This Monday we briefly addressed some of the aspects of mise-en-scene in regards to the movie Manhattan.  First, we discussed the use of music in the film. Due to the struggle I had when writing about it in my blog a few days before, I was eager to go over it in class.  Just as I had thought, there really weren’t that many scenes in the film with music.  Besides the reassurance I received from realizing I had remembered correctly, I also acquired a better understanding of the importance/role of the music in the movie.  For example, some of the music, including “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin, helped add to the romantic feel/style of this film.  The music, the idea of chasing your dreams, as well as scenes like the one in the planetarium where Mary and Issac are together in the dark, all make the film romantic I believe that the romantic style of this movie is actually the reason I enjoyed the movie as much as I did.

For the second half of class, we had a discussion on the book Catcher in the Rye.  What I really liked about this discussion was that it wasn’t just a bunch of question being asked in order to figure out who read the book and who didn’t.  I really never liked it when teachers did that in the past.  Our discussion was different in that to answer the questions, we did have to know the events and details of the book, but we also needed to get creative and think like characters’ and author’s would in certain situations.  I enjoyed assigning characters to archetypes, and also thinking about things such as what a kid like Holden would do on a regular day, or how things would be said with present day ling