Week 5, Task 2: External Blogs

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts/author/danny_leigh/index.html

Danny Leigh is a film columnist for The Guardian and regularly posts his thoughts on the state of the movie business today. I am very interested in this topic myself and like to consider myself well versed in film and the way the industry works. So for me it was very interesting to read someones blog who has links within the industry and whose opinion can actually matter.

The comments for the blog are sometimes more interesting than the article itself. Take for example, one blog examining Zack Snyder's film 300. Leigh takes an objective look at the film and the critical and public response to it, as well as the supposed racism, misogynistic and homophobic tendencies the film portrays, and examines why the film could create such a reaction. The blog itself looks at the film from an academic perspective, examining the themes present on screen and the things going on in the world at that time. Whilst I do not agree personally with what has been said about the film, since it is a film adaptation of a graphic novel that is depicting a historical event, it is easy to see how something seemingly harmless can be blown out of proportion.

Comments range from responses to Leigh's article and his own responses to the comments to the old "its only a film!" response. Users are free to give their own opinions on Leigh's work whilst debating the points he raises within the article. I have read several of his blogs and they all offer a similar debate on various subjects within the movie business. Another blog examined the resurgence of 80s action heroes in our time and what it means in the wider world outside of the films' scope. Die Hard for example has always had a valid place in society as it has dealt with the constant threat of terrorism and the various ways it can appear.

The first film released in 1988 dealt with an elaborately planned hostage situation, the second, released in 1990 and the time of the IRA, an airport under attack from a terrorist group, and the third, released in 1995, revenge for the villain of the first film through his brother and a bomb placed in a school in New York. Possibly related to occurrences in the world at the time of each release, the films placed an everyday man who became an iconic action hero at the center of all the trouble. Returning in Die Hard 4.0 in 2007, John McClane returned to foil a group of terrorists planning to shut down the United States electronically, again reflecting the times fear of cyber terrorism and the halt of life as we know it.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/11/ill_be_back.html
"For Die Hard, appearing in 1988 as Reagan exited the White House, the appeal was just as evident - with the piratical optimism of the preceding years having become mired in the grubby squelch of Iran-Contra and the drabber, hungover age of Bush I underway, John McClane's buccaneering was already an exercise in nostalgia."

One comment responded that: "The Die Hard sequel is more obvious, though didn’t a lot of Ameircans go and rent Die Hard following 9/11 as a fantasy to make themselves feel better in light of the events of that day? I always found it interesting that the Japanese boss can’t deal with the terrorists and has to die, leaving the American to save the day – kind of prefigured Michael Crichton’s Japanese-hegemony paranoia drivel in Rising Sun!"

So people do believe that a film can be related to real life, whether overtly or covertly. On this blog, such an issue can be discussed more openly, whilst giving the author the chance to respond in a professional but opinionated matter. I found this blog extremely interesting to read, as whilst it does stick to the conventions of the blogging genre, it explores its content much more deeply as it is on a subject many are deeply interested in and willing to defend their opinions on.