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The Dark Side of the Heart (Eliseo Subiela 1992) is about Oli’s quest to find true love. He goes from woman to woman in a circular pattern in his quest for ideal love. Oli is a romantic poet and he uses his poetry to find a woman who can “fly”. Or in other words, someone he can love. However he lives in a fantasy world and has no concern over the real world. He prefers magic over reality, passion over reason. Therefore his immaturity makes his quest for love almost impossible. The Dark Side of the Heart uses Frequency and Order to show Oli’s quest for love. In doing so the film uses timelessness to capture Oli’s emotion of love and loneliness.
The film starts off with Oli in bed with a woman. He quotes poetry to her however she seems disinterested. Then Oli opens the trap door by pushing a button next to his bed and the woman gets “dumped”, literally. The information given throughout the film is very specific and the temporal structure is straightforward and linear.

Again we suspend our disbelief because we believe this is fate. Throughout the film the casual chain is greatly affected by necessary coincidences. If the film were called something else the casual chain would not be believable.
The final scene shows Bobo’s change. The Bobo who gets off the toilet is left behind by the new Bobo. Now the past is finally behind him. This resolves all three levels of the fabula. They get away with the attempted bank robbery. They leave together, and finally they have worked out their inner battles. The abstract plays a very important part in the narrative. Sissi is presented as a kind of princess because she rules in the psychiatric ward. The patients depend on her the way servants depend on their princess. Bobo is the warrior, a warrior must face many battles and in Bobo’s case he has to battle his inner demons. He is at war with himself and in order to win he must “get off the toilet” and leave the past behind. Sissi and Bobo come together by fate. Whether it is believable or not does not matter. What matters is what we believe and what we want to happen. The narrative has us cheering for the two characters the Princess and the Warrior to live happily ever after.

There are some people who have anger management issues. Even if you are not that short tempered, sometimes it can be difficult to keep your cool. What is someone to do in cases like this? I was thinking about my own personality. I like to think of myself as a fairly gregarious and social guy. I also think that i am nice and respectful of others. I like to believe that i am really open minded as well. But, i do know that my temper goes up and down every once in a while. What am i supposed to do when this happens. What can i do to rectify my personality? I think that the best thing to do is take yourself out of the equation. If you ever get into one of those angry moods, try to go out for a smoke. If you don’t smoke, try going out to get a breath of fresh air. I think that this will help you control your initial reaction. When i was younger, i didn’t know how to control my raw emotions. When i got angry, i just wanted to punch something. I wanted to cause paid for others or myself. I wanted that release. But now that i am a little bit older, i try to reason. I try to calm myself down with my mind. I like to have my mind be in control of my emotions.

I just spent around 12 hours at the airport. I am super duper tired because of the delays. I had to wait at the airport for like 12 hours without knowing if my flight was going to take off or not. I just arrived here in Los Angeles and i am totally drained. I think that waiting has to be one of the most tiring activities. I think that doing hard manual labor is less tiring then waiting for something. I was reading an article about how we spend most of our lives just waiting for stuff. We usually wait in line at the store. We wait in line at the post office as well. Every time we go out to eat some food, we wait. If you have slow internet connection, we have to wait for the web page to load. All of this waiting has me sick. I wonder if we can develop something that get rid of waiting. If any of you know how to do this, please drop me a line or two in the comments section.

As mentioned earlier color was used to help give expression to Lester’s struggle with his place in life. Color is not forced into the film. Every color used does not make the film less realistic. Color is only emphasized when it carries a specific meaning. For example the car that Lester buys is bright red showing his change of attitude and his excitement for life. When a character acts differently from how society acts red is seen. This can be seen with Lester’s wife who is having an affair with another man. Whenever she is in this dangerous situation she is wearing a red suit. Red is used to enhance character traits and separate the characters from how a “normal person” should behave. This is why every fantasy scene in the film has the color red. This is because Lester is breaking the rules of how a responsible father should act. We see Lester gazing at Angela as she slowly undresses, exposing not her breasts but hundreds of red flower pedals. Later we see pedals falling down on Lester as he watches Angela lying naked on red flower pedals. In reality he is in his bed masturbating next to his wife who finds this behavior very unnatural and not normal. But what is normal? Is being ordinary normal? None of the characters in the film want to be ordinary.

