The Godfather: "Baptism and Murder"

The Godfather has many exceptional scenes but none is better than “Baptism and Murder.” The Godfather has died of natural causes and at his funeral it is clear to Michael Corleone, the Godfather’s son, that the Barzini “family” plans to wage war and take power and influence away from the Corleones. The “Baptism and Murder” scene is the scene in which Michael settles family scores and establishes himself as the new Godfather and head of the “families.”
This scene uses montage editing which cuts between Michael Corleone at his nephew’s baptism and his men murdering his rivals. The camera remains stationary using close ups or mid shots for emphasis. Coppola’s use of editing between the holy and unholy shows the complexity of Michael’s character; that he is both evil and good.
The scene begins in a Catholic church where the baptism is being said in Latin. There are several sections where the priest shifts to English as he asks Michael questions of faith. The use of Latin and English highlights Michael’s consciousness of what he is saying in the church juxtaposed with the murderous “hits” his words set in motion. The baby’s crying also underscores the action and murder.
Coppola layers this rich scene with a Bach piece that reaches its climax as the priest asks Michael, in English, if he renounces the Satan. Michael says yes and the scene cuts to murder. It is a powerful use of music, language, visuals, and editing.
Coppola also juxtaposes the image of the innocent baby, washed clean of original sin and the brutality and sinfulness of the world Michael inhabits. Sophia Coppola, the directors daughter, is the baby in the baptism scene.
The scene has a readily identifiable story arch where there is rising action as the hit men prepare for the murders, the priest prepares the baby for baptism, then the climax as Michael renounces Satan and the murders begin and then the falling action as people leave the church and hit men leave the scene of their crimes.
Coppola got this scene pitch perfect. It sends chills down my spine every time I watch it.

I don't want his mother to see him this way

I’m a The Godfather nut so, of course, thought immediately of the toll booth scene where Sonny gets killed as a great example of filmmaking at its finest. Coppola’s title for this scene is “I don’t want his mother to see him this way.”
In this scene Sonny Corleone gets a call from his distraught sister who tells him her husband beat her up. Sonny, unable to contain his anger, gets in his car to drive to her home. The scene then shifts to an establishing shot where the camera tracks the car’s approach to a set of tollbooths. The camera is stationary, set up a little ahead of the tollbooth to the right. As the camera tracks the car it pans over a billboard that depicts a woman on a telephone saying, “Don’t worry, Mom,” one of the many brilliant details that makes this movie so rich. As Sonny approaches the other tollbooth a car pulls in front of him, goes through the toll and stops. The scene is framed so the viewer sees Sonny’s car and the tollbooth but can not see the second tollbooth. There is no music or sound to tip the viewer off to what is going to happen, the only sound is the tollbooth operators radio, which is broadcasting a horse race. Coppola does not tip the viewer off by setting a mood either; the scene takes place in the middle of a sunny day. At this point of the shot, we are simply observers of Sonny.
When Sonny pulls up to the toll, the camera cuts to inside the car and puts the viewer sitting beside Sonny, on the passenger side. Coppola uses the point-of-view shot, once Sonny pulls up to the toll, so the viewer experiences exactly what Sonny is experiencing. The viewer sits beside Sonny as he pays the toll operator, looks forward, and gets impatient with the car stopped in front of him. It is at this point in the scene that the camera starts to move quickly. The camera is in the car with Sonny as he sees the car in front of him back into him, we then see the toll operator close the door and duck. The viewer is sitting beside Sonny and watch a look of concern come over his face. All of this is done with close up shots so we can feel Sonny realize what is going on. The camera, still sitting in the passenger seat, then looks right to the other tollbooth and the viewer, with Sonny, watches mob guys rise up from the floor of the other booth with machine guns in hand. The camera looks forward, through the windshield to see mob guys get out of the other car with machine guns. The camera, still inside the car, in the passenger seat, puts the viewer with Sonny as the first shots break the windshield shatter glass. Coppola has ambushed Sonny and the viewer! The camera then shifts back and forth from Sonny getting hit and stumbling out of the car, to a close up of a machine gun, to Sonny, to mobsters shooting and kicking Sonny’s dead body, to a shot of the shot up tollbooth. Then, as the scene ends, the camera then rests where it started, in front of the second toll. The camera frames the car, Sonny’s dead body lying next to it, and the Corleone car that came after Sonny approaching. The viewer starts and ends the scene as an observer.
Coppola uses several techniques that make this scene so fabulous:
 He doesn’t us music or mood to tell us what’s coming. By doing this, he puts us in Sonny’s shoes.
 As Sonny begins to panic, the camera jumps around and creates panic in the viewer.
 By putting the camera in the car, Coppola puts the viewer in the car with Sonny.
 The viewer begins the scene as an observer, is then put right in the passenger seat next to Sonny, and then ends the scene as an observer.

Coppola’s use of extreme long shot and point of view help him tell this epic story of family and power.

School Board Blues

This is a fictional post! St. Louis Park has a forward thinking school board, superintendent, administration, and teaching staff.

St. Louis Park's typically liberal citizens have elected five new school board members who promise to "whip the schools" into shape by getting "back to basics." The first thing the five did was to topple the science curriculum by insisting it include intellegent design. That done, they decided to go after the sinners in the Language Arts department. A quick tour through the school illustrated to these illustrious board members that the teachers were using too many "new-fangled" devises like movies in school (many inappropriate for their children), the (gasp!) internet for research purposes, and blogs to connect students with others from all over the world. The first thing that had to go was Media Studies because it simply wasted time. Our fine school board members knew that the short amount of time students spent in Language Arts should be spent on basic skills in both reading and writing. What the school board members failed to keep in mind was that the St. Louis Park High School Language Arts Department was on the cutting edge of using technology to engage students to read and write. Students at SLPHS were fired up by the projects the Language Arts teachers came up with and actually were teaching the teachers a thing or two about technology.
The students, being smarter than we ever give them credit for, caught wind of the School Board's intentions and began to circulate a petition throughout the community. Soon, the good citizens of SLP were rethinking their school board vote and decided they had had enough, intellegent design was bad enough - but pull Media Studies??!! A special board meeting was called and a student from St. Louis Park Alternative High School, one of the petition drafters, was elected to make the arguement to the school board that Media Studies is a valueable, in fact necessary commponent of a quality Language Arts curriculum. Her arguement's main points were as follows:

Or is it Pike's Peak?