Free Post: More Trailer Fun

A few weeks ago, I posted the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Now I am just as excited, because a really really really really really really (really really) awesome trailer just came out for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.



Oh, and here's the teaser trailer, which is not nearly as good:





Anyways... brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! The only thing that could make me happier / more hyper right now would be if my math test were canceled.

Nope, not gonna happen. Oh well. I am content.

Free Post: Jack Johnson

I just wanted to put up this recording of the Jack Johnson song Sitting, Waiting, Wishing because a) it's a great song, b) I can identify with it, and c) I figured that any song I've listened to 40 times in the last day deserves to go up on my blog. So here it is. Enjoy.

Free Post: 'At World's End' Trailer

Over Spring Break we were asked to make two free posts, but I decided to put this up in addition to the other two.

A few days ago the teaser trailer for 'Pirates of the Caribbean Three: At World's End' came out. I love 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' so I'm putting the trailer up. I know that it doesn't relate to English, but I was so excited when I saw it that I can't resist. So here it is (sorry that the film quality isn't that good, but the trailer itself is great so it makes up for it) :



I think I speak for all 'Pirates' fans when I say "SQUEEEEEEE!!" I cannot wait for May 25th... But what I want to know is why is it that Barbossa has more face time than any of the other characters? I mean we almost see him more than Jack! And why does Norrington (he's an Admiral now! :D ) only get a split second while Beckett gets more screen time than Elizabeth?! What is going on here?! *obsesses*


Yeah... sorry but I had to rant. I'm going slightly insane because May 25th is two months and one day away and that is WAY too long. Now I'm off to look for spoilers.

Free Post: Old-Fashioned Voices, Part Two

In my previous post, I talked about the different kinds of old fashioned voices. Now I'm going to try to figure out when those kinds of voices died out.

I used clips from the movies 'Casablanca' and 'The Lady Eve' as examples of old-fashioned voices. Both of these movies were made in the early 40's, a time when old-fashioned voices were still going strong. The government video with the voice of Edward R. Murrow was made in 1951-- but Murrow was older then, and is more famous for his radio broadcasts in the 40's. So we don't know if old-fashioned voices were still used among younger people in the 50's. However, I think it is safe to say that they were, because people were still using them well into the 60's, as can be seen from this clip of the 1964 black comedy film 'Dr. Strangelove':



The accents continued on even into the 70's, as shown by this movie trailer for the 1977 'Star Wars: A New Hope' :



But by the time the 'Star Wars' saga reached 'The Phantom Menace,' old-fashioned voices were almost gone:



When I watched this clip, I was expecting no traces of any old-time accents. But to my surprise, Chancellor Palpatine (played by Ian McDiarmid) has an old-fashioned voice. However, McDiarmid was born in 1944, when old-fashioned voices were the only way people spoke. He was 55 at the time the film was made, and was probably one of the last people to have that accent. Younger people at that time did not have the accent, as can be seen from the younger characters in the movie.

I want to find out when younger people lost the old-fashioned voices. 'Phantom Menace' was made in 1999, so somewhere between then and the 70's, old-fashioned voices all but died out.

'Back to the Future' was made in 1985, and it stars mostly younger actors. This clip shows that by that time, old-fashioned voices are gone. Neither character in this clip-- even Doc, who seems old enough to have an old-fashioned voice-- has an accent:



So now we know that sometime between 1977 and 1985, people stopped being born with old-fashioned voices.

The 1980 Oscar-winning movie 'Apocalypse Now' narrows down the time frame even further. In the famous 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning' scene, there are no old-fashioned voices present:



So at some undetermined point between 1977 and 1980, old-fashioned voices died out. I doubt that anyone speaks with that kind of accent today. Yes, the voices of the past lasted longer than the technology. We heard the accents long after black-and-white film was replaced with color and record machines with tape players and later with CDs. But like everything else from that time, the voices eventually faded away, along with the people.

Free Post: Old-Fashioned Voices Part One

I really love watching old black-and-white movies--like Casablanca, North by Northwest, and other WWII-era movies are my favorites, but I also enjoy Charlie Chaplain-type silent films. What I've noticed in the films that do have sound is that the all the actors and actresses have slight accents. They're not exactly British, but not modern American either-- more like a mix that is distinctly, for lack of a better word, old. I call them 'old-fashioned voices,' and I decided--since it's Spring Break and I have the time-- to try to figure out when they started and when they stopped.

