Spaghetti Westerns

 Questions for American Beauty Homework:

1. Why do you think the neighbor is so homophobic? Explain.

2. Why does the mother commit adultery?

3. Why is the movie called "American Beauty?"

1.            I forgot to put up the questions from last week. I will do that tonight.

2.            I used to punish students who used AI to write. But I realize I didn’t say I would do this before class started. I also realize that it the way writing will be now. So, in the future, I need to change how I give scores. I can’t do that in the middle of a semester. The homework is 20 percent of the final grade. I will give everyone a full score on this (20 percent).

It was dangerous for French women to date German soldiers, because the French people saw them as traitors. In Holland, they shot the traitors (the men). The women had their heads shaved so everyone would know they were traitors. The narrator is Samuel L. Jackson. 

I wanted to show The Shining, but my external DVD player is not responding. I will get a new one and we can watch it later.

1.        Why is the father so homophobic? Violently homophobic?

Inglorious Basterds are a special unit in the American army during World War II. For America, WWII is 1941 to 1945.

For Europe, WWII is 1939 to 1945.

For Asia, WWII is 1937 to 1945. Actually, 230,000 Taiwanese people died. They fought in the Japanese army.

My wife’s grandpa fought for Japan. My grandpa was a pilot. He bombed the airport in Kaohsiang on July 7, 1945.

Germany murdered 7,000,000 Jewish people. This unit is ten Jewish soldiers; they are specialists. Even though it is WWII, this is still like a cowboy movie.

Spaghetti westerns. Cowboy movies made in Italy.

There is an idea in story telling called the allegory. If you show a famous image, you don’t need to explain. Everyone will know the meaning.

 

Technicolor is an old style of filming, when we first had color movies and not black and white movies. It started around the 1950s. A lot of famous directors still preferred black and white film then as there is more depth.

Jim Bridger was an Indian fighter.

1756 to 1763, England and France were at war in Europe. But both countries had colonies in North America. So there were fighting in North America too. Some Indian tribes fought for France and some for England there. They told the Indians they would pay them for killing French/English.

Tarantino is paying homage to the Italian/spaghetti westerns.

Anachronism: something is wrong based on time and the years

“He went yard.” Home run

The actor was adlibbing.