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Task 5c Fill in the table:

Task 5d Choose a scene from any film you like. Analyse its characters, props, set and lighting. Ask yourself the questions from the table above. What effect does each element of the mise-en-scene have on the viewer? What collective impact do they make? Make notes. Share your analysis with your groupmates.

Task 5e Use your notes to write a coherent paragraph describing the scene.

WORD-BUILDING (2): NEOLOGISMS IN FILM INDUSTRY

Task 6a Read the article and say which new words have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary and why.

‘Lynchian’, ‘Tarantinoesque’ and ‘Kubrickian’ lead new film words added to Oxford English Dictionary

By Nick Reilly

The Oxford English Dictionary has recognised the cultural influence of film makers such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino and Stanley Kubrick.

The latest edition has included a new selection of 100 film-related words – and it means that some of the most influential film makers of all times have been transformed into adjectives.

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For Clockwork Orange director Kubrick, it’s Kubrickian. The term is described is “meticulous perfectionism, mastery of the technical aspects of film-making, and atmospheric visual style in films across a range of genres.”

Tarantino, meanwhile, is Tarantinoesque – which means “characterized by graphic and stylised violence, non-linear storylines, cineliterate references, satirical themes, and sharp dialogue”.

Unsurprisingly, Lynchian reflects the ethereal, other-wordly creations that the director is widely renowned for. It’s described as “juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasise a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace.”

Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg and Frank Capra were among some of the other prolific directors to make the cut.

The full list, which can be found here, also reflects everyday film jargon. ‘Mumblecore’, ‘Scream queen’, ‘Shaky cam’, and ‘Diegetic’ are among these.

Finally, there are references to some of cinema’s most iconic phrases too – with The Wizard of Oz’s ‘Not in Kansas anymore’ making the cut.

[https://www.nme.com/news/lynchian-tarantinoesque-and-kubrickian-lead-new-film-words-added-

to-oxford-english-dictionary-definition-2387041 ]

Task 6b Look through the full list of newly introduced words linked to films. Choose 5 words, study their definitions and present them to your groupmates.

[https://public.oed.com/blog/oed-3-the-revisioning-or-how-we-added-film-terms-in-the-september-

2018-release/ ]

WORLD-BUILDING (2): SUFFIXES DENOTING SIMILARITY AND RESEMBLANCE

Task 6c Study the table about adjectival suffixes denoting similarity and resemblance. What is the difference between them?

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Task 6d Find out the meaning of the following words:

a)Pythonesque

b)Coenesque

c)Kafkaesque

d)Wildesque

e)Bressonian

f)Bunuelian

Task 6e Study the following sentences and explain the meaning of the adjectives ending in -esque.

1.Ms.Zampino’s Beverly Hills-esque fortune comes from her lavish body butter firm. (www.realitytitbit.com)

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2.Pedri scores brilliant Lionel Messi-esque goal for Barcelona (Planetfootball.com)

3.Tarantinoesque bloodshed meets Greek tragedy in Aleshea Harris’s daring drama about a voyage of vengeance ‘Is God Is’. (www.theguardian.com)

4.Ozzy Osbourne recruits Tony Iommi for his Sabbath-esque single, Degradation Rules. (www.guitarworld.com)

5.Carrie Cracknell’s adaptation of Jane Austin’s “ Persuasion, ” may be “Fleabag”-esque, but she’s not imitating Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She’s making it her own. (www.euronews.com)

6.Xiaomi 12 Lite review: Apple-esque, but affordable. (www.stuff.tv )

7.‘Some Interviews on Personal Matters’ is an offbeat Coppola-esque romcom from 1970s Tbilisi. (www.theguardian.com)

8.Amazon wants to produce a Marvelesque spin-off show for streaming based on Bond. (www.theindependent.com)

9.Building a Disney-esque theme park near London is a bad idea. (www.Euronews.com)

10.Brexit has become a Monty Pythonesque joke. (www.thefinancialtimes.com)

Task 6f Make adjectives from the names of these film directors and use them in the sentences of your own.

