Breakfast at Alexa's

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)  Earlier this semester, my film class watched Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense film, Rear Window  (1954). Now as much as I'd love to analyze this film (again), my film teacher mentioned another thing that I thought would be more interesting to talk about for today's blog, and it was Hitchcock's obsession with blondes. The term "Hitchcock Blonde" refers to the leading ladies in Hitchcock's films, who were, as the name suggests, blonde, usually blue-eyed, seductively attractive, and untouchable. Not only was Hitchcock obsessed with his blonde female characters on screen, but he seemed to develop a fixation on the stars who played them, including Grace Kelly ( Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief ), Ingrid Bergman ( Spellbound, Notorious, Under Capricorn ) and Tippi Hedren ( The Birds, Marnie ). Unfortunately, Hitchcock's obsession with his leading ladies made him compulsive and invade their private...

Although films first started out as a visual medium, it has developed over time to be both audial and visual. Even the first silent films were not completely silent; it was a commonly shared opinion that both films and the audience greatly benefit when movies are accompanied with sound effects or music. Today, sound and visuals are considered to be co-expressive in film, meaning what we hear affects what we see, just as what we see affects what we hear. Filmmakers will often use this relationship to their advantage as it is essential for the cinematic experience, especially for watching horror films.  In honor of spooky season and the soon coming of Halloween, I thought it would be fun to do a post dedicated to the horror genre. My tolerance for the genre has grown immensely over the past few years, even to the point where I actually enjoy watching it a lot. It's probably because I'm addicted to the adrenaline rush of fear it gives me, but I always wondered, what was it exactly...

Casablanca (1942) - Turner Classic Movies A big development in film that shaped the way cinema is today is the ability to produce colored film. Ever since movies were able to be filmed in color, it seems that there are hardly any made nowadays that are in black and white, because why would we go back if we already have the technology for color? Similarly, why the heck would younger folks of my generation (Gen Z, unfortunately) want to watch films from over fifty years ago that aren't in color? This is something that annoys me as someone who appreciates older films; if the film was made any year before Jaws  (1975), then it's not worth their time. Now I get it, older films are simply what they are, old ; the resolution tends to be pretty grainy, there's a lot of background noise a/o buzzing from the old audio equipment, some of the narrative points are moving too slow, and of course, there's no color. There were many older films I've watched that I genuinely could no...

I don't know about you guys, but I actually don't like to watch movies more than once. Believe it or not, as much as I love watching movies, I have this tendency to not watch one again because I feel like any time won't be as good as the first time (hm, life really do be like that...). It's also very possible though that I may be finding an excuse for not having the attention span to watch a movie where I already know everything that going to happen. Either way, I don't like to watch movies multiple times. But, when I do, I have the pleasure of seeing so many things I missed before, and that's probably one of the most satisfying rewards of rewatching films.  Just recently, my film class watched Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017). The film centers around Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a black photographer who is visiting the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). I had already watched this film before and I also actually enjoy it ver...

When I found out that we were going to be watching Sofia Coppola's  Marie Antoinette (2006), I was quite excited that we'd be watching another film in film class (shocker, I know). But I was also internally giggling in my head, because whenever anyone mentions Sofia Coppola, I can't help but think of her infamous death scene in her father's film, The Godfather Part III.   I'll admit, having only watched that one particular scene out of the entire Godfather series, I never really took interest into the films and solely cared about Coppola's performance, which has been universally considered to be really bad acting. But for my own education purposes and this blog post, I figured that I'd look into her scenes in the movie to critique her acting and why some people (including me) would consider it bad acting.   The Godfather Part III: "Dad?"   Besides the infamous death scene, I watched a YouTube video that included every scene with Coppola's char...