The camera goes from a medium shot of both of them to a close-up of just Jane, excluding the warm colors. Therefore the filmmaker has the power to lessen or heighten a particular color in a scene. However a filmmaker can’t determine all the colors in a scene the way a painter can. William Johnson writes that unlike painting the screen image is closely linked to the objects filmed. Therefore paintings are distinct from reality whereas film needs to show reality. “He (the viewer) expects screen colors to obey the same rules of cause and effect as operate in real life”. The are cases where the colors that are seen on screen looks different from the colors we see in real life because of the nature of some film processes. For example, in American Beauty we see the film through the camera eye of Ricky’s digital camera. The digital picture has more static and the colors seem to bleed into each other. Another difference between a painting and a film is that a film is organized in time. It is constantly moving while a painting is not. Therefore a viewer is able to take their time and look at the whole canvas. If a painting wanted to be organized in time it needs to be a character in a film.

When a wavelength of light that is emitted, reflected, or refracted into the eye, the brain responds to it and color is formed. Color is used by painters and filmmakers in different ways. Painters have a free choice of any color they wish to use and can use them any way they want to. A filmmaker has a lot more control over the use of colors and the colors themselves in films. When it comes to the interior the filmmaker can decide what sets, costumes, props, and make-up should be used and he can choose to remove them if he wanted to. A bunch of red roses rest in the middle of the dinning table as the family eats in American Beauty. The scene before shows the house with the red door right in the middle of the frame. Therefore the red door and the red roses make used to transition from one scene to another. Filmmakers can also control the colors of an exterior scene by deciding what time of the day to shoot. Also what time of the year to shoot because each season is different. The filmmaker can change the camera angle as well to show or not show a particular color. In a scene we see Jane and Angela through the view of a digital camera held by Ricky. Jane is wearing cool colors while Angela is wearing warm colors.

While reading Margaret Livingston’s article I found that the color white is made differently in film. In film white is a no spectral color and it can be made in many different ways. All the wavelengths of visible light has to be mixed to form the color white. However when painting, the mixing of colors will result in the color brown. This can be seen if you have ever painted and your wash cup has turned brown from the mixture of many colors.
During the 1950’s many critics felt that the color films that were being made were inartistic. But are paintings all in black and white? No. Paintings use colors to make their art more “artistic.” This is what Technicolor was trying to do. Technicolor was a process that literally painted color into a film, one frame at a time. Filmmakers wanted to reproduce colors as close to reality as possible. Painters also needed to learn to imitate reality before they became independent. Technicolor became too expensive and too time consuming because it had to be painted by hand. Then came Eastmancolor which was a single-strip and used a three color system. “Unlike Technicolor, Eastmancolor could be used in a conventional camera”

Melodrama means a drama that is accompanied by music. Or this was the definition in the past because melodrama was closely associated with Pantomime. This is why melodramatic acting is usually compared to the acting that is scene in silent movies which is all about expressionism. They both use a lot of gestures to get their message across. Gestures bring to mind meanings beyond its exact arrangement. The same can be said for the role of the mute. Mutes have had different roles in different kinds of dramas. Tragedy has blindness, comedy has deafness, and melodrama has muteness, because melodrama is about expression. The actor that is playing the person that is mute has to show all the emotion and passion without the use of words but rather his dramatic powers. So the audience has to see the emotion and meaning through clear signs. As the years went by Pantomime started to slowly add dialogue. But still words were rarely used to express messages. To express messages the actors needed to have emotional outbursts. In Official Story Sara speaks to Alicia about the murder of her daughter and her husband. Alicia’s only response comes from an emotional outburst of tears. No words are needed to express her emotion. Also emblems and symbols are helpful in adding to the expression and conveying the message. In moments of passion and strong emotion, mute scenes and gestures are strongly evident. The films of today use less of these forms of expression and more spoken dialogue because it wants to be more realistic. It wants to take the best parts of life and put it together to form a certain kind of story.

I recently started a poker night with some guys in my condo building. We play up on the 44th floor of our building. I think that all guys should have some sort of poker night. Poker night is not just about poker. It is about guys getting a little break from their normal lives. It is about freedom. Poker night is all about our individual rights as humans to get out of the house. We need to get out of our house and just talk with our friends. The guys that i play with are not that good at poker. They just like to drink a few beers and talk about stuff. I think that im a pretty good play. So naturally, i end up winning on most nights. Even before i moved into this building, i would always have some sort of poker night running. For me, i think that poker provides a great metaphor for life. You have to be skilled and get lucky at the same time if you want to be successful. Life is all about taking chances. Life is a big gamble. Just like poker, you have to ante up if you want to play the game. And just like life, you will end up losing a big pot every once in a while even thought you played the cards right.