Wild Things

Really hoping this will be good. Hard to tell from this trailer.

Fallen Idol Worship

I still haven't seen The Dark Knight (I'm dying to), so I can't comment on the film, but I really did think Heath Ledger was enormously talented (particularly in Brokeback Mountain), but this article brings up some really important and interesting issues about how we make excuses for those who are talented, and thus enable celebrities in their addictions. Worth a read.

From Juba to Hoofin' and Beyond

One of the primary projects I'm working on this summer is revamping my classes. British Literature is no longer offered, and so I'm teaching semester-long courses in the Hebrew Bible, World Mythology, and Literary Nonfiction. I taught the Bible and Myth courses once 2 years ago, but the Nonfiction course is entirely new. Allen Chamberlain and I received an innovation grant to work on the course this summer, and I've been having a pretty amazing time with it. The course will deal with both written and audio nonfiction, and the preliminary ideas are on a wiki I'm developing over the summer, which will eventually become a platform for the whole class to work in.

Today, I was reading one of the essays in our textbook, and got really excited about a possible project that I may work on while the students work on their own individual projects. The essay mentioned Juba dancing, and since I didn't know what that was, I looked it up. It's a form of dance that slaves did on plantations when slave owners outlawed any musical instruments, thinking music would cause unrest and riots among the slaves. In 1848, "Master Juba" (William Henry Lane) was taken to London by P.T. Barnum to dance before Queen Victoria. While he was there, he combined Juba dancing with traditional Irish dancing to create tap dance. Reading this reminded me of one of the most astonishing Broadway shows I've ever seen - Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk - starring Savion Glover. The rest of the brainstorm - and several videos - are on the wiki, which you can check out here. It's still in rough form, but I think the videos are sufficiently amazing to justify the incompleteness of the thought process.

But just in case you don't know Savion Glover, here's a 2 minute video that ought to inspire you to look at the rest of it. But if you have time for nothing else, watch the video of him and his group (Not Your Ordinary Tappers) at the White House, which is the 2nd from last on the page.

30 Days

This is one of my favorite shows. If you don't know about it, it's Morgan Spurlock, who made the film Supersize Me. For each episode, a person goes to live for 30 days with a person or family who has a completely different experience from what they have lived. Some of my favorite episodes have included living on minimum wage, spending 30 days in a prison as an inmate, working in a coal mine for 30 days, and my personal favorite from this year - an avid hunter who lives with vegan animal rights activists. There are certainly people who believe that Spurlock has a slant, but from my perspective, he's pretty even-handed. It's amusing that shoppers rated Season 1 3/5 stars in the Fox Store, but 4.5/5 on amazon.com.

It's on during the summer on FX - Tuesdays at 10. The first two seasons are also on DVD. Really worth checking out! Here's a trailer for the show, and here's the main website.

Here's the trailer for Supersize Me, which won him Best Director as Sundance.

Chaplin and J. Edgar Hoover

Many people know Charlie Chaplin for his impeccable vaudeville technique. W.C. Fields was reported to have called him the best ballet dancer in the world. But fewer people are acquainted with his politics. His film The Great Dictator used his little tramp image to satirize Hitler - and this was in 1940!

I didn't know about this film, Monsieur Verdoux, which is being run again in New York at the Film Forum. It was released in 1947, and dealt with the issues of the Cold War. The subtitle is "A Comedy of Murders." Here is the NY Times article about it that I read today.

And now that Robert Downey Jr. is back on top of the world with Iron Man, I am reminded of how brilliant he was in Chaplin. Al Pacino incomprehensibly won the Oscar that year, which, given the depth and technical brilliance of Downey's performance, seems like grand larceny. It's definitely worth another look.