This week’s film focus was Aliens (1986). Although I had seen and enjoyed the film’s predecessor, I had never ventured further into the franchise. I did highly enjoy the film, despite finding it to be a bit slow to start with.

The debate held in class centred on the statement “Aliens is more than just a Science Fiction film.” My instinctive initial reaction was in favour of this belief, yet I unfortunately found myself winding up on a team needing to to oppose the obvious. Although we struggled initially with the task, we decided to take the stance that Aliens cannot be deemed as more than a Sci-Fi film, because the nature of Science Fiction itself includes an amalgamation of several different genres. Although we did begin to convince ourselves and win the debate, I do still believe that Aliens is a genre defying movie.

Project Brief 2 was also due at the end of this week. I chose to explore the genre of Film Noir through photos, which I found to be both challenging and interesting. Rather than trying to formulate a cohesive narrative story through the images, I instead attempted to recreate the tone of the genre through a varied bank of stills. I purposely included urban settings with damp streets, long shadows and neon signage, but I think I probably could have improved my project by choosing one specific theme to focus on.

Nora Ephron’s staple Rom-Com, Sleepless in Seattle (1993), was the subject of this week’s screening. Interestingly, I found that the dialogue and specifically the comedy of the film often perfectly fitted into the definition of humour from the week’s readings. Claire Mortimer (2010), noted that we often find things funny because a character’s behaviour towards a situation is unexpected. This is perfectly demonstrated in the film when 8 year old Jonah starts asking his father, Sam (Tom Hanks) explicit questions about his new relationship, which one would not usually expect from a small child.

Mortimer offers another definition for comedy, in which “comic suspense is [created] when a character is involved in a scheme of which the other characters are not aware”. Although not as blatantly utilised as the previous definition, this type of humour can be seen when Sam’s friend tells him that he will find out about Tiramisu on his first date since his wife’s passing. Unaware of the dessert, Sam is mystified as to what the term means, and the audience finds humour in the scenario as they are most likely aware of information that he is not privileged to.

References:

Mortimer, Claire (2010). Chapter 4: The comedy of romance. In Romantic comedy. Oxon: Routledge, pp. 69-83.