American Beauty (1999 directed by Sam Mendes)

American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). Annette Bening co-stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane; Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper and Allison Janney also feature. The film has been described by academics as a satire of American middle class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction; analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, beauty, materialism, self-liberation and redemption.

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Human Music & Sound Design

human is a music and sound design initiative, creating innovative work for commercials, film, television and culture. Instilled with the spirit of a new paradigm, human enables collaboration within a global network of artists. While devoted to maintaining traditional values of excellence, artistry and knowledge, we embrace technology as a means of expanding the boundaries of genre, location and culture. click on image to access website. click on psycho ronald mcdonald for the human vimeo page.

The Cast of Kick-Ass in Conversation.

The cast talking about the film from their perspective. They provide some interesting insight into character influences.

Representations of Age

Apologies for missing today's lesson. Your task is to think about how age is represented in the media. Remember that most characterisations presented to us by the media are stereotypes. This makes them easy to recognise and understand. This applies very clearly to notions of Age in the media. As you know teenagers get a particularly rough deal from mainstream media. The same applies to the old. In pairs you need to make a very brief list of the most obvious stereotypes for both groups. Then you need to choose a young or old character from a TV drama and make a presentation based on their representation. Add as much detail as you can. Include pictures and clips to illustrate your points.Think about how fair and accurate the representation is. As a class you need to make sure you all look at a different character and that some of you look at older characters. We'll look at these presentations tomorrow.

FORD (MR) MEDIA (AS)

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