Posts Tagged ‘film’
“Civilization impairs physical fitness”*…
American opera singer Roberta Peters (second from right, on table) works out on strength training equipment as her trainer, Joseph Pilates, stands on a table beside her. Also in the room are PIlates’ wife Clara (right) and her own, unidentified trainee (standing), February 1951.
By the early 1930s, Pilates was challenging the norms of physical culture in New York, advocating for holistic movement and upending ideas that athletic mastery — whether throwing a baseball or standing en pointe — could be achieved solely through those sports alone. He shaped a new vision of the body; abdominal muscles were not merely a source of core strength, he explained, but the basis of respiratory control, and while most trainers focused on major muscle groups, he sought to activate the equally important connective musculature to lengthen the entire body. At the same time, Pilates began teaching expecting mothers. Conventional medical knowledge long forbade exercise for pregnant women, but that started to shift as many women found the exercises helpful in regulating breath and regaining muscle tone.
On any given afternoon in his studio, you could find an eclectic crowd, from Broadway actors and ballet dancers to lawyers and housewives, all breathing rhythmically as Joseph or Clara led them through various exercises: the pulling of ropes atop structures that resembled patient beds at Knockaloe, measured twisting of the body, extensions of the arms and legs, and circular motions from the hips. For some, the practice was integral to their careers; for many, it simply offered a curious respite from the world, a place to feel their bodies engaged in measured, reciprocal movements at a time when the strains of the Great Depression, and later the terrors of the Second World War, fell over New York and the whole country. Indeed, there was comfort in the opportunity to tend to one’s body as an anatomical creation with underlying principles, and dubious clients were often convinced by Joseph’s playful analogies. “Take a horse,” he’d often say to patients. “If a man wants to race him, he keeps him in top form. He makes the horse move. Why not keep humans in top form, too?”…
Interned during WWI, circus entertainer Joseph Pilates used found materials and his fellow prisoners as his test lab, and imagined an exercise system that would captivate millions: “The Acrobatic Immigrant Who Invented Pilates in a Prisoner of War Camp.”
* Joseph Pilates
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As we bear down on breathing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that The Motion Picture Production Code was instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion, and violence in film in the U.S. Popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, who was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, AKA the Motion Picture Association of America) from 1922 to 1945, it had become largely unenforceable by the late 1960s, and was abandoned, replaced by the MPAA rating system.
“The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory”*…
In May of 1849, at the now-demolished Astor Opera House in Manhattan, a riot left… 31 dead, and more than 120 people injured. It was the deadliest to that date of a number of civic disturbances in Manhattan, which generally pitted immigrants and nativists against each other, or together against the wealthy who controlled the city’s police and the state militia.
The riot resulted in the largest number of civilian casualties due to military action in the United States since the American Revolutionary War, and led to increased police militarization (for example, riot control training and larger, heavier batons)…
There’s something both grimly funny and profound… about the riot; it seems to express the madness of American history. A mob of thousands attempted to storm a theater over a performance of Macbeth, the National Guard had to be called up, 31 people were killed and more than 100 wounded all over the personal jealousies of two vain and insecure actors, an Englishman with aristocratic airs named William Macready, and an American, Edward “Ned” Forrest, who seemed to his audiences to embody a new democratic energy…
The Astor Place riot combined two of 19th-century America’s favorite pastimes: going to the theater and rioting. This was especially true in the period after the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, who was swept into office on a wave of raucous populism and expanded suffrage to all white men. Jackson’s inauguration was very nearly a riot itself: a horde of drunken men packed the White House, destroyed furniture and overturned the food laid out. The crowd could only be lured onto the lawn with the promise that more whiskey-spiked punch would be served outside. The violence peaked in 1835, when the country saw some 147 riots, according to David Grimsted’s American Mobbing: 1828-1861: Toward Civil War...
The remarkable true tale of the competing Shakespeareans who (literally) drew blood: “The most fascinating riot you’ve never heard of.”
* Iris Murdoch
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As we agree that all the world’s a stage, we might recall that it was on this date in 1938 that James M. Cain’s stage adaptation of his 1934 novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, opened on Broadway. Cain had hoped to have the novel adapted as a movie, but the Hays Office (the Production Code Administration, the Motion Picture Industry’s self-policing moral authority) deemed it too steamy for the screen.
Cain’s play ran only 72 performances. But it was adapted as a motion picture the following year in France (by Pierre Chenal), then in Italy in 1943 (by Luchino Visconti); finally– emboldened by Paramount’s success with Cain’s Double Indemnity (which had raised many of the same moral concerns)– MGM moved ahead. Its 1946 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice was a huge hit, and is now considered a film noir classic.
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”*…
The good news is that, as a product of economic, social, and scientific advancement around the world, life expectancy is increasing and birth rates are decreasing. The other news…
The world is experiencing a seismic demographic shift—and no country is immune to the consequences…
By 2050, there will be 10 billion people on earth, compared to 7.7 billion today—and many of them will be living longer. As a result, the number of elderly people per 100 working-age people will nearly triple—from 20 in 1980, to 58 in 2060.
Populations are getting older in all OECD countries, yet there are clear differences in the pace of aging. For instance, Japan holds the title for having the oldest population, with ⅓ of its citizens already over the age of 65. By 2030, the country’s workforce is expected to fall by 8 million—leading to a major potential labor shortage… Globally, the working-age population will see a 10% decrease by 2060. It will fall the most drastically by 35% or more in Greece, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. On the other end of the scale, it will increase by more than 20% in Australia, Mexico, and Israel…
As countries prepare for the coming decades, workforce shortages are just one of the impacts of aging populations already being felt…
There are many other social and economic risks that we can come to expect as the global population continues to age:
- The Squeezed Middle: With more people claiming pension benefits but less people paying income taxes, the shrinking workforce may be forced to pay higher taxes.
