Russians - Sting

This is the video clip of sting's song : Russians.

Stan RIDGWAY

WALKING HOME ALONE

Stan Ridgway   

                                                  VIDEO                                                                  

 

COVER ARTWORK

    

This is the written comprehension of the lyrics of the song : Walking Home Alone

Two videos about The American Dream.

Speaker Series: The Future of the American Dream - Excerpt

This videos is about the future of the american dream. A man, Bob Herbert tells us that the most important aspect of the American dream is having a good Job. This is the basis of all others things. He says that to realise their dreams, the people have to be support by a good job which enables gain monney. He takes the example of the childrens on the school who are better prepared to become writters journalist or lawyers. Because thanks to this kind of job they can gain monney and reach to better way of life. According to him, having a good job, is the future of the American dream, and the belief of the news generations. 

In America - Trailer

This film takes place in New-York. It is about a family who leaves in this new city because they lost one of their childrens. They try to build a new life but it is very dificult because the father doesn't find a job. This movie gather lots of very important point of the American Dream. First, it seems that the importance of the family is very present. Because there is two little sister who try to understand this system and the father looks like  desperate. Then, the idea of the employement is here too, by the father. Finally, the black man who can be the symbol of the Hope, represents the ideal of the American dream beliefs, a land of opportunities to everyone. However, I think that it is a pessimist point of vue of the american dream, maybe even a criticism but I am not sure.

Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese

GoodFellas is a film about the american mafia based on a true story. The story takes place in Brooklyn in 1955, we follow Henry Hill's life, a boy who always wanted to become a Gangster. Indeed, at the beginning of the film he says :  "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster" and he is going to reach it by being hired when he was 11 by the most important gangster family of Brooklyn : The Lucchese crime family. Henry learns the basis of the life as a mafia. He becames very quickly one of the best guys in the group. In this group there are "El Capo" Polly acted by Paul Sorvino, and two other men very influent and powerfull, Tommy, acted by Joe Pesci and Jimmy acted by Robert de Niro, who acts in a lot of mafia movies. 
 But when they are involved in a drugs affair,  Henry's life is going to change dramatically. 

This is the trailer of the movie. 

We can consider this movie as a thriller because there are all elements which are characteristic of this genre.
Indeed, there is a central protagonist, Henry Hill who is telling his story thanks to a voice-over. We can see all his life since his childhood until the end. His job makes him faces the death all the time, either because he has to burry someone killed by his "friends", either because he is threatened. 
Henry has to be careful because in the film Tommy kills a guy who belongs to another band of gangsters and this band reach to killed Tommy and another man. So some times its very dangerous because in his job he doesn't have real friends. Then, at the end, he has to change his identity because Jimmy wants to kill him. We should not forget either that he goes in jail twice. 
The main storyline is about his life as a gangster, it shows how its like to be a gangster.
 He has to gain money commiting infractions. But when he is involved with drugs, his aim is to do things behind the back of "El Capo" without being discovered by him. 
There is also Tommy who is very unpredictable and kills people without reason, so Jimmy and Henry must hide Tommy's murders. It's kind of the opposite of a mystery that has to be resolved. 
Henry Hill tell us the story, we see everything through his point of view. His voice-over explains the character's personnality, the actions, the project of futurs thefts and the slightest details of the gangster life. 
This movie is based on a true story so in most cases the actions can only be true. Furthermore, we can see that everything in the film is very credible because we can found them in a lot of other movies like "The Godfather" or "Malavita". 
The notion of justice here is in every part of the film, indeed, the characters dispense justice by themselves, its not very conventionnal but this is the gangster law! And the morality is more or less the same. Because the gangsters don't have real morality, only Henry's wife has a kind of guilty conscience. She is the only one who have a real and "normal" morality. Henry's friends have their own morality, the law of the strongest.
The unique sign of innocence in this movie are the two henry's daughters, who live the further away as possible of their father bussiness.

Barton Fink

Barton Fink

Barton Fink is a 1991 American film written, directed, produced, and edited by the Cohem Brothers. Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a film studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie, the insurance salesman who lives next door at the run-down Hotel Earle.

Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) known informally as the Coen brothers, are Academy Award winning American film directors, screenwriters, and pruducers.

John Michael Turturro (born February 28, 1957) is an American actor, writer and director. He has appeared in over sixty films, and has worked frequently with the Coen Brothers, Adam Sandler and Spike Lee.

John Stephen Goodman (born June 20, 1952) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, voice artist, and comedian.Goodman has frequently collaborated with the Coen Brothers.  

The trailer of the movie Witness

                                    The trailer of the movie Witness.

I think this film is about a child who witnesses a crime scene in the toilet. 

There is a policeman who investigates the murder, and he needs the child to find the culprit.

I think I have understood that the mother and the child are menbers of the Amish community and the policeman goes with them for his investigation. He meets the family of the woman but I don't think that he is very appreciated by them, certainly because he isn't an Amish. 

During the time when the policeman lives with the witness's mother he falls in love with her, and an old man, I don't know who ( maybe the woman's father), is very angry. At the end, I think that the policeman finds the murderer because the child shows a photo of the black man who was in the toilet, and he kisses the woman.

I expect to view a kind of film which would be a mixture of romance with suspense, and with two parallel stories. But I don't think it would have a lot of action except at the beginning. The atmosphere looks quiet and it isn't the usual detective movies's atmosphere. However it can be a good movie to learn things about the Amish community, and according to me it's a very good thing, even if it isn't the authentic reality.