33. Listen to a conversation about the film Big Night and complete the notes below.

1) Name of the film: It’s called Big Night

2) Time / place: It’s set in …

3) Main characters: It’s about …

4) Problem: The problem is that …

5) The plan:

34. A) Read the following film review and fill in the gaps with verbs from the box. What tenses do we normally use when we write a film review?

decides become plays is filled finds out teach is set develops meets

Free Willy, directed by Simon Wincer, is a fascinating and moving adventure. It (1) ____ on the west coast of North America. The film is about the relationship between a boy and a whale, called Willy. Jason James Richter (2) ____ Jesse, a young street child who (3) ____ the meaning of love and friendship. Jesse first (4) ____ Willy in the sea park where the whale is kept. They (5) ____ good friends as they have both been separated from their families. As the story (6) ____ Jesse becomes so fond of Willy that he (7) ____ to try and free him.

All the actors, especially Lori Petty and Michael Madsen, are excellent. The film (8) ____ with suspense and emption. The scenes involving Jesse and Willy (9) ____ us how close animals and human beings can be to each other.

This is a wonderful film for the whole family. Don’t miss it as it will change the way you see life and relationship forever.

b) In pairs answer the following questions.

1) What is the title of the film?

2) Who is the director of the film?

3) What type of film is it?

4) Where is the film set?

5) Who are the main characters?

6) What is the plot?

7) Who stars in the film?

8) What comments are made about the film?

9) Is the film recommended or not? Why?

35. Read the table below. Listen to the speaker and tick the correct variant.

1) Name of film Spiderman Batman Returns

2) Stars Michael Douglas Michael Keaton

3) Type adventure comedy

4) Director Tim Burton Richard Burton

5) Set in real city imaginary city

6) Theme hero fights villains hero escapes death

7) Acting bad brilliant

8) Plot complicated boring

9) Costumes /

special effects nothing special out of this world

10) Recommendation waste of time not to be missed

36. Listen to part of a program in which critics discuss films appearing on TV. Look at the table below, then listen and fill in the missing information. Finally, using the information, describe the film.

Name of the film: Rain (1)…____

Set in: (2) _____

Type of film: human (3) ____

Story theme: a brother who finds out he’s got an autistic brother after he inherits money

Star (s): Hoffman and Cruise

Acting: superb

Script: (4) _____

Characters: very (5) ______

Recommendation: don’t (6) _____ it

37. a) Read and compare two film reviews: Lost in Translation and Office Space. Tick the features from the list which have been mentioned in the reviews.

Background: type of film, setting – where, setting – when, theme, adaptation form the novel/play, original screenplay/script, filmed in studio/on location, music/soundtrack, main actor/actress, name of director, name of producer, supporting cast;

Main Body: details of plot, ending of film, main character, other characters, comments on acting, comments on directing, comments on plot, comments on characters, the camerawork, a particularly memorable scene;

Conclusions: a personal recommendation, positive comments by critics, negative comments by critics.

Lost in Translation is a 2003 American film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Her second feature film, after The Virgin Suicides (1999), it stars Bill Murray as Bob Harris and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte. The supporting cast are Giovanni Ribisi as John, Anna Faris as Kelly, Fumihiro Hayashi as Charlie Brown, Akiko Takeshita as Ms. Kawasaki and others.

The film revolves around an aging actor named Bob Harris (Murray) and a recent college graduate named Charlotte (Johansson) who develop a rapport after a chance meeting in a Tokyo hotel. The movie explores themes of loneliness, alienation, insomnia, existential ennui and culture shock against the backdrop of a modern Japanese city.

Bob Harris (Murray), an aging American movie star, arrives in Tokyo to film an advertisement for Suntory whisky, for which he will receive $2 million. Charlotte (Johansson), a young college graduate, is left behind in her hotel room by her husband, John (Ribisi), a celebrity photographer on assignment in Tokyo. Charlotte is unsure of her future with him, as she believes he takes more interest in his celebrity models, most notably a young and popular American actress named Kelly (Faris), than he does in her. At the same time, Bob’s own 25-year marriage is tired and lacking in romance as he goes through a midlife crisis.

One night, after a long photo shoot, Bob retreats to the hotel bar. Charlotte, sitting at a table with John and friends, notices Bob and has a waiter bring him a bowl of peanuts from her table. Later, Bob and Charlotte have brief encounters each night at the hotel bar, until Charlotte invites Bob to meet up with some local friends of hers. Bob accepts and arrives later at her hotel room dressed in clothes that appear to be designed for a younger generation. Meanwhile, the two begin a friendship and bond through their adventures in Tokyo together while experiencing the differences between Japanese and American culture, and between their own generations.

On the penultimate night of his stay, Bob attracts the attention of the resident vocalist. The next morning, Bob awakens to find the woman in his room, having apparently slept with her. Charlotte arrives at his room to go out for breakfast only to find the woman in his room, leading to conflict and tension over a subsequent lunch. Later that night, during a fire alarm at the hotel, Bob and Charlotte reconcile and express how they will miss each other as they make one more trip back to the hotel bar.

