Saturday, August 8, 2009

Amadeus

For my cultural event this week I decided to go to the class movie showing. I had heard good things about New York Doll from my aunt, so I thought that would be a good movie to watch. I wasn't too excited about Citizen Cane, because I actually like the main character to be alive at the end of the movies I watch. Some may say that's not real, but I say to that, a lot more people live than die every day. I was okay with watching Amadeus, because my orchestra class started watching it in 9th grade, and while I saw the attempted suicide scene, and the burial of Mozart at the end, I didn't really see any of the in between parts and I was interested to see what happened. It was also a neat experience to be able to watch the movie with some understanding of cutting and shooting techniques, although I have to admit that I was focusing more on the actual goings on rather than specific zooms and such. I also think that it is important to add that I was in a most uncomfortable condition during the movie. The "theater" was great and quite familiar, but I wasn't feeling too well. I was ache all over and I had a whopping headache. When I got home, my mom found that I had a fever of 102, so I guess I had a right to be a little grumpy about driving all the way to Provo, sitting in the theater for 2hrs 45mins, walking back across the then menacing parking lot, and then driving the 30 mins back home. Yes, some of that torture could have been avoided if I had stayed on campus instead of returning home, but driving there was really a fairly menial part of my pains. That all sounds pretty whiny, but I'm really only saying it because my condition did have a great influence on my reaction to the film.

I got to the showing a little late, so I missed the part where Salieri tries to commit suicide, but that was okay, because as I mentioned, I had already seen that particular segment. I came in as the priest was asking Salieri for his confession. The little segments where the old Salieri explained why things happened really served to make his story more pitiable. Not only his dilapidated condition, but also to hear how much he loved Mozart's music when Mozart himself was apparently a twerp, and how Salieri was somewhat certifiable, due to the knowledge that he had played a large role in Mozart's death. I also got the idea from his way of expressing himself, almost without real depth of feeling, that he had spent a lot of time justifying his actions. I think that one of my favorite scenes with the old Salieri in it was when he was playing some of his melodies for the priest who recognized none of them until a piece by Mozart was played. Salieri did have an expression in this scene, one of irony. It is hard for me to say how well the characters were cast, because I didn't really have any background knowledge of the character of the actual people. I would hope that someone as talented as Mozart didn't really have such lax moral standards and such a humorously embarrassing laugh, but I read no book to confirm or deny such actions on his part. Another thing I didn't really enjoy was some of the language as it was yucky and almost modern in style. My biggest complaint was how long the movie was. I kept thinking, hurry up and die Mozart which is quite a terrible attitude in my opinion. I was sure the movie had gone on more than three hours and was quite surprised that it was fifteen minutes less. You can imagine my amazement when other people said they were surprised that the time had gone so fast. I think that any movie would have felt the same to me on Thursday night though.

I thought that it was neat to see a movie that sort of combined a lot of the things we have been talking about. It had classical music, opera and such. I did enjoy listening to the music and I was quite amazed by Mozart's talent when put in comparison with other composers like Salieri, who was surprised to see that there weren't any correction marks on the original music. While I sometimes wish that I was really good at just one thing so that I knew which direction I should take in life, I realized that for some it is a curse. Mozart's talent totally consumed him so that in the end he died due to spending so much time creating his music that he didn't care for himself. I think that his wife created a lot of problems for him, even if her motives were often good. Another of my favorite parts was to see Salieri have the opportunity to write Mozart's music for him when he was too weak. Salieri finally had a chance to see what inspiration was like and I gained respect for his skills as well, as he took down what Mozart said super fast. I liked the movie, but I was also relieved to finish it.

Class Week 7

I have to admit that I was pretty excited to talk about movies because I very much like them. One of the things said in class was about how movies are kind of the only truly modern art form because the medium was actually created fairly modernly. We did talk about the different inventions and such that led to the creation of film and such, but they really weren't the same medium. I really enjoyed watching the clips that marked the milestones in film like The Great Train Robbery and A Trip to the Moon. I think that I have seen the clip from the second one on Around the World in 80 Days, either that or it was something just like it. It is weird to think that one of these films was considered the first fantasy film and the other one was an "epic" narrative film, as it said in the book. The fantasy films of now are way different in their content and the film about the moon seems pretty tame in comparison. Although they lacked computer animation and a lot of the high tech stuff people expect and value now, they were really interesting. I can see how people would have been pretty shocked by the train film when there hadn't really been anything like it. In a way it would sort of the be like the suspense films of now. If compared directly it wouldn't be too bad, but for people who were brand new to the idea of moving pictures...

