Change in reading assignment

Your syllabus lists an essay on "Gangsters and the Fallen Woman Cycle" as an assignment for Tuesday, but you need not read that.  Instead, read Belton, ch. 2 in addition to the other assignment, Corrigan, pp. 39-61.

Today's films

White Fawn's Devotion is available at archive.org, but Ramona  is available only through the set of movies on reserve. 

Tomorrow we'll be watching Redskin. If these films interest you, you might think about a paper topic that would look at Redskin and The Vanishing American (which we're not watching), among others.

You can find the PowerPoint slides from today's class and last week's class at the Lectures link on the right sidebar of this page. 

Blog posts

I've commented on all the blog posts available that had comment features. If you don't have comments enabled, I didn't leave a comment.

Please put your name (first and last) somewhere on your blog or at least in your profile, so that I can credit you for blog posts and comments that you leave. In Blogger, you can do this by editing your User Profile.

Within Our Gates

The film we saw today, Within Our Gates, is on reserve at Holland/Terrell library; just look under ENGL 339 in Course Reserves (or use this link). You can also find it, with a different soundtrack, in 8 parts on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJIz5-ULbg/

The book I mentioned at the beginning of class is Jane M. Gaines's Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies of the Silent Era. It's not in our library, but you can get it through Summit.

What to look for in a film (from class discussion)

Here's a list of what you all suggested as important items to look for in a film. Thanks to Brianne Geffre for sending this information.

1. Art Form or Not pure Art? (are they out to make money?)

               

2. New Technology

                -Effects

3. Technical issues

• Lighting, angles (length of cuts, quality of movement) 

4. Direction of Action (gaze, sight lines)

5. Genre

6. Budget/ Purpose

                -Quality

7. Method of narration and subject matter

                -music/ sound

                -Narration/ voice over

8. Dialogue between viewer and movie

                -what questions arise while watching

9. Intended audience

                -era, population

10. Symbols that repeat

11. Context

                -historical background

12. Setting, props, staging

13. Beginnings and Endings

                -Order of the scenes 

14. Acting,

• who is chosen
  
• Type Casting

15. What sells the movie?

                Effects vs Story/ Characters

Broken Blossoms and The Birth of a Nation

We saw excerpts today from Broken Blossoms and The Birth of a Nation; you can see full versions at the links. (BOAN is in 20 parts at YouTube or in one continuous film at archive.org)

I'll bring the scenes from Micheaux's Veiled Aristocrats to class tomorrow.

Updates to blogroll

I've updated the links on the blogroll, so if you don't see your blog listed, please send me another email with the link.  I've also updated the report list, so please check to see if your report date is listed correctly.

Updates on this page; blog and report signup

Although I sent you all an email last night (and if you didn't get it, you should check your MyWSU email address), I won't typically be sending email unless there's some sort of major announcement like class cancellation. Instead, I'll post the information and links here, so you should make it a practice to check this blog on a regular basis.

You can check it on the web at the above address, by becoming a "follower" if you have a blog in Blogger, or by using an RSS feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader.  If you want to check it on your iPhone, you could use an app like Bylines or Reeder, or you could use Viigo or another such application if you have a Blackberry.

 About blogs and reports: you need to sign up for either a blog or a report (or both) by next Tuesday, January 19.

Movies and books from yesterday's class

Here's a list of the authors I mentioned yesterday:
Tom Gunning (we read his essay on the "cinema of attractions")
Jonathan Auerbach, Body Shots
Kenneth Brownlow


 The films we saw:

• Edison Kinetoscope films: The Kiss, Serpentine Dances, Sandow, Genroy Brothers Boxing, Cockfight, The Barber Shop, Feeding the Doves, Seminary Girls
• Dickson Experimental Sound Film 
• A Trip to the Moon (1902)
  
• Actualities: President McKinley at Home, Pack Train on Chilkoot Pass
• Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery (1903)
  
• D. W. Griffith, A Corner in Wheat  (1908)
  

Favorite (or most influential) books and movies

Here's a compilation of what your responses were to the question of your favorite (or most influential) book or movie:

• Amadeus / Seven Samurai / The Thin Man
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• The Fountain
• Kill Bill, Vol. 1
• Black Hawk Down
• The Royal Tennenbaums / adaptation of Jane Austen's novels / Big Fish
• any film by Quentin Tarantino
  
• William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Of Mice and Men
• Trading Places
• Harry Potter movies and books
• Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Cool Hand Luke
• Sweeney Todd and The Nightmare Before Christmas
• The Lovely Bones
• The Great Dictator
• The Big Lebowski
• horror films 
• Selena
• Pineapple Express
• Suspira
• documentaries
• Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (book and miniseries)
• Harry Potter books 
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 
• Fahrenheit 451 
• Angels and Demons / Crash
• Novels of William Gibson
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
• Mary Poppins 
• Harry Potter books

To set up your own blog, go to http://www.blogger.com (or http://www.wordpress.com or another site), create a username, and create a blog. Send the link to me (campbelld@wsu.edu) so that I can add you to the blogroll on this page.

I'll see you all at 3:10.

First post

Welcome to English 339!