Casablanca on the Big Screen
In June, The Michigan Theater (in Ann Arbor, MI) kicked off its 2010 Summer Classic Film Series with John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and it ends next week with Fritz Lang’s newly restored Metropolis, which will feature a live organ accompaniment of the 1927 original score. …
Why I Use Tweetdeck (and You Should Too)
Disclaimer: I’m writing this post primarily with my film students in mind, but I would argue the same for non-students.
From what I can tell, most of my film students — who are required to use Twitter this semester — are turning to the Web to tweet. Since this is where …
Teaching 200 Students How to Tweet: The Challenges
For three semesters I have attempted to incorporate Twitter into the college classroom, even once relying on the service to arrange a win-a-free-textbook contest for my Film Noir students. But overall, these attempts have failed miserably as the majority of college students — at this point in time anyway — …
Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld
Regular followers of Unmuzzled Thoughts have heard me blabbing that one day I’m going to publish an essay explaining why those who loved the sitcom Seinfeld should theoretically also love the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Well, that day has come. I finally gathered my thoughts, supported them with evidence (sifting …
The Thrill of the Long Shot
Over the weekend, The Film Dr. tagged me in a blog meme begun by Stephen Russell-Gebbett who blogs over at (the interestingly titled) Checking on My Sausages and MovieMan0283 who blogs at The Dancing Image. According to the guys, the person tagged is to submit a gallery of images that …
For three semesters I have attempted to incorporate Twitter into the college classroom, even once relying on the service to arrange a win-a-free-textbook contest for my Film Noir students. But overall, these attempts have failed miserably as the majority of college students — at this point in time anyway — …
When I was in college, both undergraduate and graduate school, this is what I knew about the personal lives of my professors:
Many had cats; at least two had dogs.
One spent most of her summers in Italy researching the letters of a sixteenth- (or maybe seventeenth-) century Italian woman.
One smoked cigarettes, …
In his column “Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis,” NY Times film critic A.O. Scott considers the current state of Generation X as seen by popular culture. Through an analysis of three texts released in 2010 — the novel The Ask (Sam Lipsyte) and the movies Hot Tub Time Machine (Steve Pink) and Greenberg (Noah Baumbach) — Scott summarizes what contemporary society apparently thinks about those of us born between 1965-1980
I was just looking through my old Facebook Notes and came across this gem. Surely you remember the “25 Things about Me” list that went around about a year ago (mine is dated February 9, 2009). It was accompanied by these directions:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write …
Over the weekend, a Facebook friend posted that one of his new favorite songs is “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus.” After reading that status update, I smiled and began singing the song in my mind:
Rock me, rock me, rock me, sexy Jesus
He died for our sins
You gotta believe us
Rock me, rock …
A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience with Twitter in the undergraduate film classroom. In brief, it did not go as planned. While nearly 100 students signed up for the social networking service, I received only a couple of real-time tweets from my large Introduction to Film class …
