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英文电影赏析计划书及总结

英文电影赏析计划书及总结
英文电影赏析计划书及总结

英文电影赏析活动

- 计划书及总结

策划人:邵光阳

2013年11月09日山峰英语俱乐部英文电影赏析活动方案

活动目的:在通过对英文电影的赏析与理解提高学生的英语文化素质,锻炼学生的组织能力,协调能力以及独立完成任务的能力,并且通过该社团培养兴趣,真正的提高自己的英语语言文化习得及口语表达能力。

活动名称:英文电影赏析

设备:电脑投影仪

活动策划承办单位:山峰英语俱乐部

人员:山峰英语俱乐部全体成员

时间与地点:待定

活动形式与内容:

1. 电影放映与赏析

电影的放映参考社团成员意见而形成最终意见。放映电影之前由宣组会成员负责对新影片的背景知识、经典对白注意率先进行讲解,并提出观看问题让社员带着问题看影片,找答案。问题设置以多样化、灵活化为基点,可有线索词寻找、镜头手段、经典语句、主题挖掘、人物分析、画面效果、语言现象等进行揣摩分析。

电影放映结束后,以小组自愿为原则、要求小组内分工合作,指派一人上台做成果汇报,可以回答宣组会一开始PPT中的问题,也可以结合小组智慧形成新的成果汇报,成果回报要求以PPT展示。宣组会将根据PPT效果、合作程度、内容价值、表达流畅性等角度进行评分。

活动要求

1、关于电影

要求在电影播放时提供所放电影中有经典对白及台词的中英文对照版。

电影放映前,负责同学提前20分钟到达指定地点,做好放映前的准备工作。例如电脑及音响设备的检测,电影台词的发放,对观看电影的同学的统筹安排及管理。电影放映结束后,负责打扫教室及其它善后工作。

英文电影赏析活动总结

校园中五彩缤纷的社团活动丰富了学生的业余生活,也为学生提供了展示自我的能力与发挥创造力的舞台,不但能开阔眼界,增加人生阅历,还能提高综合素质,适度的活动可以为我们的生活润滑,娱乐身心,放松心情,同时更重要的是增加知识与能力

这次英文电影赏析活动,活动前期做了充分的准备,在活动即将到来时,由于参加报名的人数比较少,所以,我们自己总结了一下,主要的原因是我们宣传的不到位。;另一个原因,我们刚刚接手社团,很多的事情并不是很熟悉,不知道该如何去做,现在想起这些事情,它不但锻炼了我个人的能力,也要求我的组织能力有所提高,对他们也要有明确的分工,只有让所有的人都参与进来,一起合作,才能办的更好!

社团的活动不在多,而在于精。每一次活动都尽力办到最好,社团的发展不能全部依赖于举办活动,必须有自己可发展和延续的东西。我们社团在本学期举办的活动虽然不是很多,活动也没有办的特别好,但那也是一次次精神的洗礼,能力的提升,团结的供赢。我们将会齐心协力,继续努力,争取做得更好。

