King’s Row was based on the 1940 novel of the same name, which was written by Harry Bellamann. The movie itself was filmed in 1942 and focuses on the lives of five young children turned adult: Parris, Drake, Cassie, Randy and Louise, from King’s Row, a small town in the Midwest. As a melodrama, music plays a prominent role in understanding the director’s intentions and is one of the predominant ways the creators hoped to appeal to the viewers’ emotions. Due to the fact that King’s Row was derived from a novel, it quickly generated a fan-base confirming its popularity amongst viewers when it first hit the theaters; however, it received a lot of negative reviews because of how different it was from Bellamann’s version. The novel was very graphic in terms of sexuality, including homosexual references and multiple cases of incest, therefore, exploring the emotional effects on the victims and their peers. Many critics noted that this movie suffered as a direct result of the Production Act because of the enforced censorship, director Sam Wood, was forced to eliminate, downplay, or completely change parts of the movie regardless of their significance to the overall plot.
The promotional posters and theatrical trailers helped generate anticipation and excitement for the movie leading up to its release as the trailer opened with a large, bold, scrolling “The Outstanding Book of the Year becomes the Most Talked about Movie in the Nation” where major words that could help fill in the mood are italicized, while dramatic scenes, such as Cassie running to Parris or simply watching Cassie behave frantically while at home. “Secrets” is a concept that was exploited on Kings Row posters; this represents how essential they were to both the plot ...
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...cago Tribune wrote a piece about the movie in July of 1942 and quickly agreed with the Times’ Crowther in regards to the movie. She refers to Kings Row as an “uninspiring [and] dreary melodrama in two parts” which connotes dissatisfaction and she goes on to, like Crowther, critiquing the acting. Kings Row was filled with blockbuster actors and actresses, yet the critics believed they were not even able to elevate the movie because of how much had been transformed due to the Production Code. In terms of the movie specifically, Woods and Casey Robinson, the screenwriter, was forced to eliminate the homosexuality hints, incest references, and physical abuse. These forms of domestic trauma were all key elements that helped to build the foundation in the novel, and their absence arguably changed the entire plot of the movie. However, all these omissions were a result of
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.
1. In the book Good Kings Bad Kings, Susan Nusbaum, the author, shows the lives of many different characters that live and interact with each other within a center for disabilities. She does this by narrating the story through the perspectives of both the workers and the people living within the center. Although this book is a work of fiction there is a sense of realism due to the fact the Nusbaum has been living with a disability since she was 24 and has the unique perspective of both an abled bodied person and a person with a disability. Throughout the book Nusbaum does a good job at showing the problems that many people with disabilities face on a day to day basis while also focusing on the way that society perceives and interacts with them.
Cannery Row is densely populated with a group of characters, in the narrative sense of the word and in terms of personalities. There is Dora, an imposing figure of a woman who runs a successful brothel, Henri, the non-French Frenchman, Lee Chong the shrewd but kind-hearted grocer, Doc the scientist, Mack, who leads a small group of men and is loved by the people of Cannery Row, and a host of other fascinating people who make Cannery Row so compelling. It may not seem obvious when reading John Steinbeck’s novel “Cannery Row,” but the main point or lesson in the novel is the importance of respect and Steinbeck uses his characters to tell this story about
While reading the fiction book, Good Kings Bad Kings I realized that there was a strong connection between what actually happened back in history to those with mental and physical disabilities. Even though the book was wrote to entertain, it also had me thinking about history. For example, while reading through the book I would relate back to some of the readings we read in class. These readings were “An Institutional History of Disability” and "Disability and Justification of Inequality in American History". Some of the key things that, also, stood out to me were the way the youth were treated, how workers were treated, how ableism was presented, and why people were put in these facilities.
