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David Last

Movie

Inception is a 2010 science fiction film, written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The character consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious mind of his targets while they are asleep and dreaming. Unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life in exchange for an almost impossible task: “inception”, the planting of an idea into a target’s subconscious.

• Inception was first developed by Christopher Nolan, based on the notion of “exploring the idea of people sharing a dream space — entering a dream space and sharing a dream.
• Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about dream-stealers, presenting the idea to Warner Bros
• Filming spanned six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada in late November of the same year.
• Inception was officially budgeted at $160 million, a cost that was split
between Warner Bros. and

Avant Garde:
Showed enthusiasm for mankind to escape from everyday reality to dreams.

Importance:
It influenced future movies for depicting a altered perception reality.

T.V. Show



Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. Regularly depicts the changing moods and social mores of 1960s America.

• Mad Men is set in the 1960s, initially at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City, and later at the newly created firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce
• Mad Men has received critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won multiple awards, including thirteen Emmys and four Golden Globes
• It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning it in 2008, 2009, and 2010
• Each episode has a budget between $2–2.5 million

Avant Garde: Mad Men depicts parts of American society and culture of the 1960s, highlighting cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, feminism, adultery, homophobia, racism and anti-Semitism.

Influence: Fashion designer Michael Kors based his 2008 fall collection in part on Mad Men. A Mad Men DVD spotted at the elbow of Barack Obama aboard campaign plane. Mad Men spiked a rise in baby names…weird.

Art

Burj Khalifa a.k.a Burj Dubai, Dubai Tower
Dubai Tower is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is currently the tallest man-made structure ever built!

• 828 m (2,717 ft)!
• Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009.
• The tower’s architecture and engineering Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago
• Adrian Smith as chief architect
• Bill Baker as chief structural engineer.
• The total cost for the project was about US $1.5 billion! “Downtown Dubai” development, US $20 billion.
• Earth’s tallest freestanding structure to the Middle East where the Great Pyramid of Giza claimed this about 4,000 yrs. before being surpassed by Lincoln Cathedral
• The first world’s tallest structure in history to include residential space
• World’s highest installation of an aluminum and glass facade, at a height of 512 m (1,680 ft)
• World’s highest nightclub (144th floor).
• Two men descended the vertical drop at a speed of up to 220 km/h (140 mph), with enough time to open their parachutes 10 seconds into the 90 second jump.

Avant Garde: The way technology has evolved for humans to make a structure of steel to a height to rival the birds of the air.

Influence: Countries will be jealous; therefore, will try to find ways to make structures higher, energy efficient, and magnificent.

David Once More

Avatar
Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fantasy film written and directed by James Cameron.
• mid-22nd century, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na’vi—a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora.
• Work on the language for the film’s extraterrestrial beings began in summer 2005/Na’vi language has a vocabulary of about 1000 words, with some 30 added by Cameron
• Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006
• The film broke several box office records during its release and became the highest-grossing film to date in the U.S. and Canada and also worldwide, surpassing Titanic :((
• Moreover, Cameron signed with 20th Century Fox to produce two sequels, making Avatar the first of a planned trilogy.

David Continued

Will Smith (David)
Willard Christopher Smith, Jr.
Smith is an American actor, film producer, pop rapper, and father. Newsweek declared Smith as “the most powerful actor on the planet” followed by Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller. Smith’s worldwide career box office is over $4.4 billion dollars. On top of everything else, Smith is holds the record of having eight consecutive films gross over $100 million. In addition, the sole actor to have eight consecutive films in which were #1 in the domestic box office tally.
Smith has several nominations in Golden Globe and Academy awards. Surprisingly, Smith has yet to win an Academy. Fortunately, Smith has won numerous Grammys.

• Born in raised in Philly
• Had a Scholarship to MIT
• DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince(1st Grammy in Rap Category)
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air http://youtu.be/87tkT81fp5Y
• Breakthrough Independence Day

• Possible movie about Barack Obama after presidency maybe he will win Oscar then

David Again

Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history.
• Ranked the richest African American of the 20th century
• greatest black philanthropist in American history
• and was once the world’s only black billionaire
• according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world
• her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race
The Oprah Effect
• The power of Winfrey’s opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices
• Effect so strong the stock and beef plummeted, therefore she was sued lol
• (She also has the effect to make people go crazy)

David

Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, United Kingdom. Simply, Dubstep are tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples and occasional vocals.

