Monster House Research Articles

AN ANALYSIS ILLOCUTIONARY ACT IN THE MONSTER HOUSE MOVIE

The purpose of this research is to analyze the types of illocutionary act in the Monster House movie. This study uses the speech act theory that focus on the illocutionary act by Searle theory (1979) – assertive, directive, declarative, expressive, and commissive. This study uses qualitative research by watching the movie, reading the script as a support of the movie, classifying the data, and analyzing the data to find the types and the meaning of illocutionary act, and the types of illocutionary act most frequently used in the Monster House movie that focuses to the linguistic theories derived from related literature sources. The writer finds 133 utterances of illocutionary acts used by characters of the Monster House movie. They consist of 37 assertive utterances, 59 directive utterances, 3 declarative utterances, 32 expressive utterances, and 2 commissive utterances. The dominant type is directive that DJ commands his friends in many scenes where he seems to manage the situations when they are inspecting the haunted called Monster House that he accidentally is a leader among his friends

A New Song for Herman by P. McAllister

McAllister, Paul. A New Song for Herman. Herman’s Monster House Publishing, 2017.There are many books designed to help children who are afraid of monsters. This is the second book that Paul McAllister has written on the subject. In this one, Herman, a green House Monster turned Barista Monster, works at Sarah’s cafe and is famous for his mochaccinos. However, his work is suffering because he is being kept awake at night by an Attic Monster. It turns out that the Attic Monster is just baking cookies in an old Easy Bake Oven, so Herman offers him a job baking at the restaurant. The text is simple, but includes some repetition of the Attic Monster’s song “humba rumba lumba rumba gurgle gurgle bing!”, which children will enjoy and will want to repeat during a reading. Both the text and the illustrations help children identify with monsters rather than being afraid of them. Emily Brown has made the monsters look like cuddly stuffy toys. Even the Attic Monster who scares Herman turns out to be “the cutest little monster he’d ever seen.” Brown has also included fun details in the illustrations. For example, when Herman is at his most sleep deprived, he makes the coffee with dirt and Brown shows him holding a coffee pot that has a flower growing out of it. This fun book is recommended for public and school library collections.Recommended: 3 stars out of 4Reviewer: Sean C. BorleSean Borle is a University of Alberta undergraduate student who is an advocate for child health and safety.

The Technologically Determined Decade: Robert Zemeckis, Andy Serkis, and the Promotion of Performance Capture

Between 2004 and 2011, Robert Zemeckis directed or produced five films – The Polar Express, Monster House, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, and Mars Needs Mom – which utilized performance capture technology. Zemeckis and his effects team on The Polar Express refined the existing standards of motion capture to produce the more sophisticated performance capture, which allows for the digitization of an actor’s complete performance. This article charts two competing discourses that surrounded these films: the generally negative critical reception that saw the performance capture aesthetic as uncanny and creepy, and Zemeckis’ own promotion of the technology in industry interviews. Zemeckis’ early work with the technology is contrasted with Andy Serkis’ acclaim as a performance capture star, and how both men have worked as advocates for the technology, foregrounding their claims that performance capture could enhance or even revolutionize film production and, in particular, film acting.

Re-imagining Horror in Children's Animated Film

Re-imagining Horror in Children's Animated Film

That “Monster House” Is My Home: The Social and Cultural Politics of Design Reviews and Regulations

Globalization and immigration have changed American suburbs both socially and spatially. In Fremont, California, a suburb of Silicon Valley, neighbourhoods that were once primarily the domain of single-family tract homes and white, middle- and upper-middle-class residents have given way to high-income Asian immigrant families and custom-built “McMansions”. While most scholars advocate strict regulation of these properties, this paper questions the seeming mechanistic neutrality of the design reviews, guidelines, and development standards used to regulate large-home development. In an analysis of Fremont's pro- and anti-McMansion debates and McMansion policies, this paper argues that design guidelines and development standards often employ dominant social and cultural norms about “good” and “appropriate” design. Planning and design professionals, public processes, and policies tended to privilege established, white residents' values and meanings for their homes and neighbourhoods, while marginalizing those of many middle- and upper-middle-class Chinese immigrants. The paper shows how dominant social and cultural norms regarding the proper use and design of suburban space are often reinforced through planning, design, and public policy, and shape the built environment as well as non-white residents' sense of place and belonging in it, even for those of means.

As Big as a House: Representations of the Extremely Fat Woman and the Home

The authors have undertaken an analysis of the extremely fat woman as she is represented in two apparently disparate films: the drama What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and the animated family horror film Monster House. Both films present images of the extremely fat woman as a hybridized “woman-house,” whose identity and body are merged with the physical structure of the house to which she is confined. Drawing upon the work of foundational psychoanalytic theorists, we illustrate that the fat woman as “woman-house” threatens those around her with psychic or physical annihilation and therefore must be destroyed.

Here be monsters: the Irish Industrial Exhibition of 1853 and the growth of Dublin department stores

This article explores the juxtaposition of the 1853 Irish Industrial Exhibition in Dublin and the dramatic rise of department stores in the city during the same decade. It analyses the aims, structure and reception of the 1853 Exhibition within the context of the Irish industrial movement, the economic modernity of the post-Famine era and the dramatic changes to consumer culture which were occurring during the 1850s. The article takes as its focus the hitherto neglected ‘monster house’ controversy – conducted in pamphlets and public lectures – regarding the growth of Dublin's department stores. Coinciding with the 1853 Exhibition, the controversy rehearsed many of the same concerns regarding economic and social structures in Irish urban society in the wake of the Famine. Consideration of the ‘monster house’ controversy alongside the issues raised by the 1853 Exhibition allows a new perspective on the development of middle-class urban life in Dublin during the mid-nineteenth century.

The Last Great Innovation: The Stereoscopic Cinema

In February 2007, a sea change in perception took place. A full-page article in Variety magazine extolled the virtues of 3-D movies, and a few days later, an editorial in the L.A. Times stated that 3-D had to be taken seriously by the studios. Since then, a number of articles in the trades have discussed the stereoscopic cinema in positive terms. It has become the great hope of the industry after languishing for a century, primarily because recent 3-D movies are producing about three times the revenue of the simultaneously released 2-D version of films such as Chicken Little, Monster House, and Meet the Robinsons. In addition, Disney's The Nightmare Before Christmas, a 14-year-old film that had been in home release, was converted to 3-D and profitably theatrically re-released. Before February, in the trades and the popular press, the stereoscopic cinema was referred to with derision; it was a joke, to be dismissed. That is no longer the case. What has changed in addition to the better box office? In this article, I will attempt to provide a historical perspective with regard to technology introductions to the cinema, and explore the reasons for this recent change in attitude, with regard to the stereoscopic cinema.