Journey to the Center of the Earth(地心游记)2008经典电影英文影评

Journey to the Center of the Earth(地心游记)2008 There is a part of me that will always have affection for a movie like "Journey to the Center of the Earth." It is a small part and steadily shrinking, but once I put on the 3-D glasses and settled in my seat, it started perking up. This is a fairly bad movie, and yet at the same time maybe about as good as it could be. There may not be an 8-year-old alive who would not love it. If I had seen it when I was 8, I would have remembered it with deep affection for all these years, until I saw it again and realized how little I really knew at that age. You are already familiar with the premise, that there is another land inside of our globe. You are familiar because the Jules Verne novel has inspired more than a dozen movies and countless TV productions, including a series, and has been ripped off by such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, who called it Pellucidar, and imagined that the Earth was hollow and there was another world on the inside surface. (You didn't ask, but yes, I own a copy of Tarzan at the Earth's Core with the original dust jacket.) In this version, Brendan Fraser stars as a geologist named Trevor, who defends the memory of his late brother, Max, who believed the center of the Earth could be reached through "volcanic tubes." Max disappeared on a mysterious expedition, which, if it involved volcanic tubes, should have been no surprise to him. Now Trevor has been asked to spend some time with his nephew, Max's son, who is named Sean (Josh Hutcherson). What with one thing and another, wouldn't you know they find themselves in Iceland, and peering down a volcanic tube. They are joined in this enterprise by Hannah (Anita Briem), who they find living in Max's former research headquarters near the volcano he was investigating. Now begins a series of adventures, in which the operative principle is: No matter how frequently or how far they fall, they will land without injury. They fall very frequently, and very far. The first drop lands them at the bottom of a deep cave, from which they cannot possibly climb, but they remain remarkably optimistic: "There must be a way out of here!" Sure enough, they find an abandoned mine shaft and climb aboard three cars of its miniature railway for a scene that will make you swear the filmmakers must have seen "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Just like in that movie, they hurtle down the tracks at breakneck speeds; they're in three cars, on three more or less parallel tracks, leading you to wonder why three parallel tracks were constructed at great expense and bother, but just when such questions are forming, they have to (1) leap a chasm, (2) jump from one car to another, and (3) crash. It's a funny thing about that little railway: After all these years, it still has lamps hanging over the rails, and the electricity is still on. The problem of lighting an unlit world is solved in the next cave they enter, which is inhabited by cute little birds that glow in the dark. One of them makes friends with Sean, and leads them on to the big attraction -- a world bounded by a great interior sea. This world must be a terrible place to inhabit; it has man-eating and man-strangling plants, its waters harbor giant-fanged fish and fearsome sea snakes that eat them, and on the further shore is a Tyrannosaurus rex. So do the characters despair? Would you despair, if you were trapped miles below the surface in a cave and being chased by its hungry inhabitants? Of course not. There isn't a moment in the movie when anyone seems frightened, not even during a fall straight down for thousands of feet, during which they link hands like sky-divers and carry on a conversation. Trevor gets the ball rolling: "We're still falling!" I mentioned 3-D glasses earlier in the review. Yes, the movie is available in 3-D in "selected theaters." Select those theaters to avoid. With a few exceptions (such as the authentic IMAX process), 3-D remains underwhelming to me -- a distraction, a disappointment and more often than not offering a dingy picture. I guess setting your story inside the Earth is one way to explain why it always seems to need more lighting. The movie is being shown in 2-D in most theaters, and that's how I wish I had seen it. Since there's that part of me with a certain weakness for movies like this, it's possible I would have liked it more. It would have looked brighter and clearer, and the photography wouldn't have been cluttered up with all the leaping and gnashing of teeth. Then I could have appreciated the work of the plucky actors, who do a lot of things right in this movie, of which the most heroic is keeping a straight face. 1

经典英文电影赏析分析

曾经和ing《经典英文电影赏析》由10个章节组成。每一章节包括电影背景、故事简介、主要演员阵容及导演介绍、精彩部分节选、对影片的评论及注释五大部分。相信许多读者会在观赏优美电影或阅读《经典英文电影赏析》的过程中重温自己过去的电影体验,获得新的感悟和理解。 英汉对照是《经典英文电影赏析》的一大特点。《经典英文电影赏析》既有英文原文,也提供了中文翻译,有助于英语爱好者能更好地理解书中的内容。同时,《经典英文电影赏析》还提供了注释,为读者的自学提供了参考。 ·查看全部>> 前言 在“信息爆炸”的今天,随着国际文化交流的不断深入和推进,英语作为世界通行语的优势越来越显示出她的“英语帝国”风貌。一方面中国正逐步地同世界接轨,日益频繁的国际交往,使国家和社会对大学生的英语综合应用能力尤其是听说技能提出了更高的要求。另一方面,目前全国大学英语教学改革正在各高校尝试并推广,基于计算机/网络+课堂教学的教学模式日渐普遍。 教育部2007年颁布了《大学英语课程教学要求》。为贯彻其原则和方针,遵循其提出的“加强听说能力,提倡自主型的个性化学习”要求,大学英语教学课时数在一定程度上进行了缩减,包括听力课课时。而全国大学英语四、六级考试在这一改革的背景下进行了很大程度的调整,加强了应用能力的考查,听力所占的比例也由原来的20%提高到了35%。大学英语教学也面临着新的挑战。 因此,如何在学时减少、对听说能力要求提高的情况下,加强对学生学习能力的训练,培养学生自主学习的新模式,也是大学教师应该探讨的新问题。 电影一直以来就是人类漫漫旅途中的精神伴侣。在电影中,人们可以获得心灵的安慰,得到情感的滋润,寻求生活的力量,体验人生的快乐。而英语电影不仅能把学习者带入到一个非常好的语境中培养语感,而且有利于学生熟悉国外的社会、文化、生活方式以及异国风情,为他们了解西方提供了一种影像解读的窗口。中国著名英语语言学教育专家刘润清曾说过,“电影是社会文化的浓缩,看一部电影胜似在国外生活一天”。 借此我们编写了《经典英文电影赏析》这部书。在对近几年英美国家上演的大片精挑细选的基础上,我们选择了既适合英语学习,又集知识性、趣味性、观赏性、时尚性、体验性为一体的10部电影。目的是通过提供真实的英语语言环境,让英语学习者和爱好者能直接了解英美人的思维方式、文化和生活习俗,锻炼和提高英语视、听、说、读、写、译的综合应用能力。这10部电影涉及不同的类型:爱情片、励志片、喜剧片、动作片、友情片、动画片等。

