Films Research Articles

Detecting women: gender and the Hollywood detective film

Detecting women: gender and the Hollywood detective film

Screen‐printed gold thick films for electrochemical sensor applications

AbstractScreen‐printed gold electrodes have been assembled in Low Temperature Co‐fired Ceramics technology and characterised and tested for applications in electrochemical analytics. They were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and by cyclovoltammetry in sulphuric acid and of typical redox couples such as hexacyanoferrate and quinhydrone. The electrodes differ in surface morphology, microstructure with the formation of preferential crystal orientation and exhibit different real surface sizes depending on the chosen gold paste. After pre‐treatment in sulphuric acid an almost reversible behaviour can be achieved however differences between the thick films occur at high scan rates and especially with quinhydrone. Differences in the sensitivity of the thick films at low analyte concentration can be explained by their surface properties.

Crime, History, and Hollywood: Learning Criminal Justice History through Major Motion Pictures

In this article, the author discusses the pedagogical value of teaching a criminal justice history course through the use of major motion pictures. He examines the past use of film in academia, specifically the criminal justice academy, and highlights the gap in the literature associating historical films with criminal justice history. The article then proceeds to discuss the manner in which Hollywood often portrays history and include criminal justice history, and presents an example through the Steven Spielberg movie Amistad. The article also describes the author’s experience in creating and teaching a criminal justice history films course.

Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era (review)

Reviewed by: Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era Jeff Allred Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff. Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2009. 328 pp. $35.00. Lauren Sklaroff ’s book examines a period in African American cultural history that often falls between the stools of the 1920s New Negro movement and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Her study of struggles over the cultural representation of African Americans in the New Deal era differs markedly from much recent work in African American studies (and ethnic studies more broadly): one searches in vain for accounts of radical experiments in aesthetic form, the articulation of heretofore silenced voices from the militant margins, the refunctioning of mainstream cultural forms for counterhegemonic goals, and the like. Instead, one finds the more sober yet strikingly fresh story of how the middling strata of cultural workers—primarily bureaucrats serving New Deal cultural programs, but also advocacy groups like the NAACP, performers working in the cultural industries, etc.— struggled to liberalize representations of African Americans within the cultural mainstream. Stories about cultural middle ranks tend to lack the punch of accounts of avant-gardes and movements from the margins, and Sklaroff ’s book does become somewhat repetitive in its account of the various straddles and compromises one associates with liberal politics. But the breadth of her account, spanning a wide range of genres, media, and cultural agents, as well as the intensity with which she analyzes the internal tensions within each site, lend the book an unexpected dynamism. Sklaroff ’s book argues that the cultural programs of the New Deal—including the familiar federal projects for theater, art, music, and writing, but also, especially during war mobilization, offices dedicated to film and radio—promoted progressive representations of African Americans. White liberals and leftists within the New Deal cultural apparatus collaborated with African American leaders, bureaucrats, and artists in a broad-based effort to dispel minstrel-tinged performance traditions and usher in new, more progressive roles for black performers. In doing so, Sklaroff emphasizes, they “worked within the tightest of spaces,” hemmed in by inadequate budgets, racist resistance at the state level, the enforced “unity” of war mobilization, and the rising tide of intolerance of “un-American activities” that lead to HUAC [End Page 544] and McCarthyism (2). The book thus offers an ironic narrative in which grand plans for new cultural forms, forums, and styles are diverted, diminished, and frustrated at many points while nonetheless improving the cultural climate for African Americans in heretofore underappreciated ways. Sklaroff ’s methodological focus throughout is not on cultural products but on processes: rather than the more traditional ideological reading of texts, she offers a peek behind the curtain covering the messy collaborations that produce culture. In this way her work diverges from past studies of similar terrain—Nicholas Natanson’s The Black Image in the New Deal (1992), for example—that emphasize the inadequate or falsifying white-authored representations of African Americans in the period. Rather, she reveals the agency (albeit highly constrained) of African Americans as filterers, shapers, and co-producers of the images of blackness consumed by the masses. Her well-chosen case studies recall the wide net cast by the New Deal’s antiracist efforts: on the stage (the Theater Project’s “swingcopated” take on Gilbert and Sullivan, Swing Mikado); in the arena (Joe Louis’s boxing demonstrations for fellow GIs); on the airwaves (the African American variety show Jubilee); and on the screen (the Bureau of Motion Pictures’ promotion of antiracist imagery in Hollywood films). In each case, she underscores the modest victories notched by cultural workers amid political pressure from conservative legislators, hostile elements within the American public, and unimaginative government officials. Sklaroff ’s account of the African American poet and critic Sterling Brown’s role in the production of the Federal Writers’ Project’s American Guide vividly illustrates the payoff of her approach. Brown was appointed head of Negro Affairs within the FWP in 1936, the highest post held by an African American within the entire Works Progress...

