Pulp Fiction Movie Review

I was very reluctant to watch Pulp Fiction, but overall I thought that it was a good movie.

Pulp Fiction is split into 7 different sequences but they all intertwine together.

The movie starts off in a diner and you see a couple talking about their life as robbers. They are contemplating about whether or not they want to rob the diner that they are in. They end up deciding to rob the diner because they think that they could make money off of both the diner and the customers in the diner. This is the “Prologue-The Diner”. We later learn that this is Pumpkin or Ringo (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny or Yolanda (Amanda Plummer).

The opening credits then begin to roll and we are then introduced to Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), who are driving to go retrieve a briefcase that a man at the apartment had stolen from their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). While they are walking up to the man’s apartment Jules tells Vincent that Marsellus had a man thrown off of a fourth-floor balcony for giving his wife a foot massage. Vincent then tells Jules that Marsellus has asked him to escort his wife while he is out of town. Vincent and Jules then enter the man’s apartment and confront him and his two friends about stealing the briefcase. After questioning the man, Vincent and Jules end up killing him and leaving with the briefcase.

We are then taken to the next sequence titled “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”. In this sequence we see boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) accepting a large sum of money from Wallace after agreeing to throw the upcoming fight he will be in. Coolidge and Vega briefly cross paths at the cocktail lounge where everyone is. The next day, Vega then goes to Lance (Eric Stoltz) and Jody’s (Rosanna Arquette) house to purchase heroin. He does that heroin and then drives over to the Wallace house to pick up Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), Marsellus’ wife. They go out to eat at Jack Rabbit Slim’s, and they eat and participate in a twist contest where they win a trophy.

Vega and Mia then go back to the Wallace house and while Vega is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin in his coat pocket and snorts it mistaking it for cocaine and overdoses. Vega finds her and then rushes her to Lance’s house where they are able to revive her.

The next sequence we are shown is the prelude to “The Gold Watch”. We see a flashback of a young Butch who meets Vietnam veteran Captain Koons (Christopher Walken). Koons tells the young Butch that it was his father’s dying wish to give the gold watch to him. A bell rings and we are then shown Butch in his boxing clothes, waiting to go throw the fight.

In the “Gold Watch” sequence we see Butch hopping in a cab and fleeing the arena after winning the fight. He then learns from the cab driver that he actually killed the opposing fighter. Butch had actually bet his payoff on himself at favorable odds to double-cross Marsellus.  

Butch and his girlfriend are about to leave town when he realizes that she forgot to pack the gold watch. He then goes back to his apartment to retrieve it and realizes that he is not alone in the apartment when he sees a machine pistol on the kitchen counter. Vega comes out of the bathroom in the apartment and he and Butch are then in a standoff. The toaster which has bread in it ejects the bread which scares Butch and he fires the weapon and ends up killing Vega.

Butch then drives away from the scene and at the traffic light that he is waiting at in his car Marsellus walks by and notices Butch. Butch rams Marsellus with his car and another car ends up hitting his. The two men then chase each other on foot and end up at a pawnshop. The owner of the shop then captures the two and ties them up in the basement of the shop. Butch ends up escaping and killing one of their captors and shooting the other one and then Butch frees Marsellus as well. Marsellus tells Butch that they are even as long as he leaves Los Angeles and never returns and doesn’t speak of the incidents that happened in the basement.

The movie then goes back to the beginning of the movie where we see Jules and Vincent at the man’s apartment retrieving the briefcase for their boss Marsellus, We then hear Jules and Vincent talk about retiring from the hitman life, as their informant ends up getting shot by accident. They then work to clean up the situation with the help of some of their friends and then Jules and Vincent head off to breakfast at the diner.

The diner is the same diner that “Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny” are sitting in that we are introduced to in the beginning of the movie. Things then get tricky for the couple as Jules holds Pumpkin at gunpoint and Honey Bunny turns her gun on Jules.  Vincent emerges from the diner bathroom and points his gun on Honey Bunny as he starts to reflect on his life of crime. The couple takes all the cash from the diner, except for the briefcase that Jules and Vincent still have. Jules then finishes up his final job for Marsellus.

I actually ended up liking the movie but it was a little too long for me. If the plot unfolded in a more traditional way rather than jumping back and forth like it did then the movie would have definitely not have had the same impact as it did, at least for me personally. The movie kept me on my toes and made me really wonder and guess where they were going to take the story line next. If the plot would have been more traditional then I don’t believe I would have enjoyed the movie as much as I actually did. Overall I would give the movie a B. It had enough action and suspense in it, but if the time could have been a little shorter then I would have liked it even more than I did. 

Product Placement in One Tree Hill

I have watched some episodes of One Tree Hill in the past but for this particular assignment I watched episode 4, “An Attempt to Tip the Scales” in season 3. In this episode the seniors at Tree Hill High School are celebrating Halloween with a masquerade party. We see Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) trying to convince Brooke (Sophia Bush) to be in an exclusive relationship with him and Peyton (Hilarie Burton) trying to get to know her birth mother.

