Red Dead Redemption

In class we were asked to play a video game with a narrative, to better understand how media and literature work together in the gaming world. Red Dead Redemption was my choice because it takes place in the Wild West as John Marston, a real cowboy with a score to settle. The plot takes you through Texas and into Mexico in search of the man who crossed him. It is a first person immersive game in the way that you decide if Marston is good or evil, in this open world game style. Anything, truly anything, is up to the player to choose from. The narrative puts you through real western themes, anything from ambushing bandidos at their camp to robbing the money train. The literature behind the story is what makes the gameplay so captivating, every instance is a story that takes us back to the Wild Wild West. Rockstar

Games put this all together so that we could feel what its like to be a cowboy in the digital world.

Robert Altman

Robert Altman: Critical Response


Born on Feb. 20^th 1925 Robert Altman has had a gigantic impact on film history and its evolution. I elected to watch three different films directed by Altman, hoping to capture all that such a genius could communicate. I watched Nashville, Shortcuts, and The Player.

The first thing that comes to mind after watching his films is dialogue. These films are chaotic if anything in their composition around dialogue. In The Player, Altman’s epic 8 minute long first scene, taken in a single shot is loaded with various moments that all required dialogue from almost every person in it. Furthermore, there is a crisscross of plots that arise from the many conversations that take place between these characters. In Shortcuts, the conversation that takes place between Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore is mind-blowing say the least, using nudity while the husband and wife talk about her cheating on him three years back to show how there is no sexual attraction at all between them.  Nashville is ridiculous in its ongoing conversations about numerous topics mainly the government and national pride, but in truth the way Nashville is presented to us is in the form of satire. In all a hilarious black comedy purposely flaunting American society on an epic scale.
Altman is known for his drama, and his dialogue, but underlying it all there is a lot of symbolism to communicate to us how cynical, subliminal, and satirical his films are.  We see the plots thicken up to be perverse and twisted. In The Player Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) gets away with murdering an aspiring screenwriter because he believed him to be sending him death threats.  Then the actual writer of the cards reveals himself and pitches him an idea for a movie, called…guess what? The  Player.
In Nashville we follow the multiple storylines of about 25 characters as they move around in the five days before the stage rally of a powerful presidential candidate, which we never see throughout the entire movie.
In Shortcuts, Altman shows us how married couples lose attraction for each other, argue, encounter cracks in the relationship, and face inevitable truths in the most dramatic way possible.
Overall, all of Altman’s films criticize American societies, corruption, and doubt., in a comical fashion. His multi-plot lines are chaotically capturing and his dialogues are dramatically impressive.

Not to mention his screenplay is phenomenal.

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and occasional actor. He began his career in the 90s making films like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglorious Bastards...

Quentin is known for his high adrenaline, action jam-packed, explosives included, hot babe riddled, tough guy films. Being full of violence and usually, gruesome, Tarantino's films would easily be put into the Action Genre. Usually the plot involves a situation that the main character must solve, some bad guys, fights, a hot babe or three, guns, explosions, and fast cars. Perhaps it could be made out that its a satire of modern American generations, where violence sex and death are all that matter, but the truth is still evident. In Inglorious Bastards, Quentin lures us into the sick fields of WW1, following the Americans as they struck terror into the Germans. In Pulp Fiction we have the two hit guys that are splitting up because one wants out, the other doesnt'. In Kill Bill, theres a retired hit woman who is on a path of vengeance upon those that murdered her family and tried to murder her. All entitle blood, death, guns, and fire.

Tarantino's idea of a good flick needs a great concept, terrific visuals, and screenplay. Oh and lets not forget the babes and guns. Quentin's screen work, script, set direction, and actors do all the work he needs done in order to convey only one thing: Action.

Fairy Tale in my membrane

Once upon a time in a parallel dimension came a people to our Earth. They had prancing legs and bird wings and chirped away mockingly whenever they saw us. They always cooed us into letting them near just until they pecked away at our very souls. And whenever one would feel threatened by us cursed to walk the earth, it would simply fly away.

The leader of these strange people's name was ungiven, but nonetheless held in sovereign. They wore red and blue and polished their beaks with solid gold. Their meals would involve bountiful feasts and loads of wine. Whenever the sun was out, they were soaking its rays, whenever it went down they hunted.

The visitors were a strange folk, until one day one of their kind mated with a native woman. A child is born afterwards with bright hair and golden eyes, and was an avid dancer right out of the womb with a voice like butter. This dancing golden man pranced around the village telling the crowds how bountiful he was a lad and how none other could compare. Such was the arrogance of his self that he decided to brag until one day another man came and shot him in the back.

People would rather kill people because it resembles themselves, than because they resemble anything else.

Wizard of Oz

In the Wizard of Oz, a modern American fairytale we see Dorothy, a typical girl from the country maneuver through a strange and foreign land where reality is irrelevant. Symbology and metaphors are used to express similar situations that can be found in those times. The characters and plot all lead up to “a coming of age” for the persons involved. The adversaries symbolize the impediments of reaching the end of this journey for knowledge and wisdom, along with return to reality and peace. They struggle with each others faults, like the people, and reach to improve but are forced through a system, the yellow brick road.

Plato: Discussion of Socrates with Phaedrus.

Discourses on the topic of love and rhetoric take place in this moment between Socrates and Phaedrus. Socrates states how love is strength and not a weakening agent to the friendship of the lovers. The dialogue consists of a series of three speeches on the topic of love that serve as a metaphor for the discussion of the proper use of rhetoric. . The dialogue is given unmediated, in the direct words of Socrates and Phaedrus, without other interlocutors to introduce the story or give it to us; it comes first hand, as if we are witnessing the events themselves.

I guess my status as a reader would be that I read things that I am interested in, but interpret visual information and sound information with more cognition. Reading things with imagery do add more stimulus to the brain because an imagination is required but video and sound are more direct. I as a reader am driven to gain information by any means necessary, unlike the past where it was more dependant on written/printed books. In this new age I believe that being inclined to only written media would be irrelevant, with all the tools and medias open to us.