Film

Mockingjay part 2 has just come out with the last Divergent movie in the line up for release. Write about the top movies that are adapted from young adult novels. How do they stand up in time? Is their target audience broader than young adults? What similarities or differences are there between them? Movies of interest may be the Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Enders Game, The Fault in Our Stars, Twilight…etc.Of course, there are more out now than ever and the list does not need to be confined to trilogies, so long as it is adapted from young adult books.

Who are the ten cinematic creators or performers whose untimely deaths have most deeply affected cinema? What is/are their lasting impact(s) on cinema? Which, if any, posthumous advances in film seem likely to have been achieved by these cinematic legends if not for their early deaths?

Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio – a collection of short stories – presents what the authors refers to as "grotesques," people who harm themselves by believing in one truth or ideal while ignoring all others. The eight-Oscar-winning film, "From Here to Eternity," seems to follow the same theme. Which characters in the film are "grotesques?" To what truth or ideal does each "grotesque" cling? What truth(s) or ideal(s) do(es) each "grotesque" ignore? How do these characters suffer for their constrained beliefs? How would each character – if they expanded their beliefs – not only reduce their own suffering, but better their own life, as well as (perhaps) others?

A recent conversation with a friend about his strange, meaningful dreams led to a conversation about dream theory. Which films, current or not, use significant dream sequences, and what messages do those dream sequences convey? What symbols and metaphors appear in the dreams? What messages are conveyed via this imagery? Which dream theory or theories are employed by these film makers? And, last, how – if at all – does a film maker's cultural and religious background affect her film presentation of dreams? A list of films to consider might include Un Chien Andalu, Spellbound, 3 Women, The Wizard of Oz, 8-1/2, Waking Life, Living in Oblivion, Inception, and Kurosawa's Dreams.

Do you notice how a movie can feature one death after another and there is not one shriek from a member of the audience until the killing of an animal occurs? Why does the audience accept the loss of human life yet become upset and unsettled when a dog is shot to death? Is it a matter of innocence? The animal lacking the same mental faculties as the human and therefore placing it in an inferior, and therefore more sympathetic position? This is a phenomenon I have witnessed countless times across a number of different audiences, and I, too, have the exact same reaction. Another interesting aspect is when the victim is an infant or young child, though still in the process of development, clearly superior to a dog, but still conjuring a higher level of sympathy. This leads back to my prior questions: is this a matter of inferiority? A matter of innocence? Please discuss whether or not you have witnessed similar reactions and what is your thinking behind this disparate response?

More and more these days we see actors who started out young growing up into very troubled people. Lindsey Lohan, Shia LeBeouf, Amanda Bynes, Demi Lovato; they all have their share of craziness and major obstacles they've had to try to overcome. Is this pattern of child actors going bad related to their career starting out early? Is growing up in the film industry influencing the outcome of these actors' mental health and habits?

Regardless of one's personal opinions of film remakes, there's something rather culturally significant about making a new Ben-Hur in 2016. Since the release of the 1995 documentary, The Celluloid Closet, it has become well-known that Gore Vidal went into writing the screenplay for the 1959 film with the idea that Ben-Hur and Messala were former lovers ((link) which drove much of the subtextual conflict of the story. Though the audience of the day, via their substantially heteronormative attitudes and expectations, was predominantly unable to detect this secret inclusion, today it is viewed as a successful attempt at LGBT representation in the early days of film history.

Fast forward 57 years, to a time when society has progressed enough that homosexuality is no longer the social taboo that it once was and is not at all prohibited from cinematic representation. To remake a film like Ben-Hur at this time presents a world of possibilities, namely that the filmmakers are now able to present the homoerotic tension between these characters more explicitly and overtly than was allowed in 1959. However, based on the two trailers [the film has not yet been released at the time of my writing this], there appears to have been a conscious creative choice to make Ben-Hur and Messala adoptive brothers in this new rendering of the story. One might be inclined to speculate that this decision was made to exorcise the spirit of the story's homoerotic past, thereby using "brotherly love" in lieu of "ambiguously gay duo" to unburden their hard-core action movie with something that they believe to have "non-masculine" qualities.

Discuss the differences between the two films in this respect. How does it reflect views toward LGBT characters in the film industry, particularly in the action genre? What might it say about the shifting standards for what can be deemed as acceptable and unacceptable film content? Clearly something is a little socially retrograde if a movie in 1959 is able to do a better job of including gay characters than its 2016 counterpart. Might the remake's heightened religious emphasis have something to do with this? What other examples of recent films might exemplify this phenomenon? Furthermore, what value is there to remake certain films if not to better express aspects that can receive new meaning in our contemporary context?

With the latest bunt in the cinematic superhero world, Suicide Squad, it has become clear that critics are collective tired of the ringtone narrative that nearly all superhero films cradle. Suicide Squad specifically, held the concept of 'fight fire with fire,' which obviously entails that things won't work out. Examine the failures of Suicide Squad as a whole and what it might take (if possible) to have another good superhero film like The Dark Knight.