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.