The Blockbuster as the Defining Characteristic of Post-Classical Essay

The Blockbuster as the Defining Characteristic of Post-Classical Hollywood - Essay Example Bordwell (2006) explains that blockbuster is often used not to denote a genre of film per se but to describe the performance of a movie on the market. In simple terms, blockbuster is often associated with hit or good movies that generate a lot of revenue for filmmakers. One would then ask whether in the pre-blockbuster era there were no good movies. The answer is no. there were good and hit movies but after movies like Jaws started showing the possibility of amassing so many profits from the box office, the focus of filmmakers now shifted to finding the trick of making huge box offices in each and every movie they made and that started the blockbuster era. So in general terms, the writer agrees that blockbuster came to take off as the defining characteristic of post-classical Hollywood. However, the writer refuses to agree to the often negative connotation given to blockbuster as the defining characteristic of post-classical Hollywood. In the opinion of the writer, therefore, blockbu sters came as a good and positive phenomenon and continue to remain so. One of the first reasons why the writer disagrees with the argument that the blockbuster is a negative defining characteristic of post-classical Hollywood is that blockbuster actually came in to serve a dying situation. This is to say that the trend of the blockbuster was very important in saving the Hollywood film industry from absolute and total collapse. Clearly, bankruptcy was taking over the film industry and so there was every justification for a process that would salvage the situation. Two clear examples can be given in the cases of Heaven’s Gate, which was produced in 1980 by Michael Cimino and One from the Heart, which was produced in 1982 by Francis Ford Coppola. Heaven’s Gate actually made a loss of 40.5million USD after earning $3.5 million in box-office as against a $44 million production cost. One from the heart earned merely $636,000 out of $26 million. The said now that such giant players behind the film industry actually run into bankruptcy since those losses. Without any doubt, the industry would have been seriously affected if the pursuit for profit-making through the production of ‘hit’ films was not followed as what was earned in 1975 with the making of Jaws. On the grounds that blockbuster was necessary to rejuvenating the efforts of filmmakers to seek ways of producing films that were good enough to make them stay in the industry is thus a positive rather than a negative phenomenon of the blockbuster as the defining characteristic of post-classical Hollywood. It is even interesting to note that blockbusters do not necessarily have to be of good quality to make profits but there have been newer introductions such as technology backed publicity by the use of social and popular media to ensure that blockbusters sell. The second point that makes the writer take a stand against the idea that blockbuster is a negative defining characteristic of post-classical Hollywood is that not much has changed in terms of concept.  

Fossils (Earth Science Class) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Fossils (Earth Science Class) - Essay Example They are an important resource for identifying the types of species living during a particular era. Body fossils are the actual parts of the organisms and are rare to find as they can only be found in the places where the organisms actually lived. They provide very important information regarding the physical appearance of the organism but they are still ignorant to their lifestyle. Trace fossils include footprints, pathways and droppings. These offer an insight into the lifestyle of these organisms. The time durations in the study of fossils and rocks are huge; hence a geological time scale has been developed. The major subdivisions of the geological time scale are eons, eras, periods and epochs with eon indicating a span of hundreds of millions of years. Comparison between the features of different sedimentary rocks and the type of fossils present in it can be used to establish age relationships between different strata of Earth’s crust. This is known as correlation and is an important tool in the study of fossils and rocks (Lutgens, Tarbuck, &