http://www.filmsite.org/anim.html

How would you characterize each of the three (main) brothers' respective immigrant "coping mechanisms"?

What are some of the various ways that class stratifications are expressed and/or satirized in Animal Crackers? What is the relationship between hierarchies of class and hierarchies of taste? (eg. taste in art, among other things...)

The period review from the New York Times, by Mordant Hall

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9902E0DF1E31E633A2575BC0A9649D946394D6CF

 

THE DISNEYLAND DREAM - 1956
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26rich.html?pagewanted=all

This is another one from my archives of "stuff I find interesting" regarding moving image media and public discourse. This New York Times editorial ("Who Killed the Disneyland Dream") links to this home movie from 1956... a movie that won the Scotch Tape (!) contest for "why I want to go to Disneyland" or something like that. The film is really a fantastic period document reflecting on suburbia and the "American Dream." I wanted to embed the video here but couldn't figure out how to do it. But you can follow the links and watch it if you are so inspired.  At 1956, it comes a bit late for the period our class is covering. But as historical discourse... it's a beauty.

YouTube has it here (part 1):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtpodPJ5Xv4
... and here (part 2):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO6usyCc1zA&feature=related

Still playing at the Michigan Theater.... I thought it was quite enjoyable.


This is a French/Belgian co-production that was filmed in Hollywood (there's some great old theater interiors and some clever archival footage usage). It's topical for the class... but I don't want to say exactly how it's topical as there's a nice reveal that I don't want to spoil. (This director/actor team makes wacky French 007 spoofs that are quite funny.)

It will be interesting to see if the academy nominates it for "best foreign language film." It's silent... it's intertitles (in U.S. exhibition) are in English... so technically, it's not a foreign language film.


Here's the Michigan theater blurb:

Nominated for 6 Golden Globes, including Best Picture: Comedy or Musical, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor: Comedy or Musical and Best Supporting Actress!
 
Winner of the prize for Best Actor at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, The Artist is a heartfelt and entertaining valentine to classic American cinema.  Set during the twilight of Hollywood’s silent era and filmed on location at numerous classic Hollywood locations (Mary Pickford's Hancock Park mansion, the Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A., the Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. backlots), The Artist tells the story of a charismatic movie star (Jean Dujardin) unhappily confronting the new world of talking pictures.  Mixing comedy, romance and melodrama, The Artist is itself an example of the form it celebrates: a black-and-white silent film that relies on images, actors and music to weave its singular spell.  The film has already garnered accolades on critics’ lists and film festivals worldwide, and is expected to receive numerous Academy Award nominations on January 24.

See The Artist in our classic movie palace!

"What I love is to create a show and for people to enjoy it and be aware that's what it is - a show. I'm interested in the stylization of reality, the possibility of playing with codes. That's how this idea of a film set in the Hollywood of the late '20s and early '30s, in black and white, was formed." - Michel Hazanavicius, Director

100 minutes. Rated PG-13. Silent.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/04/margaret-thatcher-state-funeral-protests

Keywords: Film, History, Nation, Genre (Bio-pic)

What would compel a person (or a nation or an industry) to make a film about a politician that "isn't political"? Is such a thing possible?

I have been a bit obsessed with the process of tracking this film's reception at opening. I admit to posting the discourse that stands furthest to the "left," politically, of any response I've seen the film garner thus far. To my reading, this column represents the rare response that goes beyond the (star) surface to attempt to locate the film's meaning and impact in the present moment. 

'60s Hollywood: The Rebels and the Studios

'60s Hollywood: The Rebels and the Studios

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/movies/14dargis.html?emc=eta1

"Over this past decade New Hollywood — usually bracketed by the bloody sensational wow of “Bonnie and Clyde” in 1967 and the two-blockbuster punch of “Jaws” and “Star Wars” in the mid-1970s — has been the subject of so much popular adulation and academic scrutiny as to become a veritable fetish."


I'm posting this as it challenges the conventional wisdom on the "end" of the Hollywood Studio era, rethinking the relationship between the studios, the "New Hollywood" directors, and the influence of foreign films. So the article is looking at some of the issues our course will cover, but within an era that our course will not reach.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/movies/26scott.html?pagewanted=all

This article in the New York Times is over a year old now. With the Occupy Wall Street and related movements, though, it takes on a currency, in re-reading, that it might not have carried, among the general public, last year. If you were to respond to A.O. Scott's questions (i.e. "which side are you on?") what movies might you reference from 2011? And how might you add to Scott's assessment of economic class as represented within historical Hollywood cinema?