Topic 3

Lecture- We watched a movie called Alphaville, a movie directed by Jean-luc Godard. It is about a tough detective, by the name of Lemmy Caution, who travels through space to a futuristic city (that looks remarkably like the city of Paris in 1965) to find a fellow detective by the name of Henri Dixon who is his main contact. When he is there, he discovers that a supercomputer called Alpha60 dominates the city’s population. Alpha60 replaces emotions with cold logical, something that only a computer can do successfully. Lemmy Caution is supposed to bring back to his planet the chief scientist, who was banished years before. Instead, Mr Caution kills the scientist and escapes the planet with the scientist’s beautiful daughter.
Tutorial- I have several friends on Myspace that I haven’t actually met. It is a different relationship to friends I have met for several reasons. First, because when I read something from a friend, I read it in the voice that my friend uses. I haven’t heard the voice of the friends I only know through the Internet and so I improvise, usually with a perfect well educated voice. The only way I know what those friends through the internet look like is through several facial pictures that have usually been modified in some way. Therefore, I’m communicating with somebody that doesn’t exactly exist how I imagine them to be.
I’ve been using Virtual worlds for about three years, and Myspace for about a year and a half. Those were the first New Communication technologies I used, after Video games of course. Privacy isn’t really an issue for me; I just don’t reveal my address or my phone number. Sometimes I even use a different name.
Readings- There was six readings. They contained a glossary for film terminology, an overview of Alphaville information, a review of the plot, a detailed essay about Alphaville by Andrew Sarris, an essay on the French new wave era in which Alphaville was a part of, and information on Jean-luc Godard.
Alphaville was released in 1965 and according to a survey done on the Internet movie database; it scored 7.5 out of ten. Jean-luc Godard was not only the director, but the writer as well. It won an award in 1965, the Golden Berlin Bear. Other works by Jean-luc Godard are; My life to live, two or three things I know about her and Helas pour moi.