Like many ambitious, provocative films, "15 Minutes" is a bit of a mess. Both audacious and unwieldy, exciting and excessive, this dark thriller is too long, too violent and not always convincing. But at the same time, there's no denying that it's onto something, that its savage indictment of the nexus involving media, crime and a voracious public is a cinematic statement difficult to ignore.
For despite its traditional cops-and-killers format, "15 Minutes" (its title taken from Andy Warhol's prediction of how long everyone in the future can expect to be famous) is a polemical, apocalyptic film. Writer-director John Herzfeld is furious at the "if it bleeds, it leads" nature of our TV news culture, at the intertwined lusts for fame and gore that rule a society where publicity is more important than reality, everyone plays the victim, and everything is for sale.
Though its anger is a force to be reckoned with, "15 Minutes" finds some space to be funny, albeit in a bleak way, and even provides unexpected moments of romance. Herzfeld, whose debut film was the equally impudent if less impressive "2 Days in the Valley," has utilized an appropriately off-center sensibility for his story, taking the strands of crime melodrama and twisting them to fit his particular purposes.
A key factor in keeping "15 Minutes" involving is its look. Working with inventive French cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier ("Les Amants du Pont-Neuf," "The Cradle Will Rock," "Nurse Betty") and editor Steven Cohen, Herzfeld is determined to keep things kinetic and visually interesting. He even makes vivid use of footage shot on a video camera by one of the actors while in character.
In general outline a policier about two of the good guys chasing a pair of villains, "15 Minutes" utilizes marquee names Robert De Niro and Edward Burns for its investigators, but generates more interest with the two lesser-known actors who get to create all the havoc.
Emil Slovak (Karel Roden) and Oleg Razgul (Oleg Taktarov) are exceptionally good as the Eastern European version of those criminal odd couples movies delight in spawning. While Emil is shrewd and ruthless, Oleg is childlike, dreamy and obsessed with being a filmmaker. "I am here for movies," he tells a baffled New York immigration official, adding by way of explanation, "I saw 'It's a Wonderful Life.' "
Actually, Emil and Oleg are here to get the money owed them from an earlier criminal action.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
The retelling of his life mostly took place in the Los Angeles county; Boxer’s hometown but also in different jails and correction facilities around California. Events such as armed robberies, grand theft, and petty theft were crimes Enriquez was performing all of throughout city Los Angeles, as well as Orange County.. All were reasons that landed him behind bars. At the early age of 18, right when he became a man; Boxer was sent to Soledad Penitentiary in Northern California for 9 years. Reason was because of an Armed Robbery. A few years later, he was transferred to the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California and then to Folsom Prison. While there, Boxer official...
As a hardworking college student living (without a TV) in this impenetrable Gothic galaxy, I am usually quite oblivious to popular culture. I was not even aware of the barrage of hype surrounding the release of Natural Born Killers. My attention was directed belatedly to the movie by a letter from a friend in which she lamented the present state of humanity - or lack thereof. And yet, I still stayed away from the movie for over a month despite my knowledge that it would be at the very least thought-provoking. I've learned that I have not been desensitized to images of violence, perhaps because of my earlier-mentioned insulation from pop culture. However, I was intent on listening to what Oliver Stone had to say. So last night I spent the entire 100+ minutes of the film curled in my seat, my head in my hands.
Both stories transpire in a brief period of time. The events in the ‘Story of an Hour” develop in just one hour from beginning to end. Mrs. Mal...
Sapolsky, Barry S., and Fred Molitor. Sex and Violence in Slasher Films. Mass Media and
In Natural Born Killers Oliver Stone backs up the assumptions that violence in the media such as music videos, movies, cartoons, and newspapers are cause the violence in society today. To portray his beliefs he uses cinematic techniques such as camera angles, shadows, lighting, and sound. And maybe most importantly characters the audience can identify with. The story line follows two serial killers in love named Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), who go on a shooting spree throughout the country. The couple is a product of all ‘bad’ influences of society. Mallory was a child that watched too much te...
As violence continues to rise the understanding behind the rise is still not exceptionally clear. It stems from the fact that violence has always been a part of our society(Noguera, 1994). While some forms of violence are frowned upon, others are glorified in the media. Violence in the media is huge entertainment for today’s society. The one fact that has become clear is that violen...
Leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells. It begins in the bone marrow, the soft tissue inside the bones. Within the bone marrow is where white blood cells are created, that help fight off bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms within the body that cause infections. The disease develops to when the white blood cells are being produced out of control. The cells that are being produced do not work properly as they should, they grow faster than a normal cell would and don’t know when to stop growing. Overtime, if not treated properly, the white blood cells will over crowd blood cells, creating a serious problem such as anemia, bleeding and infection. Leukemia cells can spread to the lymph nodes and other organs in the body causing swelling and pain.