On the following morning, Bob is set for his departure back to the United States. He tells Charlotte goodbye at the hotel lobby shortly before checking out and sadly watches her retreat back to an elevator. While riding in a limousine to the airport, Bob sees Charlotte on a crowded street and he gets out and goes to her. Bob embraces Charlotte and whispers something (substantially inaudible to the audience) in the tearful Charlotte's ear. The two share a kiss, say goodbye and Bob departs.

In addition to the meaning and detail lost in the translation of the director's words, the two central characters in the film-Bob and Charlotte-are also lost in other ways. On a basic level, they are lost in the alien Japanese.

The author and filmmaker Anita Schillhorn van Veen interprets the film as a criticism of modernity, in which Tokyo is a contemporary "floating world" of fleeting pleasures that are too alienating and amoral to facilitate meaningful relationships.

The author and lecturer Maria San Filippo contends that the film’s setting, Tokyo, is an audiovisual metaphor for Bob and Charlotte’s world views. She explains that the calm ambience of the city’s hotel represents Bob’s desire to be secure and undisturbed, while the energetic atmosphere of the city streets represents Charlotte’s willingness to engage with the world.

The film’s opening shot, which features a close shot of Charlotte resting in transparent pink underpants, has been noted by various commentators. In particular, it has been compared to the portraitures of the painter John Kacere and the image of Brigitte Bardot in the opening scene of the 1963 film Contempt. Filippo has written that while the image in Contempt is used to remark on sexual objectification, Coppola "doesn't seem to be making a statement at all beyond a sort of endorsement of beauty for beauty's sake." Geoff King, a professor of film at Brunel University, contends that the shot is marked by an "obvious" appeal in its potential eroticism, and a "subtle" appeal in its artistic qualities. He uses the shot as an example of the film’s obvious attractions, which are characteristic of mainstream film, and its subtle ones, which are typified by “indie” film.

The crew shot in some locations without permits, including Tokyo’s subways and Shibuya Crossing. Lost in Translation was shot six days per week in September and October 2002, over the course of 27 days. Many of the interior scenes were shot overnight, because the hotel did not allow the crew to shoot until after 1 a.m. Various locations were used during production; in particular, the bar featured prominently in the film is the New York Bar, which is situated on the 52nd floor of the Shinjuku Park Tower and part of the Park Hyatt in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Other locations include the Heian Jingu shrine in Kyoto and the steps of the San-mon gate at Nanzen-ji, as well as the club Air in the Daikanyama district of Tokyo. All of the locations mentioned in the film are the names of actual places that existed in Tokyo at the time of filming.

The film’s soundtrack, supervised by Brian Reitzell, includes five songs by Kevin Shields, including one from his group My Bloody Valentine. All music gave the soundtrack four out of five stars, saying “Coppola’s impressionistic romance Lost in Translation features an equally impressionistic and romantic soundtrack that plays almost as big a role in the film as Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson do.”

Lost in Translation was boosted by critical acclaim and audience word-of-mouth. It has a rating of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a rating score of 89% based on 44 reviews on Metacritic. It was praised not only for Sofia Coppola’s script and distinctive directing, but also for the work of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and rated it the second best film of the year, describing it as “sweet and sad at the same time as it is sardonic and funny”.

In his review for The Observer, Philip French wrote, “But while Lost in Translation is deeply sad and has a strongly Antonioniesque flavour, it’s also a wispy romantic comedy with little plot and some well-observed comic moments”. In his review for The Guardian, Joe Queenan praised Coppola's film for being “one of the few Hollywood films I have seen this year that has a brain; but more than that, it has a soul.”

Yet, the film has been met with criticism on the basis that it provides a racist depiction of Japanese culture. In Guardian article, journalist David Stubbs described Lost in Transation as “mopey, self-pitying drivel”, and its characters as “spoiled, bored, rich, utterly unsympathetic Americans”. It was criticized as an ethnocentric “compendium of unpleasant stereotypes ... indicative of the way visitors and foreign workers often view Japan.” Nevertheless, Lost in Translation was a major critical success and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Bill Murray, and Best Director for Sofia Coppola; Coppola won for Best Original Screenplay. Scarlett Johansson won a BAFTA award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The film was also a commercial success, grossing almost $120 million from a budget of only $4 million.

Office Space is a 1999 American comedy film satirizing work life in a typical 1990s software company. Written and directed by Mike Judge, produced by Daniel Rappaport it focuses on a handful of individuals fed up with their jobs portrayed by Ron Livingston as Peter Gibbons, a disgruntled computer programmer working for Initech, Jennifer Aniston as Joanna, a waitress at Chotchkie’s restaurant; later Peter’s girlfriend, Gary Cole as Bill Lumbergh, Initech Division Vice President and Peter’s boss, David Herman as Michael Bolton (no relation to Michael Bolton the performer), Peter’s co-worker and friend, Ajay Naidu as Samir Nagheenanajar, Peter’s co-worker and friend, and Diedrich Bader as Lawrence, Peter’s satisfied next-door neighbor, a construction worker.

