love actually

Love Actually (2003)

  135 min  -  Comedy | Drama | Romance   

   

Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England.

Director: Richard Curtis

Writer: Richard Curtis

Stars: Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon and Liam Neeson

Country:UK | USA

 

Release Date:21 November 2003 (UK)

 

Filming Locations:Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

 

Budget: £30,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $1,047,160 (Russia) (11 December 2003) (126 Screens)

Gross: $59,365,105 (USA) (16 February 2004)

Production Co: Universal Pictures, Studio Canal, Working Title Films 

Soundtracks: "River" By Joni Mitchell (as Mitchell) Performed by Joni Mitchell Courtesy of Warner Strategic Marketing UK

Filming Dates: 2 September 2002 - 26 November 2002

Kick-Ass

After watching Kick-Ass you need to write about the film in relation to the 7 key areas of representation: Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Social Class, Physical Ability/ Disability, Regional Identity.

Also refer to the 4 key areas of Textual Analysis: Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition ,Editing ,Sound, Mise-en-Scène.

Kick-Ass as a film contributes to the 7 key areas often breaking the boundaries of stereotypes, for example Genre; men are typically viewed as the strong ones, whereas we witness Hit Girl killing all the men, breaking the stereotype of Women being weak. We see this most ironically when she enters the building to seek her revenge; here she plays with the idea that all you girls are ‘innocent’ and it is this that allows her into the room where she kills and murders everyone. When she enters the building she is dressed in old school uniform comparing this to the mise en scene, which is modern and marble floors, this makes this appearance of Hit Girl more dramatic. The idea of her being in ‘old’ clothing is shadowed by the backing music which is ‘Spaghetti Western’ which brings the tension together but also contradicts the age and gender stereotypes.

            Whilst inside the building she contradicts the idea of Ethnicity, a lot of the guys she is fighting are coloured, this is because they are door men and are more likely to hurt the little girl stereotypically. However Hit Girl fights the guys, where they are dark could this be a metaphor for good & bad? The good is fighting the evil here and the good fight back better.

             The clothing of Hit Girl, Kick-Ass and Big Daddy is loud, obvious and makes them stick out for the others, so their identity is easily seen however we struggle to identify the other men. They all look like an army for Frank that gets destroyed, and he also uses his son as a man in order to protect him. In this fight we seen very clever camera work, we see the picture swapping to the professionals to the armatures. How it swaps back to one and another but yet ironically the armature (Kick-Ass) beats the professional (Frank).

             The second time we meet Big-Daddy is in the factory when we see him destroying the factory, although Big-Daddy looks like a child playing ‘dress-up’ he is the one who wins in the end. Big Daddy plays on the idea of surprise, which contradicts his clothing this is because he is dressed so that he stands out, when the audience see what Red Mist has to show his dad (Frank) we are shown from the hand held camera and then switches back to the film camera and back, I think that this is to symbolize the social class, and how even though Big Daddy is of lower class than Frank then we understand that he can still mess with him. For example they use camera that are of high quality when trying to show Kick-Ass and Big Daddy’s true identity. This is the higher class and then they log into the CCTV in the building that is weak quality, but yet it is intruding into Frank’s place, when Hit Girl is seeking her Revenge. When we see them run out of the factory trying to escape Big Daddy’s place we see the name fall off the factory I think this is foreshadowing Big Daddy bringing down  Franks business.

            The only sexual things that we see is between Kick-Ass and his girl friend, we see how he try’s to impress her being an ordinary guy where we see him struggling to keep their friendship when he likes her so much I see this as Kick-Ass’s own disability as he feels as though  he is not good enough for her and that he needs to be someone else when they are together and we see this in contrast to him being Kick-Ass, it is when his two personas merge that we witness him meeting Big Daddy and Hit girl, So it is this that gets him into trouble but it is also when he gains the courage to tell her and it is then that he gets what he wanted all day along, she loves the real him. He doesn’t have to be different. I think this is also shown in Hit Girl she should have the disability of being a young innocent girl and that she shouldn’t ever do anything wrong however we soon she is not however she does have the awful situation of being a Orphan at the end however we witness her defending herself even when she does go to school she is still able to stand up for her self so it shows her physical ability in contrast to the disability of being a Orphan.

thursdays work

Working Title Films was co-founded by producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. In 1992, PolyGram became the company's corporate backer. Radclyffe left Working Title, and Eric Fellner, a fellow independent film producer, joined the company. The company produced a variety of films for PolyGram's London-based production company PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. PolyGram Films became a major Hollywood competitor. In 1999, PolyGram was sold to Seagram and merged with MCA Music Entertainment, to form Universal Music Group. PolyGram Films was merged and sold to Universal Studios in 1999.

Although contractually allowed to produce any film with a budget of up to $25 million, on a practical basis, Bevan and Fellner consult with studio executive at Working Title's parent company NBC Universal.

WT² Productions

In 1999, Bevan and Fellner launched a subsidiary company named Working Title 2 Productions, commonly known as WT². The company is an independent film production arm run by Natascha Wharton, and has produced films that include Billy Elliot, Shaun of the Dead and The Calcium Kid.

Being a conglomerate of universal they’re able to spend a greater amount of money of which would be used to invest on a greater amount of films, so that they’re able to use new and upcoming technologies for example 3D, blue-ray, better cameras for example in the film green zone they used silicon cameras which are the size of a match box therefore allowing them to get more effective action shots that usually wouldn’t be able to get with normal cameras.

 With Working Title being part of a conglomerate with Universal they get far more funding to spent on the cast and directors. This is a huge advantage to a film business, however spending more money on more well known directors then gives you the disadvantage of the director deciding more of the film, taking over it more. Then again with higher experienced cast and crew you are more likely to get a far better effective and successful film.   

With the higher budget you are able to appeal to more genres if you have a weak budget or are not part of a conglomerate then you’re unable to do this for example Warp films can only cater for genres like social realism whereas Working title can produce films for a vaster genre for example: the dramatic, thriller and action,   which means that they can gain more audiences like films in Hollywood where they have the funding to get animation films etc. 

A issue that Working title may face as they’re a conglomerate to Universal is that universal have a lot of control over them, meaning that they’re controlled and restricted in what they can do, so the films are less artistic in order to overcome this issue working title brought working title 2 into action this was created still as a conglomerate so they still receive the funding from universal but get more artistic points for example Billy Elliot so this weakness was overcome.