"Realism and Anti-Realism"

Movie Clapper Board (pixabay.com)

"Realism and Anti-Realism" from Richard Barsam's Looking at Movies

From my experience viewing films, movies have an unbelievable power to draw you in whether they are realistic or not. As the article discusses there are three main aspects to which movies can be categorized or at least have some correlation to. In my opinion realism relates to how factual an idea, scene, plot, or action of a movie is in correlation to our actual lives. An example that comes to mind when thinking about realism is the movie I was assigned for our evaluation essays, Slum dog Millionaire because it is so true to a real life situation. Another aspect movies or television shows can take on is anti-realism, which to me means the show is stretching the truth just so far that it makes the situation unlikely to ever occur in real life but still allows viewers to connect and without making us think it’s completely ridiculous, such as in many action movies or the movie Avatar. Lastly, verisimilitude seems to be at times kind of a mixture of realism and anti-realism that gives the overall effect of believability in the movie. The plot line may be somewhat realistic even if many scenes of the movie are virtually impossible, but as long as the movie continues its rhythm and draws you in, often times we will find it to be believable. Even in movies such as The Hunger Games where the overall plot is completely bizarre we are still able to find it plausible. Why? Because the story is consistent and shows us a possible new reality.

"Looking at Movies -- Genre: The Western"

After watching "Looking at Movies -- Genre: The Western" I immediately was flooded with the characteristics of other movie genres. The western has literally just about every aspect you could ever wish for in a movie and was a great stepping stone into showing me just how common many characteristics are to specific genres. The most prominent discussion topic that came to mind was how often actors are used over and over again in certain types of genres. Will Ferrell has been used repeatedly over the past few years in humor movies and is beginning to become a staple for this generation. Although he is not a classic comedic actor such as Owen Wilson or Adam Sandler, he may one day attain such a title if he continues his work in comedies in future years.