Thank You, Gene Kelly, for Not Directing Cabaret
This entry is part 28 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Last week I stumbled across several 1976 newspaper articles in which Gene Kelly discusses his return to movies. After the death of his (second) wife, Jeanne Coyne, Kelly turned down virtually any film project that would take him away from the couple’s two young children, Tim and Bridget. At this point, single fatherhood was his life. But with the blessing of his kids, he returned to the silver screen in the dramatic (not musical) role of Evil Knievel’s “grease-monkey...
read moreHangin’ with the Ghosts of Buster Keaton and John Barrymore: Movie Palaces and Murals in Toledo, OH
This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series In and Around Toledo.Every Thursday during July and August, the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library sponsor free walking tours of downtown Toledo. Held during lunchtime, the tours cover Toledo’s history and architecture: July 7: Trinity Episcopal Church (built 1892). July 14: Vistula, Toledo’s Oldest Neighborhood (estb. 1837). July 21: The Valentine Theater (opened 1896). July 28: Birmingham Ethnic Neighborhood (Hungarian neighborhood estb. in...
read moreOn Academics and Fansites (or, My Justification for Creating Gene Kelly Fans)
Yikes! My last post, on similarities between animated GIFs and early cinema, was over a month ago. Where have I been, you ask? Unfortunately, not on vacation, not teaching, and certainly not at the movies (please get over your superhero fetish, Hollywood). I have, however, been busy with two projects: co-editing an anthology with a colleague (Gaby Malcolm), and creating/managing/editing a Gene Kelly fansite. Yeah, that’s right: a fansite. Before you judge, roll your eyes, and call me a freak, hear me out. But first, here’s a bit...
read morePimping Aaron Sorkin
This entry is part 27 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Hello readers, it’s Aaron Sorkin week over at In Media Res! Posted today is my brief analysis of Sorkin’s (weirdo) 2011 Golden Globes speech about the “elite smart girls” of Hollywood. You remember, right? Those awkward 15 seconds The Social Network‘s screenwriter devotes to his 11-year-old daughter, Roxy? “I want to thank all the female nominees tonight for helping demonstrate to my young daughter that elite is not a bad word; it’s an...
read moreAnimated GIFs, Cinemagraphs, and Our Return to Early Cinema
This entry is part 26 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Every couple of days I head over to Tumblr to check out my dashboard, which normally overflows with — no surprise to frequent readers of this blog — info about and images of Gene Kelly, Colin Firth, Jon Stewart, and Shakespeare. But hey, sometimes I also wake up to pics of Bogie and Bacall, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Karl Pilkington, and the guys from Men of a Certain Age. So there. While still photographs like this one of Colin Firth showering...
read moreThe Bias of All That: Gene Kelly and His Wives
This entry is part 25 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.In the first half of her memoir, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris, actor/activist Betsy Blair writes fondly about her relationship with and marriage to Hollywood song-and-dance man Gene Kelly. The reader learns, for instance, what Gene was wearing when the sixteen-year-old Blair first laid eyes on him: “an open-necked white shirt, a dark long-sleeved sweater, dark trousers, and moccasins. He seemed to be balanced on the balls of his...
read moreLocating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century (CFP)
Call for Papers Editors: Gabrielle Malcolm and Kelli Marshall / Cambridge Scholars Publishing William Shakespeare has long been a global cultural commodity, but in the twenty-first century “Shakespeare” is oft positioned as a social concept with the man almost forgotten amidst the terminology that surrounds the criticism, tourism, adaptation, and utilization of the plays. For instance, the plays themselves are as often re-worked and adapted as performed wholly in their own right on stage. Moreover, there are currently...
read more“I Hate Twitter, That Piece of Crap” and Other Comments from My Course Evaluations
Original Title: “I Hate Twitter, That Piece of Crap” and Other Comments from My Course Evaluations; or, A Warning to Teachers Who Want to Tweet Last semester, for the first time, one of my colleagues required his Film History students to use Twitter. He recently received his course evaluations from said students and reacted thusly, on Twitter of course (at right). My response: “Good for you, man! Only a couple of negative comments? The first time I required Twitter, 75% of students who filled out written evaluations (not that...
read moreWhy I’m Excusing Some of the Problems in AMC’s The Killing
This entry is part 24 of 33 in the series Essays / Analyses.Several critics panned Sunday night’s episode of The Killing, “Undertow.” Reviewers for Slate, LA Times, Salon, and The AV Club reamed AMC’s “nordic noir” for its ridiculous plot twists, goofy coincidences (Rosie’s pink Grand Canyon shirt), and red herrings (the terrorism subplot). “It’s all MacGuffins, with no narrative payoff,” one critic sighs. As I tweeted after watching, I didn’t think “Undertow” was...
read moreFavorite Student Tweets: Rashomon
This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Favorite Student Tweets.The spring 2011 semester is over, and so is my tenure at the University of Toledo. As a result, I’ve had time to revisit the student tweets I marked as favorites, many of which, because of the usual end-of-the-semester frenzy, never made it onto the blog. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Here are some of my favorite student tweets from Cinema History‘s in-class screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950). The Bandit The Medium (and her...
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,