1.Tarkovsky – ____________________________________________________________

a.____________________________________________________________________

2.Kubrick – _____________________________________________________________

b.____________________________________________________________________

3.Scorcese – _____________________________________________________________

c.____________________________________________________________________

4.Lynch – _______________________________________________________________

d.____________________________________________________________________

5.Spielberg – _____________________________________________________________

e.____________________________________________________________________

6.Bergman – _____________________________________________________________

f.____________________________________________________________________

7.Fellini – _______________________________________________________________

g.____________________________________________________________________

8.Eisenstein – ____________________________________________________________

h.____________________________________________________________________

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Task 6g Fill in the blanks with the words from the box + suffix ‘-ish’.

thirty/ standoff / boy/ yellow/ cartoon / bitter / nightmare / fever

1.Lisa is usually quite friendly but today she is being _______________.

2.Smokers usually have _______________ teeth.

3.Even though Mike is in his fifties, he loves to learn and has a _______________ zest for life.

4.This Indian rice dish tastes warm, _______________ and rather pungent.

5.The monsters in the film look fake and _______________.

6.The novel’s protagonist is a _______________ jobless loser, who stumbles comically in his attempts to pick up women. (The Guardian)

7.Travel this summer has been _______________ at times, marred by delays, cancellations and other snags. (The New York Times)

8.The musician has been recording at a _______________ pace, releasing a new album each year.

Task 6h Figure out the difference between these pairs of adjectives.

a)childlike – childish

b)doglike – doggish

c)ladylike – ladyish

d)godlike – goddish

EXPLORING THE GENRE: FILM REVIEWS

Task 7a In groups, discuss the following questions.

a.Why do people read film reviews?

b.What kind of information should a film review provide?

c.What kind of language do you expect to see in a film review?

d.How long should a film review be?

e.When did you last read/write a film review?

Task 7b Read the text about the content and structure of a film review do the post-reading tasks.

WRITING ABOUT FILM

The film review is a popular way for critics to assess a film’s overall quality and determine whether it is worth recommending. Film reviews encompass personal opinions and evaluations of a film, as well as objective analyses of its formal techniques and thematic content.

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Film reviews may vary in length from 500 to 1500 words and are written for general public. They are different from film criticism, written by scholars and published in academic journals.

However, film reviews require quite a lot of preparation before starting to write. Prior to watching the film, it is recommended that you do some preliminary research on the director of the film to get the idea about his style and previous works. It is also advisable that you find some information about other members of the crew and the cast and their previous works. You may also need to study the historical and cultural context of the film or, if the film is an adaptation, read the book the film was adapted from.

Writing a film review often requires multiple viewings of the film. Plan to watch the film two or three times, especially if you are taking your first steps in writing film reviews. During the first viewing, give in to the cinematic experience; in other words, get lost in the film and enjoy it without worrying about what you will write in the review. During your second viewing, try distancing yourself from the plot and instead focus on interesting elements of the film that you can highlight in the review.

These elements may be separated into two categories:

1)formal techniques such as cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, lighting, sound, soundtrack, genre, or narrative;

2)thematic content that resonates with issues such as history, class, race, environment, gender, etc.

While and/or after the second viewing, take notes on the formal and thematic elements of the film. Then ask yourself this question: “What is the central idea for my review that brings together the film’s formal and thematic elements?” You may need to re-watch parts of the film one more time in order to formulate the main idea or to clarify certain aspects.

Writing a Film Review

Although there is not a set formula to follow when writing a film review, the genre does have certain common elements that most film reviews include.

1. Introduction

In the opening paragraphs of your review, provide some basic information about the film. You may include the film’s name, year, director, screenwriter, director of photography, and leading actors. You should also begin to evaluate the film.

The terrible conversation in the hospital consulting room – everyone’s final rite of passage – is the starting point for this deeply felt, beautifully acted movie from screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus: a remake of

Akira Kurosawa’s 1953 film Ikiru, or To Live.