Der banale Internationalismus

This paper hypothesizes that international contests in sport and art promote national self-definitions based on world culture rather than on ideals concerned with cultural particularism. These new kinds of national self-images and self-ideals are closely connected with being successful within the frame of a shared international culture rather than expressing cultural uniqueness. The paper analyzes three different fields of international competition—sport, music, and cinema—and related contests like the Olympic Games, the Eurovision Song Contests, and the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards (Oscars).

Reaction time: how to edit movies

Statistical Style Analysis is applied to the editing of dialogue scenes in motion pictures for the first time, to see if film editors have distinctive personal editing styles. The answer is that some definitely do, but others only do so in a minor and limited way.

The Status of Cinematography Today

As anyone involved with feature film and/or TV production knows, cinematography has recently been experiencing acceleration in the routine use of digital motion picture cameras as viable alternatives to shooting with film. The beginning of this transitional process started with George Lucas in April 2000.

Lost (and Found) Baseball

Agloomy fact of film history is that more than half the movies made during the silent film era (pre-1927) are lost-vanished into the mists with the passing generations.One of the culprits is the evolution of film technology. For decades, prints and master materials of films were generated on nitrocellulose film stock, which deteriorates over time. Across the years, archivists have recovered lost films in rotting film cans that were hidden away under piles of boxes in grandma's attic or deep in the bowels of motion picture studio storage facilities. When a can was pried open-if it could be pried open-all that remained was its contents in various stages of corrosion. The chemically deteriorating celluloid may have become sticky, or even solidified into a mass, or was coated in varying amounts of nitrate dust. Some images still could be seen and identified while those on other frames simply had dissolved.Beyond the issues relating to the longevity of film stock, another practical reality of motion pictures comes into play here. One can view a film as a reflection of history or a mirror of the era and culture that from which it was produced. One also can view a film as a work of art. However, an unavoidable fact of the film industry is that a moving image (whether it was made by a major Hollywood studio, a poverty-row studio, an independent outfit, or a producer of newsreels) is a product, no different from an automobile churned out in Detroit or a keg of beer from Milwaukee. Unless they are home movies shot by amateur camerapersons or five-minute or five-hour-long non-narrative films, moving images are made strictly for commercial purposes, to be marketed to the public with the expectation that they will turn a profit. Furthermore, in the pre-television/ pre-VHS/pre-DVD era, a film that had completed its theatrical play was the equivalent of yesterday's newspaper. Simply put, it was old news. Beyond the reissue of a popular hit, there were no existing venues in which films could be repackaged and resold. So they often were discarded-tossed into a dumpster along with last night's stale fish and rotting vegetables.Some enterprising souls-for example, the powers who worked for Walt Disney- realized that, even theatrically, a film did not have to be the equivalent of a Gone with the Wind to be recycled every few years and marketed to new audiences. This was logical, particularly with regard to the children's films produced by Disney. Every few years, a fresh generation of kids was ripe for introduction to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snow White. As a result, before it became stylish (not to mention profitable), Disney took extra-special care to preserve its product.That studio was not the first to grasp the concept of remarketing its product. In 1925, Eastman Kodak established the Kodascope Library, which rented 16mm versions of popular films to institutions and private collectors for noncommercial screenings. Kodascope features generally were edited down to between four and five reels (with one full reel lasting approximately eleven minutes) and were sepia or amber-tinted, while short films usually were unedited. While in business, the Kodascope Library marketed more than 700 films. Many exist to this day, and are coveted by film collectors.But such was not the case pre-1920. As a result, an immeasurable number of moving images from that era exist only in faded memory.To be sure, a handful of baseball- related feature-length films were produced before 1920. Those that are considered lost include Right Off the Bat (1915, Arrow), starring Mike Donlin; Somewhere in Georgia (1916, Sunbeam), featuring Ty Cobb; and Casey at the Bat (1916, Triangle), with DeWolf Hopper- not to be confused with a 1922 DeForest Phonofilm which utilizes the sound-on-film technology developed by Theodore Case and features a hammy Hopper reciting the poem that earned him immortality. Of the early non-baseball films in which ballplayer-turned-actor Donlin appeared, prints exist only for Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917, States Rights); copies of Jack Spurlock, Prodigal (1918, Fox), Brave and Bold (1918, Fox), and The Unchastened Woman (1918, Rialto De Luxe-George Kleine System) all have vanished. …

