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Battle Royale is a Japanese action thriller film that was released in 2000 and directed by Kinji Fukasaku. It is adapted from the 1999 novel of the same name, which was written by Koushun Takami. As its name also suggests, it is about a group of high school students who are forced to fight to the death with each other by their government. One of the aspects of this film that I really like is the use of music. Other than the soundtrack that was composed for the film, there are several Western classical music pieces that were used in the film. Most of these were used in the violent scenes which in my opinion makes these scenes more impactful. I appreciate the contrast between the content of the scenes and the music that were used in them. I think this contrast between them helps us to understand how terrible and abnormal the situation the characters are in while combining it with what might be considered more peaceful.

Extraordinary You is a South Korean drama that was released in 2019. I can say that it is one of my comfort watches and guilty pleasures. I always watch it when I am stressed, and since it is the midterm week, I found myself watching it again. It tells the story of Dan-oh, a high school student who discovers that she actually lives in a comic book. While assuming she is the main character at first, later, she realizes she is an extra who has only one purpose, which is to bring the main characters together. Then, we watch her while she is trying to change her fate.  Since it is a fantasy rom-com, it is pretty easy to watch, but at the same time, it is really cheesy and sometimes even cringe to the degree that I have to stop watching for a while. Still, it is a pretty comforting TV show to watch, at least for me, and it is actually one of the works which showed me that something does not have to be critically acclaimed or a masterpiece  to have an effect on us. Sometimes we just need to

Like many people, I watched the new Batman film past week. As someone who had a DC phase in high school, of course, I liked it. Watching The Riddler as the main villain of a Batman film was great. Everyone compares the past versions of certain characters in comic book films, but The Riddler is not one of them most of the time. So, this film actually made me think about how a character may be represented in many different ways.  When we look at the last three live-action versions of The Riddler, they are very different from each other while being from the same source material. First of all, there is The Riddler in Batman Forever (1995), played by Jim Carrey. This version of the character may be the most similar to the comic book version out of the three. He was cheesy, over the top, and definitely not threatening. In addition, his costume was similar to the comic books. Staying faithful to source material can be great most of the time, but it is probably not when it comes to comic b

The Nightmare is an oil painting by the artist Henry Fuseli. It might be one of the most recreated paintings in films, especially within the horror genre. However, the specific tableau vivant I chose to write about is the one in the film Frankenstein (1931), directed by James Whale. It might not be the most detail-oriented recreation of this painting. Still, I think using it in this particular film makes it more meaningful since the author of Frankenstein , Mary Shelley, probably took the inspiration for the scene where The Creature  kills Victor's wife, Elizabeth, from this painting since she was familiar with Henry Fuseli. While in the film, Elizabeth is not killed but collapsed, in both the painting and the tableau vivant, the main subject is lifelessly lying on a bed while their heads, arms, and hairs are hanging down. They also share similar costumes.  What is missing in this tableau vivant is the  incubus  and the horse in the painting. Their equivalent might be  The Creatu

Clue is an American black comedy-mystery film released in 1985. It is also one of the first films that come to my mind whenever adaptations are mentioned since it was adapted from one of my favorite board games, Cluedo . Board games are definitely not as popular as books or comics when considered for an adaptation. Due to this, I think Clue is a rarity. What makes me love it even more is how this film does not just adapt the board game but also adds to it. Well, every adaptation does this but not always as successfully as Clue .  By taking the characters and the story,  which is basically a murder mystery,  from the board game, and adding comedy into it, Clue became a great adaptation with a cult following. I also really like the fact that it has various endings, just as how you can get a different ending each time you play the board game, and they initially released the film with different endings on cinemas.  And now they are doing a remake! I am not sure if it is necessary, but it

After our lecture this week, Better Days immediately came to my mind, which is a 2019 Chinese drama film directed by Derek Tsang. It tells the story of the friendship between a bullied teenage girl and a boy. To be honest, I do not follow Chinese Cinema closely. So, I would probably not come across this film if it did not get nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards . Thanks to this, I had the chance to see it, and I have liked it since then.  I think it is an excellent film in general, but the reason it came to my mind is the close-up scenes this film has. I find them really beautiful and effective. I believe that Better Days is a film in which the audience has to understand the characters thoroughly, and with the use of close-up shots, it does this quite successfully.

After the screening of La Jetée (1962) in this week's class, I wanted to   find similar films out of curiosity and for the preparation of Project 1. While searching, I came across Look at Life (1965). It is a one-minute short film by George Lucas which he made for a course while studying in film school.  These two films have similar aspects, but there are also differences. Both of them use still images, but while the images used in  La Jetée were shot for the film itself, Look at Life uses  found images. Therefore, it can be considered as a collage film. Even so, there are many transitions in Look at Life similar to  La Jetée .  For instance, zooming into specific details of the images was used considerably, but my favorite was in the image below. With keeping one of the images 'still,' a transparent version of the same image is used to create an illusion of movement, and I think it is pretty great! In addition,   as someone who is interested in archiving and preservation

Watching the music video of Fatboy Slim's Praise You for the first time was definitely an interesting experience. First of all, I want to say that I liked the song, which was a surprise since I am not a fan of electronic music. However, the highlight was definitely the music video rather than the song itself, at least for me.  I really liked the idea and the execution. To be honest, I am also not a fan of flash mobs,  but the one in the video was actually entertaining to watch rather than being uncomfortable. The style of the video is very fitting to the idea of a flash mob as well. The fact that they used guerrilla-style to shoot the video, whether it was intentional or the consequences of the sources they had, helped the style and the content of the video to complement each other.  As someone who is interested in everything that is vintage, the vintage look of the video also caught my attention. I can imagine myself shooting a video that is similar to this one with my Panasonic