Literature and film week 4

HUGO

Summary:Hugo is an orphan boy living in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. He learned to fix clocks and other gadgets from his father and uncle which he puts to use keeping the train station clocks running. The only thing that he has left that connects him to his dead father is an automaton (mechanical man) that doesn't work without a special key. Hugo needs to find the key to unlock the secret he believes it contains. On his adventures, he meets George Melies, a shopkeeper, who works in the train station, and his adventure-seeking god-daughter. Hugo finds that they have a surprising connection to his father and the automaton, and he discovers it unlocks some memories the old man has buried inside regarding his past.

Director:

 Martin Scorsese

Writers:

 John Logan (screenplay), Brian Selznick (book)

Stars:

 Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Lee 

Scarlet Letter

Summary:New England in the 17th century: Young Hester Prynne arrives at the colony with the purpose to find a house for herself and her husband, old doctor Roger Prynne, who still resides in good old England and will follow later. From the first day the other inhabitants of the village notice that Hester is intelligent and independent, which attracts the ones and strucks the others. When she, however, finds herself a house near the forest and takes a walk in it she sees by chance a naked young man swimming in the river nearby. The man, as she finds out later, is the very popular Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The two soon find themselves attracted to each other and secretly begin an affair. As the result of this Hester becomes pregnant and when the government finds out, she is showed up in public and has to wear a scarlet "A" as "adultery" on her chest. Because of this but also because she refuses to tell the name of her child's father, she goes into jail where she gives birth to her daughter, Pearl. Then, surprisingly, Roger Prynne, whose ship was supposed to have been destroyed in a storm with no survivors, appears in the village. The doctor is now driven by the idea to find out who was Hester's lover and destroy his life, as well as the life of Hester.

Director:

 Roland Joffé

Writers:

 Nathaniel Hawthorne (novel), Douglas Day Stewart(screenplay)

Stars:

 Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, Robert Duvall

Gone with the Wind(1939)

Summary:This classic film narrates the love between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler during the American civil war. It's the history of a selfish woman who doesn't want to admit her feelings about the man she loves, and finally loses him.

Directors:

 Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited) 

Writers:

 Margaret Mitchell (story of the old south "Gone with the Wind"), Sidney Howard (screenplay)

Stars:

 Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell 

To Kill a Mocking Bird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

Spam

 is a brand of canned precooked meat made by Hormel Foods Corporation. It was first introduced in 1937 and gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II.^[1] By 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries on six continents and trademarked in over 100 countries.^[2] In 2007, the seven billionth can of Spam was sold.^[3]