the value of mainstream schooling? Why is it that some of the most high profile and successful figures within the Western world openly admit to never having completed any form of higher learning?

In the poem Suli pays homage to Jefferson Bethke’s “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus”, a piece that received 22 million views in the space of a week, and  addresses a number of these issues in his offering “Why I Hate School, but Love Education”.

With scores of school leavers wanting to further their education with no guarantee of their dream job at the end of it, Suli believes we should ask ourselves whether qualifications still hold the same value now as they did in previous years?

Does success in the school system correlate to success in life? Or is the school system simply geared towards fact retention and regurgitation?

What is true education?

 

I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate||Spoken Word

Sam sent me links to some spoken word poetry by Suli Breaks and they are really worth having a look at.

In the first poem, “I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate” Suli talks about how he feels we have been made to think about how education and getting university degrees can give us opportunities to have a better chance in making our dream careers a reality. It also touches on how as individuals we are judged and tested by how well we perform on exams, but not all people perform well in exams so why are they made out to feel like they’re dumb? The inconsistencies of the education system are really peeled open to reveal a deep problem that needs to be addressed and how society’s needs have changed to make this even more apparent.

Suli asks why are we misled into thinking that education is the only way forward for successful means in our work and career lives? He believes we need to open our minds and educate ourselves that exam results aren’t the barometer of success and that we can’t let them decide our fate. We are in charge of our own destinies!

 

 

Sam Mendes and Conrad Hall talk about working with storyboards

 

Go here to find a site where Sam Mendes and director of photography Conrad L.Hall talk about the art of storyboarding and how they used it as a tool to work on American Beauty.

Retro versions – Alfred Hitchcock Movie Posters

 

Have a look at these re-imagined posters for some famous Hitchcock movies. The series is by graphic design student Oliver Callan. You can find more here.

What makes Hitchcock films great

Have a look at the Ultimate Hitch Cookbook, an animated book containing the recipes for Alfred Hitchcock’s classics. It’s made for Hitchcock enthusiasts and every other couch potato out there.

Hitchcock’s Cameo in Psycho

For all that asked!

Alfred Hitchcock

The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki is a good place to start if you want to find out more about Hitchcock and his film Psycho.

According to Den of Geek, Hitchcock came to define entire genres of cinema in a career that spanned over 50 years and over 50 films. His body of work – not to mention his rotund body itself – is both immense and iconic, full of tense thrillers, psycho-dramas and adventure flicks that were not only wildly popular at the time, but inspired both critical re-evaluation and whole new generations of filmmakers in ensuing years.

The French New Wave critics picked Hitchcock as a prime example for their auteur theory, a way of reading films that highlights the creative authority of the director over all other influences.

Den of Geek believe that Psycho is one of the top 10 Alfred Hitchcock films and say:

Psycho is an undisputed horror classic. Its impact is only slightly diminished by the fact that almost all of its iconic moments have been parodied, sampled and ripped off time and again for the last 50 years. Bernard Herrmann’s razor-sharp string arrangements, Anthony Perkins’ genuinely creepy turn as the shy, charming killer Norman Bates, and Janet Leigh’s grisly murder in the shower are all very familiar even if you’re not a horror aficionado, but it is essential viewing nonetheless.

Shot on a much smaller budget than Hitchcock’s previous films, and using the close-knit crew he’d groomed on his Alfred Hitchcock Presents television show, Psycho was a lean, effective, and inspired thriller that arguably gave birth to a genre of its own. And it paid off.

Made for a mere $800,000 – less than a quarter of the cost of its immediate predecessor North By Northwest – Psycho grossed upwards of $30 million over its extended run, and provided Universal with a property it has continued to milk to this day. But, more than anything, it served as Hitchcock’s most daring riposte to the Production Code, delivering an edgy, thrilling film that dealt with horrific matters intelligently and artfully. When twinned with similar films of the period, such as Otto Preminger’s Anatomy Of A Murder, it helped sound the death knell for Hollywood’s most conservative institution.

Read more: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/22201/the-top-10-alfred-hitchcock-movies#ixzz2QPrrLmyD

Psycho

We have finished watching Psycho now and it would be good if you sought out some background information on the film. One place to start is Filmsite which has a great review on the film with lots of background information. Here’s a little:

Alfred Hitchcock’s powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the “mother” of all modern horror suspense films – it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen ‘slashers’ with blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings (e.g., Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Motel Hell (1980), and DePalma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) – with another transvestite killer and shower scene). While this was Hitchcock’s first real horror film, he was mistakenly labeled as a horror film director ever since.

The nightmarish, disturbing film’s themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors.

Go here to read more.

The Auteur Theory: Intentional and Unintentional (Hitchcock, Eisenstein, and Scorsese)

Today we had a brief discussion of auteur theory before we began viewing Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’.

According to the Cinephile Fix, the auteur theory is possibly the most interesting theory of film for the simple reason that there is no true definition to fully explain the theory. It is a theory that concentrates or focuses on the styles and themes that are consistent in the films of an individual artist. Yet it is also a theory that explains that all the films of that individual artist or auteur is a basically a vision or view the auteur has on the world. It his vision and so the auteur usually uses the same themes to establish a point or message to the world. However, some auteurs are great artists without them knowing it, while others know of their themes and are not afraid to inject the audience with their message. Auteurs have a theme consistent in their work and that auteur doesn’t necessarily have to be the director, in fact it may be a director and an actor working together, each displaying his own vision.

Read more here.

Auteur of the Week: Sam Mendes

According to film110, the director is in a unique and irreplaceable position of personal artistic perspective, and that the film is, most importantly, a product of that perspective. The employment of the French word for “author” (auteur) associates the director with the individual output of other mediums (painting, literature, etc.), and rebels against the seeming “collectiveness” of the film studio. Francois Truffaut’s sensational assertion that “there are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors” importantly situates film as the characterized output of a creative individual, and responds to the economic and productive tensions in filmmaking.

In this article on Cinema Fanatic Sam Mendes is discussed as an auteur. Here’s an extract:

We often hear about an actor’s range and praise them for working in a variety of genres, etc. Rarely, however, do we hear the same praise for directors. Sam Mendes is one of those directors who never does the same thing twice. His debut film, 1999′s American Beauty was a slice of life family drama. It went on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. His second film, 2002′s Road To Perdition was a period crime drama. In 2005 he made the dark comedy/war drama Jarhead. Three years later was the 2008 literary adaptation/period drama Revolutionary Road, which he followed up less than six months later with the indie dramedy Away We Go. Each of these films is so different from the other, but what they all have in common is Mendes’ strong direction, resulting in a plethora of amazing, complicated, compelling performances.

Read the whole thing here.