Idle Thoughts

I feel like the Rolling Stone researcher at the end of Almost Famous, except I am both the supplier of the scraps of paper and the person who has to chase down the relevant information contained therein. Among my many and varied mid-year resolutions: pick just one place to write down library information.

Movie Stuff Release Valve

I feel like I need a repository for the things that I find that are tangentially related to the class for which I'm currently a TA (tangentially mainly because the class ends in 1960, so similar topics but 2011 examples) because it seems like a decent percentage of the job of leading a discussion section is trying to actively resist the group's impulse to wander off on marginally relevant tangents.

Last week we learned about the introduction of Technicolor and the different processes and changes in filmmaking involved in its inception, an evolution that starts to feel sort of cyclical when you watch the discussions here of what goes into a full-scale implementation of 3-D:

An interesting HitFix piece from Drew McWeeny about the MPAA's ratings system and his opinion of its general uselessness.

And, because the class discussion of the Production Code and its tenets reminded me of it: Freakazoid's take on the ratings system.

Non-Random Links

For someone interested in black actors and the performance of race, the critical commentary around The Help is like a delicious smorgasbord of mind food. Whether the movie is any good or not (haven't seen it yet, but if my dissertation interests end up going where I think they're going, I'll probably end up seeing it about fifty times whether I want to or not), it's refreshing to see issues of race and representation being hashed out in national publications when they're so often overlooked or swept aside. Some samples:

"The Truth about the Civil Rights Era" by Martha Southgate, from Entertainment Weekly

"Black-and-White Struggle with a Rosy Glow" by Nelson George, from The New York Times (Plus: the trailer for the crazy-awesome-looking The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975)

A statement from the Association of Black Women Historians, with a great list of sources (some of which I've read) that interrogate the historical questions around race and class that they think The Help avoids

On the Value of Primers

That is, of the "See Spot Run" variety, rather than paint or makeup. I just finished watching Visions of Light, a documentary about the history of film cinematography. I was alerted to the film by Roger Ebert's blog post regarding Variety's dismissal of film critic Todd McCarthy, who wrote and co-directed Visions of Light. Ebert's brief description spoke to the film nerd within me, so I added it to my Netflix queue.

Working on finishing my thesis and looking ahead to putting together reading lists for my comps has pushed me to think a lot about gaps in my knowledge of fields I'd like to work in, and how best to fill them. I'm interested in popular culture and media (that much is obvious), but from more of a cultural history standpoint than an aesthetic one; I've never done much literary analysis, art history or visual culture work, and while it won't be a major field of study for me, I don't want to neglect it either. A film like Visions of Light, which clocks in at a little over ninety minutes, is an ideal primer text for me, anchoring a discussion of an aesthetic history of film in a wide selection of clips that directly illustrate each point. If only every area of academic study could have such a painless, jargon-light breakdown.

I thought I'd also include my favorite primer clip - TCM's explanation of why they show films in the letterbox format. The clips they use to illustrate how pan-and-scan cropping alters movies will make you never want to watch one in fullscreen format ever again.

I recently watched Grease in widescreen for the first time after I saw this piece, and it was sort of astonishing to feel myself noticing new things in a film I've seen dozens of times in the cropped format.

Presentation Clips

Link to Jordin Sparks in 2008

Justin Timberlake in 2007:

MTV Shows

Madonna in 1984:

Madonna and Friends in 2003:

Madonna - New Music - More Music Videos

Link to Katy Perry in 2008