Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Art, Modernism: Antonioni, Fellini



Bondanella, History of Italian Cinema; Chapters 5-9

Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice"
from Poetics of Cinema

Marcus, "Antonioni's Red Desert: Abstraction as the Guiding Idea"
from Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism

Godard, "Jean-Luc Godard Interviews Michelangelo Antonioni"
from Cahiers du Cinema #160, November 1964
Text of a speech given by Roland Barthes in 1980; from Cahiers du Cinema #311, May 1980
from The Films of Federico Fellini

(nb. You are responsible for the Bordwell, Marcus and Bondanella on La Dolce Vita. The Godard interview and the Barthes letter are extra readings which I will talk about in class)





Tuesday, February 20, 2018

More Net Neutrality Newz: The Trump Edition

Net Neutrality & Comcast: We (Almost) Own Everything...No, Really, We Do.

The 'Boom': Big Deals and the Easy Sweet Life (aka The Consequences of 'the Miracle')




Remì Fournier Lanzoni, "The Age of Neorealismo Rosa" (concentrate on pg. 28-43)
+ "The Years of Euphoria and the Commedia all'Italiana"
Paul Ginsborg, "The 'Economic Miracle', Rural Exodus and Social Transformation, 1958-1963"

Peter Bondanella, "La Dolce Vita: The Art Film Spectacular"

Luisa Passerini, "Gender Relations"



from Dino Risi's 'I Mostri' (1963)

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Post-War Record Cultures: R'n'B and Honky Tonk








Whitey's Lindy Hoppers: Something Wild





This is the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, the Suzie-Q. The clip is an excerpt from H.C. Potter's Helzapoppin' (1941). The Lindy Hoppers doing "The Big Apple" in 1939 are here. Enjoy.
In this clip the dancing starts at the 2:15 mark.



from Jonathan Demme's Something Wild; The Feelies play David Bowies's "Fame" and Jeff Daniels dances with his eye on the 'Other' for cues.


Groovy Movie (1944): Instructional Video for the Lindy Hop

Monday, February 5, 2018

Tin Pan Alley to Records: For Your Listening Pleasure



Spotify seems to be experiencing some issues with playlists embedding. Until it is fixed use THIS LINK to access the playlist in your browser.  You can click ON THIS LINK to open the playlist directly in the Spotify App.


Sunday, February 4, 2018

The Technology and the Society: A Critique of McLuhan



In order to be done with ol' Marshall (even though you're never done with him).
Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society" from Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Hot and Cold Media Is the Message in the Global Village of the Guttenberg Galaxy



Eisenstein Diagram
Here are the 'notes' re: the taxonomy of Hot and Cold media. Below is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Conference' program from 1977 where McLuhan discusses and responds to audience questions on his main theoretical ideas. If we don't get to watch and discuss this in class please watch it on your own:

Thursday, February 1, 2018

The Limits to Neorealism


Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling photographed by Robert Capa on the set of Riso Amaro (1949)

Millicent Marcus, "De Santis's Bitter Rice: A neorealist hybrid"
Millicent Marcus, "De Sica's Umberto D: Dark Victory for Neorealism"


'Maria wakes up' sequence from De Sica's Umberto D