Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Citizen Kane to now?  Wow...
What kind of things are you looking for exactly?  I mean, that's a
hell of a lot of ground to cover?
Off the top of my head I'd show some (I have to admit, I don't know if
these are all post-*Kane*):
*Silence of the Lambs*; who's a better villain, ever, than Hannibal
Lecter?
(Okay, besides Linda Fiorentino in *The Last Seduction*, but)
*To Kill a Mockingbird*; didn't Atticus Finch get greatest hero in the
AFI list?
*The Matrix*; just the first one.  In fact, I haven't seen it, but
there's a featurette on the *Reloaded* DVD about how much the first
*Matrix* hit culture.
*Star Wars*; no brainer.
*Psycho*; the old one, *and* the new one.  Just to see the how much
difference the vision of one person can affect a movie.
*Taxi Driver*; You talkin' to me?
*ET*, *Jaws*, and *Raiders*; who else can you credit with the fact
that Hollywood now mainly exists for twelve-year-old boys?
*Schindler's List*; because he really did have something to say.
*The Graduate*; Coo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson.
*The Terminator*; because he'll be back, and you'll elect him
governor, too, just you watch.
*Halloween*; of course, you really only have to play that theme, and
it can do the whole job for you.
*Titanic*; no, I didn't much like it.  But I still watched it three
times; you can't turn away from a car wreck, can you?  Or a really big
boat's sinking.
*Shakespeare in Love*; just because I love it.  And Tom Stoppard wrote
it, which makes it one of the smartest movies in the world.  And if
Shakespeare were alive now, he'd probably be writing Hollywood movies,
and some of them would probably be on this list.
Brannagh's *Hamlet*; because I hated *Hamlet* until I watched it, and
then it just happened, you know?
*Top Gun*; because I just can't imagine movies without thinking of Tom
Cruise, and while I enjoyed *Jerry Maguire* more, I feel the need. 
The need for speed.  And I think she's lost that lovin' feelin'.
Part of some *Lethal Weapon* and then *Braveheart*; Mel Gibson might
just be the most powerful man in Hollywood.
*Philadelphia* and *Saving Private Ryan*; because life might be a
little like a box of chocolates, but Hanks was better gay or as a
teacher (that's the scene I'd show, too.  "Stop arguing, guys.  I used
to be a teacher.")
*Clerks*; because you, too, can make a movie using your credit card. 
It'll look silly, and it'll prolly be crappy, but it'll still be a
movie, and it just might make you a career.
*The Blair Witch Project*; because it might not, though.
*Breakfast at Tiffany's*; because film history without Audrey Hepburn
is incomplete, which is why you also need
*Bringing up Baby*; because you need Cary Grant, too.
*Gigli*; because some movies are punchlines the moment they're made.
*Lawrence of Arabia*; because most aren't.
*The Ten Commandments*; have you ever watched anything else at Easter?
*It's a Wonderful Life*; have you ever watched anything else at
Christmas?
*Casablanca*; because if you don't, you'll regret it.  Maybe not
today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.  And for the rest of your life.
*Gone with the Wind*; because maybe, my dear, you won't give a damn.
  

    
Man, there are a LOT of those I've still gotta see.
  

    
Wizard of Oz. That was a milestone movie.
Gone With the Wind. The first really long epic movie people actually
sat through.
Cleopatra - The one with Elizabeth Taylor. Just because she and the
other stars were IT during that time.
Casablanca. 
African Queen
  

    
I can't believe I forgot the *Wizard of Oz*.  Seriously.  What's wrong
with me?

I think I have to mention *The Labyrinth,* too.  Because it's Henson,
and David Bowie in a codpiece.  And those final M.C. Escher moments.
  

    
ANd let's not forget The Ten Commandments. Parting of the Red Sea and
all.
The original King and I. 
  

    
 
Metropolis
Fantasia - certainly strange
  

    
OOOH!
Forbidden Planet. 
  

    
AND
War of the Worlds.

Going this time.
  

    
Back.

