A way for me to keep my sanity, demonstrate plot/theme, and have a quick, engaging mini-lesson: Friday Afternoon Film Festival.
I’ve been finding these great clips off of Vimeo. And although the website is blocked, I can still embed school-appropriate content, like the films you see in my widget sidebar.
So, grab some mini-popcorn, and enjoy the show!
It’s the birthday of the comic-book author Bob Kane, (books by this author) born in the Bronx (1916), who was working at DC Comics in 1939 when his editors began asking for more superhero characters to follow up on the success of Superman. Kane thought about it over the weekend, and on Monday morning he turned in some sketches of a character he called Batman. The character made his debut in DC Comics number 27, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” in May of 1939. He is alter ego of multimillionaire Bruce Wayne and one of the few superheroes in the history of comic books who doesn’t have any special powers. He’s just rich enough to build himself special crime-fighting gadgets. Kane said he based the character partly on Zorro, because he liked the idea of a fashionable rich guy dressing up as a vigilante at night to fight crime. He got the idea for Batman’s costume from a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of a bat-winged flying machine.
So, burning question:
Your faced with a creative challenge. What do you do? What resources will you draw from, (literally, if you’re an artist, or figuratively, if you’re tangling another sort of task)? Did you ever imagine that Bob Kane would use the genius of a 420-year dead guy to inspire him? Happens all the time.
One of my former students LOVED the Cirque du Freak series, long before anyone had taken a bite out of the Twilight apple. If you check out the Dog Ear blog, she gives the trailer a mixed review, stating it gives too much of the plot away. I’ll leave that up to you to decide – remember, it’s always better to read the book first before seeing the movie anyway. The movie should just enhance what images are already in your mind. The casting director’s job is to find the best actors and actresses to portray the characters faithfully.
We all have people we admire, whose work and talents make us all better people. One blog I follow is by a man named Mike Baker, and he had the chance to meet one of his heroes, Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away and Princess Mononokeare two of my all-time favorite animated movies. What an incredible opportunity. Read what he has to say about his experience, and start to think about someone you would like to meet, and what do you think the encounter would be like: would your hero live up to your expectations? Where would you meet them? What would you ask them? What would you want them to ask you?
http://mikerbakersdump.blogspot.com/2009/07/hayao-miyazaki.html
For a trailer of the new movie Ponyo, visit here: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1877738009/
