Some you’ve loved forever, some you’ve never heard of (but now ought to seek out to view): The Library of Congress announced 25 new films added to the National Film Registry, the list of great films we all ought to know about.
This year’s list covers 82 years of cinema, from 1912’s “The Cry of the Children” through 1992’s “El Mariachi” to 1994’s “Forrest Gump.” It’s a very diverse list, from big Hollywood productions through animation, test films and even a series of home movies.
Here’s the list, followed by the press release; the list with descriptions of each film is below the fold.
Films Selected to the 2011 National Film Registry
Allures (1961)
Bambi (1942)
The Big Heat (1953)
A Computer Animated Hand (1972)
Crisis: Behind A Presidential Commitment (1963)
The Cry of the Children (1912)
A Cure for Pokeritis (1912)
El Mariachi (1992)
Faces (1968)
Fake Fruit Factory (1986)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Growing Up Female (1971)
Hester Street (1975)
I, an Actress (1977)
The Iron Horse (1924)
The Kid (1921)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
The Negro Soldier (1944)
Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (1930s-40s)
Norma Rae (1979)
Porgy and Bess (1959)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Stand and Deliver (1988)
Twentieth Century (1934)
War of the Worlds (1953)
The press release:
December 28, 2011
2011 National Film Registry More Than a Box of Chocolates
“Forrest Gump,” “Bambi,” “Stand and Deliver” Among Registry Picks
“My momma always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’” That line was immortalized by Tom Hanks in the award-winning movie “Forest Gump” in 1994. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today selected that film and 24 others to be preserved as cultural, artistic and historical treasures in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
Spanning the period 1912-1994, the films named to the registry include Hollywood classics, documentaries, animation, home movies, avant-garde shorts and experimental motion pictures. Representing the rich creative and cultural diversity of the American cinematic experience, the selections range from Walt Disney’s timeless classic “Bambi” and Billy Wilder’s “The Lost Weekend,” a landmark film about the devastating effects of alcoholism, to a real-life drama between a U.S. president and a governor over the desegregation of the University of Alabama. The selections also include home movies of the famous Nicholas Brothers dancing team and such avant-garde films as George Kuchar’s hilarious short “I, an Actress.” This year’s selections bring the number of films in the registry to 575.
Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant. “These films are selected because of their enduring significance to American culture,” said Billington. “Our film heritage must be protected because these cinematic treasures document our history and culture and reflect our hopes and dreams.”
Annual selections to the registry are finalized by the Librarian after reviewing hundreds of titles nominated by the public (this year 2,228 films were nominated) and conferring with Library film curators and the distinguished members of the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB). The public is urged to make nominations for next year’s registry at NFPB’s website (www. loc.gov/film).
In other news about the registry, “These Amazing Shadows,” a documentary about the National Film Registry, will air nationally on the award-winning PBS series “Independent Lens” on Thursday, Dec. 29, at 10 p.m (check local listings). Written and directed by Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton, this critically acclaimed documentary has also been released on DVD and Blu-ray and will be available through the Library of Congress Shop (www.loc.gov/shop/).
For each title named to the registry, the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation works to ensure that the film is preserved for future generations, either through the Library’s massive motion-picture preservation program or through collaborative ventures with other archives, motion-picture studios and independent filmmakers. The Packard Campus is a state-of-the-art facility where the nation’s library acquires, preserves and provides access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts and sound recordings (www.loc.gov/avconservation/).
The Packard Campus is home to more than six million collection items, including nearly three million sound recordings. It provides staff support for the Library of Congress National Film Preservation Board, the National Recording Preservation Board and the National Registries for film and recorded sound.
Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. It seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.
Below the fold you’ll find a description of each film.
Passage of the Delaware, by Thomas Sully (1819). Now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Hessian? Do my students know what he’s talking about?
What is the other famous painting of this event?
Considering how famous that other painting is, isn’t it almost tragic this one isn’t more famous?
Considering #3, how many other great paintings of U.S. history sit in museums, or in government buildings, waiting to be discovered? Maybe bloggers could help, by finding those paintings, photographing them, and posting the photographs.
Listing of the painting and explanation, at the site for Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts — including the history; the painting was commissioned by North Carolina, intended to hang in its state capitol building. Sully began the painting before getting confirmation of the commission from North Carolina’s governor, however. When the painting was done, it was discovered to be too large for the place it was intended to hang. The painting is 17 feet by 12 feet. It had been in storage since the Boston MFA acquired it in 1903, until hung in the gallery in 2010.
