uwhistory409a

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: One last post, I swear! This is an excellent (and short) interview with Anne Thompson, author of The $11 Billion Year (about the modern film industry in Hollywood). It’s relevant to our course because she talks about the impact of streaming Netflix and other Internet movie-watching on Hollywood film, and how it’s the smaller, mid-level movies (as opposed to the blockbusters) that are getting harder to finance these days. Thompson offers some perceptive insights in the video on the contemporary state of movie making.

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: THE BEST (most informative and most straightforward) explanation of how Hollywood got to where it is today is in this Tedx Talk by Frank Smith, CEO of the thriving, highly successful Walden Media. If you watch only one of the videos I posted this week, I highly recommend this one. Smith offers a very perceptive analysis of the difficulties the entertainment industry faced in morphing to fit the changing times, and how those willing to adapt were the most successful. Check it out if you get a chance. Smith really knows his history. Everything we’ve talked about this term will start to make a lot more sense, I think.

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: Earlier this year, Al Jazeera ran this excellent story on the impact of streaming films on Hollywood cinema. It’s a brief story that raises the challenge of how to control streaming movies on the internet.

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: The Internet has become a major battleground where the future of Hollywood is currently being determined. In particular, Internet movie piracy proved especially harmful to the film industry. Here is a fascinating exchange of ideas from about four years ago on PBS’s NewsHour. The guests are Open Internet Coalition's Markham Erickson and the Motion Picture Association of America's Michael O'Leary. They discuss the challenges of imposing controls over Internet piracy, and the harmful impact of the phenomenon on Hollywood.  For another compelling debate about Internet movie piracy, check out this episode of Canadian talk show host Steve Paikin’s excellent TVO program The Agenda (”Piracy and the Wild, Wild Web).

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: Glamour magazine held a fascinating Hollywood Women Directors Roundtable. The first few minutes lay out some of the key issues and challenges women face. All of the women in the Roundtable talk about how they broke into directing film. It’s quite fascinating.

[uwhistory409a]

Modern Cinema: In a remarkable turn of events this year, federal investigators with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission turned their attention to the issue of the lack of female directors in Hollywood. Here is a CBS News (from October 2015) story on the scandalous lack of female directors in the American film industry. It features an excellent interview with film director Lori Precious, who speaks to the difficulties that women have faced breaking into film over the decades. The story also speaks to the appalling absence of women in other areas (screenwriters, producers, actresses), and provides a number of glaring statistics. Obviously, Hollywood - unlike Justin Trudeau - is not aware that it is 2015.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: This is an excellent interview/documentary on the influential film director Oliver Stone, whose historical epics have often received critical acclaim (especially the films he made between 1986′s Platoon and 1995′s Nixon). Don’t feel that you have to watch the entire interview, but I highly recommend watching the 4-minute long montage of Stone’s films at the 6 minute and 20 second mark. He really is a remarkable director, with an incredible track record of movies that focused on historical events.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Here is an excellent short (30 minute) documentary on radical iconoclastic filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (1963 - ). You’ll notice in this doc, titled Quentin Tarantino: A Life in Pictures, that Tarantino is quite a different personality than Steven Spielberg. As mentioned in the previous post, the two represented - in many ways - the Yin and the Yang of filmmakers in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Tarantino, unlike Spielberg (but like Orson Welles), wrote many of his own projects.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Here is a documentary on the life of legendary film director Steven Spielberg (1946- ). This week, I’m going to post one documentary on Spielberg and one on Quentin Tarantino, who represent the Yin and the Yang of Hollywood filmmakers in the 1980s and 1990s - the culturally conservative sentimentalist (Spielberg) versus the radical iconoclast (Tarantino). Both directors made several blockbuster films, and stylistically, many of their projects are quite unique.  Have a look and we’ll discuss them at our next meeting.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Known for its gritty and uncompromising depictions of inner-city violence in South-Central Los Angeles, John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991) established the young filmmaker as one of the most significant African-American directors of the 1990s. This is a particularly heartbreaking scene in which one of the main characters is shot in a drive-by.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Pioneering African-American director John Singleton (1968- ) discusses the challenges of being a black filmmaker in the 1980s and 1990s. Singleton directed such films as Boyz N the Hood (1991) and Higher Learning (1995).

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Here is a particularly dramatic scene from Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed biopic Malcolm X (1992).

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: A scene from Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed landmark film Do the Right Thing (1989), a film hailed for its realistic depiction of racial tensions in 1980s’ America.

[uwhistory409a]

The 1980s and 1990s: Spike Lee (1957- ) is one of the most influential directors in Hollywood, and perhaps its most influential African-American director. His films, starting with indie feature She’s Gotta Have It (1986), have often (but not always) sought to chronicle African-American life in modern America. His Do The Right Thing (1989) introduced his street-wise brand of directing to a mass audience, and his film Malcolm X (1992) is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s greatest historical biopics. Here, Lee discusses Malcolm X with singer/songwriter/producer Pharrell Williams.

[uwhistory409a]

Meeting 6: Film Noir: I won’t inundate you with too many posts about Film Noir. But I would like you to watch this PBS documentary, American Cinema, which focuses on Film Noir. It’s a superb documentary, narrated by the late, great Richard Widmark, and I think it’s a great companion piece to our weekly reading. Please watch it when you get a chance - I think you’ll really enjoy it!

[uwhistory409a]

Meeting 5: The War Years and the Auteurs: John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) is a prime example of one of Ford’s later Hollywood films. Now regarded as a masterpiece, and one of the greatest Westerns ever made, the film was met with mixed reviews when it was originally released in theaters. It contains a superb performance by John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, an embittered, racist Confederate veteran who ventures out into the craggy southwestern landscape to find a niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) who was abducted by Comanches as a little girl. It was the twelfth film that Ford and Wayne worked on together, and the two returned once again to the stunning scenery of southern Utah and northern Arizona to film it.

[uwhistory409a]

Meeting 5: The War Years and the Auteurs: John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), starring Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell, is an example of a classic Hollywood social conscience film. It contains many of the fine touches that perfectionist Ford brought to his finest films: tight direction, a masterful screenplay, great acting, naturalistic on-location settings, and universal human themes. Based on the novel by John Steinbeck, the film was a surprising hit at the box office, and helped solidify Ford as one of the greatest auteurs of classic, Golden Age Hollywood.