英语影视赏析课程教学大纲

《英语影视赏析》课程教学大纲 (2003年制订,2006年修订) 课程编号:100190 英文名:English Movie Appreciation 课程类别:专业选修课 前置课:基础英语 后置课:无 学分:2学分 课时:34课时 主讲教师:李丽萍褚玉襄 选定教材:Andrew Lynn,英语电影赏析,北京:外语教学与研究出版社,2005年。 课程概述: 本课程针对英语专业高年级学生开设。主要目的是为了顺应我国当前政治经济形势发展的需要,满足大学生迫切需要通过电视、电影等媒体来直接了解世界各国的政治、经济、文化和社会发展动态的需要。通过涵养学生的影视艺术感觉,提高学生英语水平和影视艺术鉴赏的审美品位。 学习语言的过程很大程度上是文化习得的过程。语言只有放置于一定的文化背景和语言环境的情况下才有其意义,学生才能够将语言认知能力转化为语言运用能力,达到学习语言的能力。 教学目的: 通过对影视英语的分析与欣赏,让学生能够身入其境地了解影视中各种人物的对话,了解各国的风土人情、特有的文化背景、历史与现状、科学技术的发展、地理地貌等特点。本课程借助现代媒体手段,充分利用各种可能的途径,获得各种特点的素材和资料,在课堂上和学生一起分析其中所用语言和其使用的环境,尤其是英文经典和热门电影的赏析和解读帮助学生领略电影大师们特色各异的创作韵趣,进一步认识电影思维、电影语言的独特规律,并从欧美和中国不同民族和地域的社会文化背景深入了解作品的文化学内蕴,通过教师分段的各种提问与讲解,使学生能对影片的内容有个透彻的了解,从而能逐渐培养起他们独立欣赏原版片的习惯与能力。学生通过本课程的学习,可以提高自身通过听觉获取信息的能力,可以较为顺利地听懂有一定难度的英语电影、电视片段等,了解英语国家的人文特点,提高英语文化素养,能够在日常生活中灵活运用所学知识进行交流。

Seven(七宗罪)1995经典电影英文影评

Seven(七宗罪)1995 David Fincher's classic tale of inventive serial killing and urban degredation, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman on excellent form Who'd have thought? An absurd-sounding tale of a serial killer basing his crimes around the seven deadly sins, directed by the man behind the mess that was Alien3, turning out to be one of the most chilling and original thrillers of the 1990s. From the outset, through the film's brilliantly designed deliberate under-lighting - we see very little blood and guts - and muffled sound, the audience is encouraged to lean towards the screen, immerse itself in the film's unbearably grim world. Pitt is in career-making form as Mills, a simple cop moving with his sweet young wife (Paltrow) to a grim, anonymous city, determined to make a difference, to do some good. He is assigned to track down a vengeful killer, and works alongside Somerset (Freeman), a jaded, wise policeman on the verge of retirement. The two are that modern movie cliché -the mismatched pair thrown together by circumstance, who gradually learn mutual respect. But Fincher and Walker take these hackneyed ingredients, play with them in the context of a brilliantly cohesive plot, and present something consistently fresh - the police finding themselves with too much evidence, the premature unmasking of the killer - and very, very dark. 1

