Most casual film fans and cinephiles alike only notice costume design when it is exercised to its most extreme and simultaneously least creative setting: the period film. Heck, it’s often called a costume drama for exactly that reason. I say that these projects are less creative than films set in the present day not because I think they are easier to execute, but because they are researched-based and a removal from the current. For example, designing a gown for Cate Blanchett to wear in Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a far different task than the floral dresses worn by Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy.

Which one requires more thought? More exploration? As part of my internship with the Oklahoma City Museum of Art two years ago, I conducted research on costume design for an exhibition on the topic. The true nature of costume design really hit me in a conversation with Deborah Landis, designer and professor at UCLA. She asked our group “Can all of you remember when and where you bought each piece of clothing you are wearing?” Odds are you can. Try it right now! Did you buy it all at the same time? Of course not. I am wearing the shoes I bought right before my trip to France my junior year of high school. The Jeans are a few months old, and I just picked up this sweater at a garage sale. It looks like me, it does not look like the fall window display at The Gap. Likewise, any character in a film should look like he or she is wearing clothes from multiple stores and styles.

This is a basic introduction to the series of posts I will be making over the next few months about costuming the Hollywood film. From Studio-era to today, period drama to futuristic space opera, there are common threads (pun intended) of characterization through wardrobe. Check back every week for a new entry in this series!

Not only is “Qwickster” a terrible name plucked straight out of the Napster and Friendster family (we all know how well those worked) it’s also pointless. Why would I want to visit and entirely different page to view my DVD queue when they are all in the same place now? This is the opposite of progress. We all know that DVD is a dying format, but it is not dead yet, and should not be treated as such. Plenty of people do not yet have access to the internet speed that makes streaming video a better choice for them, and streaming video is far from the quality of Blu Ray or even DVD. Internet-ready TVs are still prohibitively expensive to the vast majority of Netflix subscribers, many of whom only recently purchased plasma or other forms of HDTV and will not be ready or financially able to purchase an internet-ready TV for at least five years.

So once again, we have an out-of-touch corporation raising a big middle finger to most of its customers, but masking it as an attempt to pander to our needs. He says in his email “I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail.” Not only does he confirm his privilege, but does he really not realize that Streaming and DVD by mail have the same ultimate goal? They both give us stuff to watch. That’s all. Streaming video does not bake us cookies or give us a back massage. If we really want to talk about goals, let’s not forget that streaming still does not give us the ability to choose between widescreen and chopped up full frame, does not provide subtitles most of the time, and tosses extras and commentaries out the window.  I am not amused, nor am I satisfied with the fact that there is no alternative I can switch to, and I can’t cancel my service until I’m caught up on Mad Men. Damn you!

There's also that whole ting where they didn't search Twitter for their company name before releasing it, forever associating Netflix with pot-smoking Elmo.

First, I would like to talk more about classic film by doing a series on costuming period films. This will cover most decades of filmmaking, and how the costumes in a period film made in any decade is equally informed by styles current to the time as well as period aesthetics. If you have any specific requests for discussion in this series, please let me know.

I also want to talk about the changing face of new media, particularly television. I have spent most of my summer starting series such as Mad Men and House, but also watching a lot of reality TV. I want to write about TV formula and reception, and I also want to examine the function of storytelling in reality programming.

I hope that gives you an idea of the direction I want to go in the next few weeks. After a long break, I am looking forward to writing regularly, and I hope you enjoy it!

Finally, please subscribe! I recommend Google Reader, but it would be nice to know how many people are reading this regularly. See you soon!

Do you agree with the above statement? If so, please leave the planet. As a continuation of yesterday’s post, I want to talk about the meaningless rants I hear and read about a so-called “war” between classic and contemporary film.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen blog posts that condemn contemporary anything because it is oversexualized. While contemporary media is definitely sexual in nature, the fact that the collective idea of “the fandom” is that 1920s-40s culture was not at all sexual frightens me. It is basically telling me that a majority of studio-era film fans fundamentally do not understand the films they are watching. This is especially interesting to me as a future film professor.

The first thing that I have to recognize as a film scholar is that not everyone is like me. In fact, few classic film fans have studied film as the post-secondary level, and have never given thought to a film’s deeper meaning. Still, the suggestive nature of old films, particularly Pre-Code, should be obvious to even the most monkey-brained of viewers. A production code would not have had to be implemented if there was not an underlying “problem” and concern about film content.

From "The Sign of the Cross" (1932)

I have no qualms in saying that the only reason the sex act was not shown in films in the studio era and beyond was because it was not allowed, not because of some higher sense of “morality” in the status quo. People have always had sex. Just because movies post-code only mentioned sex between consenting and married adults (unless punished accordingly) does not reflect the sexuality of the general public.

I see so much of this “disgust” toward contemporary lifestyles expressed through the calssic film fandom, especially within my own sub group, the fans of Astaire and Rogers. There is post after post like this one, simultaneously celebrating the immense talents of the two late actors and condemning modern culture. It makes me feel like these fans think they are speaking for the actors and the films. The post which I linked above is especially telling in its line “when did dancing become all about sex?” because it proves the author’s ignorance not only of the very films they are celebrating, but also the entire dance discipline. Dance at its most basic is a mimicry of the mating rituals of animals, and serves as a religious, communicative, celebratory, and artistic language in most cultures. TO answer that author’s question, dance became all about sex approximately 200,000 years ago, when the first homonid species became all about walking upright. To bring it back to classic film, the author longs for a time (which she obviously does not know intimately, being less than 90 years old) when people like Astaire and Rogers danced innocently. Okay, but are you telling me that Fred offered Ginger a cigarette at the end of “Night and Day” because he thought she liked smoking, or because dance numbers in musicals represent sexual experiences?