I also enjoyed learning more about the different shots that movie people use. I had never consciously thought about how they were used in film. Yet, when we looked at the picture of a man being filmed on an angle, I recognized that there was some one who was waking up or drugged or something like that even though I had never seen the movie. It was really helpful to see the different types of shots in action. They really helped me to recognize what I have seen in movies before. I think that one of my favorite shots is the match shot. At least, I really like it in Hours or whatever the show was called. The other day my family watched a show called Cloverfield. I'm going to pretty safely say that the filming technique was one of the most annoying I've ever seen used. It was completely in the point of view of whoever was holding the camera while Manhattan was being destroyed. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if he had been a decent camera man, but as it was, the image was pretty much blurred the whole time. I guess that it was 'artistic,' but I'm really not a fan nor were the other people watching the movie with me. I hope that I will continue to be able to recognize the different film techniques so that I'll understand even more what the directors are trying to say.

Reading Week 7

I don't really think that we had any reading assignments this week besides the one paper about museum film. It was interesting to read about, but I think I'll write about something from last week because I didn't write about reading, but about the theater style we were supposed to look up. I actually truly enjoyed the chapter about film because I'm sort of a very amateur movie buff. It was neat to look over the list of movies at the end of the chapter and realize that I have seen quite a few of them. Mostly the ones I have seen were of the 'feel good' variety, but hey, they are still classics. Some of the ones I have seen are, The African Queen, Amadeus, Babe, Beauty and the Beast, Ben-Hur, The Gods Must be Crazy, Gone with the Wind, The Great Train Robbery, It Happened One Night, Its a Wonderful Life, The Little Mermaid, The Little Princess, Mary Poppins, Miracle on 34th Street, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, North by Northwest, Sense and Sensibility, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Shane, Singin' in the Rain, Star Wars, The Ten Commandments, 2001:A Space Odyssey, and the Wizard of Oz. Yikes! I didn't mean to write all of them really, but as I went down the list and saw each title, I just couldn't leave any of them out. I really didn't write them all to fill space, though it will probably appear that way. Actually, I probably shouldn't have admitted that I have wasted so much time watching movies, but I love them. They help a person to escape their own problems and focus on something else. I almost want to give a synopsis on some of these movies because anyone who hasn't seen them really is missing out, but I'll spare you.

In twelfth grade for my English research paper I wrote about The Golden Age of Film Making (that was the title). I pretty much got way excited when stuff I learned about while researching was referred to in the chapter. My main focus during the paper was the Studio System and while that was really only mentioned once in the chapter, "U.S. v. Paramount anti-trust case, resulting in the end of the studio monopolies," it just brought a whole bunch of memories from the paper and my US history class to my mind. Many of the films my family owns aren't exactly new releases and I think that is why I really enjoy the old MGM, Paramount, RKO and Fox classics. I don't know if the acting was better back then, but I do think that some of the most all around talents were developed. The characters on musicals didn't just act, they sang and danced as well: Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Fred Astaire. They also had some of the most debonair leading men: Cary Grant, Peter Lawford, Errol Flynn, etc. I think that sometimes the black and white movies make history seem like it was so long ago, and in black and white, but then I realize that my grandpa was around twenty when these movies were being made. My grandpa is here, now, and he certainly isn't colorless.

Besides all of the history stuff, I also enjoyed reading the conclusion section of the chapter. The section called Molder of Values sounded just like something my dad would say. "People in the film industry don't want to accept the responsibility that they had a hand in the way the world is loused up. But, for better of worse, the influence of the church, which used to be all-powerful, has been usurped by film. Films and television tell us the way we conduct our lives, what is right and wrong. When Burt Reynolds is drunk on beer in Hooper and racing cops in his rocket car, that reinforces the recklessness of the kids who've been drawn into the movie in the first place and are probably sitting in the theater drinking beer." My dad is always saying that if Hollywood isn't destroyed, Sodom and Gomorrah deserve an apology.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Realist Theatre