Wall Street Journal article about the painting, and its emergence from a century of hiding – “In Sully’s masterwork, Washington and his army are now on the move. Astride a horse, right hand on his hip, Washington looks confident and proud that his army of 2,400 men with 18 artillery pieces has almost completed the crossing of the treacherous ice-choked Delaware River from Philadelphia, and will soon be fully assembled on the New Jersey shore. A throng of anxious men surrounds him. Gen. Henry Knox is pointing his sword. Gen. Nathanial Greene is mounting his horse. Washington’s servant, William Lee, and a figure who may be Gen. John Sullivan look on uneasily. But the 44-year-old Washington is tranquil and resolute, his face serene. He seems transfigured, as if communing with the gods of fortune. Sully has turned a crucial juncture in time and history into a timeless work of art. “
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Nature and science produce some of the most beatiful stuff, especially in high-speed phtotography, or photo-micrographs, or shots from scanners of various kinds including especially Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM).
I spent three years locked in a lab looking at photographs of Nuclepore filters that had captured dust, pollen, and air pollution in the desert southwest. Magnified about 50,000 times, fly ash from coal-fired power plants become brilliant balls of glassy light; pollen from god-knows-what become intricate, Alhambra-worthy patterned stones, and dust becomes jagged expressionistic sculptures of someone greatly disturbed (but still artistically gifted).
Now we know that proteins fold up in specific ways. Micrographic photos show wiggles of ribbon to you and me.
It’s inspiration to May K.
You and I see tangled ribbons:
To May K the human protein 2-nd PDZ Domain of Mint1 becomes . . .
Thomas Nast helped bring down the crooks at Tammany Hall with cartoons. Boss Tweed, the chief antagonist of Nast, crook and leader of the Tammany Gang, understood that Nast’s drawings could do him in better than just hard hitting reporting — the pictures were clear to people who couldn’t read.
But a cartoon has to get to an audience to have an effect.
Here’s a cartoon below, a comment on the security wall being built in Israel, that got very little circulation in the west at Christmas time. Can you imagine the impact had this drawing run in newspapers in Europe, the U.S., and Canada?
It’s a mashup of a famous oil painting* related to the Christian Nativity, from a London-based artist who goes by the name Banksy. (Warning: Banksy pulls no punches; views shown are quite strong, often very funny, always provocative, generally safe for work unless you work for an authoritarian like Dick Cheney who wants no counter opinions.)
Banksy's modern nativity -- does he ever bother to copyright his stuff, or would he rather you broadcast it?
* At least I thought so in 2008. I can’t find the painting now. Anybody recognize a work underneath Banksy’s re-imagining? Let us know in comments, eh?
The War Against Bugs, by Print Magazine — a Neocide ad from European media.
With all due respect to entomologists, there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about bugs (insects by any other name). These little monsters certainly have ecological significance, but don’t tell me they are fun to have crawling around. Hence, chemical manufacturers have made it their business to find he most efficient means of ridding the pests while retaining the fine upstanding species. Too bad that anything designed to kill will doubtless have ill effects on he eco-system. In he 50s DDT was the magic bullet against such varieties as various potato beetles, coddling moth, corn earworm, cotton bollworm and tobacco budworms (eeeecccchhhh!). Then in 1972, the US Environmental Protection Agency curtailed all use of DDT on crops. The ban did not take hold in other countries until much later, and DDT was vociferously promoted through eerie calls to arms like this poster by Savignac.
Earlier I questioned whether Einstein actually said that. I don’t think he did — but I love the poster and the sentiment, all the same. I haven’t been able to verify the quote in Alice Calaprice’s The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, for example.
In my classroom the air conditioning often did not work last spring, at testing time. When we’d open the windows, we’d get visitors — usually bees, but birds on at least two occasions. The student in the picture has her priorities right.
The poster is just $10.95. Teachers, if a dozen of these appeared in your school, it might make a difference.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Aurel Bacs, International Head of the Watch Department, shares his passion and knowledge of the only known matching pair of gold and enamel singing bird pistols, to be offered at Christie’s Hong Kong Important Watches sale on 30 May 2011.
This is the only known pair of matching singing bird pistols, thought to have been created by Frères Rochat, a Swiss watch, toy and machine maker. Several people have sent me links and alerts to this video over the past several weeks — it’s worth seeing, just to admire the craftsmanship, and inventiveness required to make these things.
No matter how much the Texas State Board of Education wishes to run away from America’s heritage, we can’t.
Nor should we want to.
Propaganda is not a bad word. There is bad propaganda, stuff that doesn’t work. There is propaganda for bad purposes, stuff that promotes bad policies, or evil. But good propaganda is stronger, long-lasting, often full of great artistic merit, and instructive.
Images of Uncle Sam provide clear pictures of what Americans were thinking, from the oldest versions to today.
This poster above is a World War I poster designed to convince Americans to get involved in the war effort. J. C. Leyendecker, a noted illustrator, casts Uncle Sam as a baseball player up to bat. The poster says simply, “Get in the game with Uncle Sam.” Perhaps uniquely, this poster showed Sam in yellow-striped pants, instead of the more traditional red-striped. Could an artist take such liberty today?