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2. Plot Summary

Remember that many readers of film reviews have not yet seen the film. While you want to provide some plot summary, keep it brief and avoid specific details that would spoil the viewing for others.

A buttoned-up civil servant works joylessly in the town planning department; he is a lonely widower estranged from his grasping son and daughter-in-law. In the original, he was Mr Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura. Now he is Mr

Williams, played by Bill Nighy.

Approaching retirement, his supposed reward for a life of pointless tedium, Mr

Williams receives a stomach-cancer diagnosis with one year to live. And now he realises that he has been dead until this moment. After a mad and undignified attempt at boozy debauchery in the company of a louche writer (Tom Burke),

Mr Williams realises there is one thing he might still achieve: forcing the city authorities to build the modest little children’s playground for which local mothers have been desperately petitioning and which he and his colleagues have been smugly preventing with their bureaucratic inertia.

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/21/living-bill-night-kurosawa-ikiru-remake ]

3. Description

You may also include a more detailed description of your particular cinematic experience watching the film. It could be your personal impression of what the film looks, feels, and sounds like. In other words, what exactly stands out in your mind when you think about this particular film?

The story has its moments of suspense, especially when Nina’s child wanders off from the beach. But the soul of the film exists in the small exchanges and tensions between characters. No motive or interaction is simple, the complications expressed sometimes in glances, sometimes in words. Dagmara Domińczyk sharply defines

Nina’s brash, pregnant sister-in-law, Callie, who is by turns benign and intrusive. “Children are a crushing responsibility,” Leda tells her, hardly the diplomatic thing to say to a woman expecting her first child, but the comment – maybe wilfully hurtful, maybe thoughtless – is true to Leda’s character. Johnson, in her best performance by far, poignantly captures Nina’s jumpiness and ambivalence as a woman with nothing to complain about (so she says), except an exhausting child who makes her feel trapped in her own existence.

[https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20211215-film-review-the-lost-daughter ]

4. Analysis

When sharing your impression of the film, analyse how it utilises formal techniques and thematic content. How do the formal techniques of the film (cinematography, genre, narrative, editing, mise-en-scène, lighting, or sound) affect the way the film looks, feels, and sounds? How does the thematic content (history, class, environment, race, sexuality, or social issues) affect your cinematic experience and interpretation? How do the formal techniques forward the thematic content?

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“The French Dispatch” contains an overwhelming and sumptuous profusion of details.

This is true of its décor and costumes, its variety of narrative forms and techniques (live action, animation, split screens, flashbacks, and leaps ahead, among many others), its playful breaking of the dramatic frame with reflexive gestures and conspicuous stagecraft, its aphoristic and whiz-bang dialogue, and the range of its performances, which veer in a heartbeat from the outlandishly facetious to the painfully candid.

[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-french-dispatch-reviewed-wes-andersons-

most-freewheeling-film

Grabbing a couple of rarely known nuggets about a movie will make your review stand out from the crowd. By conducting a decent amount of research about a film, its cast and crew, it will also make writing the review even easier and quicker. Look out for certain aspects, such as the budget, whether the story is original or based on a book, some details about the casting and/or the production process.

Partly inspired by the early-life adventures of film and TVproducer Gary Goetzman, Licorice Pizza pinballs between seemingly random episodes, taking us from a teenage fair (where John C Reilly cameos as Herman Munster) to the Encino hills via fiery motorcycle stunts with movie stars (Sean Penn as a William Holden-esque screen veteran) and close calls with police and politicians (Benny Safdie as mayoral hopeful Joel

Wachs) – all played out against the end-of-days background noise of the Opec oil crisis.

[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/02/licorice-pizza-paul-thomas-andersons-joyously-

nostalgic-coming-of-age-tale

That the movie amassed 152 million hours viewed in one week, according to Netflix, which reports its own figures, suggests a cultural trend taking shape.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/arts/television/dont-look-up-climate-change.html ]

5. Cinematic Knowledge

You may also reference other films and filmmakers within your review to give more depth to your criticism. Make short, snappy links to other films to help readers get a better idea about the film.