I thought that realist theatre sounded interesting, mainly because I recognized the name of one of the plays we talked about in class, namely Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. As I looked at a couple of different websites about Realist plays I realized that I haven't seen or read any Realist dramatic production. I'm not entirely sure that I would like to, as it sounds as though most of them are quite sad and normally I like to absorb things that at least end happily. One site put out by the Northern Virginia Community College seemed particularly helpful. It said that the Realist movement started in France, (while Wikipedia said that it started in Russia so I'm not sure which to believe) during the 19th century, specifically 1860. It came about largely because of the changes in society and also started out to change society. The worker class was very poorly treated and had no rights, along with other minorities such as women. Many realist plays used satire to speak out against such help society to realize that many things about it were flawed, discrimination being a small part of the problem. It said that the different governments promised to do something about the terrible economic and social conditions but wouldn't really do anything. Ibsen's plays, for example, had to do with many social issues such as "euthanasia, war and business, the role of women and syphilis." The cite said that realism came to be founded on three basic principles:
"1.truth resides in material objects we perceived to all five senses; truth is verified through science
2.the scientific method—observation—would solve everything
3.human problems were the highest were home of science"
One of the reasons these are so focused on science is that Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was one of the things that spurred the realist movement. Interestingly enough, another take off of Darwin was something the richer people benefited from as well. The idea of Social Darwinism said that people like the Rockefeller's, Carnegie's and Van Buren's were at the top because they were meant to be. That, like with wild animals, people rose to the top due to natural selection. Contrarily, the realist movement was more about the common man.

Some of the play writes of Realist theatre were Alexandre Dumas fil, who wrote 'Camille' which was dramatized; Emile Augier; Henrik Ibsen whose plays included such titles as 'Ghosts,' 'Pillars of Society,' 'Hedda Gabbler,' and 'Dolls House;' George Bernard Shaw who wrote, 'Arms and the Man,' 'Mrs. Warren's Profession,' 'Major Barbara,' and 'Pygmalion;' and Anton Chekhov, who wrote 'The Seagulls,' Three Sisters,' and 'The Cherry Orchard." The play that sounded the most interesting to me was Pygmalion, which was the basis for My Fair Lady which is one of my favorite musicals and uncommonly funny. It says that Pygmalion "shows the transforming of a flower girl into a society woman, and exposes the phoniness of society." The part about the phoniness of society seems to describe realism really well. It says that George Bernard Shaw was "uncommon for his witty humor," so I don't expect that I could expect all Realist plays to be like My Fair Lady, but I think that I might be interested in seeing some of them just to get a better idea of what realism is.

Class

I really liked talking about music for the last two class periods. I'm not very good with the history side of music because I haven't really studied that, but I've been in an orchestra since third grade and in music classes since seventh grade so I sort of know the theory part and some of the vocabulary. I play the violin, but I really enjoy all of the different timbres in 'classical' music and really any music. It was neat to listen to the way the music changed from one period to the next. My opinion probably isn't shared by most people, but I really like the Baroque style of music. I think the unique sound of the harpsichord adds a lot to the music. Songs with the harpsichord in them make me think of ladies in big fancy dresses at a ball all dancing very properly with their partners, and since I love that sort of history I like the music. Probably not all of the music composed back then was for dancing to, but I have to imagine a good portion of it was because the musicians were commissioned by the very rich who liked to give big parties. It was interesting to think about how the fact they were commissioned probably effected the music they produced. They had to do it in a certain style or their patrons would be most seriously displeased.

In class we talked about how the first time the Rite of Spring was played there were riots and people simply left the theater because they had been expecting a ballet and they didn't think that that was what they had received. Now Rite of Spring is a very well thought of composition. I personally quite like it. It was really interesting to hear the comment made in class about how we accept change much more easily now than they did then and it really is true. We look at the new and unusual as trendy simply because it is those things. I don't know why change is more accepted now, but it really does appear to be. I can't imagine the reactions of the people back then if they were to hear an electric guitar.

I think that I will have to listen to a few more songs from each era if I expect to be able to discern them just by hearing them. I think that I can handle Gregorian chants all right, but I get all mixed up with Baroque, Classical and all of the others. Sometimes when I'm driving I turn the radio station to 89.1 and I can tell that something is Baroque because it has harpsichord or something like that, but I don't always know what is going on. I get especially excited when a song is played that I have played in one of my orchestras.