What is Leukemia? Leukemia is a cancer in blood forming cells that are in early stages of development. Most of the time the white blood cells, but some types of leukemia start in other types of blood cells. Blood cells are form in bone marrow. Any of these cells can turn into a leukemia cell, once this happens the cell does not mature like it should. The cell may start to produce rapidly and the mutated cells probably won’t go through apoptosis like they should. These cells build up in the bone marrow and crowd out the healthy cells. Typically, leukemia cells get into the blood stream rather quickly. From the blood stream they can spread to places like lymph nodes, spleen, liver, central nervous system or other organs where the leukemia cells can cause those other cells to function irregularly.
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Violence, along with pornography, is one of the largest topics of the censorship debate, as well as the effect of exposure to violence. “Until age nineteen, children and teens exposed to media violence are more likely to view violence as a normal behavior and to become criminals themselves,” says New Republic editor Gregg Easterbrook. People, mostly children, who are still in the formative stages of their lives will be much more influenced by maliciously aligned media than those who are older, and have already established their core values and beliefs. However, it has also been shown that the acts of violence and murder frequently shown in movies (and seemingly replicated by some few children) have also occurred in children before the invention of television, or film - such as in the Leopold-Loeb “Perfect Crime” murder case of 1924, which was in fact later adapted into its own violent media five years later (Easterbrook 1). In the Leopold-Loeb murder case, Nathan Le...
When discussing violence in television and how it relates to society, there may be no better show than Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad is notorious for its violence, whether mental or physical, and several other instances of illegal crime. Our group decided it would be necessary to analyze the show and find out how it could affecting society with its mischief and violence. We chose the first four episodes of the entire show to showcase how quickly viewers of all ages are thrown into the violence of Breaking Bad. With this approach, the viewer is able to get a grasp on just how violent this show may become, and one may also get a glimpse on the nature of the show itself. The first four episodes are important to a show because it sets the tone for the rest of the series. Breaking Bad is one of the most popular shows in American
“Each year in the United States alone, nearly 32,000 adults and more than 2,000 children develop leukemia, a cancer of the blood cells”. Acute and chronic leukemia are the two kinds of the disease. Acute leukemia developments much more rapidly, chronic leukemia advances gradually, and the immune system is damaged slower. (Panno 36). Leukemia is one of many systemic diseases. Each disease affects the body differently. Leukemia affects the immune system, which affects the body by "feeling extremely sick, complaining of recurrent infections, bleeding, bruising, bone tenderness, fever, chills, sweats, weakness, fatigue, headaches, or swelling in the neck, or armpits”. Otherwise, an individual might have not any indications entirely and the disease might be discovered accidental from a checkup blood examination. When finding acute leukemia typically comes to instant hospitalization. Since leukemia victims require numerous transfusions of blood, patients have to be treated at medical establishments. Acute leukemia is treated by chemotherapy, which contains two stages: an initiation stage, where an individual is forcefully treated with a mixture of strong medications to kill the leukemic cells entirely, and a consolidation stage, using the similar or dissimilar medications, and starts as soon as the illness has gone into remission (Mayfield 1). The normal action for leukemia contains radiation and chemotherapy, which destroys the ca...
Leukemia is cancerous disease that starts in blood-forming tissue such as the bone marrow and causes large numbers of blood cells to be produced and enter the blood-stream (National Cancer Institute, 2008, para. 1). It is one of many complicated cancer diseases that affect all ages and have very negative outcomes if not treated properly, and on time. Within the disease are several different types that affect according to how quickly the disease develops and attacks the body. It could be classified as chronic leukemia, which has a slow progress of getting worse or acute leukemia which usually gets worse quickly. The types of leukemia also can be grouped based on the white blood cell that is affected (National Cancer Institute , 2008, p. 1). The disease could either start forming in lymphoid cells or myeloid cells. When the disease forms in lymphoid cells it is called lymphoid, lymphocytic or lymphoblastic leukemia. The disease affected by the myeloid cells is called myeloid, myelogenous or myeloblastic leukemia.
Key Elements:The story of an hour · Plot: Standard plot. A woman who receive the notice of her husband's death, and when she begins to felt freedom her husband appear again and she can't accept it and fall died. · Characterization: Few characters a. Mrs. Mallard or Louise: Mallard's wife. Was afflicted with hearth trouble.