Hi, all!
The Wizard Of Oz!
14 years ago
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Survey time!
Thursday, May 17, 2012
A Frighteningly Fun Project
Greetings, Phans!
Well, I finished my latest semester of college, and this was an especially fun one for me. One of the main reasons why is because I took a class on horror literature. In that class, we studied some well-known and influential works of horror, from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (widely considered to be the first Gothic novel), through the famous ones like Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein, up to modern works like Stephen King's The Shining, and even some urban legends dealing with ghosts or spirits encountering people in Hawaii.
POTO, sadly, wasn't a part of the curriculum. However, for an end-of-semester project, all the students got to give PowerPoint presentations on the horror-related subject of our choice. No prizes for guessing what I picked. I presented a very brief history of POTO, from the novel to the many film and stage versions. It had to be brief, since every student had a 10-minute time limit for presenting.
I think the presentation went pretty well; my professor congratulated me on researching my subject so extensively. (I neglected to mention that most of that research had been done for fun, long before the project was assigned.) Also, I found out that one of my classmates had been in the technical crew for Palikū Theatre's production last fall. She shared some secrets, including the fact that the makeup designers were originally going to try an even more horrific disfigurement for the Phantom but couldn't get it to look right, so they settled for the "leprosy" look I described in my reviews (which, in my opinion, was still very effective).
A lot of the other students' presentations were also great fun. There were slideshows on just about every random horror-related topic you could imagine, from The Exorcist to doppelgängers. And now, the semester's over, and I'm preparing for a summer vacation that just might be even more epic than my last one.
Feel free to comment if you found ways to bring POTO into some of your school projects in the past! (I will say that this presentation certainly wasn't the first time that the Phantom's tale has found its way into my schoolwork. I even referenced the story in my SAT exam once, and from what I can recall, I got a pretty respectable score for it. Yay, I suppose!)
I remain your obedient servant,
I.A.E.
Well, I finished my latest semester of college, and this was an especially fun one for me. One of the main reasons why is because I took a class on horror literature. In that class, we studied some well-known and influential works of horror, from Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (widely considered to be the first Gothic novel), through the famous ones like Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein, up to modern works like Stephen King's The Shining, and even some urban legends dealing with ghosts or spirits encountering people in Hawaii.
POTO, sadly, wasn't a part of the curriculum. However, for an end-of-semester project, all the students got to give PowerPoint presentations on the horror-related subject of our choice. No prizes for guessing what I picked. I presented a very brief history of POTO, from the novel to the many film and stage versions. It had to be brief, since every student had a 10-minute time limit for presenting.
I think the presentation went pretty well; my professor congratulated me on researching my subject so extensively. (I neglected to mention that most of that research had been done for fun, long before the project was assigned.) Also, I found out that one of my classmates had been in the technical crew for Palikū Theatre's production last fall. She shared some secrets, including the fact that the makeup designers were originally going to try an even more horrific disfigurement for the Phantom but couldn't get it to look right, so they settled for the "leprosy" look I described in my reviews (which, in my opinion, was still very effective).
A lot of the other students' presentations were also great fun. There were slideshows on just about every random horror-related topic you could imagine, from The Exorcist to doppelgängers. And now, the semester's over, and I'm preparing for a summer vacation that just might be even more epic than my last one.
Feel free to comment if you found ways to bring POTO into some of your school projects in the past! (I will say that this presentation certainly wasn't the first time that the Phantom's tale has found its way into my schoolwork. I even referenced the story in my SAT exam once, and from what I can recall, I got a pretty respectable score for it. Yay, I suppose!)
I remain your obedient servant,
I.A.E.
Monday, January 2, 2012
These are My Confessions...
Greetings once again, and Happy New Year! I hope 2012 will be a wonderful year for all of you.
To celebrate the new year and my third Phanniversary (having first seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical on this date in 2009), I thought I'd share some of my confessions, courtesy of a Tumblr page I discovered called Phantom of the Opera Confessions. Enjoy, and feel free to contribute some of your own if you wish. I should note that none of these images were created or posted by me; they were put up by various Tumblr users who follow the page, but I found myself agreeing with them as well.
