A Cinderella Story

I'm sure everyone knows the classic story of Cinderella. The girl is forced to be a slave to her step mother and evil step sisters, but she falls in love with her Prince Charming (Austin Ames) at the ball. She drops her "glass slipper" on her way out and he won't rest until he finds his Cinderella. Well, A Cinderella Story is the modern version of this story. Sam, a teenager living in the Fernando Valley, lives in a big house with just her father: until her sixth birthday when Fiona comes along. Her father felt something was missing so he marries Fiona and her and her two twin daughters move in with Sam and her father. When her dad was around, everything was perfect. "For [her] growing up, the San Fernando was [her] kingdom."

To set the mood of the "fairytale," the movie begins with a magical kingdom inside a snow globe that's placed on Sam's bedside table. Sam's father is reading her a bedtime story and she asks him if fairy tales come true. He says "No, but dreams come true. Fairy tales are about standing up for what you believe in. This fairytale book contains something very important." This foreshadows the future when Sam is living with Fiona. Sam is living in her fairytale but she has no courage to stand up for herself and what she believes in. Right after her father tells her this, the house begins to shake, and the earthquake begins. The snow globe slowly shimmies towards the edge of the table until it can't hold itself up an longer. It comes tumbling to the ground and within seconds, the snow globe is destroyed and the"kingdom" breaks to bits. This represents how not only Sam's snow globe was destroyed, but her whole life.

Sam:

The main character is Sam. She is a teenage girl who's life gets turned around when her dad dies in an earthquake. She struggles through her childhood living under the ownership of her evil step mother, Fiona, who takes complete control of her life. When Sam's father dies, he leaves no will and everything goes to Fiona: the diner he used to own, the house, the money, and Sam. Fiona uses Sam as her own personal servant and Sam puts up with it because if she does, Fiona will pay for her to go to Princeton University. Sam wears dark and baggy clothes throughout almost the whole story. She's upset about what she has to live with and isn't happy with who she is. But at the end of the movie, once she meets her Prince Charming and goes off to Princeton, she gets her life back. As soon as this happens she was shown wearing a bright, pink outfit, laughing in front of the San Fernando Valley, just like at the beginning of the movie before her dad died and everything was perfect. I think the dark and baggy clothes when she was living with Fiona represented her sadness but by the time the happy ending rolled around, even how she was dressed, along with the music, reflected the mood of the story and Sam's happiness.

I thought that there were only three people in this story who had a positive impact on Sam's life. They were Rhonda, Carter, and Austin.

Rhonda:

Since Sam doesn't have a mom, her dad has passed away, and her step mom isn't much of a parent, Rhonda almost takes on the roll of Sam's mom. She works at the diner day and night to keep it afloat, and has only stuck around for so long to look after Sam. When Sam finally builds up her courage and stands up to Fiona, Rhonda takes Sam in and looks after her.

At the beginning of the movie, Sam says "At Hal's [Diner], everyone felt like family." This caught my attention because this was the only family Sam has ever had, and Rhonda was the closest thing to a female role model Sam could get.

Carter:

Carter was Sam's best friend. He was always telling her she needed to just be herself and not worry about what anyone else thinks. Carter was Sam's only friend that was her age in the story, and he always had her back. He brought her to the ball and made sure that she got her chance to meet her prince charming. He was always encouraging her to just tell Austin that she was his Cinderella, but the time was never right.

Austin:

Austin is Sam's Prince Charming. When she finds out that he is the one she has been dying to meet for months, she's disappointed. Being the star of the football team and the most popular boy in school, she assumed he would be another rude and arrogant jock who cared about no one but himself. But once he convinces her to give him a chance, she realizes that he's nothing like what he seems. He writes poetry and hates that he is always surrounded by people who act like someone they're not. He only plays football because his dad makes him and wants him to go pro. But like Sam, he also wants to attend Princeton and he wants to become a writer, not a football player. Austin makes all of Sam's dreams come true, and just like every other typical "Cinderella" story, they live happily ever after.

