Test Blog-First Post

Hello my name is Matthew. Ever since my 7th grade digital art class, I have fallen in love with the hobby of movie making and enjoyment of watching a good film. throughout my high school time, my friends would spend weeks writing, story boarding, filming and editing our little pet projects-I even won an award my senior year for a dumb little comedy skit I made.

My genera or kind of movie would probably be horror, now before you judge me I love a good horror movie simply because I understand the struggle of creating a good scare. I always believe there are 3 key points to a movie and those are visuals, sound, and story, so in order to have a good horror movie you need to perfect all three instead of other genera's who can falter in some to benefit others. movies like "The Void" have insane visual and practical effects but a lacking story, some slashers have a good story with cheesey visuals so on so forth. Movie genera's I dislike would most likely be dramas or religious/political films. Dramas I dislike for the terrible writing and forced tears with dead tropes, dont get me wrong horror is also riddled with tropes but something about hearing the same sappy story like hallmark movies over and over is just irritating and lacks creativity. Religious and political films i dislike for obvious reasons, religious films are never taken seriously after one good one and political films are laughable and obvious propaganda where their should be art.

Jaylah Bennett, Test Post/Get-to-Know-You

Ello! My name is Jaylah Bennett, I’m a potential music/business administration double major and am big

into performing arts among other things. As such, I have lots of interest and experience in performance and technical aspects of productions (albeit stage and not movie, but relevant knowledge still transfers). I also love movies, though I’m more of a passive (and occasionally mildly analytical) viewer. I put this colloquium as one of my first choice options because I have always had a fascination with Greek history and especially their mythology. I realize this is mostly Roman, and though I have very limited knowledge about Roman history/mythology, I am excited to learn about it!

The movie genres I typically enjoy are action, comedy (but usually only paired with another genre— most modern lone comedy relies too much on secondhand embarrassment), fantasy, fiction, and good book-to-movie adaptions. I love something engaging, thrilling and/or personal— and I’ve always loved fiction and fantasy books, so the latter three cater to that side of me. Musicals are also a huge portion of my watch repertoire, since I obviously have a great affinity for music and musical theatre. I absolutely cannot stand horror movies and almost every Halloween-related movie, save Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown (because I am the biggest scaredy cat you’ll ever meet), terrible adaptions of books (which seems pretty self-explanatory), and old Westerns (mostly because they’re cheesy, and partially because my dad has made me watch so many because he used to do re-enactments).

Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through! I am looking forward to learning and growing with all of you, and to delving into the ancient world!

First Blog Post - Chase Banks

     My name is Chase Banks and I am from Visalia, California which is a small town that is about an hour away from Fresno. I am not very familiar with film at all, I was interested in taking this course because Greece and Rome is something that I find very compelling. I personally like animated and comedy movies because, they are usually pretty funny and can lighten my mood. I absolutely despise horror movies because, I do not like being scared and I don't understand why anyone would enjoy that. 

First Blog: Amanda Wininger

 My name is Amanda Wininger my interest in the class was based on the fact that I love to watch movies. I also wanted to learn more about Ancient Greece and Rome. The movies I like to watch are comedies or mystery movies simply because I love to laugh and I like to figure out who is guilty. I do not like romance movies because they are always predictable and it is the same story over and over again. 

First Blog Response - Veronica Castille

My name is Veronica Castille (some call me Ronnie, it's your choice which you prefer), and I do not have any past experience with film. I do enjoy watching movies when I have the time, but I typically stick to reading or watching TV shows instead. Greek and Roman history has always seemed interesting to me, so I'm glad I get the opportunity to see my first toga movie and learn more about the history instead of just accepting the stereotypes and romanticizations.

My favourite movie genre is horror. Sometimes horror movies are so bad they're good and it's fun to poke fun at their campy nature, but most of the time the horror movies I watch fall into the psychological horror category. Some of my favourite horror movies are the Saw franchise, Get Out, Midsommar, and American Psycho.

I wouldn't necessarily say I detest this genre, but I don't particularly like action movies. I feel that they're over-the-top and focus more on crazy action sequences than on forming and sticking to a cohesive and engaging storyline. Essentially, I think they're cheesy and not worth watching. The Fast and Furious franchise comes to mind for this category.

Zach Martin post #1

 Hello I am Zachary Martin. I am not really a fan of cinema, I have always found movies that take themselves super seriously super difficult to watch. I can see why The Godfather and Casa Blanca are influential and important movies, however I find myself being bored by them. My favorite movies in general are ones that are stupid and wild, but mostly the ones that are not taking themselves super seriously. My favorite genre is like eighties and nineties horrible horror. Atrocious movies with tiny budgets are so much fun. I appreciate well made movies and can see the effort put into them and how they are so influential, just sometimes they bore me a little bit. I hope to be able to learn how to properly analyze movies from this course so that even if I am not enjoying them I can at least contextualize and understand them.

First Post Morgan Wigert

 My name is Morgan Wigert and I was interested in this class because I want to major in either history or classics. I'm also really interested in movies so combining my two passions seemed like a good idea. My favorite genre of movies is action. I grew up watching Indiana Jones, Marvel movies, and Star Wars. Action is a movie area that I know pretty well so I'm excited to branch out into more dramas and silent movies. 

First Blog Post-Alayna Kisiday

 I have not seen many movies that are based off of Ancient Greece and Rome, but I have seen the film Jason and the Argonauts, which is loosely based on Greek mythology. Though this is not my favorite movie I think that other movies related to Greece and Rome would interest me. My favorite type of movies are Science-Fiction, for example Interstellar. Space and science related topics have always been intriguing to me so watching movies with this topic is an easy and fun way to learn more. I also enjoy drama movies similar to Shawshank Redemption. I find myself engaged with drama films because they cause the viewer to experience the same emotions that the character feels. I don't typically watch or like romance movies because I think the way love is portrayed in most romance films is unrealistic (but I do love Pride and Prejudice).

First Blog Response

Please introduce yourself briefly and talk about your background with film and/or interest in this class. What kind of movies do you like, which ones do you detest and why?

I myself watched many of the epic movies we'll discuss as a child on German TV. Back then, I just enjoyed the spectacle and epic scale of these movies. Later, as I studied Latin and Greek and learned more and more about the actual ancient world, I got a bit disenchanted with them because these movies take so many liberties with history that they are almost painful to watch. But then, they aren't meant to be documentaries, just to entertain. Ever since I've accepted that, I've been able to enjoy toga movies.

In term of non-toga movies, I like comedies, but also some action movies. Last summer, for example, I enjoyed watching all five "Dirty Harry" movies with my son. That said, I don't actually care for movies that contain lots of gratuitous violence, and I really don't like horror movies. I remember being freaked out by the silent movie "Nosferatu" when I saw it first many years ago. The closest I can take are parodies of the genre, like Gene Wilder's "Young Frankenstein" (which is, of course, really a comedy).

 

                                        Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu (1922)

 

Hi everyone, 

This blog is meant to facilitate our classroom discussions. Here you can, for example, post your impressions of the movies we watched or publish short comments on the readings that were assigned for homework. You will also be able to respond to other people's contributions. 

I will invite all of you to become contributors to this blog. In order to do so and be able to post yourself, please accept these invitations when they are emailed to you. 

I am looking forward to meeting you all at our first class meeting on Wednesday, August 25, 2021, from 1:30-3:00pm. 

Professor Knorr

Cleopatra (USA, 1963): One of the great movies we'll watch.