4th of July poem

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                6/12/12

4^th of July poem.

Oh, Independence Day!

Extraordinary of a day.

A day of remembering,

Remembering so much.

Much had to be done,

Independence isn’t easy.

But what is easy to do?

Celebrating our independence.

Ode to la Bomba

Animal actors

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                  5/3/12

Animals in films.

            Humans aren’t the only ones who can act in films and earn very high praise and fame from the people who watch them. Animals, too, have been loved for years for their performances as many iconic film animals, both old and new.

            It doesn’t matter if they’re dogs, dolphins, whales, elephants, monkeys, bears, birds, or any other type of animal. People still love them even if they’re real animals, animatronics, CGI animals, puppets, or people dressed as animals.

            One such famous animal actor, or actors, are all of the dogs who have played Lassie over the years in the numerous films and television shows. Since 1943, the lovable collie dog has been played by numerous different dogs, all descended from the original dog up until the 1990s. Besides most being played by those related to the original, all of the dogs were male since their coats were thicker than females and it looked better.

            Animals that became famous from movies but weren’t played by actual animals are the sharks from the Jaws films. Steven Spielberg’s first big film had a mechanical shark that would often suffer malfunctions. Nicknamed Bruce, it was Spielberg’s idea for the audience not to see much of the shark but to see it from its point of view. It worked, even though the film went over budget and past its schedule, as Jaws went on to become the highest grossing film at the time of release, lifted Spielberg to the top, and led to three sequels.

            Some of the most famous fictional animals that are portrayed by humans are those that are half animal and half human. These can include the Wolf Man, first famously played by Lon Chaney, Jr., in 1941, and later played by Benicio del Toro in the 2010 remake. Another half human/half animal is a Were Cat, famously played at the start by Michael Jackson in his music video Thriller, directed by John Landis who is also famous for his own werewolf film An American Werewolf in London.

            Other famous animal actors, whether real animals, fake animals playing real animals, or fictional animals, are Uggie the dog from The Artist, Godzilla, Scooby-Doo, Flipper, King Kong, the Free Willy whale Winnie-the-Pooh, Santa’s Little Helper from The Simpsons, the cat stroked by Blofeld in the James Bond films, the monkey from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and others. This and many others have entertained audiences for over one hundred years and will continue entertaining more.

Summer Time poem

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                              5/30/12

Summer Time Fun poem.

Oh, summer you can be so fun,

Summer, it’s such a great time.

Where can you go at this time,

Anywhere that’s exciting.

What exactly can you do,

Maybe have some fun?

What’s summer good for,

Maybe to take time off?

This will help a lot so much,

That’s why we have Summer.

Post-credit scenes.

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                5/24/12

Post-credit scenes.

            Something that’s more common in films today than films made say in the 1980s and before is that they have post-credit scenes, also known as stingers. This means that they have a scene, whether it’s meant to be important or just funny, after the end credits are done.

            Most types of films that are comic book based, superhero based, comedies, and animated are the ones that usually show these stingers. Rarely do other types of films show stingers, but if they do it’s usually to show something important that could lead to a sequel.

            The earliest use of stingers is in the second James Bond film, 1963s From Russia with Love, which showed text after the credits that Bond will be back in Goldfinger which is now used in every film since minus what the next film is called since it ended with 1983s Octopussy as they were unsure after that what the next title might be. However, a scene after the credits was first shown in The Muppet Movie, which was released in 1979, had a scene of one of the characters bursting out of the screen as the credits roll.

            Modern examples of stingers in films are especially used in the MARVEL based films that led up to The Avengers. Iron Man’s stinger was just meant as a joke for the fans with Nick Fury telling Stark about the Avengers Initiative, which eventually was taken seriously after the surprise success of the film. Iron Man 2 had a stinger that led to the events of Thor whose stinger lead to the events that would lead to the beginning of The Avengers. The stinger for the Captain America film was really a scene from the Avengers film along with some clips of the subsequent film. As for The Avengers, it had two stingers depending on which theatre it was shown in, with one being the heroes after the battle with Loki eating quietly at a restaurant and the other as a sequel hook by showing what looks like Thanos discussing Earth and its heroes.

            Other stingers include the four Pirates of the Caribbean films where the monkey becomes cursed again in the first, the dog being considered a god in the second, Elizabeth and her son waiting for Will in the third, and Penelope Cruz’s character finding Sparrow’s voodoo doll in the water and smiling. There’s also Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Matthew Broderick’s character breaks the fourth wall by telling the audience that the film is over and they should go now. Cars had an earlier seen couple going on vacation lost because the husband doesn’t want to ask for direction. The stinger for Monster’s Inc. ends with Mike and Sulley performing a musical they wrote based off of the events of the film. A final stinger is The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie doing the same thing as the Ferris Bueller movie of breaking the fourth wall.

Actors who direct

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                5/20/12

Actors turned directors.

            Since films first started one thing in particular has not changed in the over one hundred years since it first started. That being actors who also direct their own movies, whether they’re in it as the main character, a secondary character, or just cameo to not being in them at all.

