A Concise History of Kentucky

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University Press of Kentucky, 12.09.2010 - 256 Seiten
For three decades, no American filmmaker has been as prolificÑor as paradoxicalÑas Woody Allen. From Play It Again, Sam (1972) through Celebrity (1998) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999), Allen has produced an average of one film a year, yet in many of these films Allen reveals a progressively skeptical attitude toward both the value of art and the cultural contributions of artists. In examining AllenÕs filmmaking career, The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen demonstrates that his movies often question whether the projected illusions of magicians/artists benefit audience or artists. Other Allen films dramatize the opposed conviction that the consoling, life-redeeming illusions of art are the best solution humanity has devised to the existential dilemma of being a death-foreseeing animal. Peter Bailey demonstrates how AllenÕs films repeatedly revisit and reconfigure this tension between image and reality, art and life, fabrication and factuality, with each film reaching provisional resolutions that a subsequent movie will revise. Merging criticism and biography, Bailey identifies Allen's ambivalent views of the artistic enterprise as a key to understanding his entire filmmaking career. Because of its focus upon filmmaker Sandy BatesÕs conflict between entertaining audiences and confronting them with bleak human actualities, Stardust Memories is a central focus of the book. BaileyÕs examination of AllenÕs art/life dialectic also draws from the off screen drama of AllenÕs very public separation from Mia Farrow, and the book accordingly construes such post-scandal films as Bullets Over Broadway and Mighty Aphrodite as AllenÕs oblique cinematic responses to that tabloid tempest. By illuminating the thematic conflict at the heart of Allen's work, Bailey seeks not only to clarify the aesthetic designs of individual Allen films but to demonstrate how his oeuvre enacts an ongoing debate the screenwriter/director has been conducting with himself between creating cinematic narratives affirming the saving powers of the human imagination and making films acknowledging the irresolvably dark truths of the human condition.

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Seite 105 - tis the draught of a breath, From the blossom of health to the paleness of death ; From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud : — Oh ! why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? Oh ! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Seite 152 - The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead.
Seite 61 - But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
Seite 103 - I have heard something said on this and a former occasion about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West to which I owe any allegiance.
Seite 58 - I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State, nor out of it...
Seite 55 - received and admitted into this Union as a new and entire member of the United States." CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...
Seite 181 - I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.
Seite 109 - ON the 4th day of March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln took the oath of office, as President of the United States.
Seite 15 - Thicket, and the Spring Water runs through it. On the South side is a plain Indian Road, on the top of the Ridge are Laurel Trees marked with crosses, others Blazed and several Figures on them.

Autoren-Profil (2010)

James C. Klotter is professor of history at Georgetown College and the state historian of Kentucky. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including A New History of Kentucky. Freda C. Klotter has twenty-five years of classroom experience and currently serves as an educational consultant for the nonprofit Kentucky Collaborative for Teaching and Learning.

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