Movie Blog #1 Blog #4

Stephen King, famous for his horror stories and films, makes all of his book’s plots and climax’s rely on suspense, not like other horror books and films that rely on blood and gore to scare their readers and watchers. Stephen King’s book, The Shining, talks about an average adult man that has had many problems that had occurred in his past life. Those problems that this man has had was between his wife and his son and also his past job as a teacher at a college prep school. He had solved his alcohol problem that was the cause to his past problems and he had recently been hired at a hotel to be a janitor for the off-season. Stephen King is trying to tell his readers about the average people in life encounter many problems that affect their future and relationships. Stephen King had to know the realization of average peoples lives and also the many problems that affect families relationships to one another. As a reader of The Shining, you can tell that Stephen King likes to build up a lot of suspense to future encounters between characters. He also likes to define his characters and tell in very depth and detail the personality of the main character to help his readers understand how each of his character act and how those characters may act later on in the book. I believe that Stephen King wrote this book to show that there are many problems in society that affect the personalities of people and also to show the realization of society. The story of The Shining takes place mostly at the small home of the man and his family and then the setting moves along to the hotel where the man and his family will spend the cold winter nights taking care of the hotel. Stephen King sets the story in the time period of the sixties. As a reader you can tell that the time period of The Shining took place in the sixties because of the family relationship that goes on. Also by the problems that were going on, such as the war. Another authors tactic Stephen King uses is creating a strong atmosphere for the setting in his story. Stephen King describes the setting in great detail in the first hundred pages by telling his readers about the mountains and the brutally cold winter blizzards and the huge seventy foot tall hotel that is far from civilization. Stephen King is an overall strong writing author that spends a lot of time telling his readers about the setting, characters, and he knows how to build up suspense for future occurrences later on in the book.    

Blog Post #2

The best thing to hear in a movie theater is someone screaming because something scary came on the screen. Many horror films these days use the supernatural to try to scare their viewers, but to me I do not think that using the supernatural is very scary. I used to believe in ghosts and the boogie man but I do not believe in those kinds of supernatural anymore. I am not sure what it is that i do not like about the supernatural, but it just is not very scary to me. One of the reasons i might not think that the supernatural is scary is because I am in the theater program and i have watched many horror films. I can depict what is real and what is not on the movie screen. For example, if a door just opens on its own, the first thing i think about is how they made that door open by itself. The door was either opened by an unseen person or it could have been electronic or opened by a pulley system. I do not think that ghosts really opened a door or made any scary sounds. Another reason why i do not believe in the supernatural could be my outlook on religion, since religion, mostly catholic form of religion, has to do with afterlife and spirits. My beliefs toward religion are pretty much non existent, i believe myself to be a scientist, not a worshiper. So not believing in an afterlife with spirits and ghosts could be why i do not believe in the supernatural. There could be a supernatural but there is no proof that shows me that there is a supernatural in our world. My story about how i came to believe that there is no supernatural is as follows. When i was little, my sister would try to scare me by saying our house was haunted or say she heard sounds and things moving and i would believe her. She would make me watch all of the classic horror films that kids would watch and i would be scared of them. After watching all of those movies and when i grew older my common sense came into play and i stopped believing in all of the supernatural and just said to myself that it was just my mind. Then i would watch horror movies all of the time for fun and figure out how they made things appear and move on the screen. Nothing to me is more fun than watching horror movies. Also, listening to all of the other people scream when things pop out at you or move since i know that none of the stuff on the movie screen is real. I sit there and think about how the director made things on the screen move of pop out while all the other movie watchers scream in terror.