From "The Gay Divorcee" (1934)

I see this obvious misunderstanding as a symptom of multiple problems, including but not limited to a blind nostalgia of a time when everything was a little bit better-people were prettier and nicer, things were cheaper, and it was all a little more innocent. It is childish and wrong, so where do we begin to re-educate?

When I meet new people and discuss my interests, they often come to the conclusion that A) I think all contemporary films are awful and B) I am smug because of my feelings connected to A. Is this because they have met other classic film fans, or is this an idea that several people have discovered independently of one another based on a conversation with me? Statistics being what they are, I think it is the former.

To set the record straight, not only do I like many contemporary films, I also hate a lot of old movies. And that’s okay. Contrary to popular belief, I do not worship at the altar of black and white. I am not asking for a pat on the back, but rather, let’s discuss the people who have pitted old and new, black and white and color, and original and remake: the fans. I think it’s great when I find a blog or some other kind of online devotional to old movies, until I see something like “They don’t make them like they used to.” This is a true statement from a literal standpoint, but neither an assessment of legitimacy nor cultural value. Films are edited digitally, often presented digitally, and are full of special effects, even when we don’t know it. Technology has vastly improved, and we are now allowed to freely express sexuality and show graphic violence to our heart’s content. Filmmakers are also cultivated based on their “vision”, a stark contrast to the factory system of studio-era filmmaking, which emphasized finish and polish in a timely manner.

Yes, I am responding to that statement quite literally, but that is the only way to respond, unless you want to turn it in to an evaluation of a handful of films with a 60+ year legacy compared to a decade of blockbusters. Not only is it unfair, it’s totally inaccurate, and it gives old film fans a bad name and frustrates me to no end. Of course Transformers 3 cannot be compared to The Wizard of Oz. Too many fans glorify the entire studio system, based on only a few of their products, either blissfully unaware or not willing to recognize that their brothers and sisters, the failures, are products of the same system. They also shrug off the ways that the studio system abused its power legally (see the Paramount Decision and the Hollywood Blacklist) and by objectifying their employees on both sides of the line. There is a reason that not all films have earned the same legacy of a Casablanca or Citizen Kane. Of course, for every old film with a permanent place in our hearts, there are one or two films which deserve the same attention, but that still does not make up even half of the films made in 1928-1950. Not every film will be remembered, but could you imagine how exhausting, overwhelming, and impossible the act of being a cinephile would be if they were?

This is just the beginning of an extended discussion that I want to have with myself and my fellow fans and scholars about why we love old movies so much. I have challenged myself to abstain from using objective comparisons to explain my passion-no more “the actors were just better” or “the stories were more internalized” because they are A) not true and B) meaningless in discussion.

This post will not have a clear conclusion, because I don’t want this discussion to ever end, unless it ends with “I love movies” without a baseless comparison that invalidates your opinion.

Last Wednesday, I had the honor of introducing The Gay Divorcee at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. It was great to see it again, especially on the big screen. That brings me up to three A/R films I’ve seen in theaters, the other two being Top Hat and Roberta at the historic Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Seeing Divorcee on the big screen pointed out some of its major flaws. Although it’s an enjoyable film, it’s obvious that RKO does not yet know what to do with the pair. Roberta is the key film of the pairing, but I’ll get to that in a later entry.

Last Saturday, I attending “Slumber Party 3″ at the Circle Cinema, Tulsa’s local art house theater. It started at 10 PM with Rolling Thunder a surprising, serious pick for the otherwise rowdy festival of bad films. After some hecklers finally realized that we took this film seriously, we enjoyed a film that deeply criticizes the hypermasculine ideals of post-Vietnam America. The film has not aged well, with less-than-stellar acting from most of the supporting roles, but the message holds up.

Next we watched Death Wish III, a silly attempt to keep a struggling franchise going. Charles Bronson is greasy, the gang members were obviously dancers from the way they fell, and a lot of buildings were blown up. It’s a guilty pleasure movie.

Our first surprise movie was also my favorite of the night. Rolling Vengeance is basically about a boy whose family is senselessly killed by Ned Beatty’s hillybilly sons. Naturally, the boy builds a monster truck in his barn and runs over everything in sight. Not the most efficient form of revenge, but someone has to stop Ned Beatty from doing his hair like this:

After that was Savage Streets. Basically, Linda Blair with a crossbow. It was fun, and it brought up our gratuitous nudity quota.

Our final surprise film started at 5:45 AM, and it’s a miracle my friends and I stayed awake through it. Eye of the Tiger is a really confusing Gary Busey flick, in which Busey, a recently-released ex-con is picked on by a motorcycle gang led by a bald dude. No idea why, but he kills Busey’s wife and kidnaps their daughter. I was hoping an actual tiger would make an appearance, but the only giant fangs we got were from the ‘Buser himself.

The most painful moment of the slumber party was leaving the east-facing theater at 7:30 AM, with the sun shooting directly in our eyes, reminding us that we just paid to stay up all night watching truly awful movies, but we wouldn’t change a thing.

Here’s my friend’s video account of the night:

The finale of Ginger day.

Billy Wilder’s American debut…

THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR.

Please join us in the chat room to discuss the movie.

You can watch it on youtube here.

BE THERE BE THERE BE THERE.