The Changing Seasons of Mark Harris's It Looked Like Forever : Henry Wiggen as Athlete and Everyman

Mark Harris's It Looked Like Forever, the last of his four Henry Wiggen novels, has received far less critical commentary than the first two, The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly. The third Wiggen novel--A Ticket for a Seamstitch--has suffered the same neglect, but as a short comic novella originally written for Life magazine (but never published there), clearly lacks the gravity of the other three and thus there is logic to its failure to attract much attention from scholars of baseball literature. The neglect of It Looked Like Forever, though, is curious, given that unfolds and examines the end of Henry's life as a ballplayer. Granted, The Southpaw is accomplished and appealing novel, introducing young Henry as a sort of Huck Finn with a fastball--a rube on the surface, but capable of coming of age on the big stage in the big city against the backdrop of the Korean War. Add to the maturation tale Henry's vernacular narration, linking the novel to the literary tradition of baseball established by Lardner, and there is much to like about The Southpaw. Similarly, Bang the Drum Slowly, with its tragic plot and subsequent motion picture popularity, casts a shadow over It Looked Like Forever, a novel written in 1979, over twenty years after the relatively short burst of creativity (1953-57) that produced its three predecessors. Though The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly are fine novels, the quality of neither justifies Christian Messenger's offhand dismissal of It Looked Like Forever as an ill-advised comeback. (1) Contemporary reviews of the novel were mixed. Among the more negative reviews, Joseph Epstein argued that it goes on too long and will be incomprehensible to someone who has not been following baseball closely. (2) At the opposite extreme, Richard Stern, in a review of several novels, singled out It Looked Like Forever as a work of narrative perfection. (3) Neither misguided comeback nor perfect narrative, the final novel of the Wiggen tetralogy is one Harris said had been on [his] mind for quite some years, and one that has much to offer in its treatment of middle age for both athletes and everymen. (4) At first glance, It Looked Like Forever may seem a bit cliche. It is often said that a professional athlete dies two deaths, the first at the close of his or her career, and the second, of course, the natural death everyone must face. Both athletes and sports commentators alike occasionally repeat this idea--usually in vox gravitas to give the weight of profound wisdom--as yet another piece of evidence of the exceptional nature of athletes. This early but metaphoric death is much of the subject matter of It Looked Like Forever, but Mark Harris's skill as novelist elevates the theme of double death beyond sports cliche. Harris certainly recognizes the professional athlete's dilemma of having to give up his trade at age when most people are entering the prime of their careers, and much of the interest the novel generates comes from its careful examination of Henry's difficulty in accepting life after baseball. The novel is further complicated when Harris portrays Henry, the mythical ace of the New York Mammoths' pitching staff, as a middle-aged everyman in addition to aging ballplayer. Thus, Henry's struggles with his loss of youthful power are not the stuff of some ESPN documentary, exploited for entertainment, but a psychological experience artistically crafted to evoke sympathy and under-standing--if not pity and terror--for both his plight and his means of coming to terms with becoming one of many, as his wife puts it, younger older persons like you and me. (5) AN ATHLETE DYING MIDDLE-AGED Henry's struggle to accept his role as former baseball star and younger older person emerges in a fairly straightforward plot. At the funeral of his longtime manager, Dutch Snell, he learns he has been passed over to be Dutch's successor, a position he always believed would fall to him given his long, illustrious career with the Mammoths. …

