"Show Me the Money!": Final Presentation Schedule

ENG 3115: Film Theory & Criticism

Undergraduate Academic Mini-Conference

(a.k.a., Final Presentations)

Schedule of Presentations: Monday April 23, 2012 in ROLFS # 115

Group 1: “‘I wanted to see you, to see if I'd want to see you’: Love & Art Meet at the Movies”

11:50	Danielle Dobies	“A Single Cinephiliac (Wo)Man”	Breathless
11:55	Thomas Macowski	“Cinephilia & CFK”	Citizen Kane
12:00	Phil Kunzig	“A Cinephiliac Approach to The Departed”	The Departed
12:05	Doug Yablun	“The Best of Both Worlds: David Fincher & The Social Network”	The Social Network
12:10	Andy Oram	“Film, Culture, Billy Elliot”	Billy Elliot
12:15	Radha Allard	“The Coen Brothers & Auteur Theory”	The Coen Brothers
12:20	Patrick Hart	“Adaptation, Originality, and an Exception to the Auteur Theory”	Adaptation
12:25	Question/Answer Session

Group 2: “‘For the First Time in My Life I Can’t See My Future’: Romance & Doom at the Movies”

4:10	Aliza Breznick	“Film: The DeLorean of Reality & Its Many Partners”	Melancholia
4:15	Hailun Zhu	“Marxist Elements in Melancholia”	Melancholia
4:20	Kiran Sonty	“Romance in Paris: Her Name is Cinephilia”	Midnight in Paris
4:25	Keishla Rivera-Estrada	“God in the Details”	A Single Man
4:30	Lacey Booth	“A Different Kind of Auteur”	A Single Man
4:35	Chance Crevler	“Cinephiliac Interpretation Gives New Meaning to Tom Ford’s A Single Man”	A Single Man
4:40	Logan Stallings	“Black & White: An Essay on A Single Man”	A Single Man
4:45	Sherrinette Wong	“Did You See That?”	A Single Man
4:50	Question/Answer Session

Group 3 à “‘It's like a puzzle. When you put it together, something's going to happen’: Finding Purpose in Hugo”

5:05	Brett Passa	“Combining Past with Present: Historicism & Martin Scorsese’s Hugo”	Hugo
5:10	Summer Ceraolo-O’Donnell	“Communication & Technology in Films”	Hugo
5:15	Jesse Moss	“Marxism in Hugo & Metropolis: Is the American Dream Really Possible?”	Hugo/ Metropolis
5:20	Zac Hudson	“A Formalist Approach to Hugo”	Hugo
5:25	Joe Morgan	“What is film?: How Cinephilia in Hugo Defines It”	Hugo
5:30	Nicole Deck	“Hugo: The World as a Machine”	Hugo
5:35	Luis Velasco	“Smokescreens & Magic: A Return to the Cinema of Attractions”	Hugo
5:40	Craig Cummings	“‘The Decay of Cinema’ Revitalizes Cinephiliac Criticism”	Hugo
5:45	Jonathan White	“Cinephilia: Finding the Real”	Hugo
5:50	Question/Answer Session

Group 4 à “Give them enough reason to doubt it’: A Closer Look at Christopher Nolan’s Magical Cinema”

6:25	C.J. Wittus	“Hans Zimmer’s Musical Twist in Time”	Inception
6:30	Jared Guidroz	“Inception: Cinema as a Dream”	Inception
6:35	Ben Elliott	“Memory in Memento”	Memento
6:40	Philip Allcott	“How to Hide in Plain Sight”	The Prestige
6:45	Sean Warfman	“Art”	The Prestige
6:50	Daniella Majia	“Under the Spell of the Magic Wand: Female Representations in The Prestige, in Cinema, & in Early Theatre Spectacle”	The Prestige
6:55	Lindsey Jones	“Are You Watching Closely?”	The Prestige
7:00	Question/Answer Session

Blog Assignment #7: The Stuff Films are Made of

The Cinephiliac Approach to analyzing film can be defined as the fetishizing of fragments of a film, either individual shots or marginal (often unintentional) details in the image, especially those that appear only for a moment. A cinephile’s objective is to retain the pleasure found in the emotional response to a film, and more importantly, to make that pleasure productive instead of repressing it. According to Susan Sontag, the act of interpreting a film (“de-coding” it) removes the pleasure from the cinematic experience and transforms the text into something it is not. She asserts that by beginning with a concentration on cinematic form, and describing the particular response to a given detail in the form of an anecdote, the critic can retain his/her special love for the cinema without trying to "uncover" the film's true meaning.

For this blog post, you will experiment with the cinephiliac approach, choosing a moment, a detail, or a shot that stands out in your memory from Tom Ford’s A Single Man. It is not important that you begin this exercise with an understanding of the moment, but rather that you begin there and work to uncover its significance according to your own background knowledge and what you are able to uncover doing preliminary research into the moment. For example, Craig mentioned the owl at the end of the film. Recalling this image, you might look into possible connections that can be made. You might discuss the owl imagery in Psycho or research Hegel’s The Owl of Minerva. If there is a connection to be made, discuss the importance of the moment and how it allows you to think deeply about A Single Man. But, keep the objective in mind…you are not trying to make the film into something it is not (i.e., don’t say “this film is about…”) but to discuss how YOU made connections that are present within the film. So, if you are going to discuss the Owl of Minerva, you must relate HOW the film speaks to this idea as a whole (for you).

Group TWO: 300 words minimum; due Friday by 3:00 pm.

Group ONE: Respond to someone's post by either commenting on or building from the moment discussed by the author. OR, if the moment discussed reminds you of another moment from the film or a moment from a different film, you may post your thoughts on these types of connections. 300 words minimum, due Sunday by noon.