First, here are samples of different accents that all fall under my category of old-fashioned voices:

This clip from the movie 'Casablanca' has several accents in it, but the only character with the accent I'm looking for is Rick-- the other characters are not American and therefore have a different, more foreign old-fashioned voice that I'm not focusing on. Just listen to Rick's voice to hear the 'Tough American' old-fashioned voice. Humphrey Bogart, the actor who plays Rick, is the perfect example of that kind of accent:



Another common accent is the one that most women spoke with. In this clip from the movie 'The Lady Eve,' Barbara Stanwyck, the actress who plays Jeanie, is another perfect example:



The other most-heard old-fashioned accent is the more official, radio-announcer type voice as can be heard here in the voice of Edward R. Murrow in a (rather inaccurate) government safety film on atomic attack:



Murrow's accent is very apparent, but very much absent in the voice of David Strathairn, who plays him in the recently made movie 'Good Night and Good Luck':



Old-fashioned voices are the kind of voices you hear coming from record machines and grainy black-and-white films. No one speaks like that anymore. They are one of the marks of the past, and they've been washed away along with the 'inferior technology' and 'ignorance' of those times. Yes, it is easy to laugh at the government's earnest black-and-white Atomic Safety video that tells you to close your blinds in case of nuclear attack. But those times-- at least for me-- also hold a romantic, sometimes even innocent, feeling that will probably never be captured again.

Free Post: Campaign Ads

Last week in English we were given around ten minutes to free-write about any [appropriate] topic we wanted to. Belatedly, I’ve decided to use this as an excuse to post on a topic that isn’t assigned.

Today when I was riding home from school with my dad, we listened to a recent NPR broadcast on his iPod about political campaign ads. They played ads dating back from the first televised presidential campaign ad: Ike Eisenhower’s Disney-produced cartoon jingle in 1952:

My first reaction to hearing this was incredulity that someone would actually run this for a presidential campaign. But the interesting thing is that, back then, it worked. Or at least it didn’t too much harm—Eisenhower won that year in a landslide election.

Anyways, I got to thinking about what would happen if that kind of ad was played today. I think it would go something like this:

Ad: Bush for President, Bush for President, Bush for President, Bush for President…

Viewer: …what…

Ad: You like Bush, I like Bush, everybody likes Bush (for President)

Viewer: BAAAHAHAHA!

Ad: We don’t want John or Hillary or Barack…

Viewer: Yeah OK not voting for creepy jingle man.

But in the fifties, the commercial was a success. Eisenhower’s idea of putting a political ad on TV quickly caught on. While some politicians such as Adlai Stevenson condemned the idea of political ads ("The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."), most presidential campaigners followed his example and used the television as communication with their voters. Some worked better than others: ads such as the one that can be viewed here: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/candidates/ad.archive/stevenson.mov were not as successful as the strategic attack ads that were later developed, such as this one: http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/election/index.php?nav_action=election&nav_subaction=R&campaign_id=172

Attack ads, though often viewed as unnecessary, are effective. Possibly the most famous attack ad in campaign history doesn’t even mention the name of the candidate’s opponent—but was what some historians view as the message that was the final push that won Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign. It is easy to see why the message was so effective:

It plays off of fear, and also subtly lays the blame on Johnson’s opposition, a man named Goldwater who was noted for his aggressive war tactics and wishes to use nuclear weapons in the war on Vietnam.

This ad is more similar to those played today than that first innocent, jaunty jingle ad run by Eisenhower in 1953.

A recent attack ad run by President Bush in his 2004 campaign ad against John Kerry also plays on fear:

Like the ‘Daisy Girl’ ad, this ad was successful. But this ad was also more than bit a misleading: Kerry suggested budget cuts in the 1990s, before the terrorist attacks—but he wasn’t the only one: so did some Republicans on Bush’s side.

So as you can see, as our country has developed, successful campaign ads have turned from happy jingles with parades, to atomic explosions and killing of children, to misleading attacks on opponents. We’ve gone from positive ads playing on positive things to almost threatening ads that play on fear. I’m not sure I like what that says about our country.