Sanctioned Daydreams: Music, Pictures, and Architecture

The experience of viewing any commercial motion picture, whether a film classic or forgettable recent release, can remind one of the historic links between the sound film—in fact all moving-image entertainment—and nineteenth-century concert life. That link rests in a habit of visual thinking and narrative imaging spurred by listening that lent concerts their popularity in the late nineteenth century. The popularity of going to the movies and movie and television watching since the mid-twentieth century are phenomena that emerged from the widespread success of the central public high art of the nineteenth century: concert music (inclusive of opera). Whatever popularity concert life enjoyed rested on the unintended uses to which the literate and largely prosperous urban public put listening. The sonic variety and range of the Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian orchestra (e.g., Mahler, Debussy, Strauss) and the prior development of rhetoric and symbolism within musical practices and forms evocative of conventional narrative—including the suggestion of interior rumination and description of external reality—lent themselves to a species of visual listening and daydreaming based on a complex pattern of correspondence between musical expression and experience. 1 By the turn of the century, individuals with sufficient means and education flocked to concerts to experience something fantastic, psychologically potent, and therefore desirable: the opportunity to free themselves, albeit briefly, from the relentless quotidian routine mirrored in the conventional allocation and construct of time. The concert offered a temporal experience in which time was recalibrated beyond the clock. Music expanded and contracted time; it lent the elapse of time an intensity unavailable through speech and everyday life. Symphonic instrumental music—whether as brief as Mussorgsky’s twelve-minute Night on Bald Mountain or as lengthy as Mahler’s eighty-minute Sixth Symphony—created a space for a subjective experience of time defined by an internal stream of mental pictures or images crafted by each

Molecular dynamics simulation of uniaxial deformation of thin Cu film and Al-Cu heterostructure

The paper discusses the effect of free surfaces and interfaces on mechanical characteristics of a thin Cu film and an Al-Cu film heterostructure. It is shown that the interface of the cyclically deformed Al-Cu heterostructure evolves from a chessboard distribution with a period dependent on the degree of inconsistency of the material lattice constants to anew more energy-beneficial distribution of hillocks and dimples with spatial scales dependent on the film thickness and specimen dimensions.

On split Dynamic Time Warping for robust Automatic Dialogue Replacement

In this article, we present LipSynch, a software tool that can be used for the automatic replacement of speech dialogues in motion pictures, video or television series. The system operates in two steps: during analysis, the timing relationships between the speech segments of the dialogues that serve as a timing reference and the corresponding speech segments in the replacement dialogues are measured by means of a split Dynamic Time Warping algorithm. The obtained warping paths are then processed and used to synthesize high-quality natural-sounding speech dialogues that are precisely time-synchronized with the reference dialogues. Subjective audio-visual listening tests performed within the context of a difficult Automatic Dialogue Replacement task demonstrated that LipSynch achieves a significant improvement compared to the industry-standard benchmark VocALign, both in terms of achieved lip-synchronization accuracy as well as in overall speech quality of the synthesized dialogues.