A lady I work with has a 12 year old daughter who is not doing well in
reading. A suggestion was made that she reads out loud. Now, this is
one of the women in my office who barely reads the newspaper. Just not
much of a reading family. I leant her my Coraline. And told her to tell
Emy to be sure and do the voices. They are going to the lake for a few
days and she is going to have her do some of the reading aloud in the
drive up there and then read a chapter each day. 

This weekend, I'll need to go through my books for those books I think
she'll like. I have some horse books I know she'd like. She doesn't
care for Nancy Drew. She likes mysteries so I'll debate about
introducing her to Agatha Christie or Ellery Queen. Do you think they'd
be too old for a 12-13 year old? Anyway. I have so many books. I'm
sure I can find something else. Pratchett. More Gaiman. 

I think I'll make some book covers for my books. Take the covers off
and keep them and cover the books with some pretty paper to protect
them while she has them. I am determined not to get huffy if she
damages them. After all. I can always buy another one. Right? 
  

    
Good luck!  Wish I could advise you about the Christie and Queen, but
I haven't read either.

I know I loved Edgar Allen Poe when I was around that age (and
beyond)....
  

    
OOOh! YES! I have some of those! and some Mark Twain! They can be
funny. I think I'm going to have fun scouring my bookshelves this
weekend. Poor girl. I'll try not to give her mom a book for her to read
until she finishes the one I'd sent. Or maybe I'll send two very
different books each time so she can choose.
  

    
That's a good idea!
  

    
Maybe she would like some graphic novels, like Scary Godmother, or
Wolves in the Walls. If she's having trouble with reading, Poe and
Twain might make her feel even more like a failure  because of the
formality of the language.  Perhaps whattshishead....wrote James and
the Giant Peach?  And Daniel Pinkwater is funny, too--Neil recommended
him, but I was too old when I read him to truly appreciate him.  I can
see his appeal to younger folks, though.  And Wee Free Men and
'Educated Rodents--I think I would have adored those even more when I
was 12.  I loved Walter Farley's books about horses and dogs at that
age.  My experience with my kids at school, who read very badly, is
that formal language (like Poe, whose Tell-Tale Heart I taught this
year) can be very off-putting when you are struggling to recognize the
words, and don't know what many of them mean, and aren't good at
recognizing meanings from context. Inverted sentence structure, archaic
words and phrases, and unfamiliar figures of speech are major road
blocks when you have all of them to contend with at one time. They can
do it, and appreciate it, but reading it aloud in class gives them
enough support to "get" the story.  I don't know if they would stick
with it if they were assigned to read it on their own.  Reading some
Poe *to* her might be good.  If it's a non-reading household, how is
her vocabulary?  My seniors came across "mad as a hatter" in Heartbreak
House this week and were flummoxed.  They're an interesting mixture of
very verbal and very limited in what words, phrases and references
they understand.

Sorry to go on so long!  I love educational theory, even if education
itself is giving me hives at the moment ;-)

Will--you utterly and completely rock.  I knew I would get great
responses here.  And I didn't realize that you had a birthday
recently--happy 26th!  My 26th sucked, so I will wish you my luck in
this--that every one since then has been better.

Dodge--Metropolis!  I almost forgot.  And yeah, Casablanca and Wizard
and.....

Tiny--me, too.

What I'm trying to do is give them a little bit of a vocabulary of
film history--they watch everything like it's real life, and have no
critical response at all.  They don't think about the "why" or "how" of
any of it.  I guess I want to give them the wonderful experience I had
in grad school--I took the first section of film history with Charlie
Eidsvik, a marvelous film scholar.  We started at the
beginning--Lumiere Brothers, train pulling into station, A Trip to the
Moon, etc.  2-3 weeks into the course (we met 4 days a week for an hour
and a half) we got to The Great Train Robbery.  When the camera panned
for the first time in film history, the class cheered.  I don't think
I've ever looked at film the same way.  I'm no good on 1941--present
'cause Charlie went on his Fulbright scholarship to Germany to study
Expressionism the next semester and there was no one to teach the
class.

