FOUR NOTIONS IN A SINGLE SONG AND VIDEO CLIP: R.E.M. - Every Day Is Yours To Win (2011)

1. R.E.M.'s biography:



REM played their first concert in Athens, Georgia, USA, on 19 April 1980. Their line-up consisted of four drop-outs from the University of Georgia: Singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention because of Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's unclear vocals. By the early 1990s, when alternative rock began to experience broad mainstream success, R.E.M. released its two most commercially successful albums, catapulting them to international fame, Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992). In 1997, Bill Berry left the band, while Buck, Mills, and Stipe continued the group as a trio. Through some changes in musical style, the band continued its career into the next decade with mixed critical and commercial success, despite having sold over 85 million records worldwide. In 2007, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. R.E.M. disbanded amicably in September 2011, announcing the split on its website.



2. Review



Another classic-in-waiting, the (on initial exposure) simplistic slow tempo melody pushing the same emotional buttons as Everybody Hurts, while sharing that song’s lyrical message of hope, strength and support: “I cannot tell a lie/It’s not all cherry pie/But it’s all there waiting for you...”.



Buck’s unfussy picked guitar line is doubled by Mills on what sounds like a glockenspiel, giving the track the feel of a reassuring lullaby. The repeated “Hey, yeah!” of the chorus cries out to be sang lustily by audiences, although early indications are that the band won’t be playing live to promote the album.


Terry Staunton



3. My Review



It is a song reminiciscent of old R,E.M.’s songs but it doesn’t sound very commercial. An atmospheric piece in which the band seems to say goodbye to his audience. It is a quite sad song, and I can’t find a clear relation between the lyrics and the title. Maybe it’s about things waiting for someone who is illusioned with the future, but both the song and the video are very banal.



4. Video Review



In the video we can see several young people expressing themselves (dressing up, da ncing, making antics, etc). It seems the lyrics talk about these young boys and girls, some of them quite extravagant, although most of them look very amateurish and banal. When the clip ends we can see a list of Names with their correspondent e-mails, like the credits from a movie, so this clip shows the way young people express themselves on social networks. It seems to be a homage to them.

 

 

  

I NOW WALK... INTO THE WILD

These words on the screen are the words Christopher McCandless wrote in his diary when he reached the area in Alaska where he would die four months later. The camera shows Chris from above walking on the snow and then goes like a bird flying from the sky coming down to the ground, showing images of the landscape: mountains, meadows, and forests full of snow; an eagle flying, wild animals running, Chris hunting… and nothing else: isolation, emptiness, purity, loneliness are words that come to mind, perfectly complemented by the music of Eddie Vedder: the sound of wind from the movie is substituted by the arpeggios of an electric guitar backing Vedder’s voice: the stripped-down arrangements of the song match the images as well as the words to the lyrics: words on a new life alone, a life in which one’s best friend is his own soul: a life in a time and place where the most important thing is to feel oneself and understand what is really life about.

INTO THE WILD: THE MYTH OF FREEDOM AND THE GOOD SAVAGE OR THE ANTI-HERO

The movie tells the story of a man who decided to break free from society and his own life. The notions of Progress and Myth are seen in a different way than in other movies. The main character is against progress and chooses to come back to a natural state and have a better life; this is his idea of progress, opposite to what most people think. The protagonist is like the "Good Savage" from the myth, trying to live and survive in the wilderness, surrounded only by nature, an anti-hero compared to the stereotypes of glory and success. If there is a clear notion in this film is about freedom.
It seems the main character is an idealistic young man who, probably by chance, decides to get lost when on holiday and live the dream of a free life. It seems his car gets broken in a flood and so he starts hiking and meets some people on his way to Alaska who think he must be crazy and ask him if he really knows what he is doing or not, because he says he wants to  to live in the open air.

MYTHS AND HEROES : Worksheet

Here is the link to my worksheet.

FREE POST

 

 

 

Happiness is a feeling that takes little to get but very hard to keep, and it's also something that many never achieve.

 

Actually it's the best thing in life, because otherwise, why would we live? To suffer?