Looking up articles about product placement in One Tree Hill, I found that season 3 actually had the most product placement in it throughout the whole entire running of the show. The main product placement throughout season 3 is Sunkist.

According to an article that was published on hollywoodreporter.com on March 30, 2007, product placement like this allows a company with a much smaller marketing budget than its competitors to score high-profile integrations and branded entertainment campaigns. This allows the company that is getting the air time to not have to pay integration fees or up its media commitments in general to get the word out about their products.

This product placement in season 3 allowed Sunkist to get more exposure than they were getting at the time and it allowed for creative ideas in the episodes to involve Sunkist. In one episode Sunkist sponsored a fictional concert that raised money for breast cancer awareness. Then Sunkist actually backed a real life mall tour with the show’s cast to promote the season’s soundtrack and raise money for breast cancer awareness.

In this episode when you see Brooke going to talk to Nathan you get a glimpse of Spalding on the basketball that he shoots at the net. Spalding has been in a lot of episodes since the show talks a lot about basketball.

Another product placement in this episode is the phone that Nathan calls someone on when he is sitting at his desk in his room looking at pictures. You get a very quick glimpse of the AT&T symbol on the bottom of the phone. Something interesting that I noticed in this scene was that you never actually saw the bottom part of the computer that was at Nathan’s desk. I’m assuming that they didn’t show the bottom of the computer because it was most likely a product that didn’t pay the TV studio to be on the show.

The last product placement that I noticed in this particular episode was the Sunkist soda container behind the bar at the masquerade party. It was a very quick glimpse of the container that was behind the bar but you obviously noticed the container because it was bright orange. There were many other shots of the container throughout the scenes at the party but I noticed that they were not very long shots. To actually see the containers I had to pause the episode a couple of times to get a full glimpse of them. Someone who was not watching an episode for specific product placements would most likely not have caught the containers in the background.

The Keystone Newspaper: "Plan for infilling Keystone Hall pool invokes opposition in KU. Page 3. January 22, 2015.

This article talks about the possibility that the diving well that is located in Keystone Hall may get filled in to make more space for women’s lacrosse and field hockey locker rooms. This obviously causes issues for the swim team, and for other sports teams who use the diving well during practices and workouts. The article also talks about how the sports medicine faculty uses the diving well for athletes who have injuries as a part of their rehab process. The article goes on to list more reasons why the diving well is useful. It is used for educational purposes, like aquatics and life-guarding classes, and the Tri Valley YMCA swim team also uses the well during their practices.

The article then goes on to talk about how the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) requires all of the universities in the system to develop a master plan every 10 years. PASSHE currently prohibits adding new space while the enrollment of the university is dropping though so that’s why Kutztown can’t actually add the locker rooms on as a new addition to Keystone.

The article quotes Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Jeff Grimm as saying that the project of filling in the diving well may not actually happen. The article then goes on to explain that Keystone is outlined in the master plan for an entire renovation , but it would first depend if Risley Hall can get reformed for the wrestling and football teams. The article then ends by saying that there is no actual time line for when or if a decision will actually be made. This makes me think that this will definitely have to be a story that I would have to keep following in the next couple of years to see if anything actually happens.

Overall I thought that the article was very descriptive and gave me a good idea of what exactly was possibly going to happen in the future for Keystone Hall. I would have liked for this article to have quotes from girls on the lacrosse or field hockey teams to see if they would think that they would benefit from having their own locker rooms. 

Introduction

Hi everyone, 

My name is Samantha Biastre but you can just call me Sam, and I am a junior Leisure and Sport Studies major with a minor in Public Relations at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. I am originally from New Jersey, and enjoy spending my summers down the Jersey shore with my friends. I work in the Health and Wellness Center on Kutztown’s campus in the Promotional Services department. In the department I come up with programs to present to residence halls about healthy topics like portion vs. distortion when it comes to eating healthy, I create posters that can be seen around the campus advertising flu shots, among many other things.

I am a big New York Yankees fan and I hope to one day work for them in either their social media or public relations departments. If I end up not wanting to work for a sports team, I would also want to work for a sport public relations firm or for a sport agency. I find everything that has to do with sports and the public relations world to be very interesting and exciting. I enjoy reading in my free time as well as spending time with some of my best friends from high school when I am home.

I will now shift my attention and start talking about Dr. Massie’s blog (http://ponderingprof.blogspot.com/) I found his blog to be very true. I am someone who is constantly on their phone, always texting someone, or on social media. A big influence on my need to always be on social media is definitely the need to stay current and up to date on what is going on in the world. This can include staying up to date on not only my friend’s lives but the lives of celebrities as well. Our generation is always on our phones and we need to realize that being on social media and staying up to date and current isn’t always the best option when there is a world around us just waiting to interact with us only if we got off of our phones.