            Most of the most famous films ever made were directed by actors turned directors, whether they’ve been Oscar winners, huge blockbusters, or just plainly critically acclaimed. Some directors have however quit acting and just direct while some take time off from either one until the time is right.

            One of cinema’s greatest actor-directors was silent film star Charlie Chaplin who first acted in 1914s Making a Living. Chaplin’s first directorial job came in late April of that same year after making a dozen short films with Twenty Minutes of Love, which he also wrote. After that, most of the films he worked on he directed himself which turned out to be loved and iconic such as The Kid, City Lights, and his first all sound film in 1940 The Great Dictator.

            Another great actor turned director is former western actor Clint Eastwood, who directed two Best Picture winning films. Clint started out in mid-to-late 1950s monster films as extras then turning to the show Rawhide in a supporting role in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. His breakthrough hit came when Sergio Leone cast him in The Man with No Name trilogy in the mid-to-late ‘60s of spaghetti westerns, which made him a bigger star and brought him to the attention of Don Siegel who cast him in numerous films, such as Coogan’s Bluff and Dirty Harry. It was from Leone and Siegel that Eastwood learned what it takes to direct which lead to his directorial debut with 1971s Play Misty for Me. Since then, Eastwood has directed most of the films he starred in and some he didn’t star in such as Pale Rider, J. Edgar, Mystic River, Sudden Impact, and his two Best Picture winning films 1992s Unforgiven and 2004s Million Dollar Baby.

            Other acting directors and the films they directed include Woody Allen with Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris, Sylvester Stallone with Rocky II and The Expendables, Ben Affleck with Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Orson Welles with Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, Sofia Coppola with Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, Jodie Foster with Little Man Tate and The Beaver, and others like Mel Gibson, Ben Stiller, Kevin Bacon, and many more. All of them have directed films that have earned great praise, nominated and/or win Oscars, and become huge blockbusters.

memorable movie scenes

Daniel Brizuela                                                                                                                                    2/2/12

Iconic Movie Scenes.

            Since the creation of film in the late 1800s, and the idea of the film-making process at the start of the 1900s, films have had many memorable things about them that so many people love to watch in their favorite movies. There are the memorable characters, like James Bond or The Tramp, memorable quotes, like anything that Clint Eastwood says, and even memorable endings, like The Dark Knight and Casablanca. But, one very important thing that so many great films have is their very memorable scenes where something great is shown that it’s eventually copied and parodied in other films.

            Some of these memorable film scenes include most of the Rocky films’ training sequences, especially the first film. In 1976s Rocky, the film that made Sylvester Stallone famous, boxer Rocky Balboa trains by running all over Philadelphia. He then runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, now known as the “Rocky Steps”, which he does again in some of the sequels. What makes this film so memorable is that it was one of the first films to use the Steadicam as a way to not make the camera jump up and down as it’s following Rocky.

            Another memorable scene in film is from one of the classics of the 1930s that has been copied, parodied, and remade so many times: the climbing of the Empire State Building near the end of the original King Kong. The 1933 RKO production, which was produced and directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and starring Fay Wray in her most famous role ever and the original scream queen, was considered revolutionary at the time thanks to the stop motion special effects by Willis O’Brien, who made the first stop motion animation with 1925s The Lost World. The very memorable scene is when Kong finds and captures Wray’s character after he escapes from a Manhattan theater and climbs the Empire State Building while holding her in one hand. At the top, Kong is eventually killed after being shot down by fighter planes, with the directors in cameos as one of the pilots and shooter, and eventually falls down.

            A third and final memorable movie scene is from the classic 1985 science fiction time travel comedy Back to the Future. The Steven Spielberg produced and Robert Zemeckis written and directed hit has so many great scenes, that’s the same for its two sequels in 1989 and 1990. However, the scene that’s the most memorable in the original film is at the start when Marty McFly, played by Canadian actor and Family Ties star Michael J. Fox who replaced Eric Stoltz a few weeks into production, first sees the modified DeLorean that his friend Dr. Emmet “Doc” Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, built. It has Marty holding onto a film camera and filming Doc using a remote control to drive the DeLorean with his dog inside to 88 miles per hour right towards them. Just before it hits them, the DeLorean is surrounded by a flash of colored lights and disappears, leaving nothing but a fire trail in front of and behind Marty and Brown and the license plate spinning on the ground. Marty, being shocked by what just happened, freaks out that Brown’s dog was just vaporized but he explains that the DeLorean was a time machine set for one minute ahead. Before it returns, the one thing that Marty is more confused about is that Doc built a time machine out of a DeLorean. When it comes back, the exterior is filled with smoke and ice cold, but everything inside intact and a clock being exactly one minute behind.

            Besides those few films, there have been others that are as famous and parodied as Back to the Future or Rocky. These include the gun barrel sequences at the start of the James Bond films, the snow globe breaking at the start of Citizen Kane, or even Harold Lloyd hanging on a giant clock in 1923s Safety Last.