Amid overt references to Italian filmmakers such as Fellini, Zeffirelli and Leone, there is a strong metacinematic element in The Hand of God, culminating in Fabietto’s lifechanging meeting with the real-life director Antonio Capuano (played by Ciro Capano), whose The Dust of Naples (1998) gave Sorrentino his first writing credit on a feature

[https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/hand-god-leaves-viewers-sort-autobiography-

from-fabrication ]

6. Conclusion/Evaluation

In the closing of your film review, summarise your general thoughts and impressions of the film. You may also explicitly or implicitly state whether or not you recommend the film and briefly explain why the film is or is not worth seeing.

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Like the many movies Joel Coen has made with his brother Ethan, The Tragedy of Macbeth has been directed to within an inch of its life, which leeches it of some emotional impact. Sometimes I wanted to linger longer in this dark world, to let its chill seep more fully into my bones. Still, there’s no denying Coen has the right temperament for this doomiest of Shakespeare plays. Add it to the many stories he’s told about men lost in tragedies of their own making.

[https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1066924652/the-tragedy-of-macbeth-film-review ]

Remember that the best reviews are the ones that provide new and unusual ideas that one may have never considered before and we can learn from. Don’t write reviews just copying points from other critics.

CHECK YOURSELF

a.What elements are commonly included in a film review?

b.What information is commonly included in the introduction?

c.What should you keep in mind when summarising the film plot?

d.What should you focus on when describing the film?

e.What questions should you ask yourself when analysing the film?

f.What elements are commonly analysed?

g.How can your cinematic knowledge be applied when writing a film review?

h.What can you write in the conclusion?

YOUR RESEARCH

Task 7c Choose two film reviews from some English-language media. Identify the abovementioned elements. How are the reviews structured? Share your analysis with your groupmates.

TIPS FROM EXPERTS: HOW TO WRITE A FILM REVIEW

Task 8a Listen to the tips on how to write a film review given by the New York Times film critic A. O. Scott at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raiWajtEV9s . Make notes. Compare your notes with your partner.

Task 8b Do the reviews you chose for Task 7c reflect the tips (1-4) in Task 8a? Bring evidence to prove your point.

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Task 8c Read the text “Advice to Young Critics” in Supplementary Materials Section A1. Which tips do you find useful?

Task 8d Read the text “How to Watch a Movie Like a Film Critic” in Supplementary Materials Section A2. Which tips do you find useful?

WRITING SKILLS (3): PRODUCING A NEUTRAL REVIEW

Task 9a Discuss the following questions with your groupmates.

•What film can you call an ok film?

•What language do you expect to find in a review where the critic liked the film 50/50?

MENTOR TEXT (1): REVIEW OF DON’T LOOK UP: YOU’LL LAUGH LIKE HELL

Task 9b Read the following film review and annotate it, marking out 1) elements commonly found in film reviews, 2) the structure (order of paragraphs), 3) specific language.

Review of “Don’t Look Up”: You’ll laugh like hell

Audiences should cherry pick the good stuff from the sea of unfocused choices.

By Peter Travers

It’s time to sit tight and assess “Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay’s broadly satiric take on global disaster now in theaters en route to Netflix on Dec. 24. Is it the “cynical, infuriating, insufferably smug” lampoon of its worst reviews or “the funniest movie of 2021” to reference a rave?

Audiences would best be served by cherrypicking the good stuff from a sea of unfocused choices, the kind that strand an all-star cast tasked with breathing life into thinly-drawn characters with little chance to resonate despite a needlessly flabby 145-minute running time. […]

Still, it’s high time we had a movie that makes a star of science. And Leonardo DiCaprio – showing a flair for farce that doesn’t negate seriousness – takes the MVP spot as Dr. Randall Mindy, an astronomer from Michigan State who panics when his protégé, Ph.D candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence with a nose ring), discovers a comet hurtling toward Earth.

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