 

Happiness consists of three things: having always something to do, having someone to love and something to expect. Never getting locked inside oneself and get isolated from the rest of the world, because there will always be someone who wants you to be happy.

 

It's posible to be happy with just a 'hello', with a smile, with a look, watching a view, watching someone else grow up and get by, Little things but big at the same time.

 

Life goes on and realising about that makes you happy too, and there can be people who make you live life happily.

 

Sometimes you get sad, you are sorry and you want everything to stop, but you can't do anything to stop the time. Happiness, however, can be the strength that helps you take the best in every situation and make things go on.

 



'THE HELP': or how Power will leave you for someone better.

 

 

 

 

The issue of power is shown from different points of view in this movie. Power here is shown very clearly as something that not everybody can have at the same time, like a force that passes from one person to another when people don't do the right things:

-From the point of view of racist white people in Southern towns of the USA (Hilly, e.g.), they have a lot of power on black people, treating them nearly as slaves, telling lies about them (such as that the black people carry a lot of deseases and so they can't use the same toilets as white people) or deciding if their black servants can continue working or not, with no social security.

-The power of non-racist white people in the same environment, such as Skeeter, the young journalist who writes the book telling all the truth about racism in her town but changing the names of real people, and this is the beginning of the end of the problem,
a bit like the Horse of Troy.

-The power of the Media and Literature, and the people related to them, such as the journalist's editor, who is a very powerful and sophisticated woman who knows that polemic books make a lot of noise. When the book is published, people around the nation get to know the reality in Southern cities in the USA, which is not very different to the nineteenth century, when having slaves in the Southern states was legal.

- The power of surprise, in cases such as when Minny, the black maid, gives a cake cooked with her faeces to Hilly, the evil young housewive, or when Skeeter lets a mistake in Hilly's advertisement and so her garden is ruined with toilet pots.

- The power of gossip in small towns. Like a monster that destroys everything it has protected before, gossip makes the servants don't want to work for Celia, or makes Skeeter's mother dismiss her daughter's black nanny, Constantine, but gossip is also what makes racist white people keep their mouths shut and a low profile when the book becomes famous.

-The power of black people and, generally, of opressed people: let's not forget that the current President of the USA, is black, and the movie is a homage not only for him but for all the black people who suffered terribly in United States due to racism.

- The power of the spectator, and the power of cinema itself. This does not appear in the film, it is implied, but this movie is one of those films that make people talk about it and support it against racism.

'Redacted', or the abuse of power

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the movie deals with issues such as abuse of power, lack of commitment from the powerful towards the unprotected and censorship; a proof of this is that Brian de Palma was not allowed to tell the real story on which the film is based due to legal restrictions and had to make an adaptation of it.

 

I think another subjects in this film are the lack of communication (as we can see when the soldiers shoot the car with the pregnant woman inside without understanding it's on its way to Hospital) and how people get mad and lose contact with reality when they follow an idea with no clear aim in sight (it seems the Americans didn't know what they were doing in Irak).

 

An interesting thing about the name of the movie is that 'redacting' something in this context means 'editing' the information which is told in a piece of news; how truth seems to change when you tell things in a way or another.

 

SYNOPSIS

 

This film is about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers with shocking images that will leave some viewers in tears.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

Made in a deliberately episodic form, Redacted tells various stories about the war in Iraq, ostensibly from different viewpoints. One film portion by a French filmmaker tells the story of U.S. soldiers watching over checkpoints. In another episode, a superior soldier makes a casual mistake dealing with garbage that was set out in a road and is blown to bits. It's all leading to the pivotal rape and murder of the pretty girl who is discovered by the soldiers on a raid of an Iraqi house in order to find evidence. One night, the drunken and mostly morally lost U.S. soldiers discuss going back for the "skank" whom they saw in the house they raided. One soldier straps a camera to his helmet, and the footage of the girl's rape is secured.

The rest of the film mostly deals with measures taken by the army against the criminals. A final scene has a soldier from the criminals' unit confessing to his friends a war story that he will never forget: the plundering and murder of the Iraqi girl.