英语电影欣赏教案

英语电影欣赏教案

英语电影欣赏教案 【篇一:英文电影欣赏校本课程】 英文电影欣赏校本课程教案 执教人:何菲 课时说明: 一、教学目标 在教学中注重引导学生了解隐含在语言内部的一个民族的生活方式、思维方式、价值观念、风俗习惯、审美情趣等;指导学生提高对西方文化的鉴别能力,汲取精华,去其糟粕;使学生在学习语言的同时,情感受到真善美的陶冶,心灵受到激荡,人格得到升华,提高认识能力,从而树立正确的人生观和价值观。 二、教学重点与难点 通过观看电影中的其精彩部分(highlight),在“质感”的英语中感受体悟原汁原味的英语,逐渐培养学生独立思考的能力,让学生大胆表达自己对电影的真实感悟,从真实的交流中体会语言的文化内涵。 三、教法、学法及教学手段 1. 学情分析 从学生的认知水平和能力状况来看,学生已初步具备了一定的查找材料和信息的自主学习能力,但学习的方法和习惯还有待养成。在此基础上引导学生自主、探究、合作学习,大多数学生喜欢思考,能积极参与学习交流活动,但他们也需要老师适当引导。 2. 教法 (1)采用问题教学法

采取实践、参与、合作、交流的学习方式,如:教师引导、查阅资料、分析探究、小组讨论、模拟对白,情景剧表演 (2)谈话教学法 设置情境——引导思考——交流互动 3. 学法 自主探究学习法,在课前,学生查阅相关资料课上教师扮演学生领路人的角色,学生在教师的引导下探究并自我总结,形成知识结构。引导学生学会独立地思考问题并能流利地表达自己的观点。 4. 教学手段 多媒体教学 四、课时安排 本课程共4课时。欣赏4部影片:《里约大冒险1》、《冰河世纪2》《哈利波特与魔法石》、《驯龙高手2》 课程内容: 第一时《里约大冒险1》电影欣赏 2. plot outline(故事梗概) 《里约大冒险》的故事讲述一只生活在美国明尼苏达州小镇上的 蓝色金刚鹦鹉,一直是世界上仅存的一只公金刚鹦鹉。直到有一天,一个鸟类研究博士图里奥来到了这里,告知鹦鹉的主人琳达要是再不给它们进行人工繁殖那么蓝色金刚鹦鹉可能就会灭绝,而他们研究所就有一只母蓝色金刚鹦鹉。于是,为了拯救蓝色金刚鹦鹉,他们从美国出发飞往巴西里约热内卢,一段充满异域风情的冒险之旅就这么开始了。 3. movie time带问题看电影

电影赏析,英文版

Review of the Wreck-it Ralth Compared with the movies we have seen this semester,Wreck it Ralth is my favorite.It is the work of the Disney.we had a lot of fun in this film as well as moving. For this film, I want to write lots and lots, but feel my lack of language. Watched this movie ,Ithink that many people will have the feeling of fondly remembering. Exactly said, I am not a game fan, but it still aroused the memories of my childhood ,the street machine that in childhood played..In addition,I have never played Super Mario and PAC-man, and other classic games of figures I have just seen.But that's it, I still love this movie because it has put us in a game which always appears in a dream world. Therefore the angle of view of this movie gives people the fresh feeling At the beginning ,we all know that ralph is a good man but play a bad role.according to this,the story begins.In the hero duty,we knew the ralph's weakness.Fortunately,he overcomed his weakness and gain a sincere friendship. At the end of the film ,Ralth destroies the king with his huge fist,When he used the stone from the top of the volcano hit Coke fountain. his destruction has reached an extreme. And I am looking forward to this destruction, and adored this destruction,And my heart silently said: to make it ! Very humorous scene of the film, no matter how hard Felix tried,it only makethe Iron Prison firmer, and Ralth had become a savior. When your heart is full of love, the damage is also with personal happiness. The film is told in the usual frame of thinking, we have hidden things we can not see, such as the identity of the person,