Meanwhile, then-president Woodrow Wilson, who had won reelection in 1916 on an anti-war platform, faced the need for American participation in the terrible “Great War” raging in Europe. He and his cabinet knew that American involvement loomed. But how could the government convince the American public that this was necessary? One idea was to create a poster that urged Americans to metaphorically “Get in the Game,” along with their patriotic national symbol, Uncle Sam.
Artist J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) designed the poster, commissioned by the Publicity Committee of the Citizens Preparedness Association, a pro-war organization with federal support which also sponsored “preparedness parades” and other nationalistic activities. Leyendecker himself emigrated from Germany at age eight and was approaching the pinnacle of his career in 1917 when he created this work.
The poster just preceded James Montgomery Flagg’s famous “I Want You” image of Uncle Sam, which later became the best-known likeness of the country’s unofficial symbol. Leyendecker’s version, in spite of his baseball bat, is possibly less affable to contemporary eyes than Flagg’s friendlier Sam. But the bat he holds connected him to many Americans, who perhaps then decided that America should “get in the game.”
Some of this older propaganda had a humorous twist I think is too often missing from modern posters. It was more effective for that, I think.
The image of Sam at bat shows up in many places in the internet world, but most often stripped of its identifying links to Leyendecker. That does disservice to the art, to history, and to Leyendecker, who was one of our nation’s better illustrators for a very long time.
Dick Feynman taught in Rio de Janeiro for a while. He was frustrated at the way Brazilian students of that day learned physics by rote, instead of in labs. In a lecture he looked out from the classroom to the sun dancing on the waves of the Atlantic, and he realized it was a beautiful, brilliant demonstration of light refraction, the topic of the day. Sadly, the students didn’t understand that the beauty before them was a physics problem. (Was that story in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, or What Do You Care What Others Think?)
Here, a marriage of physics, moonlight, spring runoff over a cliff, and modern photography, in Yosemite. If you don’t gasp, call your physician and find a new sensei:
(Programs and maintenance of this park are threatened by Republican budget writers, BTW.)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of our very good art teachers at Moises Molina High School, William Adkins, works with a group called Big Thoughts. Big Thoughts interviews teachers who work with the program about how arts education boosts student achievement in core areas, and how to leverage arts to improve the boost. Adkins had some thoughts about how art really is a core part of education , and on the role of administrators in helping teachers:
Adkins’ students regularly win awards, often outperforming the many more students at our district’s arts magnets. One of his students, Moses Ochieng, too the top prize at the state art meet this year for a brilliant sculpture he did. Moses was my student in U.S. history, too — a great adventure, since he emigrated from Kenya just a few years ago, and he lacks the familiarity with so many American things that we, and the textbooks, and the state tests, take for granted that students know. Ochieng’s art helped focus him on history. It supplemented his studies so that he picked up two years of history work in just one year.
The fictional but very popular memes that environmentalists hate humans, humanity and capitalism wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t blind their believers to larger truths and sensible policies on environmental protection.
One may argue the history of the environmental movement, how most of the originators were great capitalists and humanitarians — think Carnegie, Laurance Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and all the early medical doctors who warned of the dangers of pollution-caused diseases — but it falls on deaf ears on the other sides.
According to the catalogue from Heritage Auctions, this piece of glass was formed in what is now the Libyan Sahara 29 million years ago when a meteoroid struck the sand, creating massive heat that fused sand into glass. This light lemonade colored glass comes from only a small part of the Libyan sands. Tektite is collectible by itself. Some craftsman (unidentified and unplaced in time by Heritage Auctions) carved this piece into a cephalopod.
Taking an uncommonly large and clear specimen, the master lapidarist has carved the form of a malevolent-looking octopus, with superb rugose skin texture and a mass of curling tentacles. With a gorgeous translucence and lovely delicate green/yellow color, this exceptional sculpture measures 2¾ x 2 x 1¾ inches. Estimate: $2,800 – $3,200.
Compared to the giant articulated dinosaurs about 50 feet away from the display, one could easily overlook this little gem. Still, bidding online looked to be pretty active. Is P.Z. still in the British Isles? Is he bidding by internet? Is his Trophy Wife™ planning a Father’s Day surprise?
Tektites should pique your interest, Dear Reader. Glass formed only when interplanetary objects smash into the planet, providing clues to the makeup of our solar system and universe, dating back well before recorded time, found in only a few fields around the Earth. They are the perfect marriage-merger of geology, astronomy, geography, natural history, history and, in this case, art. They are popular among collectors. Who walks away with this one this afternoon?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
BusinessWeek cover, April 18-24, 2011 - Don't play chicken with debt ceiling; chicken image by Jan Hamus/Alamy
Not every one of the Bloomberg Businessweek covers has been a hit, but a lot of them are — vastly more entertaining since Bloomberg took over the old workhorse magazine.
This one packs a political punch along with visual excitement.
And it’s right. Do any Republicans pay attention to the finance and business worlds anymore?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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