Fun Facts about Altered States

We watched the movie 'Altered States' after class on Friday and in preparation for a film discussion on Monday. I thought that I would share a few fun facts about this rendition of the Jekyll and Hyde myth.

-The actual director (Ken Russell) used was the 27th choice as a director. In essence, no one really wanted to make this movie.
-It was also the first American movie directed by British director Ken Russell.
-Members of the cast and crew of this movie tried the isolation tank, where our main character experiences his hallucinations. William Hurt actually hallucinated while Blair Brown found it very peaceful.
-During the hallucination moments in the film, several of the 'hell' scenes were taken from the 1935 drama 'Dante's Inferno'.

Alright, that's about all that I have for now, I'm not feeling too philosophical right now. I guess more artsy...check out my deviantART page if you want! Here! Yea.....so enjoy!
Love,
Sara :)

Fun Facts about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931 film)

We watched the 1931 film, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in class yesterday. Any movie has it's random fun facts that go along with the making of it. It is especially interesting after you read the book itself and then watch the movie to see the differences. I would highly suggest doing this!!

-The man who played Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde was the third person who was considered for the part, and was picked because the director thought that he could play both the good Doctor and the evil Hyde.
-Another part of this character was the makeup that was used to make him into Hyde very nearly damaged the actor's face.
-The characters of Murial Carew and her father (the fiancé and father of Dr. Jekyll) were taken not from the novel, for they were not in the novel, but from the broadway musical.
-Edgar Norton, who played Poole, the butler, also played Poole on stage starting in 1898.
-In 1934, the Haze Code was implemented which was an act to get rid of any scene in movie that were considered risky. This is the reason why the character of Ivy, played by Miriam Hopkins, was not nominated for an Oscar because most of her scenes were cut after this.
-This was also the first horror movie to win an Academy Award.

Just a few interesting things to think on about movies :) what are some fun fact you have?
Love,
Sara :)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Rober Louis Stevenson, born in 1850 in Edinburgh. He lived what he called a "life of adventure", suffering from lung trouble when he was little and spent most of his childhood sheltered away with his upper-middle-class family. He married Mrs. Fanny Osbourne in 1880, she was 10 years older than him (guess age didn't matter), and it was then that he became obsessed with his work and tried to find a cure of his illness. This search took him all over the world, during this time he wrote many travel essays which were widely published.
In 1883, he published his first full-length fiction novel, Treasure Island. He had published short fiction stories before hand, but it was this first novel that brought him great fame, and to this day Treasure Island remains a popular and classic book for readers of all ages and has been made into many movies. In 1886, he published his second novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which we read in my class for this week. I really enjoy both of these books, and they are quite different!
He also published Kidnapped in 1886 and The Master of Ballantrae in 1889, both Scottish romances.
His death is one thing that really interests me, especially since I have just finished The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I use the words of Vladimir Nabokov, which come from the introductory essay at the beginning of the Signet Classics version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Copyright 1980) because I can come up with no better way of saying it. He died in 1894 in Samoa: "He went down to te cellar to fetch a bottle of his favorite burgundy, uncorked it in the kitchen, and suddenly cried out to his wife: what's the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed? - and fell on the floor. A blood vessel had burst in his brain and it was all over in a couple of hours." (p 44-45)
I leave you with that to dwell on :P
Happy Hump Day, my friends! I think I will be heading out to dinner tonight, so there may be some pictures from that up later, so be warned :P a combination of a date night and a girls' night out...
Love,
Sara :)

The Start of a New Week

It's Sunday. Finally! It has been one hell of a long week! This class I am taking, though fun, is quite a lot of work, I have spent this weekend working on that paper and only got a full rough draft done this morning (NOT good!). But I did go out Friday night with a few friends for a birthday party. We were up in Minneapolis and went to a bar called Williams where we met up with some friends of friends and had a few drinks and a lot of fun! Calling it a girl's night out.

The above picture is Andi, me, and the birthday girl Carly :)

It's also quite dry outside, so make sure to use lotion! :P Yes, this is me giving advice again!

Well, I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend!! :D And look forward to a good week :) In my class we will be moving on to the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde this week! So, be prepared for that change as well :P

Love,

Sara :)

Monsters: Myths and Movies

Yesterday was my first day of my interim (January term) class. The class is called Monsters: Myths and Movies (hence the title of today's post). For those of you who don't know, an interim or January term class is a class that lasts just the month of January, before second semester starts in February. These classes tend to be more intense and meet 4 or 5 days a week for at least 2 hours a day. In essence, it is the equivalent of taking a semester length class and shoving it into a month. I enjoy interim because I can concentrate on just one class instead of having to worry about multiple classes and subject matters all at once. This year I am taking an english class, Monsters: Myths and Movies, which our professor has introduced with two quotes:

    "What we call monsters can be experienced as sublime. They represent powers too vast for the normal forms of life to contain them....By a monster I mean so horrendous presence or apparition that explodes all of your standards for harmony, order, and ethical conduct." ~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

    "Horror films function as nightmares for the individual viewer, as diagnostic eruptions for repressive societies, and as exorcistic or transcendent pagan rituals for supposedly post-pagan societies. They can be analyzed in all these ways because they represent a unique juncture of personal, social, and mythic structure." ~Bruce Kawin, "The Mummy's Pool"

In this class we will be reading six novels, three of them classics and three of them more "re-tellings" of these classics. We are starting out with Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, followed by the "re-telling" called The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. We will then move on to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Rober Louis Stevenson, and the "re-telling" being Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin. The las pair we will be reading is Dracula by Bram Stoker, with Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. As we go through these I will be putting up some notes from class, hopefully better than I have been doing over the past semester... But as the title of the class says, we are also going to be looking at movies! We are gong to watch the 1931 movie "Frankenstein" as well as the 1994 movie "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". For the second group we will watch the 1931 film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and the 1980 film "Altered States". I will say that I almost wish that we were watching parts of the show "Jekyll" from BBC America, it looks freaky but kinda awesome! For our vampire fix, we will be watching the 1931 movie "Dracula" (Bela Lugosi has to be here somewhere!) as well as 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (creative titles here, folks) and also because of the drastic change in recent years we will watch excerpts from the film "Twilight" as we look at how our view of vampires has changed.

That's all I will throw at you today from this class, look for more updates to follow! Happy Friday :D

Love,

Sara :)