Tess(苔丝)1979经典电影英文影评

Tess(苔丝)1979 Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which Roman Polanski has turned into a lovely, lyrical, unexpectedly delicate movie, might at first seem to be the wrong project for Mr. Polanski in every way. As a new biography of the director reports, when Tess was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, the press pointed nastily and repeatedly to the coincidence of Mr. Polanski's having made a film about a young girl's seduction by an older man, while he himself faced criminal charges for a similar offense. This would certainly seem to cast a pall over the project. So would the fact that Hardy's novel is so very deeply rooted in English landscapes, geographical and sociological, while Mr. Polanski was brought up in Poland. Finally, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is so quintessentially Victorian a story that a believable version might seem well out of any contemporary director's reach. But if an elegant, plausible, affecting Tess sounds like more than might have been expected of Mr. Polanski, let's just say he has achieved the impossible. In fact, in the process of adapting his style to suit such a sweeping and vivid novel, he has achieved something very unlike his other work. Without Mr. Polanski's name in the credits, this lush and scenic Tess could even be mistaken for the work of David Lean. In a preface to the later editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Mr. Hardy described the work as "an impression, not an argument." Mr. Polanski has taken a similar approach, removing the sting from both the story's morality and its melodrama. Tess Durbeyfield, the hearty country lass whose downfall begins when her father learns he had noble forebears, is sent to charm her rich D'Urberville relations. She learns that they aren't D'Urbervilles after all; instead, they have used their new money to purchase an old name. Tess charms them anyhow, so much that Alec D'Urberville, her imposter cousin, seduces and impregnates her. The seduction, like many of the film's key scenes, is presented in a manner both earthy and discreet. In this case, the action is set in a forest, where a gentle mist arises from the ground and envelops Tess just around the time when she is enveloped by Alec. Alec, as played by Leigh Lawson, is a slightly wooden character, unlike Angel Clare, Tess's later and truer lover, played with supreme radiance by Peter Firth. Long after Tess has borne and buried her illegitimate child, she finds and falls in love with this spirited soul mate. But when she marries Angel Clare and is at last ready to reveal the secret of her past, the story begins hurtling toward its final tragedy. When Tess becomes a murderer, the film offers its one distinctly Polanski-like moment—but even that scene has its fidelity to the novel. A housemaid listening at a door hears a "drip, drip, drip" sound, according to Hardy. Mr. Polanski has simply interpreted this with a typically mischievous flourish. Of all the unlikely strong points of Tess, which opens today for a weeklong engagement at the Baronet and which will reopen next year, the unlikeliest is Nastassja Kinski, who plays the title role. Miss Kinski powerfully resembles the young Ingrid Bergman, and she is altogether ravishing. But she's an odd choice for Tess: not quite vigorous enough, and maybe even too beautiful. She's an actress who can lose her magnetism and mystery if she's given a great deal to do (that was the case in an earlier film called Stay As You Are). But here, Mr. Polanski makes perfect use of her. Instead of a driving force, she becomes an echo of the land and the society around her, more passive than Hardy's Tess but linked just as unmistakably with natural forces. Miss Kinski's Tess has no inner life to speak of. But Mr. Polanski makes her surroundings so expressive that her placidity and reserve work very beautifully. Even at its nearly three-hour running time, Mr. Polanski's Tess cannot hope for anything approaching the range of the novel. But the deletions have been made wisely, and though the story loses some of its resonance it maintains its momentum. There are episodes—like one involving Tess's shabby boots and Mercy Chant, the more respectable girl who expects to marry Angel—that don't make the sense they should, and the action is fragmented at times. That's a small price to pay for the movie's essential rightness, for its congruence with the mood and manner of the novel. Mr. Polanski had to go to Normandy and rebuild Stonehenge to stage his last scene, according to this same biography. As is the case throughout his Tess, the results were worth the trouble. 1

