APELC Summer Reading
Hello 2010-2011 APELCers. I hope you’re all enjoying the summer with your friends and family as much as I am with mine. I wanted to remind you of your summer reading assignments: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad.
You can find them easily at your local public liberry, or you might try Bookman’s. Both are in the public domain and are available online. You can also find audio versions at LibriVox.org in a variety of download packages. (I chose to subscribe to each through iTunes and sync them to my iPod.)
I recommend taking notes on everything from the small facts to the broad ideas as you read and/or listen carefully and thoroughly. (If you don’t already have this habit, now’s a good time to begin to develop it.) Don’t expect to be quizzed on them on the first day of class, but be ready to speak on them intelligently.
I look forward to meeting you in four weeks.
Finally, an Explanation
I came across this graphic recently. Makes sense to me.
Thanks again to Andrew Strumpf for bringing “Miracles”, ICP’s excellent and thought-provoking meditation on the nature to the world, to my attention in the spring. The sheer inanity of the song and its video garnered serious attention even from the New York Times and New York Magazine, respectively: “Kidding the Clowns Online, but Who Will Laugh Last?” and “Violent J of Insane Clown Posse Explains the Remarkable Song ‘Miracles’”.
I hope everyone’s enjoying their summer.
My Movie List
Here’s the long-promised movie list I kept on the board from class that I said I’d reproduce in a post. It all started with Moon back in February because of the existential questions it engendered, and as other movies came to mind I added them to the board. Some selections were purposeful and provoked me to think of more along similar lines, while several were the result of haphazard ruminations, and some are essential to cultural literacy, while others are just silly, but I think they all have their merits.
A quick note to cover myself: Many of these films contain language and situations that some will find objectionable and are rated accordingly. So if you feel like checking any of these out be mindful and maybe surf over to the Wikipedia page for each where you can at least get some ideas about what to expect.
Here’s my list:
The Last Starfighter, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Flash Gordon, and Conan the Barbarian are awesome adventure/sci-fi flicks I enjoyed in my youth in the early the 80s.
An American Werewolf in London and Tremors are a great mix of horror and humor. (Do not waste your time with the sequels of these movies.)
National Lampoon’s Vacation, Fletch, Spies Like Us, and Caddyshack reflect a time when Chevy Chase was actually funny and are worth plenty of laughs. Another hilarious golf movie is Happy Gilmore.
Witness, The Fugitive, and Blade Runner (The Final Cut) are three excellent Harrison Ford movies, the first dealing with questions of place, the second questions of justice, and the third questions of identity.
Joe vs. the Volcano is a highly underrated Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan absurd comedy. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in the leads, is an absurd tragicomedy. And Moon is an absurd tragedy with Sam Rockwell. All deal with issues of purpose and identity.
The Silence of the Lambs is a graphic psychological crime-thriller with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. Reservoir Dogs, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and True Romance written but not directed by Quentin Tarantino are excellent seriocomic crime films, the former more serious and the latter more comic, and both are pretty brutal.
Kids and Requiem for a Dream, both notable for their graphic content, are depressing existential explorations of the consequences of morally unrestrained youth culture. American Me and The Wrestler, with Edward James Olmos and Mickey Rourke, respectively, both deal with lives of shattered adults who’re desperate for meaning in their lives but who at the same time are unwilling or unable to grow beyond their circumstances and themselves. The Hours is another depressing meditation on meaning and growth, but not savage as the others.
The Commitments is a comedy that follows an Irish soul band trying to establish their identity in Dublin; A Man Called Horse is a forerunner to Dances with Wolves; and The Big Blue is a fictionalized account of the competition between two free-divers. None of these movies have anything in common with each other.
I saved the greatest movie of all time, which deals with sacrifice, duty, patriotism, and love, for last: Casablanca. See it yesterday.
That’s it for now. Remember, check these films before you rent them or add them to your queue, and while you’re watching them consider speaker, context, audience, and text, examine and analyze how they’re organized and to what ethical and pathetic ends, and discover and evaluate the concepts they’re tackling and the questions they’re asking and attempting to answer.
Happy viewing.
Next Year
After much anxiety since school let out, I’m happy to report that, as of last week, I will be teaching at CDO for the 2010-2011 school year, and I couldn’t be more relieved. I’m especially looking forward to putting these excellent gifts from Andrea, Bailey, and Shayne to use next year:
What? Y’know I’m sayin’?
I hope you’ll drop by T-12 and say “Hello” during the year. Regrettably, I won’t be in kilt-wearing form for the start of school, but I’m working on it (and I did finally shave).
Enjoy the rest of your summer, kids.