I found that in this particular story, it wasn't Sam's circumstances that were holding her back, it was the people around her. This is why for Sam it was so important to keep the important people, like Rhonda, Carter and Austin close to her. Fiona, on the other hand, is the stereotypical "bad guy." She's the one that no one likes except for her daughters yet she still thinks everyone loves her. She's full of herself and thinks she is superior to everyone else. For example, the San Fernando Valley is going through a drought, yet Fiona feels that saving water is for poor people so she wastes away water on keeping her lawn green and healthy-looking. Some could argue that Austin at times could be considered a "bad guy," too. For the most part of the story he seems like a jerk. When Sam finally stands up for herself before Austin's big football game, she tells him off by saying "waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought: useless and disappointing," then she storms away and takes her seat to watch the game. With 9 seconds left in the game Austin leaves to make it up to Sam, and rain starts to fall and they end up kissing in the rain, like I am convinced must only ever happen in the movies. So by the end of the movie, Austin does finally prove himself and in my opinion he turns from villain to hero.

The use of music in this film helped to set the mood of each scene. At the end of the movie in particular, in the scene at the football game, the song "Hear You Me" is playing which turns the mood to very slow and depressing, because that is the mood of the song. When Austin leaves the game and makes it up to Sam, the song "Friend" starts playing which is a very upbeat song and the mood is very happy and uplifting. The mood of a story can be quickly changed through the use of music. The video below shows how these two songs were used to set the mood in this scene of the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61vh38Zg_GI&feature=related

In the end, the fairytale book from the beginning did contain something very, very important, just like Sam's dad had told her minutes before he died. But the book didn't just contain something metaphorically important, there was something literally inside that book that was very important to Sam. She found his hidden will folded up inside the book, with Fiona's signature. Fiona was taken "downtown" by the police and ownership of everything including the house and the diner went to Sam. Sam went off to Princeton with Austin and left Rhonda in charge of the diner, which was restored to it's original look from before Fiona had taken over.

"...And they all lived happily ever after."

Valentines Day

Last weekend I watched the movie Valentines Day. It is the type of movie that reminds you of a soap opera. There's way too many characters to count and somehow in the end you realize they all know each other. There's drama, comedy, and romance. It was just what I suspected it would be, yet once the movie was over, I said to myself: "Wow that was actually a really good movie." Which left me wondering: what made this movie so good?

To explain every character would just be confusing and very strenuous, so I will make things a little simpler. There is a man named Dr. Harrison Copeland who is shown with his girlfriend on the morning of Valentines Day. He tells her he has to leave right away to go to San Francisco for work. Turns out he goes to Beverly hills to visit his wife and daughter which his girlfriend doesn't know exists. When he gets there and sits down at the breakfast table he picks up 3 oranges and starts to juggle them, and following that his wife says "doesn't daddy juggle well." I caught that quote and realized how it also applied to how he handles his life. He can "juggle" having an affair with his girlfriend, while also living with his wife and daughter, and have no one else know. Ashton Kutcher plays a character in the movie named Reed Bennett who proposes to his girlfriend. While proposing he says that is dad told him "If you're ever with a girl that's too good for you, marry her." As soon as he said that, I started to wonder if the marriage would really last. In a way this was almost a type of foreshadowing because without directly letting the audience know, Reed implied that his girlfriend was way too good for him. Just as I had suspected, in a matter of hours his girlfriend had left him. This had made me realize that there can be foreshadowing like with Dr. Harrison Copeland where it is evidently implying the quote not just literally, and then there is foreshadowing like with Reed Bennett, where it is very subtle and indirect, yet it still makes you think.

Being called Valentines Day, the movie is all about romance. It's about heartbreak and proposals and falling in love. Throughout the movie the writer threw in little inspirational quotes to set the mood of the movie. One quote that I caught was from a man working at a flower shop who said: "For some people love doesn't exist unless you acknowledge it in front of other people." Following that quote, a different actor would have their dilemma about how his girlfriend wasn't ready to be seen in public with him wearing her new engagement ring. I found that just those few lines and bits and pieces of how they made the movie flow from one scene to the next is what kept me interested. By every once in a while throwing in a few of those lines by each character to help set the mood was a good way to let the movie flow and not seem "choppy" like some soap opera's can when moving from scene to scene.

