Annie Hall Essay

Annie Hall was produced by Charles H. Joffe, Woody Allen’s manager and was distributed by United Artists. The film’s budget was $4 million and it grossed $38,251,425 in the box office. The movie was developed by Woody Allen and his co-writer Marshall Brickman. The original concept was about a man in his forties exploring his relationship with a young woman, “the concern about the banality of life we all live,” and about his own character. Allen wanted to abandon the safety net of a solely comedic movie in order to explore deeper concepts and although Allen claims that the film is not autobiographical, the commonalities between he and Alvy are obvious. Allen was also

In the novel Grand Avenue. Greg Sarris uses the theme thread of poison to connect all of his separate stories about the Toms’, a Pomo Indian family. He proves that the roots of a family are the basis which gives the family its structure, even if those roots are bad. In the Toms’ family they’re roots were poisoned from the very founding of the family starting with Sam Toms’. His poison was not the fact that he tried to steal a married woman away, but that he was filled with secrets, deceptions, and self hatred. His family was founded on these poisened roots and passes the poisen down generation after gerneration. The only way to stop the poison, or inner self hatred taken out in other forms, was to let go of past and

	Lucille Ball has made significant and positive contributions to the country with her comedy. Many consider her America's best female actress. Kathleen Brady, in fact, says, "Lucille Ball is one of the greatest performing artists America has produced" (ix). Throughout her career, Ball has not only been a comedienne, but also a superb businesswoman, an excellent role model, and has won numerous awards.

Literary devices will be a primary source used to compare and contrast the narrative and stylistic choices made in the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the film 2081 directed by Chandler Tuttle. In the film the director is able to express visuals, sounds, and physical characters, to establish a firm idea of how the characters within the story act and feel based on their surroundings and what is happening around them. However, an Author in a short story is reliant on his words alone to paint the picture for the reader to understand the movement of the plot and its impact on the atmosphere. The literary devices used in creating and shaping pieces of literature will heavily impact the point of view of the

Tennessee Williams wrote the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in the mid-1950’s.The play takes place in Mississippi during one of its hot, humid summers. Most of the play is centered in the bedroom and sitting room of Big Daddy’s home on a Mississippi plantation. The characters are members or acquaintances of the family. On one summer evening, the Pollit’s family is gathering to celebrate Big Daddy’s birthday. The previous evening Brick break’s his leg, while trying to jump hurdles. Brick’s wife, Maggie, then tries to stop Brick from his miss-behaving due to his alcoholism, while trying to seduce him at the same time. Maggie feels as if it is urgent for her to have a baby, but Brick is too drunk to even care much about

What insights into the American Dream are offered through the novella Of Mice and Men and the film American Beauty? In your essay you must consider the influences of context and the importance of techniques in shaping meaning.

Michael Warner states in his book The Trouble with Normal that "the [American] culture has thousands of ways for people to govern the sex of others," that a certain regulation of sexuality and desire can be designed "directly, through prohibition and regulation, and indirectly, by embracing one identity or one set of tastes as though they were universally shared, or should be" (Warner 1). According to Warner, the logical process that follows such a regulation ensures a certain shame attaches to any "taste" that is not "universally shared." That this one "taste" "should be" shared implies that it is not universal. The “taste” that must be converted in order to achieve a “universal” desire is, then, naturally marked with a stigmatized

This past semester I was involved in SUNY Oneonta’s production of Avenue Q, directed by Drew Kahl. Our show opened on April 20th and ran through April 23rd and seemed to be well received by audiences. For this assignment I am required to discuss the successes and failures of the scene leading into “The Money Song,” however, due to my involvement, my perspective is not that of an audience member. I never saw this scene in its finished product, so my critique is based on the earlier stages of this scene and what I heard backstage. My initial reaction as to why this scene would be difficult to stage is simple: puppetry.

The book Girl, Interrupted is about a teenage girl Susanna Kaysen. At the age of 18 she voluntarily sent herself to the McLean hospital. In the beginning of the book the Susanna was talking to a psychiatrist she has been seeing for awhile, she has had a couple of suicide attempts so she started seeing that doctor. The doctor had recommended Susanna to go to McLean to help her be anti-depressive and help cure her borderline personality. Susanna ended up being in the hospital for 2 years.

The third chapter will mainly discuss Woody Allen?s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) to examine how a theme about cinema-goers reflects a desire from the filmmaker and the audience. The film fabricates a fantasy where the protagonist of a film called ?The Purple Rose of Cairo?, Tom Baxter (enacted by Jeff Daniels), ?steps? out of the film during a screening. He joins Cecilia (starred by Mia Farrow), a frustrated waitress and aggrieved wife who has watched this film countless times, and starts an adventure in the real world. Confronting the chaos caused by Tom arbitrarily leaving the screen, Gil Shepard, an actor who impersonates Tom, comes to persuade Tom to return to the film, while pursuing Cecilia at the same time. In the end, Cecilia chooses to stay in reality but ends up alone due to Gil abandoning her for his career in Hollywood.

This film in particular uses the editing tool to create the disconnection between the protagonist and his peers. That tool is called jump cuts in which two shots are overlapping causing the illusion of jumping forward or backward in time. Woody uses it and it plays a major role in the story as we see the author trying to escape reality but it keeps on daunting him. In terms of the character arc, Harry goes to a series of obstacles that stop him from obtaining his goals and the characters he created are the reason why. Woody plays the same persona as the majority of his films that he stars in; however, in this one, he is a character within a film in a matrix world. The film reaches its climax when Harry visits the fantasy world in which he meets the devil and discusses about what he had done in the past in a taboo comedic way. Allen was trying let us feel uncomfortable with the film, as the dialogue is a key factor because of its bad tone. The characters consistently swear and provoke bad language with some words that are highly unexpected to be said from an auteur like Woody Allen. By doing so, he makes the audience feel painful on how the story is structured with a little to no sympathy towards the main

Woodstock Woodstock was a rock music festival that took place near Woodstock, New York in a town called Bethel. The festival took place over three days, August 15, 16, and 17, 1969. The original plan for Woodstock was an outdoor rock festival, "three days of peace and music" in the Catskill village of Woodstock. The festival was expected to attract 50,000 to 100,000 people. It was estimated that an unexpected 400,000 or more people attended. If it weren't for Woodstock, rock and roll wouldn't be where it is today. Woodstock became a symbol of the 1960s American counterculture and a milestone in the history of rock music. The original plan for Woodstock had been to build a recording studio in the town of Woodstock (Sandow,

Thesis Statement- in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the psychological struggle between the need for stability and the desire for freedom is perhaps the central concern of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

In “Annie”, again the physical setting and placement of participants play an important part in the communication style. Two of the members are sitting side-by-side on a couch while the third person sits in her desk chair across from the couch. The person in the chair is not only able to make eye contact with the other two but also is in a physical position to see their verbal and non-verbal communications. The two

Love, greed, hate, deception, and mendacity; Tennessee Williams’s plays are widely known for their description of emotion and avarice in the 20th century, especially in his childhood household. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” thoroughly represent Tennessee Williams’s style of writing with the various acts of deceitful behavior among the characters of the play. An acrimonious dispute between two brothers, Brick and Gooper, and their wives, Maggie and Mae, about inheritance. Big Daddy, the father of Brick and Gooper, is diagnosed with cancer and the two sides of the family use different schemes to gain the favor of Big Daddy. Wealth and power play an important factor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”; it’s power infected people with hate, greed and mendacity,