To celebrate the new year and my third Phanniversary (having first seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical on this date in 2009), I thought I'd share some of my confessions, courtesy of a Tumblr page I discovered called Phantom of the Opera Confessions. Enjoy, and feel free to contribute some of your own if you wish. I should note that none of these images were created or posted by me; they were put up by various Tumblr users who follow the page, but I found myself agreeing with them as well.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Phandom Heresies
I'm a huge fan of the website TVTropes. It's a really fun site on which you can find a lot of popular devices and conventions used in well-known fictional works, be they novels, films, TV shows, video games, and yes, even stage shows. (The section they have for POTO is quite fun and informative, covering the novel, ALW musical, and a few of the film versions.)
The title for this post comes from one of my favorite tropes to return to (and also look at the Troper Tales page for): Fandom Heresy. That trope illustrates the idea that within a fan community, there are certain opinions so unpopular that they may drive people to send hate mail to a fan who expresses them, particularly on fan websites, blogs, and forums -- heaven help you if you're a Star Wars fan who liked Episode I, or if you're a Batman fan (or a movie fan in general, really) with anything negative to say about Christopher Nolan.
Although reactions to differing opinions on the internet can often be intense, I like to think the majority of Phantom Phans are a pretty tolerant bunch. No version of the story nor any actor in a film or stage production is universally loved or hated (with the possible exceptions of Lon Chaney under "loved" and the Forsyth and Argento versions under "hated"), and most Phans seem to be pretty okay with that. No version or actor is going to please everyone because we all have our own visions of what the story is or should be. It's a lot like how everyone who reads a novel is going to have different views of how characters and locations look, how the dialogue is spoken, or what certain things are supposed to represent; therefore, even the most faithful attempt at a film adaptation isn't going to please everyone who loved the book.
There are, however, some Phantom Phans who do take it personally when someone else disagrees with them on favorite and least favorite versions and actors. As I said previously, I understand to an extent why some react so harshly -- the reason why we are Phans is because the story and characters mean something to us and touch us on some deep, emotional level. It can sometimes be a bit shocking to hear that someone really didn't like a version or performance that profoundly moved you. Sometimes, we may try to rationalize it -- for example, if someone didn't like a particular actor, we may tell ourselves that maybe the person was unlucky enough to catch that performer on an "off-night." Other times, as with hot-button issues like religion or politics, we may become convinced that our own opinions are the "right" ones; therefore, everyone who disagrees is "wrong" and has to have their opinion changed to conform to ours.
The title for this post comes from one of my favorite tropes to return to (and also look at the Troper Tales page for): Fandom Heresy. That trope illustrates the idea that within a fan community, there are certain opinions so unpopular that they may drive people to send hate mail to a fan who expresses them, particularly on fan websites, blogs, and forums -- heaven help you if you're a Star Wars fan who liked Episode I, or if you're a Batman fan (or a movie fan in general, really) with anything negative to say about Christopher Nolan.
Although reactions to differing opinions on the internet can often be intense, I like to think the majority of Phantom Phans are a pretty tolerant bunch. No version of the story nor any actor in a film or stage production is universally loved or hated (with the possible exceptions of Lon Chaney under "loved" and the Forsyth and Argento versions under "hated"), and most Phans seem to be pretty okay with that. No version or actor is going to please everyone because we all have our own visions of what the story is or should be. It's a lot like how everyone who reads a novel is going to have different views of how characters and locations look, how the dialogue is spoken, or what certain things are supposed to represent; therefore, even the most faithful attempt at a film adaptation isn't going to please everyone who loved the book.
There are, however, some Phantom Phans who do take it personally when someone else disagrees with them on favorite and least favorite versions and actors. As I said previously, I understand to an extent why some react so harshly -- the reason why we are Phans is because the story and characters mean something to us and touch us on some deep, emotional level. It can sometimes be a bit shocking to hear that someone really didn't like a version or performance that profoundly moved you. Sometimes, we may try to rationalize it -- for example, if someone didn't like a particular actor, we may tell ourselves that maybe the person was unlucky enough to catch that performer on an "off-night." Other times, as with hot-button issues like religion or politics, we may become convinced that our own opinions are the "right" ones; therefore, everyone who disagrees is "wrong" and has to have their opinion changed to conform to ours.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
A Holiday Gift For My Phellow Phans
In the spirit of the holiday season, here is a video I made for an audio compilation I put together some time ago. I love listening to POTO in different languages, and this is something I made to demonstrate why. Enjoy, and please leave comments and/or subscribe to my YouTube account!
I remain your obedient servant,
I.A.E.
I remain your obedient servant,
I.A.E.
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