河科大公选《经典英文电影欣赏》课程摘要

电影,也称映画(motion picture):是由活动照相术幻灯放映术结合发展起来的一种现代艺术,是一门可以容纳文学、喜剧、摄影、绘画、音乐、舞蹈等多种艺术的综合艺术。 艺术界把电影称为是继文学、音乐、建筑、美术、雕塑、舞蹈之后的第七艺术。 西方电影经历了四个时期: 电影艺术萌发期(1895-1907)无声故事片创作时期(1908-1926) 有声故事片创作时期(1927-1945)电影艺术新发展时期(1945- ) (一)电影艺术萌发期 这一时期,存在着两种不同的摄影倾向;一种以卢米埃尔兄弟为代表,主要在现实中区捕捉生活现象,银幕上展现的就是人们身边的琐事;一种以梅里埃为代表,主要记载舞台上经过加工的虚构的生活图画。沿着这两种创作方式,发展呈后来的记录片和故事片两种片种。卢米埃尔兄弟的作品,均为纪实主义电影,银幕上展现的就是们身边的琐事。题材和内容大致可分为四个方面:劳动和工作的生活场景;家庭生活情趣的记录;政治、文化、新闻纪录;自然风光和街头实景。代表作品:《工厂的大门》《火车进站》《水浇园丁》《耶路撒冷教堂》《儿童吵架》《婴儿的早餐》。 1895年12月28日,卢米埃尔兄弟《火车进站》、《工厂大门》等标志着电影的诞生。 梅丽爱(1861-1938)对电影的贡献:1.把戏剧手法移植到电影中,完成了电影同戏剧首次“联姻”,丰富了电影表现力。2.自觉运用了人工布景,大摄影棚拍摄,重点虚构创造艺术效果。3.灵活运用停机拍摄,场面转换等拍摄技巧和方法。4.开创多种电影特技,如多次曝光、合成摄影、渐隐渐显、慢速摄影等。 (二)无声故事片创作时期: 这一时期的代表人物和电影流派包括:大卫·格里菲斯查理·卓别林德国表现主义电影法国印象主义电影超现实主义电影前苏联蒙太奇学派电影 大卫·格里菲斯:被誉为“现代电影观念的奠基者”。1.他将电影从依附于戏剧的形式中独立出来,采用文学观念进行创作,将电影从简单的记录层面提升到复杂点的叙事层面,使电影真正成为一门独立的艺术。2.他首创巨型片的先河,制作场面宏大,形式新颖,使用时空跳跃和蒙太奇对比手法,创造了世界电影史上著名的”最后一分钟营救发”,至今仍在电影创作中广泛使用。最著名的代表作品,包括:1915年《一个国家的诞生》(the birth of a nation)1916年的《党同伐异》(intolerance) 查理·卓别林:生平简介:英国电影演员,制片人,导演,不列颠帝国勋章佩戴者,1889年4月16日出生于伦敦,1977年12月25日卒于瑞士科西耶。代表作品:从1919年开始,卓别林独立制片,一生共拍摄80余部喜剧片,其中在电影史上著名的影片由《淘金记》《城市之光》《摩登时代》《大独裁者》《凡尔杜先生》《舞台生涯》等。创作特点:1.影片有着深刻而尖锐的现实主义批判精神,完全不同于以前的庸俗闹剧。2.卓别林的喜剧电影大都是带有悲剧色彩的喜剧,善于把一些对立的因素在艺术创作中有机的集合起来,这种对立关系的桥面处理发人深省,具有很强的艺术感染力,使悲喜交集达到高度的融合。3.卓别林用艺术夸张手法构成情节和人物动静的造型,构思巧、手法新,完全超脱了一般庸俗闹剧的旧模式,因而在创作上达到深刻的现实主义和卓越的浪漫主义想结合,从而使得卓别林的喜剧电影取得了很高的艺术成就。 德国表现主义电影:是20世纪一、二十年代在德国出现的把文学、戏剧、和绘画上的表现主义原则,运用于电影创作的电影流派,认为:“电影的画面应该像绘画作品一样”,创作者把本人的内心骚动,情绪外化于所免回的形象之中。创作特点:用荒诞离奇的手法,曲折而精确的反映出一战给德国人民带来的极度恐慌和惶惑的心情。银幕上呈现的是高度夸张、变形、主观化的世界。艺术特征:1.总体风格沉郁、灰暗、冷酷。2.内容倾向于黑暗题材的表现,人物往往具有象征含义。3.用变形、荒诞、失真、扭曲等手法反映现实。4.空间安排热衷舞

The Pursuit of Happiness(当幸福来敲门)经典电影英文影评

The Pursuit of Happiness(当幸福来敲门)2006 With a title like The Pursuit of Happiness, you expect the characters to get to the promised land. They do, but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in one. This is not the feel-good movie of the season unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happiness is a chore. Downbeat movies aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived circumstances. How is it that movies "inspired by a real story" often feel more fake than those fully embedded in the realm of fiction? Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy whose rags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me away. In and of itself, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it wouldn't surprise me if the movie's prestige factor and Smith's popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star, Thandie Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face into unpleasant expressions. Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his occasional deficiencies are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's direction, but there's not much personality behind the cute features and curly hair. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his self-employed business of selling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the disposition of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns into a country song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a friend over $14. He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But there's a bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no chance to get in until he amazes the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab. It's a blessing that the movie doesn't use a stock villain to impede Chris' herky-jerky trip to the top, because that would have tipped the movie into the empire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a strong conflict makes the two-hour running length seem very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in the way of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a real-life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how desperately Chris loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher seems like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do. The film's most compelling scenes are those that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure these salesmen are under and how important the contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, these sequences are background noise. They are neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training. The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams. Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promises a better story than the one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbose) voiceover that adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't need Will Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'" This is the English-language debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himself in Italian cinema. The Pursuit of Happiness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a director raised outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an asset in some circumstances is a detriment in this one. The Pursuit of Happiness isn't enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting misery. The Pursuit of Happiness is competently made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it loses the pursuit and misses the "happiness."

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