The Sources of ‘Put a Ring on It’

Posted on December 30, 2008 at 11:00 am

The Steady Diet of Film blog has a brilliant analysis of the sources for Beyoncé’s hit video, “Put a Ring on It.” It is not just wise and witty, it is an entertaining glimpse into the combination of mash-ups, wikis, and creative imagination that come together on the internet.

First there was Fosse. Bob Fosse choreographed a dance number for his one-time wife and all-time favorite dancer Gwen Verdon, to the song “Mexican Breakfast.”

Then someone combined the dance with DJ Unk’s “Walk It Out.”

This inspired the dance and look of “Put a Ring on It.”

And that inspired many, many, many, many tributes, parodies, and variations including Verdon/Beyoncé, combining “Put a Ring on It” with the Verdon number and an SNL skit with Justin Timberlake.

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Music Shorts Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Ghost Town

Posted on December 30, 2008 at 8:30 am

Bertram Pincus, D.D.S. sees dead people. And he’s very crabby about it.

Bertram (Ricky Gervais, creator and star of the original British version of “The Office”) doesn’t much like any kind of people, living or dead. He likes being a dentist because the people he deals with mostly have their mouths full of cotton. After a bad reaction to the anesthetic during a colonoscopy has him “dead” for seven minutes, he can suddenly see ghosts everywhere and they start following him around like the Verizon wireless network. They all want him to do something so that they can rest in peace but he has no more interest in helping them than he does with the living humans in his life, including his partner, his patients, or the very pretty woman who lives in his building.

It turns out she is Gwen (Téa Leoni ). Her late husband Frank (Greg Kinnear) is the most persistent of the ghosts because he wants Bertram to stop Gwen from marrying a human rights lawyer (Billy Campbell). Betram decides the only way to do that is to woo her himself.

The story is creaky and predicatable — a little humiliation humor here, a little learning that it’s relationships that matter there, not to mention the colonoscopy humor. Director David Koepp is better known as a screenwriter (“Spider-Man” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”). The script is over-long and clunky and his visual sense is a little claustrophobic and sit-com-ish. But Gervais and Leoni are so completely charming that they make it work. It isn’t often that you see a couple really connect in a movie. Usually that moment is glossed over with a syrupy montage or having them discover that they both collect bottle caps or something. But here the easy and genuine (and sometimes politically incorrect) laughter Bertram and Gwen share keeps us smiling with them.

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Comedy Fantasy Romance

The Snowman

Posted on December 29, 2008 at 8:00 am

A
Lowest Recommended Age: All Ages
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Profanity: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: A sad loss
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: 1982
Date Released to DVD: 1982
Amazon.com ASIN: B000HIVIOW

Cold winter days are just right for curling up with some hot cocoa to watch DVDs filled with the pleasures of winter. And it is always wise to have some on hand for those days when it is too cold or snowy to go outside. One movie every family should watch is The Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, a wordless lyrical fantasy about a boy whose snowman comes to life. The exquisite illustrations and score perfectly complement the story, evoking the simple joy and childhood magic of playing in snow. The boy first brings the snowman into his world, showing him his home — unsurprisingly, the snowman does not like the fireplace but does like the ice cubes. Then, in a moment that still makes even grown-ups catch their breath, the snowman shows the boy his world, flying with him through the night sky to the ice lands, where they meet the snowman’s friends, including Santa Claus.

Some children may be upset when they see that the next morning, the snowman has melted. But even small children can understand that the boy will always cherish his time with his special friend. This movie can inspire children to build their own snow friends, and should lead families to talk about how what is most familiar to us (like a light switch) can seem interesting or strange or even scary to others. And what is familiar to others (like the Northern Lights) can seem exotic and thrilling to us.

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Animation Based on a book Comedy DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week Elementary School Fantasy Preschoolers

Do Holocaust Movies Help Or Hinder Our Understanding?

Posted on December 28, 2008 at 8:00 am

Stuart Klawans, movie critic for The Nation for 20 years, has written a provocative essay about Holocaust movies for the website Nextbook.
Like so many other Jews, I have made my contribution toward the multiplication of Holocaust films. On New Year’s Eve 1985, I chose to spend my money at a movie theater, watching Part One of Shoah. A few years later, when asked in the wake of Schindler’s List how many more Holocaust films the world needed, I snapped, “We can stop at six million.”
But now, some dozen years and perhaps hundreds of movies later–in a season swollen with no fewer than six such releases–I respectfully request a moratorium on Holocaust films. By continually replaying and reframing and reinventing the past, these movies are starting to cloud the very history they claim to commemorate. Call it the law of diminishing returns–or call it a paradox that mirrors the Torah’s famously self-contradictory commandment at the end of Parshat Ki Tetze, concerning the people who were the prototype of Nazi Germany: “Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget.” Very soon, with Holocaust movies, we’ll need to forget if we want to remember.
This issue has been on my mind as well. While others on Beliefnet have written approvingly about the recent film “The Boy in Striped Pajamas,” I found it to be superficial and manipulative. A lot of WWII movies are. As our world is increasingly troubling and complex, it is too easy to return to the Holocaust and portray Nazis as the last unambiguously evil villains, and just as important, unambiguously defeated. And yet, the very magnitude of the Holocaust requires a mosaic of stories for us to understand it even imperfectly.
According to Klawans, the number of Holocaust-related films is increasing as the few left who were there to witness it are dying out. He describes a recent screening of the upcoming film “Defiance,” based on the true story of The Bielski Partisans, three brothers who hid more than 1000 Jews from the Nazis. But it seems to me he makes a powerful point against his argument when he describes the reaction of the audience.
This audience, with its special moral authority, clearly did not care that the true story of the Bielski brothers was being filtered through calculated performances, invented speeches, dramatic conventions, and cinematographic effects. What mattered to them, as people irrevocably claimed by these events, was that their past was real, and so was the movie that acknowledged it.
This alone is a valid enough reason to make movies about the Holocaust, to reassure the survivors who saw so many stories lost forever that at least their stories will be told. We will not ever know all the more than six million stories of the Holocaust, but each succeeding generation has something to learn from the moral failings and moral triumphs of the era. That may not always mean dramatic re-enactments, however. The Holocaust movie I have found most insightful and affecting in recent years is Paper Clips, a touching documentary about a Holocaust curriculum in an almost all-white, all-Christian elementary school.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture
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