Good God, I'm chatty!  Off to.....probably check Neil's blog again,
'cause I'm going through withdrawal.  How can he possibly be doing
anything more important than blogging for us!?  ;-)
  

    
Thank you, Mary, for the birthday wishes.  Yep, turned the big 2-6 on
May the 8th.  And I have to say, it's fitting pretty well.  Usually I
have to grow into years, they start off a little long in the cuff. 
This year, I don't know, I feel ready.  And it actually got off to a
bang; a great night at a local pub with ten of my closest friends, some
drinks, sure, but dancing and laughing more.  Simply sublime.
It may be my last one at home.  We'll see how that goes...

Glad I could help on the movies... the list can't be compleat, of
course.  I think I skewed more with popular culture in mind, too, you
might consider; most of the movies I mentioned (and I didn't forget
*The Ten Commandments*, dodge!) are more iconic than anything else.  I
loved that your class cheered when the camera panned.  That's how to
teach a class, right there.  Anyone can teach, but to help someone
*understand*?  Good on 'im.

As for books, just have to mention, 12-13 proved the most influential
age of reading for me.  Before then, it'd been all Hardy Boys books,
Tom Swift, stuff like that.  I had, like, a hundred of those "Case
Files" things.  Franklin W. Dixon was *the man*.
(I may have told this story before, but) When I was 12, or so, I
smuggled *Needful Things* out of my father's library (by library, I
mean the wall unit where he kept twenty or thirty Stephen King books,
mind you).  I went to a Catholic Grade school, so I had to read it
carefully, couldn't get caught, it was Stephen King, after all, and
some hours I started reading about the rosary and ended reading about a
suburban housewife about to blow an old man for a velvet Elvis
painting.
It took me a while (Stephen King has never been known for his brevity.
 He might be one of the reasons for my own tendency toward going on at
length [for which I apologize.  But that's me.  Sorry]), but I
remember, toward the end of school, my great aunt passed away.  She was
from Virginia, and my mother and father went down for the viewing et
al., left us kids with friends of our family.  I took the book, and I
finished it that weekend.
I wish, now, I could read that book again for the first time.  I
wonder if my reaction would be different, if it would change the course
of my life.  I wonder sometimes if I might not be graduating medical
school next week had I not read that book.
Because, you see, I read the ending of that novel, I'd never been so
involved in a story, and it just Hit me.
I'm a writer.  That's what I was supposed to do.  It was like the
match to a stick of dynamite, and my world changed when it exploded.  I
can actually remember closing that book, looking at the cover, and
realizing that I was different, and that I saw the world differently.

All of which is not to recommend *Needful Things*, nah, I should
probably reread it (I'm a little scared to, if you want the
honest-to-Buddha truth), it was pretty trashy, really (but fuck-all if
it wasn't more fun than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide).  There
are hundreds of other books to recommend, too; I remember I loved
Stasheff when I was around that age, too.  I started reading Dean
Koontz right around then, even.  And for a girl, well, someone like
Mary Higgins Clark might be good, because you can't go wrong having a
strong female protagonist.
Raoul Dahl wrote *James and the Giant Peach*.  And *The Big, Friendly
Giant*.  Both of which it's rather easy to do far worse than, because
they're fun books.
But my point is, well, sometimes, a book when you're twelve... well. 
Talk about life-altering.
And as for aloud, don't forget *Stardust*.  I mean, the damned thing
*begs* to be read aloud.  And, truthfully, isn't as good if not (I've
dated several girls I started reading it to, who then refuse to finish
it, because we've broken up, and so I don't read to them anymore).
Douglas Adams is great aloud, too.  Go ahead, try to say
"Slartibartfast" or "Zaphod Beeblebrox" out loud without breaking into
fits of chortling.  I dare you.
See?  You can't!
  

    
>Raoul

Roald
  

    
<chuckle>  That'll teach me to post after I've taken a TylenolPM. 
Woops.
  

    
Yeah. And I was remembering older stuff. Well. Off to do movies this
weekend. Will go by myself if nobody wants to. So many. So many. And
will comb my books and see what to give her.

Anybody want Vampire Sextet? I'm getting rid of that book. It was ok
to read once but I don't want to read it again. 
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
Mary, good thinking about the archaic language.  I should probably
think of books I liked at a slightly younger age, since reading was
never a problem for me.  (How cool that Holley can get input from a
teacher with your sort of experience!)

