in the typical horror movie there are victims, lots
of victims; and as per the unwritten law of horror
movie cliches,

the murderer -

- does not run
- wields a sharp, pointy weapon
- performs the ghastly deed in time with scary,
sourceless, music-like sounds

and the victim

- is annoying in some way
- happens to be in a creepy place
- is sexy, naked and/or not fully dressed
- whistles or sings to lighten the mood
- is surprised by the murderer’s sudden appearance

the scene below features Sacha Baron Cohen’s char-
acter Borat and the Bates Motel of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho

despite its brevity, this scene manages to combine
all the above-mentioned horror movie clichés;

leaving us shocked, horrified and somehow pleased
that there is order and predictability in the horror
movie universe

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) is considered by many to
be one of the best films of the 1960s; and THE best
Rock Film of all time

it starred The Beatles and it took Beatlemania to
even greater heights

A Hard Day’s Night was directed by Richard Lester,
who introduced cinematic techniques that made
the film part of movie history

these techniques include multi-angle filming of
live action, as well as rapid-paced cutting that is
in sync with the music

to this day, critics, directors and “cultural historians”
have praise for Lester’s work

finally, the cinematic innovations introduced in A Hard
Day’s Night helped to shape the music videos that
were later to appear on MTV

MTV acknowledged Lester’s influence with an award
that dubbed him the “Father of the Music Video”

in fact, many consider the clip below, one of the film’s
scenes, to be the first modern music video

Can’t Buy Me Love

French inventor Louis Le Prince (1841-1890) is
considered by many to be the inventor of the motion
picture camera;

and he has been credited with shooting Cinema’s
first experimental motion pictures

Le Prince, however, is a relatively unknown figure;
cultural sociologist Richard Howells writes,

Le Prince had indeed succeeded making pictures move
at least seven years before the Lumière brothers and
Thomas Edison, and so suggests a re-writing of the
history of early cinema.
- Screen vol.47 #2, p.179~200, 2006

Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed in October 1888, is
believed to be earliest surviving motion picture

it was shot at the home of Le Prince’s mother-in-law,
Sarah Whitley in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England

Ms. Whitley and Le Prince’s eldest son, Adolphe,
are featured and can therefore be thought of as
Cinema’s first actors

the 2-second experimental film was shot at 12 frames
per second

Roundhay Garden Scene

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, Le Prince’s second film,
is also 2 seconds long; it documents Leeds’ 1888
horse-drawn and pedestrian traffic

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

for more on Louis Le Prince, check out
E. Kilburn Scott’s Adventures in Cybersound,
The Career of L. A. A. Le Prince

To be, or not to be? - that is a question; but a
still better question is -

Are you anybody’s favorite person?

better because it affects the heart as well as the
head, and likely more so

it is a question that we can not only PonderAbout,
but also FeelAbout

and for some, it can be a life changing question

Are You The Favorite Person Of Anybody? is the title
and subject of the short film below

it is directed by Miguel Arteta and written by
Miranda July

you can find out more about them and their film
here

in the SciFi classic Forbidden Planet (1956), we see
an inconceivably large mega-computer; one that
occupies a underground complex some 40 miles long
and 7,800 levels deep

it had been created by an extinct race, the Krell

check it out in the excerpt below; it ends with a
question, posed by Commander John J. Adams, who
is played by Leslie Nielsen . .

What’s it all for?

before too long, Commander Adams learns that the
Krell had designed this mega-computer to make their
every wish a reality; an instant reality

however, this race wrought its own destruction
when it failed to take into account its darkside

like us, the Krell possessed what Freud called an Id;
that primitive, amoral, ego-centric part of the psyche
associated with aggressive and destructive drives -

a part of us that we typically are able to suppress

in Forbidden Planet, we discover that when the Krell
threw the switch on their mega-computer, the power
of their darkside was infinitely multiplied, their des-
tructive impulses were quickly acted out, and they
self-destructed in a single night

check out this second clip; once again the monsters
of the Id are unleashed, and the mystery of the
Krell’s disappearance is resolved

in this last clip we see an example of pioneering
work on the brain-computer interface; does this ring
any bells?

as science are proceeds down that path of using the
power of the computer to make our wishes reality,
how close will we come to that point where the
computer acts out our destructive impulses? -

that point when we inadvertently unleash our darker,
destructive drives

then again perhaps somewhere, in some top-secret
lab, it has already happened