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 …
Over the weekend, I put the final touches on my course syllabi. I have three this semester: Introduction to Film, Introduction to Film DL (distance learning), and Critical Approaches to Cinema. One part of syllabus-creating that I actually look forward to is figuring out which films my students will watch …
A couple of weeks ago, USA Today‘s pop culture blog featured a guest author, Denise Du Vernay, a lecturer in Humanities and Communications at Milwaukee School of Engineering and co-author of The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield (she also tweets). For her guest …
About five years ago, I came across a column in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Notes from a Career in Teaching.” (If you don’t have a Chronicle account, you may read the entire piece here.) In it, the author, a recently retired college …
A few weeks ago, I came across a blog post from The Guardian entitled “The Film That Changed My Life.” In it, filmmaker Brett Ratner (X-Men, Rush Hour) recounts the ways that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) inspired his career path. At only 10 years old, the future director had …
Last week Dominique Homberger, a tenured LSU biology professor, was removed from her class mid-semester for “allegedly grading too harshly.” According to one article that covered the event, “more than 90 percent of [her] students were failing or had dropped the [introductory-level biology] class.” After considering those numbers, the dean …
I’ve been fascinated by generational studies ever since my husband brought home PowerPoint slides from “Introduction to Generations in the Workplace,” a presentation he attended about 6 or 7 years ago while working at the University of North Texas. According to my husband, the workshop was designed to introduce Student …