The film’s sympathetic depiction of ordinary IT workers garnered a cult following within that field, but also addresses themes familiar to white collar employees in general.

Shot in Las Colinas and Austin, Texas, Office Space is based on Mike Judge’s cartoon series of four animated short films about an office drone named Milton that he created. It was his first foray into live action film and second full-length motion picture release.

Peter Gibbons is a disgruntled programmer at Initech, a software company plagued by bureaucracy and excessive management. He spends his days “staring at his desk” instead of reprogramming bank software to be Y2K-compliant. His co-workers include Samir Nagheenanajar, who is annoyed by the fact that nobody can pronounce his last name correctly; Michael Bolton, who loathes having the same name as the famous singer, whom he hates; and Milton Waddams, a meek, fixated collator who constantly mumbles to himself (most notably about his workmates’ borrowing his favorite red Swingline stapler and about his plan or threat to set the workplace on fire). Milton had actually been laid off years earlier, though he was never informed and, due to a payroll computer glitch, he has continued to receive regular paychecks. All four are repeatedly bullied and harassed by management, especially Initech's smarmy, callous vice president, Bill Lumbergh. The staff are further agitated by the arrival of two consultants, Bob Slydell and Bob Porter, who are brought in to help with cutting expenses, mainly through downsizing and outsourcing.

Peter is depressed, bored, and pushed around at work. He attends an “occupational hypnotherapy” session urged by his girlfriend, Anne. The obese hypnotherapist, Dr. Swanson, suddenly dies of a heart attack before he can snap Peter out of a state of complete relaxation. The newly relaxed and still half-hypnotized Peter wakes up the next morning and ignores continued calls from Anne (who angrily leaves him, confirming his friends’ suspicions of her infidelity) and Lumbergh (who was expecting Peter to work over the weekend). Peter announces that he will simply not go to work anymore, instead pursuing his lifelong dream of “doing nothing”. He finds himself finally relaxed enough to ask out Joanna, a waitress who shares Peter's loathing of idiotic management and love of the television program Kung Fu. Joanna works at Chotchkie’s, a restaurant that plays on T.G.I. Friday's interior decoration and uniform standards (Joanna’s frustration with her occupation eventually culminates in an argument with her boss and her dismissal after she gives him the finger in front of some customers).

Peter begins removing items at work that annoy him (a door handle that had shocked him on previous occasions, corporate slogan banners, a wall of his cubicle that blocks his view of the windows) and parks in Lumbergh’s reserved parking spot. Despite Peter’s poor attendance record, laziness, and insubordination, he is promoted by the consultants because of the positive impression he makes on them with his bluntness about the office’s problems (specifically the overabundance of management).

Meanwhile, Michael and Samir are downsized. To exact revenge on Initech, the three friends, inspired by Richard Pryor's character from Superman III, decide to infect the accounting system with a computer virus, designed to divert fractions of pennies into a bank account they control. They believe the scheme to be foolproof because they think that over a long period of time they will be able to accumulate a substantial amount of money in units so small that companies generally don’t bother keeping track of them. On their last day at Initech, Peter also steals a parting gift from the office: a frequently-malfunctioning laser printer, which the three beat to pieces in a field.

A misplaced decimal point causes the virus to steal over $300,000 in the first few days, a far more conspicuous loss to Initech. After a crisis of conscience and a discussion with Joanna, Peter writes a letter in which he takes all the blame for the crime, then slips an envelope containing the letter and the money (in unsigned traveler's checks) under the door of Lumbergh’s office late at night. The next morning, Milton – having been deprived of his cherished red Swingline stapler by Lumbergh, forced to move to the cockroach-infested basement, and having had his paychecks finally cut off – enters Lumbergh's office to reclaim his stapler. Peter, fully expecting to be arrested when he comes in to work, finds that his problem has solved itself: as he nears the Initech building, he can see that it is fully engulfed in flames and that all evidence of the missing money must have been destroyed.

Peter finally finds a job that he likes: doing construction work with his next-door neighbor, Lawrence. As the two of them are cleaning up debris from the fire, Samir and Michael visit Peter and offer to recommend him for a job at Initech rival Intertrode, where they have gotten new jobs. He declines, expressing new-found contentment with his place in life. After Samir and Michael leave, Peter discovers Milton’s stapler among the wreckage and saves it, saying, “I think I know someone who might want this.” The last scene reveals the fate of the missing money; Milton is seen lounging on the beach at a Caribbean resort, mumbling complaints about his beverage.

The film received positive reviews with a 79% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 68 metascore on Metacritic. In his review in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote, “It has the loose-jointed feel of a bunch of sketches packed together into a narrative that doesn’t gather much momentum.” Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote that Judge “treats his characters a little like cartoon creatures. That works. Nuances of behavior are not necessary, because in the cubicle world every personality trait is magnified, and the captives stagger forth like grotesques”. However, Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C” rating and criticized it for feeling “cramped and underimagined”.

While not a box office success, the film sold well on DVD and VHS, and has become recognized as a cult classic. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named Office Space one of “The 100 best films from 1983 to 2008”, ranking it at #73.