Langston Hughes at the Movies

Black Nativity (2013), is based on Langston Hughes's The Nativity. You'll want to see this film, especially for the music.

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln by Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field

No history buff will be able to pass up this film. Learn how the political process was put to the test and how Lincoln managed to have congress vote the Emancipation Proclamation that would end slavery in the United States.

 

F.B.I.

How did the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States become so powerful? Find some answers here.

Bird

This film about jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker shows the difficulties of the life of a travelling musician, particularly in a racist America.

Visit Detroit

Eminem stars in 8-Mile, a film about living in the city of Detroit from 2002.




 And see another musician from a few decades earlier: Rodriguez in Sugar Man, about a musician who was active in the 1970s.

Short Cuts

The original thing about this film is that splicing Raymond Carver's short stories into a film gives them an added coherence, and the characters that do not meet each other in the published stories, are quite credible as people that live close to each other in the film. Altman gave us a brilliant piece of social criticism.

Viola Davis stars in The Help

Viola Davis is everyone's favorite maid in The Help (2011), which was released in the US in August.





Links
Official Site for the film (thehelpmovie.com).
Joel Stein, "Help Wanted.  Viola Davis is a star." Time (August 15, 2011).
Betsy Sharkey, "The Help" Los Angeles Times (August 10, 2011).
Manohla Dargis, "'The Maids' Now Have Their Say," New York Times (August 9, 2011).
Kirk Honeycult, "The Help: Film Review" Hollywood Reporter (August 7, 2011).

While we wait for the movie...

Students have produced what they think might be a good trailer for the film... and the wait is long to get a full movie-length version of this excellent book, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Meanwhile, the story has been produced as a play by Book-It Repertory Theatre. See the video here: http://www.book-it.org/confederacy.php.

Initiation and Tall Tale

Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris explores trickery, fantasy, initiation, narrative invention and the Tall Tale in Big Fish by Tim Burton in Sillages critiques 10 (2010).

Keats & "Bright Star"

Jane Campion has put poetry and the life of young John Keats at the heart of her film Bright Star, which takes place in 1818.  Keats was in love with Fanny Brawne, knowing that it was a hopeless romance, that for reasons of class she could never become his wife.

Links about the film:

A short excerpt from "Bright Star" from the Cannes Film Festival (AFP, 2009).

Bright Star Production Scrapbook (2009).

Four clips from the film — from www.commeaucinema.com (2009)

"Cannes film festival: Bright Star rising, Ben Whishaw," Guardian (May 19, 2009).

"'Bright Star': le trouble exquis d'une passion chaste au XIXe siècle," Le Monde (May 16, 2009).

Michaël Melinard, "Campion revient à ses premières amours," L'Humanité (May 16, 2009).

Joan Dupont, "Jane Campion Presents Another Resilient Heroine," New York Times (May 15, 2009).

Links about the poet and his poetry:

Charles McGrath, "Truth and Beauty? Only in Afterlife," New York Times (August 7, 2008).

Stanley Plumly, (first chapter) "Posthumous Keats," New York Times (August 8, 2008).

John Keats (.com)

John Keats, Poems 1817 (e-book, Project Gutenberg).