What the author is doing is letting the reader foreshadow. A technique which creates suspense, a vital element in any action story. The author then explained what was being hinted at;
Eden Robinson’s short story “Terminal Avenue” presents readers with the dystopian near-future of Canada where Indigenous people are subjugated and placed under heavy surveillance. The story’s narrator, Wil, is a young Aboriginal man who struggles with his own inner-turmoil after the suicide of his father and his brother’s subsequent decision to join the ranks of the Peace Officers responsible for “adjusting” the First Nations people. Though “Terminal Avenue” takes place in Vancouver there are clear parallels drawn between the Peace Officers of Robinson’s imagination and the Canadian military sent to enforce the peace during the stand-off at Oka, Quebec in 1990. In writing “Terminal Avenue” Robinson addresses the armed conflict and proposes
Symbolism “acts as webbing between theme and story. Themes alone can sound preachy, and stories alone can sound shallow. Symbolism weaves the two together” (Hall). Symbolism uses the story to convey the theme. Darkness is used in the novel to show the secrecy and lies that the story has. The whole story involves secrecy among two women and a man. Without symbolism the story would just have a very dark house and two very mysterious and disturbed women. Instead there is a feel of secrecy right from the beginning. Symbolism gives the story excitement, while also providing the reader with a good read. The author can read the first few pages and determine the story is not a happy
its own we will see a slight change in history’s value of warfare and hardship as war turns into a
“If the human race didn’t remember anything it would be perfectly happy" (44). Thus runs one of the early musings of Jack Burden, the protagonist of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Throughout the story, however, as Jack gradually opens his eyes to the realities of his own nature and his world, he realizes that the human race cannot forget the past and survive. Man must not only remember, but also embrace the past, because it teaches him the truth about himself and enables him to face the future.
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
... shadow of his narration suggests the significant influence of Joe’s bias on the manner in which the film is portrayed. The writer claims to represent the voice of empiricism, promising to deliver “the facts…(and) the whole truth” before the story gets “all distorted and blown out of proportion”, but his personality overlays the narration and his supposedly impartial retelling of the series of events contains opinions, editorials, and literary references all too reminiscent of a Hollywood drama. Joe Gillis, being a writer of fiction with an intense personal investment in the story he is telling, cannot be expected to adhere to scientific impartiality. Instead, he illustrates an essential tenet of storytelling and Hollywood mystique, the subjective nature of facts when coupled with human interpretation. Joe Gillis shows how a road can be more than a strip of asphalt.
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
The film may have edited out one of the drastic details that made the novel’s success, explaining the film’s failure.
Cannery Row is a novel John Steinbeck wrote after World War I. At first, the novel almost seems like a humorous book, written in a style commonly used by Steinbeck. The book has its main plot, but also has side chapters that periodically interrupt the main idea, which adds to the story. One would think that these side chapters are there to universalize the book, but in fact that is not true. The side chapters tell their own story, and they have a message that Steinbeck was clearly trying to show through his book. The novel has a main point about respect. In Cannery Row , Steinbeck is trying to say that respectability is the destructive force that preys on the world. Steinbeck uses his characters to tell this story about respect and its effect on society. The central figure of the whole book, Doc, better explains this point by saying, "It has always seemed strange to me . . . The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitive, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second" (131).
To transform a good company to great company is all manages’ dream, but only few of them make it. To find out the core factors which lead to a good company became a great company is very difficult, because in different era, different industry companies face different opportunities and threats. To begin the research for the Good-to-Great study, Jim Collins and his research team searched for companies that: performed at or below the general stock market for at least fifteen years; then at a transition point began to pull away from the competition, and sustained returns of at least 3 times the general market for the next fifteen years. He started with a list of 1,435 companies and found eleven that met his criteria. These eleven companies produced, on average, a return of 6.9 times the general stock market during the 15 years following the transition points. Collins chose a 15-year span to avoid "one-hit wonders" and lucky breaks. In the book, Collins highlights some important factors which are the result of the research. They are level 5 leadership, fist who … then what, confront the brutal facts, the hedgehog concept, culture of discipline, and technology accelerators, (Collins, 2001, p.12).