Teaching Goes to the Movies: The Sequel
Tomorrow in my College English prep class we begin Terry Gilliam's Brazil.It's got everything we need, everything we have studied or will ever study:
Love. Longing. Absurdity. Passion. Neat gadgets. Evil inventions. Violence. Bureaucracy. Terrorists. Suspected terrorists. Invasive plastic surgery. Torture. Corporate policies. Endless paperwork. The crushing of the spirit. The survival of vision and imagination.
And that was just the making of the movie.
I'm rushed today (how lucky for you) so I will provide you with an array of cool links I found on this splendid movie:
Monty Python veteran Gilliam is famous for his mise-en-scène (that's set design to me and you), about which you can read more here.
Even rotten.com has things to say about Brazil.
There are obvious and implicit relationships between Brazil and the next movie we will be watching, Apocalypse Now.
There is so much more to say, but I will simply end with thanks to Wide Angle Close-Up and to
dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine.
And offer you this link to a charming random site I stumbled upon all by myself during this research: Glass Bead Game II [via CoreWave].
[image: still from opening credits to Terry Gilliam's Brazil]
categories: film teaching technology thought
posted by lisa schamess @ 10:38
3 Comments:
I remember hearing about it, but never saw it. Another movie to add to my list.
Maybe I should just sign up for your class, instead.
Hey Lisa-
I love TGilliam and truth be told anything in the Monty Python realm.
"Holy Grail" was (and still is) a truly religious experience for me.
I do believe I'm going to start calling you Queen of the Links. ;)
Where do you come up with this stuff? Some are simply amazing.
The Glass Beads are a bit daunting for my head today. I think I need some sleep.
~michaelm
In grad school, I got very tired of literature and took a film class just for fun. I don't remember what we said about Brazil (or any of the movies, really), but I oddly can remember almost all of the movies we watched: Brazil, Shane, a very old Robert Duvall movie shot in black and white (his first I think, I can't remember the name, but it was just two words and it was him and a pregnant woman in a cabin, if that helps), Apocalypse Now. And I remember that I did my long paper on Barton Fink - and I spent a lot of time talking about the picture of the sea shore in the hotel room. My one summer slacker course...brings back some good memories. ;)
On the Monty Python front, we finished the very gory, very quirky but strangely transfixable Sin City tonight - so many of the fight scenes reminded me of the "That didn't hurt" sequence from Python's The Holy Grail, it made me almost want to watch the behind-the-scenes and see if it was on purpose. But I was so relieved when it was over, I couldn't do it.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home