Do The Right Thing

Do The Right Thing was my favorite movie we watched in art of film so far. My favorite scene from the movie was when the white guy accidentally scuffs Buggin Out's new Air Jordans, then he and the rest of his friends freak out at the white guy. I liked the way the movie used bright colors and gave everything like an orange tint to exaggerate and show how hot it is.

I thought it was easy to concentrate more on Sal's pizzeria being destroyed than on the death of Radio Raheem, even though the death of Radio Raheem is supposed to be more important than a pizza store burning down. It was easy to pay more attention to Sal's pizza place being destroyed because that got more attention in the movie, and when Radio Raheem died it only showed him being choked to death for a short amount of time and then he was taken away in a cop car, and no one really payed any more attention to it.

I don't know if Sal is racist, there are some things in the movie that could say he is racist and some that could say he is not racist. You could say that he is not racist because he was always nice to Mookie and never fired him, and he was nice to Mookies's sister. And when Sal smashes Radio Raheem's stereo I think he would have smashed anyones radio white or black if they were doing that. You could say that he only called black people racist names when he was mad for his store being burnt down. But you could say that if he called anyone those names under any circumstance that he is really a racists.

The Battle of Algiers

I thought The Battle of Algiers was a good movie, because it showed both sides of the fights evenly, and the scenes looked like they were real. I knew that this film was viewed in the pentagon a while ago but i learned from the New York Magazine review that this film was also used by the Black Panthers as a training video. The article talks about how the movies distributer originally inserted the disclaimer “Not one foot of newsreel or documentary film has been used.” I thought that Pontecorvo did a good job making this film look realistic or documentary like, the way he was able to choreograph huge crowds in the same shot, and the way he used a hand held camera through out the film. Also from this article I learned that the screen play was originally written in a french prison by Saadi Yacef, who approached three directers after his release one of the pontecorvo. Saadi Yacef became the producer and also appeared in the movie playing a character similar to himself El-hadi Jaffar, the military leader of the FLN. The character of Ali La Pointe was played by an illiterate peasant Pontecorvo found on the steets.