• Dubstep releases date back to 1998 (experimental, instrumental) tried to incorporate funky elements of breakbeat into B-sides
• Dubstep is rooted within Jamaican dub music which is considered the subgenre reggae
• Mainly and underground scene, with increase in mainstream popularity in the late 2000s
• Influence of Dubstep on commercial or popular genre can be seen as far back to 2007 Britney Spear used Dubstep sound in Freaksho, Hold it Against Me. Kesha used Dubstep in her album Animal. Rihanna’s Rated R album had 3 dubstep tracks.
• Turning point for Dubstep happen when I Need Air by Magnetic Man reached 10 in UK singles chart

Three Modern Influences- John S

I.                   Radiohead

1.      Importance

i.      Brought the academic, obtuse sounds of electronica (such as those of Lorrie Anderson) to the mainstream.

ii.      Engineered one of the first universal digital distributions of an album in which customer could choose their own price.

1.      The band still sold over three million copies of “In Rainbows.”

2.      Avant Garde

i.      Fused electronic instruments like analog synthesizers, mini-synths, drum machines, programmers, and sequencers with acoustic instruments like guitar, drums, and glockenspiels.

ii.      Combined chromatic jazz scales (Radiohead cites Miles Davis as a major influence) with diatonic pop music chord progressions.

3.      Influence

i.      Radiohead’s influence is profound: pop musicians from Britney Spears and Lady Gaga to rap artists like Kid Cudi  have begun experimenting with electronica and pushing the boundaries of genres.

II.                CNN

1.      Influence

i.      The first twenty-four hour news service with a constant stream of global “journalism” in five-minute stories and constant alerts, reporting everything and nothing simultaneously.

ii.      Created “The CNN effect,” a term coined by Pentagon official regarding the influence of constant, concurrent reporting.

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2002/0123media_journalism.aspx

2.      Avant Garde

i.      The entire premise that news could remain fresh and entertaining twenty-four hours a day had never before been executed.

ii.      The ADD-presentation of flashing ALERT signs and a constant scrolling news bars gives a new, chintzy look to serious topics.

3.      Influences

i.      CNN spurred an influx of cable news, and created an entirely new form of entertainment.

ii.      It’s chief competitor, FOX News, claiming to represent a different side of the story, has perfect CNN’s gaudy presentation

iii.      The website The Onion perfectly satirizes the cable news industry.

III.             Pulp Fiction

1.      Importance

i.      Created a mainstream American film from the groundbreaking experimentation of Jean Luc-Godard, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Fonda

ii.      It won Academy Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director

2.      Avant Garde

i.      The film used a familiar, garish action movie setting, but drove the story through dialogue, characterization, and scenes that were not chronogically ordered.

ii.      The film simultaneously mocked and worshipped popular television, music, and movie techniques.

3.      Influence

i.      The film influenced the acting market as a whole: independent, risky films were now clearly marketable to a mainstream audience, and it became easier for smaller film-makers to hire big names.

ii.      The style of Pulp Fiction is emulated in many modern gangster movies.

The New New Pop Culture -Justin

Pong- Creator Allan Alcorn-1972 –Electronic media.-Atari

What it was: A video game in where players played table tennis against each other on a television screen.

Avant-Garde: It was the first video game, and spawned a multi-billion dollar industry, and changed the face of pastime entertainment (Gamers over the age of 2 in the United States spent over 13 hours playing video games each week in 2010).

Influenced: Several Atari Video gaming consoles, Colecovision, TV Boy 1 and 2, Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, and Xbox.

“Walk this way(cover)”- Raising Hell– Run DMC feat. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry – released in 1986- Label: Profile/Arista

What it was: A rap cover of “Walk this Way” by Aerosmith.

Avant-Garde: It allowed Run-DMC to become the first successful Rap group to cross over into mainstream media. It is also attributed for starting hip hops golden age (the period from roughly 1986 to 1994, when rap music’s visibility, variety, and commercial viability exploded onto the national stage and became a global phenomenon). They are the only other rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame

Influenced: Paved the way for others such as the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J.

Real World – 192- MTV- Reality Television

What it was: “The true story… of eight strangers… picked to live in a house…work together and have their lives taped… to find out what happens… when people stop being polite… and start getting real…The Real World.”

Avant-Garde: One of the longest-running reality series in history, credited with launching the modern reality TV genre. It has spawned a society of followers that love watching others and their tribulations.

Influenced: Surivor, Big Brother, American Idol, The Bachelor, and countless others

Teaser – Justin

MusicHome entertainment

Television

Hi men–
It may surprise you that we will meet at 2:30 p.m. this week–until 5 p.m. I hope this will not disrupt your lives. Please let me know if you will have trouble arriving on time.

Also, The VMFA will be showing the film Basquiat on May 6 at 6 p.m. Wow!

So, I choose the following as my contribution to our study of significant contemporary artists: photographer Carrie Mae Weems, painter Chuck Close, and videographer Bill Viola. I am really in the mood to talk about poets, Billy Collins and Mary Oliver . . . but the three I have chosen (above) are (maybe) more compelling (for you).

Carrie Mae Weems. Social Studies 201. Operation: Activate, 2011

Chuck Close. Fanny. (1985)

Bill Viola.