The trip to the media center was interesting and a fun experience. I saw places that didn’t even.know were there and my knowledge expanded to how much technology there was and what it can be utilized for. I learned about different corportations that are in the fields of production and video in general in one building. There were places when walking, even on the Brooklyn bridge, that were interesting that captured my attention. I enjoyed my time there
West Side Story is a classic film that tells the story of two gangs from NYC (Jets and Sharks) fighting for territory and supremacy with the authorities involved but later on slowly working out their differences due to one of the Jets memebers falling for one of the shark member’s sister. It is a classic film that i enjoyed. It tells a good story
On the Waterfront (Andrew Plazza)
“
On the Waterfront” was, among other things, Kazan’s justification for his decision to testify. In the film, when a union boss shouts, “You ratted on us, Terry,” the Brando character shouts back: “I’m standing over here now. I was rattin’ on myself all those years. I didn’t even know it.” That reflects Kazan’s belief that communism was an evil that temporarily seduced him, and had to be opposed. Brando’s line finds a dramatic echo in A Life, Kazan’s 1988 autobiography, where he writes of his feelings after the film won eight Oscars, including best picture, actor, actress and director: “I was tasting vengeance that night and enjoying it. `On the Waterfront’ is my own story; every day I worked on that film, I was telling the world where I stood and my critics to go and – – – – themselves.”You can feel the passion that was ignited by the HUAC hearings and the defiance of those who named names, or refused to. For some viewers, the buried agenda of “On the Waterfront” tarnishes the picture; the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum told me he could “never forgive” Kazan for using the film to justify himself. But directors make films for all sorts of hidden motives, some noble, some shameful, and at least Kazan was open about his own. And he made a powerful and influential movie, one that continued Brando’s immeasurable influence on the general change of tone in American movie acting in the 1950s. The gangsters push Doyle off the roof to his death, implicating Malloy in the murder as an accomplice. A shocked Malloy had fooled himself into believing Doyle would only be roughed up a little.The neighborhood gathers over Doyle’s body. Pops Doyle, a longshoreman for four decades, tells everyone he had advised his son to be quiet, since his testimony would risk the jobs and lives of all the stevedores. Joey Doyle’s sister Edie, a buttoned-up Catholic teacher trainee who is home visiting from her school, screams passionately for justice over her brother’s corpse. Finally, the local priest Father Barry kneels over Doyle, praying. Besides Edie, the entire waterfront knows what really happened, but no one will speak. At Johnny Friendly’s smoky barroom hangout, Charlie “the Gent” Malloy, Terry’s brother, who serves as Friendly’s right-hand man, is introduced. Terry’s hot temper in this scene indicates that his conscience is wrought by his role in Joey’s death.
The Cocoanuts (Andrew Plazza)
The transition from silent films to talking films was a difficult process in the early days of Hollywood cinema. While it would prove themselves to be more than just a novelty, the fact is one can hardly blame early skeptics for thinking that the introduction of sound to cinema would not last long after seeing some of the first films to experiment with the medium, like Robert Florey and Joseph Santley’s ‘The Coconuts’ (1929), starring the iconoclastic Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo).
The main plot to Florey and Santley’s film is more or less irrelevant , with the story and setting being little more than an excuse for the brothers to cause mayhem, confusion, and insult poor Margaret Dumont. Mr. Hammer, owner of the failing Florida hotel — the Hotel de Coconut — tries anything and everything to make money, from denying his bellhops of their proper payment to attempting to wooing the rich but dowdy Mrs. Potter.
However, Mr. Hammer’s main scheme is the auctioning off of less than desirable real estate, which is sabotaged by the wild antics of two conmen (Chico and Harpo) who also manage to interfere with a pair of jewel thieves and their plans to rob the rich Mrs. Potter of a valuable necklace. Also thrown into the mix is an unimportant subplot involving the star-crossed love affair between Mrs. Potter’s daughter Polly and her architect boyfriend Bob Adams.
Although it has its moments, it’s unlikely that ‘The Cocoanuts’ will be truly enjoyed or appreciated by any modern day audiences save for Marx Brothers enthusiasts and stuffy film historians given its poor soundtrack qualities and other pressing issues. Multiple times throughout the picture, the dialogue can be a bit difficult to discern, while numerous “pops” and “clicks” on the film’s soundtrack sometimes single one out of their viewing experience.
Trip to MoMI (Andrew Plazza)
The trip to MoMI was interesting. There were so many things that caught my eye. The lights that simulated people walking was very creative and well thought out. I enjoyed my trip over there. I thought it would be a little boring but it was interesting. Alot of familiar faces from certain movies like “The mask, Star wars etc.” that were present had a very vivid look.
Assignment #4. The Jazz Singer by Andrew Plazza
The context: In the 1910s and ’20s, Al Jolson (1886-1950) was by far the most popular entertainer in America, selling out show after show on Broadway and around the country. His style was revolutionary for its time: wildly energetic and extroverted, he would turn an ordinary concert of popular tunes into a spectacular. The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture observes that “Al Jolson was to jazz, blues, and ragtime what Elvis Presley was to rock ‘n’ roll…. Jolson was a rock star before the dawn of rock music.”
Upon seeing him perform in the musical Robinson Crusoe, Jr. in 1917, the writer Samson Raphaelson was struck by Jolson’s emotional intensity and star power. Five years later, Raphaelson published a short story, “The Day of Atonement,” based loosely on Jolson’s life as a young Jewish man who became a popular singer. He then adapted the story into a stage play called The Jazz Singer, which opened on Broadway in 1925 to great success. George Jessel, a popular entertainer in his own right (and a friend of Jolson’s), starred in the show, and was the obvious choice to appear in the film version when Warner Brothers bought the movie rights. But the Warners (still the actual original brothers in those days) couldn’t come to terms with Jessel about his paycheck or the screenplay, the first version of which deviated from the stage play significantly and offended Jessel.
This was good news for movie history, though, because the Warners’ offered the role to Al Jolson, who was phenomenally popular and was the original inspiration for the story anyway. Would Jessel, as fine a performer as he was, have electrified movie audiences the way Jolson did? Would it have been as magical to hear Jessel’s voice coming from the screen as it was to hear Jolson’s? Perhaps these questions are answered in a parallel universe, but in this one we can only guess.
Then there was the matter of sound. Movie theaters had used live music, ranging from a single piano or organ to a full orchestra, to accompany films since the beginning of the medium, so it was only natural that someone would seek to simplify the process by including recorded music in the films themselves. Inventors as far back as Thomas Edison had experimented with the idea. The most obvious solution — to have a phonograph record accompany the film — also had the obvious drawback of being very, very easy to screw up. Just a tiny skip in the record and the movie’s out of synch — and that’s if you can synch them up correctly to begin with.
The system that some smart engineers came up with, and which I am not smart enough to fully grasp, was sound-on-film. Basically, the sound waves were converted to patterns of light and shade and included on the film strip next to the images. Some magic thing in the projector would convert the patterns back into sound, and voila. Synchronization wasn’t a problem, and if part of the film was damaged and had to be cut out, the corresponding sound was cut out too. Technology for sound-on-film had existed since around 1910, but it wasn’t until after World War I that people started getting serious about it.
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