Critical Evaluation of Romeo and Juliet By Baz Luhrmann Essay Example

Critical Evaluation of Romeo and Juliet By Baz Luhrmann Essay Example Critical Evaluation of Romeo and Juliet By Baz Luhrmann Paper Critical Evaluation of Romeo and Juliet By Baz Luhrmann Paper Essay Topic: Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann is possibly the most famous love story of all time about the two star crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. Luhrmann had the task of remaking the classic play, written by the even more famous William Shakespeare, into a film that would appeal to a younger audience despite the Shakespearian language. Due to the language in the film, Luhrmann has to use many different techniques to help the audience understand what is happening or to help them relate to the story. The film is set in a fictitious city that is meant to be Verona in Italy but it looks more like a larger American city. This helps younger viewers relate to the film as many of them will live in large cities themselves. The most basic way of Luhrmann showing how different the Montagues and Capulets were was their race. The Montagues are white Americans and the Capulets are Hispanic, from a southern American country. This immediately tells the audience that the families are different and that racism may play a large part in the story. Also, he shows the families are different by the way they dress, the Montagues dress like surfers, very casually with shorts and shirts with bright colours where as the Capulets dress formally wearing smart trousers and shirts with blank blazers. Although the families have their distinctive dress senses Romeo and Juliet both dress differently. When the audience first sees Romeo he is not dressed in beachwear, he is dressed formally. This shows that he is not like the rest of his family. Juliet also dresses differently; she is always seen in white to signify her pure and angelic form. She changes from white to black later on in the film, this is when she realises she is alone and she isnt like her family even if she wants to be. Her family disown her when she expresses her distress at the thought of having to marry Paris as she secretly loves Romeo. Another even more important way that Luhrmann shows Juliet is different is that she is white while her family are Hispanic. Another way Luhrmann gets round the difficult language of the film is by his use of casting. The two family leaders Lord Capulet and Lord Montague, played by Paul Sorvino and Brian Dennehy respectively have played many roles as gangsters. This gives the audience the right impression of them, nasty and unfriendly characters. Luhrmann also recruited Leonardo Di-Caprio, voted The Most Handsome Peron on the Planet who had a huge fan base before Romeo and Juliet so many of his young female fans would go to see the film just to see him. It would also make the film more enjoyable for them. Claire Danes was chosen to play the part of Juliet because she is pretty but not glamorous and this would make girls think that they dont have to be perfect to find a boyfriend. She had also never had a major role in a film before so this would mean she would not bring any past roles into the film which would damage her credibility as the angelic Juliet. Luhrmann made some questionable decisions whilst making Romeo and Juliet like setting it in modern times and keeping the Shakespearian language, another was choosing to introduce drugs into the film. Romeo takes an ecstasy tablet before the party but he sincerely regretted it after as it ruined his party. He took the ecstasy because Mercutio gave him it and through a mix of peer pressure and not wanting to offend Mercutio he takes the drug. Luhrmann is critical and makes a bad impression of them in the hope that some people will be deterred by the way Romeos party is ruined by drugs. Drugs is a major issue in modern days so this is yet another way in which some of the audience can relate to the film as some people may have had experiences with drugs and need to deal with them. Luhrmanns use of the music in the film is very helpful for people who cant understand the language of the film. The film starts with a lot of action and confrontations so the music is frantic and sounds like western cowboy-showdown music. By contrast, the first time the audience meets Romeo the music is very calm and soothing to show Romeo is very mellow and not looking for trouble or fights. The music also helps people know if something bad is going to happen. For example when Romeo and Juliet marry the music is happy and merry but for the next scene it changes to very deep and dramatic music, this is just before Mercutio is killed. When Romeo and Juliet realise they can never be the music changes to sad music. Some people may not have caught on to what was happening without the music but it changes effectively to show they can never be together. In conclusion, Luhrmanns techniques of producing a Romeo and Juliet film that appeals to a young audience were somewhat successful. Although the Shakespearian language is very difficult to understand at times young viewers still watch and enjoy the film.

