The 2006 released film Stranger Than Fiction is one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking films to have come out of Hollywood in recent years. Starring Will Ferrell in the lead role, the cast includes Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah and Emma Thompson in support roles. This essay will confine itself to comic aspects…
Category: Media Studies
Reading Response to Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a popular science book published in 2005. The subject is the ‘human adaptive unconscious’, which is the cognitive phenomenon behind quick, frequent and automatic processes in the mind. Gladwell’s central thesis is that our minds can make fairly accurate judgments, without consuming much time and information. Gladwell…
Pablo Picasso: A Political Life
Pablo Picasso is one of the pre-eminent artists of the twentieth century, having mastered various art forms such as painting, sculpting, print-making, ceramic-making and stage designing. Alongside Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp, Picasso is considered to have revolutionized plastic arts in the early part of the twentieth century. He is also credited with co-founding the…
Neil Postman’s Defending the Indefensible
Neil Postman’s essay titled ‘Defending the Indefensible’ appears in his seminal book ‘Conscientious Objections’, in which he critiques aspects of our culture that we’ve taken for granted. The essays in the book address quality of life issues related to advancing technology, new media and declining education standards. Defending the Indefensible pertains itself to one facet…
On Orientalism featuring Edward Said
Orientalism, a concept coined by the renowned American intellectual Edward Said has attracted praise and controversy in equal measure. While remaining Said’s definitive scholarly work, its thesis is a condensation of themes found in his other works such as The Question of Palestine and Covering Islam. To be concise, Orientalism can be defined as the…
Media Literacy and Ethics
In Chapter 2 of Converging Media: A New Introduction to Mass Communication, “Media Literacy and Ethics,” we are introduced to the concept of media literacy and how to develop it in ourselves. Explain what media literacy is and discuss how media literate you yourself are. How many sources of news and information do you consult…
Censorship of books and select websites in school libraries: Pros & Cons
Censorship and freedom of expression within school campuses has attracted a lot of debate and discussion over the years. School authorities have a difficult time in ascertaining where to draw the line between free enquiry and moral hazard. It is a surprising fact that in a country with a rich liberal tradition like the United…
Play Review: Hay Fever by Noel Coward
Authored by Noel Coward in 1924, the play Hay Fever was first performed the following year at the Ambassadors Theatre. The original cast included eminent actors and actresses from the Jazz Age America. These include Helen Spencer, Robert Andrews, Marie Tempest and Graham Browne who comprise the members of the Bliss family. Most of the…
Paris (2008) by Cedric Klapisch
The movie I chose for this exercise is titled Paris, released in 2008. This is a French language movie that I watched with English subtitles. Written and directed by Cedric Klapisch, the film stars Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris and Fabrice Luchini. While watching the movie on my laptop computer, I was able to identify some…
Growth of home theaters, new delivery mechanisms, and alternative viewing devices
With the flourishing of the Internet and vast improvements in network bandwidth capabilities, films produced in Hollywood have also been marketed and distributed through these channels. In the article in question, which was published in www.wired.com in June 2005, George Lucas was talking about a fundamental shift in movie consumption patterns. The film industry in…