PHI350

I haven't written a journal entry for PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema in a few weeks so this is a first attempt to catch up.  I'm catching up on my reading material today so I'll likely follow this post with another reflecting upon that material.  What I would like to focus this post upon is my second piece of assessment, a short essay.

The question I chose asked about Rancière's three 'regimes of the arts' in relation to cinema.  I loved this topic and there is such a wealth of information out there.  This, of course, was my first problem.  Because I had a passion for the topic and the depths that I could see it reaching a short essay couldn't do it justice.  My notes alone were twice as long as the essay was allowed to be, and if I included all of the topics I desired to cover then a rather detailed book would have been the result.

I've just booted up my notebook, logged on here and realised that it's been a while since I've written a journal entry for PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema.  I've been snowed under with course work and various forms of assessment for PHIL2400: Ethics and the Passions, ABT31: Comparative Indigenous Studies, and REL22: Buddhist Meditation Traditions.

Ramblings is the title and ramblings is what's likely to follow.  I've just finished watching Buster Keaton's The General again.  I've decided on this film for my PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema film review for the simple fact(s) that I love this film and I already own a copy.  The film review is only to be 500 words, needs to be a philosophical review, and it may be of the entire film or just a single scene.

This week was of PHI350 was much more interesting and engaging than the other weeks so far.  The title for the week was 'The Question of Realism', looking for an answer via the writings of Andrè Bazin and Rudolf Arnheim.  Two films were prescribed for the week, The Spy by Lang, and Bicycle Thieves by De Sica.  Unfortunately I couldn't source either of these films in full so had to settle on excerpts.

This week's material was actually quite wide ranging.  We had readings by Rancière on Artistic Regimes and the Shortcomings of the Notion of Modernity, Jarvie, more broadly, on the Philosophy of film, Aristotle on what makes a good plot, and, of course, Plato's cave and a little on art theory (such as his simile of the chair).  The film for this week was either Buster Keaton's 'Our Hospitality' or 'The General', I chose 'The General' as I own a copy.  And, as usual, my tutorial question responses follow at the end.

As part of my assessment for PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema I have to keep a journal which can be presented in whatever creative fashion one desires (although a basic text only, handwritten journal is fine too).  What I've proposed is that I keep my journal online, as an aspect of this website, part of my blog, as there are numerous benefits to doing so.  My T.A.