Douglas Keesey
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628466973
- eISBN:
- 9781628467024
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628466973.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The ...
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Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek. Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works. What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, the book takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films.Less
Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek. Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works. What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, the book takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films.
Jay Dorfman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199795581
- eISBN:
- 9780197563175
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199795581.003.0004
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Equipment and Technology
Mrs. Jones has 14 years of teaching under her belt. She received her music education degree from an excellent state university program and completed a master’s in ...
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Mrs. Jones has 14 years of teaching under her belt. She received her music education degree from an excellent state university program and completed a master’s in music education early in her career during the summers. After teaching at several levels, she has settled in a good junior high school position in an upper middle-class neighborhood. The music department—she and two other teachers—is a collaborative group that consistently turns out strong performances for the school and community. About five years ago, Mrs. Jones noticed that technology was becoming an increasingly important part of many of the school music programs she considered to be on par with her own. She had introduced some technology in her orchestra class—she used notation software to create warm-up exercises and often played listening examples for the students that she stored on her iPod. So, with the same enthusiasm that she approaches most of the parts of her job, she approached her principal about funding a computer lab for the music department. Her request was met with excitement. The principal agreed to set up a lab dedicated to the music department and to schedule a class for Mrs. Jones to teach called Music Technology for the following fall. There was no established curriculum for the class, but Mrs. Jones would have the summer to assemble the curriculum and lesson plans, in consultation with the principal and the other music teachers. They all recognized that starting this class would bring new students to their excellent music department and could only draw more public attention to their good work. The lab would have 15 student stations and an additional station for the teacher. None of the music teachers or the school’s administrators had any expertise in designing computer labs, so they left that task up to the district’s architects. The information technology (IT) department was enlisted to set up all of the hardware and software and to make appropriate network and server connections, with enough time for Mrs. Jones to get used to the lab before the school year would begin.
Less
Mrs. Jones has 14 years of teaching under her belt. She received her music education degree from an excellent state university program and completed a master’s in music education early in her career during the summers. After teaching at several levels, she has settled in a good junior high school position in an upper middle-class neighborhood. The music department—she and two other teachers—is a collaborative group that consistently turns out strong performances for the school and community. About five years ago, Mrs. Jones noticed that technology was becoming an increasingly important part of many of the school music programs she considered to be on par with her own. She had introduced some technology in her orchestra class—she used notation software to create warm-up exercises and often played listening examples for the students that she stored on her iPod. So, with the same enthusiasm that she approaches most of the parts of her job, she approached her principal about funding a computer lab for the music department. Her request was met with excitement. The principal agreed to set up a lab dedicated to the music department and to schedule a class for Mrs. Jones to teach called Music Technology for the following fall. There was no established curriculum for the class, but Mrs. Jones would have the summer to assemble the curriculum and lesson plans, in consultation with the principal and the other music teachers. They all recognized that starting this class would bring new students to their excellent music department and could only draw more public attention to their good work. The lab would have 15 student stations and an additional station for the teacher. None of the music teachers or the school’s administrators had any expertise in designing computer labs, so they left that task up to the district’s architects. The information technology (IT) department was enlisted to set up all of the hardware and software and to make appropriate network and server connections, with enough time for Mrs. Jones to get used to the lab before the school year would begin.