Watching this movie helped me realize the dynamic of how movies are put together, and in particular I noticed all the small and subtle things that turn a movie from "alright" to "great." In a story with so many characters it would be difficult to transition from one character to the next, but this movie really helped me notice that without the little things such as transitions and foreshadowing, a movie can be a lot less interesting.

The Lovely Bones

While I was watching a movie the other night, I started thinking about novels versus movies. When I thought it through, I realized that I think it’s always better to read a story rather than watch the movie because you can almost make that story your own. You can imagine it in any way that you want to rather than having it created for you. In almost every case I can think of (Harry Potter, Twilight, My Sisters Keeper, The Kite Runner) the novel is always better than the film. Why do you think that is?

Last weekend I had the chance to watch the awfully depressing movie, The Lovely Bones. It is the story of a 14 year old girl named Suzy Salmon who is murdered by her neighbour. About a year ago, I also read this book and I found that the movie was a bit of a disappointment. The movie was based mostly around how Suzy’s murderer was going to get away with the crime and the family coping with Suzy’s death. The book had a more realistic ending for the situation, was more about how Suzy’s father tries to solve her murder, and how Suzy can’t move on to a happier place because she is trying to help her father solve the mystery. In my opinion, movies almost never turn out as well as the book does. In writing you are able to make the story as long as you want and you are able to create a mental picture for the reader so that everyone’s mental image of a certain character, setting, etc., is their own. When you then create a movie out of the story, the characters are almost never how you imagined them.

While I was watching this movie, I found a lot of archetypes that I wouldn't have noticed if we weren't doing this project. At the very beginning of the movie, Suzy has a snow globe in her room with a penguin in it. She's worried that the penguin is sad because he can't get out, but her dad says to her: "He's trapped in a perfect world." This foreshadows when Suzy passes away and she is stuck in heaven (her perfect world) but there's no way out. I also noticed that when Suzy is taking pictures of her parents in front of her neighbours house and her killer steps in front of the rose bushes and ruins the picture she says: "He stepped out in front of the bushes and ruined it. He ruined a lot of things." This foreshadows that he is the one who killed her, but the dad has yet to figure that out.

In the Lovely Bones I didn’t picture the characters to look like the actors in the film and the setting was not at all how I pictured it, so in a way that can ruin a movie. I think I find it is easier to interpret and imagine when reading a story rather than watching the story in a film because in writing everything is possible. I am the kind of person who likes fictional stories, which is why I think I like to read more than watch a story in the format of a film. Everything imaginable is possible in writing, while in movies you are limited to only what is possible to be created in real life.

The Blind Side

When I was on vacation last week, my family and I rented the movie The Blind Side. The Blind Side is the true story of a boy named Michael who has the perfect genetic endowment of a NFL football player. He is a young boy whose mother won't take care of him and who doesn't know his father. Living on the streets, "Big Mike" is a lonely, quiet boy who is a big friendly giant. At the beginning of the story, before we are introduced to Michael's personality, he is seen roaming the streets in the dark and wearing dark, worn clothing. This was an archetype that jumped out at me while watching the movie without even thinking about it. His big figure and bad reputation made him seem violent and frightening, but throughout the story he is portrayed as a more bright and friendly character. As cheesy and stereotypical as it is, Michael really is an example of the one person in a bad situation who breaks the odds and rises to the top. He is taken in by the Tuohy's, a rich family with a history of graduates from Ole Miss University. With the support of his new family, Michael gets coached and trained at school and becomes a star football player. He is soon offered scholarships from colleges all around the country, but finally settles on Ole Miss.

When I found out during the closing credits that it was based on a true story, it really made me think. I found it interesting that after living in a household full of Ole Miss graduates for only a few months, he chose that school in a heartbeat. It made me realize how much influence your surroundings really do have on a person. I thought: If Michael wasn't living there, he probably never would have chosen to take the scholarship at Ole Miss; but then I realized something else. Without the Tuohy family, Michael probably wouldn't have even finished school, wouldn't have played football, and wouldn't have gone to university.

This movie has really made me think about how where we are from can really influence where we are going. Our surroundings and the people who we surround ourselves with make a greater impact on who we are as people than many people realize.