Definition and Examples of Verbal Placeholders

Definition and Examples of Verbal Placeholders A placeholder is a word (such as whatchamacallit) used by speakers to signal that they dont know or cant remember a more precise word for something. Also known as a  kadigan, tongue-tipper, and dummy noun. Examples and Observations You need something to sell. Now this could be anything. It could be a thingamajig. Or a whosi-whatsi. Or [pulls out a Watchamacallit candy bar from his pocket] a Whatchamacallit.(Steve Carell as Michael Scott in Business Office, The Office)Work, the whats-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what dyou-call-it.(P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist, 1915)I have unspiked the sliding doors at the far end of the barn, so that the greatly increased flow of visitors can move past the whatchamacallit without eddies and backwash. In one end they go, and out the other.   (Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard. Delacorte Press, 1987)It will do magic,Believe it or not,Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.Now Salagadoola meansA-Menchika-boola-roo,But the thingamabobThat does the jobIs Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.(Al Hoffman, Mack David, and Jerry Livingston, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo. Cinderella, 1950) Doodad doodad n (Variations: do-dad or do-funny or doofunny or do-hickey or doohickey or do-hinky or doohinky or do-jigger or doojigger or doowhangam or do-whistle or doowhistle or do-willie or doowillie) Any unspecified or unspecifiable thing: something one does not know the name of or does not wish to name.  (Barbara Ann Kipfer and Robert L. Chapman, American Slang, 4th ed. Collins Reference, 2008) Placeholders Placeholders . . . have little or no semantic meaning and should rather be interpreted pragmatically. The placeholder words that Channell discusses... are thing, thingummy (with the variants thingummyjig and thingummybob), whatsisname, whatnot, whosit, and whatsit... Incidentally, they are all defined as slang in Cassells Dictionary of Slang (2000)... The situation where the next dialogue occurs reveals that Fanny does not know the name of the boy who was laughing with Achil and uses thingie as a placeholder: Fanny: And I walked off and like I just walked away and Achil and thingy were laughing at, you know, just not at me at how how crap [name]Kate: [Yeah.]Fanny: had been and how I had to go away.(142304: 13-215) Thingamajig occurs four times with reference to an object and twice with reference to a person. In (107) we meet 14-year-old Carola and Semantha . . . from Hackney: Carola: Can I borrow your thingamajig?Semantha: I dont know what thingamajig it is.(14078-34) Semanthas reaction shows that there is no doubt that thingamajig belongs to the category of vague words. It obviously refers to an object that Carola would like to borrow, but Semantha apparently has no idea of what she is referring to.  (Anna-Brita Stenstrà ¶m et al., Trends in Teenage Talk: Corpus Compilation, Analysis, and Findings. John Benjamins, 2002) Douglas Adams on the Placeholder in Do-Re-Mi One particularly niggling piece of Unfinished Business, it occurred to me the other day in the middle of a singing session with my five-year-old daughter, is the lyrics to ‘Do-Re-Mi,’ from The Sound of Music... Each line of the lyric takes the names of a note from the sol-fa scale, and gives it meaning: ‘Do (doe), a deer, a female deer; Re (ray), a drop of golden sun,’ etc. All well and good so far. ‘Mi (me), a name I call myself; Fa (far), a long, long way to run.’ Fine. I’m not saying this is Keats, exactly, but it’s a perfectly good conceit and it’s working consistently. And here we go into the home stretch. ‘So (sew), a needle pulling thread.’ Yes, good. ‘La, a note to follow so . . . What? Excuse me? ‘La, a note to follow so . . . What kind of lame excuse for a line is that?â€Å"Well, it’s obvious what kind of line it is. It’s a placeholder. A placeholder is what a writer puts in when he can’t think of the right line or idea just at the moment, but he’d better put in something and come back and fix it later. So, I imagine that Oscar Hammerstein just bunged in a ‘a note to follow so’ and thought he’d have another look at it in the morning.Only when he came to have another look at it in the morning, he couldn’t come up with anything better. Or the next morning. Come on, he must have thought, this is simple. Isn’t it? La . . . a something, something ... what?’...â€Å"How difficult can it be? How about this for a suggestion? ‘La, a ... a ...well, I can’t think of one at the moment, but I think that if the whole world pulls together on this, we can crack it.(Douglas Adams, Unfinished Business of the Century. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. Macmillan, 2002)

RES675, Version 2 - Written Assignment #1 Essay

RES675, Version 2 - Written Assignment #1 - Essay Example Each part is weighed against generally accepted methods for preparing research articles. The review concludes with the author’s thoughts about the research methods depicted in the two articles, citing appropriateness of the methods as well as limitations. Research is the cornerstone of any science. It refers to the systematic and purpose-driven process of attempting to gain knowledge about something. Research processes are often documented in journals, which describes the reason for the research, how the research was conducted and the results of the research or study made. This paper looks into two researches conducted and reviews the documented research process contained in the journal article published by the researchers. The first research article presents research done with postcards and looks into its usage as a souvenir, collectible or a means of communication from 1985 until 1920. The research was conducted by Bjarne Rogan, professor of ethnology and culture history at the University of Oslo, Norway. His article on his postcard research was published in the Cultural Analysis journal in 2005. The article describes the researcher’s purpose for conducting the research using present day postcard collections from the period mentioned above. The researcher wanted to look into other aspects of postcards aside from their picture side where more scholarly researched had been focused on. Reviews of previously published articles and literature on postcards are also used by the researcher in order to determine the reasons for the postcard’s popularity during its time, as well as to trace the development of postcards and the evolution of its design during the period. The second research article presents research regarding consumption of energy drink among college students. The research was conducted by Brenda Malinauskas, Victor Aeby, Reginald Overton, Tracy Aeby, and Kimberly Heidal, all professors at East Carolina University