Compositional and microstructural evolution during annealing of Terfenol-D nanoparticulate films

Abstract

9-6 ダンスリズムの逐次評価に向けた映像の主成分分析(第9部門ヒューマンインフォメーション2)

9-6 ダンスリズムの逐次評価に向けた映像の主成分分析(第9部門ヒューマンインフォメーション2)

DVD sales and the R-rating puzzle

In the last decade, attendance at movie theaters has been relatively stagnant, while sales of digital versatile discs (DVDs) have grown dramatically. In this paper, we look at the factors determining sales of individual DVDs in the United States. Using data on new motion pictures released on DVD between 2006 and 2008, we find the demand for new DVDs is price-inelastic and that DVD sales are counter-cyclical. We find that previous box office success has strong positive effects on DVD sales. Production budget also has a positive effect on DVD sales, albeit indirectly through its effect on box office revenues. Critical acclaim has significant positive effects on both box office revenue and DVD sales, but the effect is smaller in regard to DVDs. There is some evidence to suggest that DVD sales are higher for movies with more sexual content and more violent content and lower for movies with more profanity, but these effects are indirect through the changes in the box office of these movies. We find that sales of R-rated DVDs are not as dependent upon critical acclaim as movies of other ratings, and are thus less risky for movie studios to produce. Our findings provide another explanation for the R-rating puzzle.

Bi2WO6 Inverse Opals: Facile Fabrication and Efficient Visible‐Light‐Driven Photocatalytic and Photoelectrochemical Water‐Splitting Activity

Photonic crystals have attracted extensive interest for their potential applications in manipulating light in nontraditional ways based on photonic band-structure concepts. [ 1 ] In a photonic crystal, light with certain frequencies is forbidden to propagate due to a photonic stop band arising from the periodic modulation of the refractive index. [ 2 ] Slow light propagation near this stop band is a unique property of photonic crystals, and is of particular interest for enhancing the light energy-conversion effi ciency in solar cells, the hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting, and photocatalytic processes for environmental remediation. [ 3 ] It has been reported that TiO 2 inverse-opal fi lms exhibit signifi cantly increased photocatalytic effi ciencies as compared with conventional TiO 2 fi lms. This enhancement of the effi ciency is generally attributed to the improved interaction of light with TiO 2 due to the low group velocities of light near the stop-band edge, improved light harvesting due to the multiple scattering effect in the inverse-opal structure, and continuous pore channels that facilitate the transfer of reactant molecules. [ 3 a,c,d]

Cinematography and character depiction

This essay investigates the ways in which cinematography can be used in depicting characters effectively in the motion picture medium. Since an aspiring filmmaker may be overwhelmed by the expansive field of cinematography, this essay aims to demystify and systematise this aspect of filmmaking. It combines information from written sources (mostly text books on filmmaking and cinematography) with observations made from viewing recent and older feature films. The knowledge is organised under the three main headings of lighting, camera view point and the camera’s mode of perception. The outcome is an accessible and systematised foundation for film makers to consult as an entry point into understanding the relationship between character depiction and cinematography:“Cinematography captures and expresses what a character isfeeling – their attitude towards the rest of the world, their interior state” Ian Gabriel, director of Forgiveness (2004) [personal interview 2009].

Organic Non-Volatile Memory Device: Floating-Gate Organic Thin Film Transistor

A new structure is proposed for organic thin film transistors (OTFT) and the operation of the device is presented. The threshold voltage of this device can be adjusted by controlling the quantity of electric charge on floating gate, and the different threshold voltages can be used to store two different states: ”0” and ”1”. So this device can be used as organic non-volatile memory device. This device is studied by the method of numeric simulation, and the study shows this memory device has a large memory window about 4 V and good programmable memory characteristics. This new structure memory device can be widely used in the filed of information storage.

