Movie Analysis Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Analysis - Movie Review Example featuring weird, surreal experiences and phenomena which are distortions of reality and which probability of occurring in real life is pegged at almost zero. But then this is a smart and clever, head-trip of a comedy where moviegoers’ disbelief is momentarily suspended throughout the movie as they find themselves unwittingly enraptured by the intensity of the story and the acting of the whole cast as well as the fantastic imagery. Moviegoers soon become enmeshed by the palpable reality of its themes of manipulation, voyeurism, identity and the desire to experience being a matinee idol even for a brief instance. Director Spike Jonze and scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman expertly weaves a bizarrely original, wildly imaginative tale of adventure-seeking people crawling through chutes and transforming themselves into modern Alices in Wonderland or Gullivers except that the fantasy world they have rode into is inside the mind of a celebrity which they try to control and appropriate for themselves for their personal, selfish benefits. The movie functionally begins when Craig Schwartz a puppeteer working as a filing clerk in a low-ceilinged office in the 7 1/2th floor of a New York building, discovered a portal behind a filing cabinet. Crawling into the narrow tunnel, he was suddenly whisked into the brain of actor John Malkovich, experiencing what Malkovich experiences as if these were his own experiences. After 15 minutes, he is spewed out and dumped near the New Jersey Turnpike Social psychology is the science that seeks to understand how people’s behaviors, thoughts and feelings are influenced by other people (Schneider et al 2005,p.2). In this movie, 6 principles of social psychology can be utilized to explain the characters or behaviors of one or more of the dramatis personae in the movie and these are the following: 1. The Looking Glass Self- One forms a self-image of himself from the reflections i.e. the judgments or critiques of others. These make

Should the Death Penalty be Abolished Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Should the Death Penalty be Abolished - Essay Example Of late, therefore, advocates of the death penalty are relying on economic arguments to buttress their position that the death penalty is an appropriate and valid punishment by focusing mainly on the issue of deterrence. As the New York Times put it: â€Å"Does Death Penalty Save Lives?† (Liptak, 2007). Likewise, anti-death advocates are steering clear of emotive language and using hard statistics as well but to demonstrate non-deterrence, racial bias, judicial fallibility and the like. Analyzing the two competing positions on the death penalty, this paper’s thesis is that those arguing for capital punishment uses economics as lens of analysis and emphasises deterrence rather than retribution, and those who argue against capital punishment use an economic, legal and sociological frame. Death Penalty Advocates favour economics-based arguments In the fairly recent work of Dezhbakhsh, Rubin and Shepherd, econometrics was used to determine the deterrent effect of the death penalty and it was found that â€Å"the legal change allowing executions beginning in 1977 has been associated with significant reductions in homicide† (page 373). ... d economist, Naci Mocan, who admitted being â€Å"personally opposed† to the death penalty (Liptak, 2007) had found that â€Å"each additional execution decreases homicides by about five, and each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount, while an additional removal from death row generates one additional murder.† (Mocan and Gittings 453). Death Penalty Opponents use a combination of economics and sociological arguments There is, however, no shortage of critics to the argument that death penalty deters crimes, specifically homicide, and therefore saves lives. According to a paper written by Jeffrey Fagan from the Columbia Law School – Most of the studies fail to account for incarceration rates or life sentences, factors that may drive down crime rates via deterrence or incapacitation; one study that does so finds no effects of execution and a significant effect of prison conditions on crime rates. Another report shows incarceration effects th at dwarf the deterrent effects of execution. Most fail to account for complex social factors such as drug epidemics that are reliable predictors of fluctuations in the murder rate over time. The studies don't look separately at the subset of murders that are eligible for the death penalty, instead lumping all homicides together. Those who are against the death penalty have also provided evidence demonstrating that racial bias has played a big role in execution sentences, with scholars like Zeisel for example demonstrating that the death penalty was administered unequally, discriminating against black offenders and against murderers of white victims. (456). Barry Scheck, who is the co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, notes the case of Claude Jones, who could have been saved from the death row