Walter Farley -- Oh, he did the _Black Stallion_!  I had that book,
and also _Thunder_ (can't find the author), which was based on a TV
show about another black horse.  (So was _Fury_, based on a 50's show,
but I can't find that one either.)  I couldn't quite get into _Black
Beauty_ or _Misty of Chincoteague_, though.

Maybe some of Twain's stuff has "formal language," but _Huck Finn_
would be hard to understand for the opposite reason!

Will -- Did I wish you a happy birthday at the time?  If not, Happy
Belated Birthday!

I used to *love* Roald Dahl -- especially the Willy Wonka books.  (I
didn't even see the movie until years later.)

And yes, I was thinking of _Stardust_, too.  And though I can't say
what it's like read aloud, I would definitely recommend the
illustrated
version over the non-.  It adds a whole other dimension to the story
that I think is essential.

Authors I couldn't resist around ages 9 thru 11, when I loved reading
the most:

  Beverly Cleary (though most of the Quimby books were written from
Ramona's point of view, it was _Beezus and Ramona_, written from
Beezus's POV, that snagged the heart of this big sister)
  Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi Longstocking fame, but she had many other
great series)
  Laura Ingalls Wilder
  Maud Hart Lovelace (of Betsy, Tacy, and Tib)
  Carolyn Haywood (Betsy books)
  P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins books)

And even now, I'm more inclined to read a book if it's humorous.

(Yeah, I know Holley has already left for the weekend, but anyone can
predict what will happen when you ask this group about books!)
  

    
Wow!  Neil!  You look _really_ handsome in those photos
(http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/it-looked-moodier-once-candles-burne
d.asp
&
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/why-i-cant-die-before-halloween-phot
o.asp).
 You remind me of a very good-looking college professor or something. 
(The coffin ones kind of give me a bad moment, though.  Try not to
show those to your parents, man, or they'll freak.)  Of course, the TV
technician in me is thinking of what a bugger they must have been to
light, especially with you all in black.

Oh, right, it's Fox MOVIE Channel, not a real channel.  So much for my
getting to see it.  But thanks for posting photos.

Get-well wishes to poor Fred.  Sheesh, that cat does NOT play well
with others.

BTW, I finished screening _Neverwhere_ for my mom a few nights ago,
and of course she loved it!  She said to tell you that her favorite
line was, "You are all very stupid people and you do not know
anything," as delivered by Earl Cameron.  <g>

All -- Have a good Memorial Day Weekend!
  

    
Only just skimming posts and jumping back into the fray here. 

Hi! How is everyone?

-squeaks
  

    
Hi, Mrs. Larson!
  

    
Yeah. Those are good suggestions. I think the next books I give her
will be a start on the Pratchett children's books. Like Truckers,
Diggers, Wings and the Johnny books and Maurice and Wee Free Men and
Hat Full of Sky. After that, it'll be anything I can find on my shelf
she might like. I've all the Clemens books. And the Black and Flame
books from Farrel. I never could get into Black Beauty myself. Then,
The Wrinkle in Time and Wonka etc. I actually own quite a lot of books
it looks like that can be given to a girl to read. 
  

    
I've been astonished the last few years to find how much I like
children's books!
  

    
>Farrell

Farley. 

I've been collecting some children's books lately, ones I was fond of
as a child. Sometimes I just remember something and then go out on
half.com, amazon, and ebay to hunt it down (I have a complete
collection of Farley, the 'Ginnie' books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, etc.)
and sometimes I'm rummaging through a garage sale or library sale and
I'll stumble across something and go whoa! I remember this!

Most recently, I went to a giant book store in Nampa (the second
biggest city in Idaho, sort of like the Oakland to Boise's San
Francisco), and ran across an old reader called More Streets and Roads.
The name rang a bell and I flipped through it. It was one of the books
my teacher had given me in second grade when it was obvious that I was
way beyond the stuff they were giving us to read. 

At that same store I also found a lot of the Bobbsey Twins books in
the green bindings, before everything became a 'mystery.'