Gone Girl by David Fincher Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Gone Girl by David Fincher - Movie Review Example The movie is the screen version of the best-seller by the former television critic Gillian Flynn. The critic Scott Smith wrote about it: â€Å"I cannot say this urgently enough: you have to read Gone Girl. It’s as if Gillian Flynn has mixed us a martini using battery acid instead of vermouth and somehow managed to make it taste really, really good. Gone Girl is delicious and intoxicating and delightfully poisonous. It’s smart (brilliant, actually). It’s funny (in the darkest possible way). The writing is jarringly good, and the story is, well†¦amazing. Read the book and you'll discover - among many other treasures - just how much freight (and fright) that last adjective can bear† (Smith). Flynn wrote the script for a movie herself. She says that her main goal was to keep the spirit of the novel. This spirit is gloomy and depressive. Therefore, it is no wonder that the author of movies Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo David Fincher decided to make the screen version. For now, his only optimistic picture is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". In all the other works Fincher tells us about maniacs, mental pathologies, etc. Certainly, we shouldn't forget about his "Social network", but it also cant be called optimistic. It is interesting that Gone Girl is a feminist and anti-feminist movie at the same time. For example, Fincher's "The girl with the dragon tattoo" was absolutely feminist. However, as a new movie of the director is in general anti-human, it contains two opposite doctrines: the sacrifices women make for men are great and dramatic, but women also mock at men so much that it depreciates their own sacrifices. The ps ychological thriller is a genre that is very popular in the modern world, but the movies of this genre are usually very pessimistic. The inner world of every person is dark and frightening, thus this genre appears to be the most difficult and not every director decides to work with it.                  Ã‚  Still, there is one thing that makes Gone Girl less gloomy. One of two main characters seems to be too specific, not corresponding to the ideas of an average person. Rothman states: â€Å"Gone Girl† is a fantasy, of course, and it takes place in a dream world, not reality. Leaving the theatre, you have to ask yourself how connected these ideas are in real life. And you can’t miss the fact that, fundamentally, â€Å"Gone Girl† is a farce. There is no  real  crime or horror in the Dunne household. Amy and Nick hurt one another, but in unexceptional ways; Nick’s affair with a sexy student - Emily Ratajkowski, of the â€Å"Blurred Lines† music video - is played for comedy. In fact, it’s the creation of a heightened atmosphere of suspicion around those banal â€Å"crimes† that leads, eventually, to the real ones. Maybe â€Å"Gone Girl† is just playing around-making up, rather than finding, connect ions within our imaginative lives†. The movie is a fantasy; therefore, it is not necessary to make frightening generalizations. But they still can be made. And this really frightens.      

Popular Music, Culture & Politics Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Popular Music, Culture & Politics - Article Example This shows how some isolated or marginal areas within Japan are capable of upholding authentic Japanese culture, characterized by composition of musical lyrics in Japanese. There is further emphasis on the fact that urban areas of Japan, unlike the isolated ones, are connected to and even compromised by Western influence, coupled with Japan’s troubled history. The association of Japanese popular music with the West is evident throughout the article, forming its greatest theme. For instance, Morris takes note of the fact that the country’s musical culture hence national identity is largely tied up with its 19th century occupation by Western Allied forces. It was as a result of the occupation that Japanese musicians were forced to embrace western styles of music composition and performance, in order to keep Allied soldiers entertained hence surviving the occupation. The author is keen to note that, since that time, music primarily reflects the country’s cultural pl acement hence national identity in connection and contrast to the West. The systematic review approach adopted by Morris adequately demonstrates that Japanese popular music adopts practices that allow it to capitalize on emerging trends. These include not just utilization of English in composition and performance, but also adoption of emergent trends such as those in media technology. This approach is, however, too broad to fully examine and effectively facilitate understanding of Japan’s national identity, as shaped by music and its resulting culture. There is extra focus on the nature of music, as influenced by the relationship between Japan and the West, especially the U.S., thus overlooking crucial cultural elements within the country. Other examples of broad or non-specific music associations with national identity include the association of rock and roll music with British