Today's holiday concert at the library with SMA scored C+ as I drew a blank on the first entrance piece but did a reasonably good job playing from memory on the Minuet II. The piece clipped along at a faster pace than anticipated. Had a few other mishaps on the holiday pieces which I hadn't played since last year, mostly unnoticeable to the audience. I'll get another chance next Saturday.
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Humanities Studies: Fine Arts - Film
Notes from A Short History of Film - Chapter 4
The Hollywood Studio System in the 1930s and 1940s
Populace entertainment for the 1930s was mostly escapism to provide relief from the drudgery of daily existence.
Theaters ran films continuously sometimes for 24 hours a day
Studios forced theaters into buying package deals - B Films vs A Films
Performers were typically under contract for 7 years.
New technical difficulties with sound.
Microphones on Booms allow for more mobility for perfomers
Advent of color technologies
Technicolor by Herbert T Klamus and pushed by his wife Natalie who made sure that Technicolor was used to its best advantage in movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
John Ford specializing in westerns mostly shot in Monument Valley. Noted works: Stagecoach, Grapes of Wrath / John Wayne taught to react to other performers and keep his gestures to a minimum.
Howard Hawks: The Gray Fox noted for Dawn Patrol, Scarface, Bringing up Baby, To Have and to Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River. His key to good film was simply "3 good scenes, no bad ones".
Hitchcock: 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Storyboarded all his shots before filiming. Was detached from shooting process which allowed him to design his films as intricate puzzles to hook the audience with clever and exciting touches.
Fritz Lang: Departed Nazi germany to America. Couldn't see why he couldn't work through lunch and dinner times. Pessimistic stylist who viewed humanity as essentially flawed, foredoomed and inherently corruptible.
Charlie Chaplin: Modern Times 1936 still silent. The Great Dictator 1940 not well received.
Ernst Lubitsch Touch - romantic comedies with a bite. His "The Shop Around the Corner" is remade by Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail". "To Be or Not to Be" was one of Lubitsch's most accomplished farces and the highlight of Jack Benny's screen career.
Max Ophuls was romanticist. Most famous film was "Letter form an Unknown Woman" A sense of fluid restlessness pervades all of his best work.
Orson Welles - Citizen Kane makes Hearst mad. Welles becomes noted for being brilliant but a difficult and potentially dangerous filmmaker.
Frank Capra - Small Town America - Mr. Smith goes to Washington well received but It's a Wonderful Life wasn't a box office hit.
George Cukor became known as a "woman's director" because of his skill in managing stars such as Katharine Hepburn
One Take Woody / WS Van Dyke - Tarzan the Ape Man
Spectacle: Cecil B DeMille - Cleopatra
Josef von Sternberg - Marlene Dietrich: The Blue Angel
Preston Sturges - foremost social satirist of the period.
Walt Disney and UB Iwerks - Steamboat Willie
Looney Tunes - Leon Schlesinger
Tex Avery
Max & Dave Fleischer - Betty Boop
1934: The Code stymies Mae West. Hollywood is brought to heel with no drugs, crime methods, excessive lust, white and black romance, etc.
Shirley Temple rises to fame.
Most famous film of the era 1939 Gone with the Wind
Hollywood goes to war with films like Casablanca
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Listened to 3 lectures from Ideas that Shaped Mankind by Felipe Fernandez Armesto
The Idea of Ideas - so what differs us from the apes? Imagination?
The Mind of the Hunter -- The unseen world, spirits, planning and trying to influence the outcome of the natural world -- be it a successful hunt or praying for rain.
Of Ice and Mud -- the tyranny of agriculture and the concept of labour and feeding the masses, storage and domestication.
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