- Rising Healthcare Costs: Longer lives do not necessarily mean healthier lives, with those over 65 more likely to have at least one chronic disease and require expensive, long-term care.
- Economic Slowdown: Changing workforces may lead capital to flow away from rapidly aging countries to younger countries, shifting the global distribution of economic power.
The strain on pension systems is perhaps the most evident sign of a drastically aging population. Although the average retirement age is gradually increasing in many countries, people are saving insufficiently for their increased life span—resulting in an estimated $400 trillion deficit by 2050…
In many countries the old-age to working-age ratio will almost double in the next 40 years. How should we prepare? “The rising ratio.”
* T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”
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As we kick off the “Decade of Healthy Aging,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1931 that Dracula premiered in New York. Directed by the great Tod Browning and famously starring Bela Lugosi (in what many consider still to be the definitive portrayal of the blood-thirsty Count), the film was based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The film was was both a critical and commercial success on its release, and has earned it’s way into the canon, having been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
“a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”*…
Nihilism, not unlike time (according to Augustine) or porn (according to the U.S. Supreme Court), is one of those concepts that we are all pretty sure we know the meaning of unless someone asks us to define it. Nihil means “nothing.” -ism means “ideology.” Yet when we try to combine these terms, the combination seems to immediately refute itself, as the idea that nihilism is the “ideology of nothing” appears to be nonsensical. To say that this means that someone “believes in nothing” is not really much more helpful, as believing in something suggests there is something to be believed in, but if that something is nothing, then there is not something to be believed in, in which case believing in nothing is again a self-refuting idea.
It is easy therefore to fall into the trap of thinking “Everything is nihilism!” which of course leads to thinking “Nothing is nihilism!” Thus in order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it is necessary to distinguish it from concepts that are often associated with it but are nevertheless different, concepts such as pessimism, cynicism, and apathy…
The varieties of negativity: “What Nihilism Is Not.”
* Shakespeare, Macbeth
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As we dabble in the dark, we might send existentially-thrilling birthday greetings to Patricia Highsmith; she was born on this date in 1921. Dubbed “the poet of apprehension” by novelist Graham Greene, she wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories (over two dozen of which have been adapted to film) in a career that spanned five decades.
For example, her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951; her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted several times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan”, Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film.
“The worst gift I was given came when I got out of rehab that Christmas; a bottle of wine. It was delicious.”*…
(Roughly) Daily is headed, after this post, into it’s annual Holiday hiatus; regular service will resume on or around January 2. So, with best wishes for the New Year, these practical tips for dealing with some of the exigencies of the season…
A chemistry-themed spice rack [pictured above]: This one really knocks it out of the park. It’s designed to go on the counter, first of all, and it’s fragile, so if you have badly-behaved cats you’re going to have to stress about them shattering all or part of it. In order to use it, people have to conscientiously funnel bulk spices into teeny tiny flasks, which is a pain in the ass. Nine of the thirteen containers are test tubes with curved bottoms so you can’t put them down on the counter and have them stand upright. They have corks as tops so you need two hands to open them and there’s no shaker. Finally — this is really the icing on the cake — they come with cute chemistry-themed labels but while they look like chemical formulas they’re super wrong, like “Salt” is “Sa” instead of NaCl, so if your recipient is a chemist, it is guaranteed to annoy the hell out of them. This is bulky, difficult to use, difficult to store, and also just stupid for its intended purpose…
Just one of the handy tips in Naomi Kritzer‘s “Gifts for People You Hate, 2019.”
And lest one forget oneself, here’s all one needs to know to make a Christmas cinema classic an integral part of one’s own celebration: step-by-step instructions on “How to make your own Die Hard Christmas tree ornament.”
* Craig Ferguson
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As we check things off the list, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life premiered. Featuring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a small town banker who has given up his dreams to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve elicits the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched, and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would have been had George never been born.
The film disappointed at the box office on its release; but it was nominated for five Academy Awards, and has gone on to become a classic, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made,
“I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s the not knowing that makes it interesting”*…
Koyaanisqatsi is a 1983 wordless documentary primarily made up of slow motion and time-lapse footage. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the trailer here.
I wondered how easy it would be to make an internet version using random Giphy ‘gifs’ which have been tagged as slow motion or time-lapse, playing them along with the Philip Glass soundtrack…
Rico Monkeon has built a “random Koyaanisquatsi generator.”
* Philip Glass
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As we commune with the cosmic, we might send dandy birthday greetings to Sir Noël Peirce Coward; he was born on this date in 1899. A playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, he wrote more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theater repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theater works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), screenplays, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward’s stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works.
For all that, he may be best remembered for his persona, for his wit, flamboyance– and for what Time magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise.”
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot”*…
Before Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson, before Chuck Jones and Jackie Chan, there was Buster Keaton, one of the founding fathers of visual comedy. And nearly 100 years after he first appeared onscreen, we’re still learning from him…
Lessons from the best: “Buster Keaton- The Art of the Gag.”
* Charlie Chaplin
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As we mix marvel with mirth, we might recall that it was on this date in 1850 that photographer Frederick Langenheim was issued U.S. Patent #7,784 for “Improvement in photographic pictures on glass,” a process of rendering photographic images on glass plates– magic lantern slides.
Prior to 1850, most magic lantern slides were hand-painted on glass, or created using a transfer method to reproduce many copies of a single etching or print; the development of photographic slides created entirely new uses for the magic lantern, from university lectures to amateur family photo shows… to “Coming Attractions” advertisements in theaters in the silent film era.
