THE INCREDIBLES

After watching “The Incredibles”, I determined that it had a classical paradigm narrative structure.  The film starts in the past, when the heroes were young and celebrated, from an omniscient point of view.  After a series of unfortunate events they have to go in to hiding and deal with normal life, acting as normal people, which sets the scene for the inevitable conflict to arise when they are discovered.  The protagonist, Mr. Incredible, wants to be “super” again.  As he attempts to do this, the suspense builds, centering around whether he will be caught by his wife and who is behind the whole ordeal.  There is a climactic buildup until the inevitable downfall of the antagonist in the final scene.  This is a great movie for the family action genre. The references to other films in this one also kept the adult audiences’ attention.  James Bond films seem to be the most referenced film in spy movies, but other films such as “Entrapment” and “Mission Impossible” are also referenced in this entertaining family movie.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball’s was very entertaining film for both children and adults. Originally it was a book written by Judi Barrett that was published in 1978. The director had to update some of the dialogue to incorporate jokes that are entertaining to adults by referring to people events and situations found humorous in 2010. This made it popular to adults who were more perceptive of the humor while still being appropriate for children. This seems to be a common occurrence in the children’s cartoon produced in the last 10 years. Also the illustrations in the film are more comparable to screen shots with the manipulation of angles and depth. In movies like “Snow White” most of the illustrations were at medium angle with movement left, right, up, and down. However in “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” the viewer would see more dimensional illustrations showing more depth to the world. There were many long shots in the film showing the main character running down the street in a hurry shot from far above. Shots like this show the evolution of cartooning and are especially noticeable when comparing it to and older classic like “Snow White”.

Wizard of Oz

In the Wizard of Oz, color, camera angle, and lighting were key visual factors in evoking the mood of this movie. The way the director, Victor Fleming, used color in this movie was amazing.  It really expressed the mood and atmosphere.  When the setting was in Kansas it was black and white, conveying a sad or depressed state.  When the setting was in Oz it was radiant with colors to show the mood and atmosphere of Oz, describing it as a wonderful joyous place. The exception to this was when the characters were in peril, when the director used dark and gloomy colors to convey danger. The director used color and lighting, a lot of which was in high key, to set the mood in whatever scene is shown.  The director also used many wide angle shots and telephoto lens in shooting the more famous shots in this movie. He also used camera angle to show Dorothy taller than the munchkins by shooting from a high and low angles when shooting the characters.