Mental health at screen: the movies mediating learning in nursing graduation course

ABSTRACTObjective: to analyze the contributions of movies on learning process during nursing graduation, with emphasis on health mental area. Method: this study was based on action research, for which a programming of movies was planned and presented to second-year students of the Centro Universitário Serra dos Órgãos Nursing School. Data appreciation was based on contents analyses from individual reports and interviews with these students. Results: students accounts showed important matters that were presented by five categories. They concern on approach with health mental area made easy because of the movies, theoretical consolidation on mental health arising from the movies, critical reflections about social subjects on health mental area engendered by films, mobilization of sensibility before people with mental disorders and reflections about professional acting motivated by movies. Conclusions: using movies during nursing graduation was a powerful learning strategy for mental health area. It was able to contribute significantly to cognitive and affective development of students. Descriptors: nursing; teaching; mental health; video-audio media.RESUMOObjetivo: analisar as contribuições do cinema no processo de ensino-aprendizagem na formação de enfermeiros, com ênfase no campo da Saúde Mental. Método: estudo baseado em pesquisa-ação, para a qual foi construída uma programação com filmes apresentados aos estudantes do 4º período do Curso de Graduação em Enfermagem do UNIFESO no ano de 2010. A análise dos dados teve como referencial teórico a análise de conteúdo a partir de resenhas individuais e entrevistas realizadas com os estudantes. Resultados: os relatos dos estudantes evidenciaram questões importantes que foram apresentadas a partir de cinco categorias, que versaram sobre a aproximação da área de Saúde Mental facilitada pelo cinema, a consolidação teórica em Saúde Mental a partir dos filmes, as reflexões críticas sobre questões sociais na área de Saúde Mental geradas pelos filmes, a mobilização da sensibilidade frente aos portadores de transtornos mentais e as reflexões sobre a atuação profissional disparada pelos filmes assistidos. Conclusão: o cinema se apresentou como uma estratégia potente de ensino-aprendizagem para área de Saúde Mental no Curso de Enfermagem, capaz de contribuir significativamente no desenvolvimento de cognição e afetividades. Descritores: enfermagem; ensino; saúde mental; mídia audiovisual.RESUMENObjetivo: analizar las contribuciones del cine en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la formación de enfermeros, con énfasis en el campo de la Salud Mental. Método: estudio basado en investigación-acción, para la cual fue construida una programación con películas, presentadas a los estudiantes del 4º período de 2010 de la Licenciatura en Enfermería de la UNIFESO. El análisis de los datos ha tenido como referencial teórico el análisis de contenido a partir de reseñas individuales y entrevistas realizadas a los estudiantes. Resultados: los relatos de los estudiantes evidenciaron cuestiones importantes, presentadas a partir de cinco categorías, que versaron sobre la aproximación del área de Salud Mental facilitada por el cine, la consolidación teórica en Salud Mental a partir de las películas, las reflexiones críticas sobre cuestiones sociales en el área de Salud Mental generadas por los largometrajes, la movilización de la sensibilidad frente a los portadores de trastornos mentales y las reflexiones sobre la actuación profesional mostrada por las películas vistas. Conclusión: el cine se ha mostrado como una potente estrategia de enseñanza-aprendizaje en el área de Salud Mental en la Licenciatura de Enfermería, capaz de contribuir significativamente al desarrollo de cognición y afectividades. Descriptores: enfermería; enseñanza; salud mental; medios audio visuales.

Genealogy of extremal particles of branching Brownian motion

AbstractBranching Brownian motion describes a system of particles that diffuse in space and split into offspring according to a certain random mechanism. By virtue of the groundbreaking work by M. Bramson on the convergence of solutions of the Fisher‐KPP equation to traveling waves, the law of the rightmost particle in the limit of large times is rather well understood. In this work, we address the full statistics of the extremal particles (first‐, second‐, third‐largest, etc.). In particular, we prove that in the large t‐limit, such particles descend with overwhelming probability from ancestors having split either within a distance of order 1 from time 0, or within a distance of order 1 from time t. The approach relies on characterizing, up to a certain level of precision, the paths of the extremal particles. As a byproduct, a heuristic picture of branching Brownian motion “at the edge” emerges, which sheds light on the still unknown limiting extremal process. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.