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The Rule of Three: Film Studies C-3003 Final Exam
Why are there always three sailors or soldiers, never two or four, on shore leave or furlough? (a) Because Gene Kelly favored the “rule of three”(b) Because one can sing, one can dance, and…
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Harold Bloom on Jazz
Harold Bloom [photo by Sue Mingus] . . . the whole jazz tradition from at least Amstrong on features what was called "cutting." And cutting is the pure instance – from the Greeks on,…
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“Lucky You” (a collaborative ode to Woody Allen, with a Harry James soundtrack)
On August 9, 2016, for the “Next Line, Feature” that The American Scholar posts on its website, we were directed to write couplets that would extend and complete an ode to Woody Allen begun a month…
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“Pepys in the Time of Plague” (part III of III) [by Thomas Moody]
“…do lament the condition we are in, by a negligent Prince and a mad Parliament.” — Samuel Pepys Reading these entries with the benefit of nearly four centuries of hindsight, we know that London…
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Geoffrey O’Brien’s “Phantom Empire” [by David Lehman]
Geoffrey O'Brien's The Phantom Empire (1993) is one of the all-time great odes to Hollywood. In gorgeous prose O'Brien adopts the associative logic of a Hollywood dream to address the subject of movies in general…
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“Pepys in the Time of Plague” (part II of III) [by Thomas Moody]
“In the evening home to supper; and there, to my great trouble, hear that the plague is come into the City; but where should it begin but in my good friend and neighbours’, Dr.…
