Movie review with additions

"Persepolis", by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that details the story of a young girls tribulations during the Iranian revolution of the 1980's. It was recently made into a movie which stays as faithful as possible while is still a great movie for those who have never read it.

"Persepolis" starts out in a French airport as we see Marjane smoking a cigarette, looking around pensively as the story goes back a few decades to her childhood. To keep things brief, as we go through Marjane's story she clearly went through a lot, from losing family members and friends, to having to deal with "The Guardians". As we go through her life we are introduced to various characters, all with distinct personalities and each add something extra to the story. From the general kindheartedness of Marji's father to the heartbreaking story of Fereydoon, they all make the story all the more heart wrenching. The level of emotion derived from the movie is also stepped up from the different animation and cinematography used. At a particular point in the movie when Marjane is at probably the lowest point of her life, the background turns darker and the world turns utterly bleek, which really made me get into the movie.

I am not the only one who is singing Persepolis' praises though, as in his recent review, Roger Ebert states,"It might seem that her story is too large for one 98-minute film, but Persepolis tells it carefully, lovingly and with great style", and I for one could not agree more. But "Persepolis" is also great for other reasons. For one, it proves McCloud right when he states, "The world of comics is a huge and varied one", as when someone thinks of a comic, I highly doubt they would think of anything like Ms. Satrapi's "Persepolis".

"Persepolis" is not without it faults, however, but they are minor. It leaves a few scenes out from the graphic novel version but also adds a few scenes that weren't present in the novel which added more to the movie overall. The movie also took several scenes out of order from the graphic novel, but they still work and are cohesive.

Overall, I definitely give my highest accolades to "Persepolis", it was a heart wrenching detailing of a girl's struggles growing up in one of the toughest of environments possible, yet still has moments of pure happiness. It really toys with your emotions and for that I love it.

Draft

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that details the story of a young girls tribulations during the Iranian revolution of the 1980's. It was recently made into a movie which stays as faithful as possible while is still a great movie for those who have never read it.

Persepolis starts out in a French airport as we see Marjane smoking a cigarette, looking around pensively as the story goes back a few decades to her childhood. To keep things brief, as we go through Marjane's story she clearly went through a lot, from losing family members and friends, to having to deal with "The Guardians". As we go through her life we are introduced to various characters, all with distinct personalities and each add something extra to the story. From the general kindheartedness of Marji's father to the heartbreaking story of Fereydoon, they all make the story all the more heart wrenching. The level of emotion derived from the movie is also stepped up from the different animation and cinematography used. At a particular point in the movie when Marjane is at probably the lowest point of her life, the background turns darker and the world turns utterly bleek, which really made me get into the movie.

Persepolis is not without it faults, however, but they are minor. It leaves a few scenes out from the graphic novel version but also adds a few scenes that weren't present in the novel which added more to the movie overall. The movie also took several scenes out of order from the graphic novel, but they still work and are cohesive.

Overall, I definitely give my highest accolades to Persepolis, it was a heart wrenching detailing of a girl's struggles growing up in one of the toughest of environments possible, yet still has moments of pure happiness. It really toys with your emotions and for that I love it.

Critcal Criteria

While both provide a good critical review of Spiderman 2, Mr.Ebert and Mr.Gilchrist cover a wide array of topics and differ on the importance placed on them. Gilchrist and Ebert covered a lot of the same topics however disagreed on most. Gilchrest thought that most scenes were drawnout and had to lengthy of dialogue while Ebert viewed them as just the right amount of time to develop the characters. On the topic of special effects, Gilchrest liked Raimi's earleir work however barely mentions the subject when compared to Ebert who thought they were fantastic. Ebert also goes on to say how pleased he was the Toby Maguire reprises his role as Spiderman in the sequel, while Gilchrist fails to speak much if at all about the actors. Gilchrist does, however, mention that fans of 70's Spiderman books will enjoy this movie as its storyline is more similar to the comics of that era, where as Ebert doesn't mention similarities to the comic version at all. Over all, Gilchrest takes a more negative approach and doesn't seem to have enjoyed the movie that much where as Ebert gave the movie much praise. Personal taste seemed to have somewhat of an influence on the critics as Ebert obviously had different expectations for the movie than Gilchrest.

Persepolis

After watching the movie version of Persepolis, I think it did justice to the graphic novel. The movie is animated and keeps the same style as the novel, essentially becoming a moving version of it. One difference, however, is that the movie seemed to a have a darker undertone than the novel, as we could now hear the character's voices and tones. Another few differences between the novel and movie is that many scenes were dropped or in the wrong sequence in the movie version as well creating a few scenes. The movie also was in French with English subtitles, which I actually enjoyed. I do not know French but felt that having the characters speaking a foreign language instead of English helped me get into the movie more for whatever reason.

Exercise 1

1.) a.) A recent experiment suggests that there are dangerous levels of Chemical X in the Ohio groundwater.
b.) Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that this novel has certian flaws.
c.) I've always believed that football is so boring.
d.) It is often said that male students often dominate class discussions.
e.) You would think that the film is really about the problems of romantic relationships.
f.) I cannot help thinking that templates like the ones in this book will stifle my creativity.

Reaction to Eisner

I found the Eisner comic strip explaining comics to be a pretty interesting read. According to Will Eisner, comics have to have sequential art which is somewhat common sense, but he also adds that it is stirctly neutral when it comes to style, quality, and subject matter. Meaning that a comic can pretty much cover any topic. The comic goes on to say that most people stereotype comic books into being for 8 year olds, an offense I am definetly guilty of. The comic often takes to long to get it's point across but still gets the information about comics across. The part about abstracting a real life photo was particularly interesting and the images used were particularly helpful.