Museum of Art

This week I went to the BYU Museum of Art and look at the art work of Walter Wick. I had already been there before with my family, but I didn't really take a very good look at all of the interesting things there. When I first walked into the gallery area downstairs I almost turned back and decided to go a different time because it was so noisy. There were a whole bunch of kids crying and just so many people crammed into the relatively small space that it was a little bit overwhelming. I assume that some exhibitions wouldn't be like that, but then I realized that for me it added to the experience. It was actually really great to hear all of the kids exclaiming over different paintings and the things they could discover in them. Admittedly I could have done without the crying. It was also nice that section that housed Wick's work wasn't terribly spread out.

It was interesting to see the contrast between his misty water pictures and the pictures that showcased some of his I Spy sorts of things. I really liked both of them. One of the pictures was of a abandoned soccer field in a water saturated field. At first when I looked at it I say just that. Then I read the sign by it and looked at it with a completely new perspective. I could really see how the reflection or the goal post and the goal post itself formed a rectangle that seemed to cut a section out of the picture. It was sort of an eye illusion. The other pictures were equally thought provoking. They had fairly similar subject matter and would probably have looked like the same colors of squares from far back, but up close each of them was unique.

Another section in the exhibition I really liked was a group of pictures that were from his science book. They were pictures of snowflakes, a pin floating on water, an egg balanced on the edge of a bottle with two forks sticking out of it, a water droplet hitting the table and a few others. I didn't know that snowflakes were really shaped quite exquisitely. I mean, it's hard to imagine that such tiny, puffy things could be so intricate on a more microscopic level. The egg balancing on a bottle was an interesting picture because it made me want to go home and attempt to perform the seemingly impossible task. This group of pictures was so interesting because I know they were photographs, and they looked real but then again they didn't. It's sort of like the pictures of Mt. Timpanogus that are so pretty they don't seem like they can be real.

I really like the beauty and the beast picture and the sand castle picture inside the other section of Walter Wicks' work. The beauty and the beast picture was really pretty and the other was creative with figure action nights and other toys dotting a sandcastle in different knightly positions. Not only did Wicks have to take a great picture for much of his artwork, he also had to set up the intricate (yes I know that I have used that word twice, but it really fits in both cases) scenes to take the pictures of. Beside one picture there was an explanation of how he had to use salad tongs to situate the different animals in a triangle-shaped mirror room. He used common household things to create many of his pictures: salt shakers, pie tins, dials for stoves, baseballs, jar lids, etc, etc, etc. It was super fun to discover the different things that the plaques near each picture said to look for. I don't remember ever owning a real I Spy book, but sometimes we would get them from the library when I was a kid. I have to admit it's pretty frustrating when you can't find something. I didn't have a whole lot of time in the museum because I had to get someplace else, but I could probably have spent a couple more hours trying to find the different items in each picture.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Reading Week 5

Last year in English we learned a lot about theater and I didn't even know it. We had a list of vocabulary terms and they included such things as Deux ex Machina, catharsis, and plot. We didn't really connect them to the theatre even though we did read plays, Fences, Othello and a Man for All Seasons being the foremost in my mind. In the book it says, "A play in a book is only the shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it....The printed script of a play is hardly more than an architect's blueprint of a house not yet built or [a house] built and destroyed. The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not words on paper nor thoughts and ideas fo an author." I completely agree with this quote. In English we always watch a video of the play after we read it. It really does give a better idea of the characters than just words on a paper can, though they be quite lovely. Also, with Shakespeare, it is sometimes easier to tell what some of his words mean when someone else is saying them, with what inflection they are saying them.

Later on in the chapter, it says, "In both tradgedy and comedy, it is the nature of the balance between the strengths and weaknesses of the characters and the deserved or undeserved nature of the catastrophe taht determines whether the result is tragic or comic. With minor editing of character and situation, for example, tragic Othello becomes comic Othello." It goes on to itemize how this seemingly unseemly thing could come about. It just does seem that a man killing his wife could be funny, but they do a pretty good job of pleading their case. It's pretty interesting and I can see how several other plays could be made humorous.

Somewhere it talks about how due to television and other diversions the viewing of plays has gone down. I actually really like to see plays, but a lot of the time they are more expensive than I have the stomache for. My mom used to sew costumes for a local Junior High's plays and we would get free tickets. The plays we saw there were better than some of the ones my High School put on.