REC

Why was the Spanish horror film REC, filmed in a documentary style on a shaky handheld camera, so popular in the UK and America? It was that successful that it was even brought by a big film company which then re made the films. REC was directed by Jamue Balaguero and Paco Plaza on a budget of €1,500,000. At box offices the film earned $32,492,948.REC is about a young reporter and a camera man who follow the night shift at the local fire station. A couple hours into the night the fire crew get a call about an old lady who is stuck in her apartment, when the fire fighters get to the apartment they find the residents crowded in the lobby. When they go upstairs to the old lady’s apartment the old lady starts to act oddly then she attacks a police officer, when they return back in the lobby they find that they are trapped in the building, to make it worse there phones have been cut off so they don’t have a clue what is going on. They soon realise this will be a night they won’t forget.

The hand held camera style films are very popular in the horror/thriller films. The reason for this is because it gives more of a real effect when watching it through the eyes of what someone is filming/seeing themselves. Also you see only what they see and it makes it more dramatic and scary as you don’t know what’s happening until the person behind the camera moves the camera.REC was also popular because the main actress (Manuela Velasco) was a well-known TV presenter in Spain, when the film came out people were confused as to why she was in the film so it made them want to watch it therefore making the film more popular.

REC was so popular that Screen Gems (A large American subsidiary) bought the rights to remake the film. When a company buys another company it is called a vertical integration. Screen Gems wanted to bring out there remake of REC (Quarantine) quickly because the film it was based on was a very popular film. They also bought the rights to REC so they would also profit from the sales. When Quarantine was released in the Cinema, REC was re-released on DVD, this promoted Quarantine. This then made people go and buy the REC film before they went to see Quarantine in the cinema.

REC was made into a sequel, REC 2 premiered in September 2009 at the Venice Film Festival. The sequel deals with the events immediately following the end of the first film REC. REC 3: Genesis is the third film of the REC series. It was realised in theatres in Spain in March 30th, 2012. Genesis is set at the same time as REC but takes place miles away at a wedding in broad daylight. The infection has left the building. In a clever twist that draws the plots of the first two movies together.REC 4: Apocalypse is scheduled to be released in 2013.

War of the Worlds

H.G Well’s classic novel War of the Worlds was brought to life in 1953 by Bryon Haskin. War of the Worlds is story told on the radio about the invasion of Earth by Martians. The story line for the 1953 War of the Worlds is about a strange fireball flies across the sky and lands in a gully in San Gabriel mountains. Fireman quickly put out the fire but authorities are puzzled by the long cylinder that fell to the earth and stared the fire. Three men are left in the surroundings of the unusual object, after a while the cylinder unscrews and a long neck probe rises out. The three men decide to approach the unusual object by declaring their friendly intentions, the alien fires a beam at them that incinerates the three men and starts another fire. More cylinders fall from the sky and starts killing more and more people. The aliens then start dropping to the ground dead puzzling the people. The political subtext for the original war of the worlds was America didn’t like the communist’s, so this made America scared of Russia cause there county

was communist where everyone was the same. In 2005 Steven Spielberg remade the 1953 version of War of the Worlds. The

budget for this films was $132,000,000 and the Box office takings were $588,929,061. Steven Spielberg remade war of the worlds to make a statement about the terrorist who attacked America’s world trade center, and how vulnerable the Americans felt after what had happened. He said if 9/11 didn’t happen he probably wouldn’t of re made the film. In this version of War of the Worlds it follows Ray a divorced dad and his two children trying to survive the alien attack on earth. A violent storm hits the town, lighting strikes the same area a lot of times before the storm goes away. Ray goes to find his son when he notices all the cars in his town has stopped working. He goes to the street where the lighting hit and a huge machine on three legs comes out the ground and makes a loud fog horn noise which scares the crowd of people who have gathered around to see what’s happening. It starts to incinerate dozens of people with blasts of heat beams the people it hits are turned instantly into ash leaving their clothes to slowly float to the floor. Near the end of the film ray notices that birds are surrounding an alien which he makes him realize something isn’t right. He tells the army and they shoot it down, they then discover this is happening to all the aliens.

You see some reference in this film from the 9/11 like the ash covering everything and ray, this is based on when the twin towers came down it covered everything in this thick ash. The narrator says ‘No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own’ This can refer to the terrorists watching the people of New York and blending in with them before then planning there attack.

Karate Kid

Karate Kid (1984) is a Martial Arts Romantic Comedy, which was directed by John G. Avildsen and written by Robert Mark Kamen. It was released on the 31st August 1984 and on the opening weekend it made more than $5,031,753. The Karate Kid is about a boy called Daniel who gets moved to New Jersey when his mum gets a new job. Daniel soon figures out he doesn’t fit in with the blonde surfer crowd as he’s a dark haired Italian boy with a jersey accent. He starts to get bullied by the other boys who are all adept in karate. One day when he’s gets beaten up and is about to pass out when he sees the elderly gardener beat off the gang of boys before helping him. Miyagi promises to teach Daniel karate to help him deal with the bullies, but while he’s teaching Daniel karate he’s also teaching him a valuable lesson. Karate kid was remade in 2010 by Harald Zwart. It was released on the July 28th 2010 and made $55,665,805 on the opening weekend. The main two actors in the film are Jackie Chan and Jayden Smith. These two actors are well known this means that the audience are more likely to watch the film if there a fan of the actors, so this helped promote the film. It’s different from the original film because it was set in china whereas the original was set in America. During the release of the film merchandise was made, this increased the promotion of the film and the production company made more profit. Synergies such as clothes (t-shirts and jumpers), posters, soundtracks, games were sold during the release which promoted the film. The original Karate Kid films were re-released on DVD. The soundtrack had some well-known artists on it like Gorillaz, Red hot chilli peppers and Justin bieber.