Posts by Karen Rose Ginman

Be afraid. Be afraid of women, especially if they live inside the moon, are cat-like, can control your mind, and have pet spiders. Arthur Hilton's film Cat-Women of the Moon is a funny Sci-Fi B-movie that shows the gender stereotypes present in films from the 1950s. The actors are given laughably horrible lines that don't even attempt to hide the typical roles of the male "cowboy" and the female "ditz."

Regina Spektor's music, summer nights, and NYC are intertwined inside of me. As the air grows warm, I find myself listening to her music as she sings of summer in the city and selling butterflies on street corners. This summer, I am attending my first American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. I am bursting with pure joy to visit such a literary and musical city while attending my first professional conference. I have had a few summers in this city, and now I am ready to experience a small slice of another. 

Plan 9 from Outer Space was filmed in 1956 by Ed Wood, the King of B-movies, but was not released until 1959. The film begins with the funeral of a beloved wife, played by Maila "Vampira" Nurmi. The old man, played by Bela Lugosi, weeps openly at the loss of her and his purpose in life. The plot then takes off on a roller coaster ride of odd twists and turns, with characters who deliver their lines as if they are robots.  

Walt Whitman filled the pages of Leaves of Grass with poetry exalting the lives of Americans. While out in the streets, he observed and recorded the beauty of daily life. Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing" is a delightful example how common activities make up the fabric of America.  Within its lines, a boatman owns a part of America, and a mother's daily activities are considered divine:

Black ink soaks through a transparent canvas to form an image drawn by the master, Pablo Ruiz Picasso. 

In Le Mystere de Picasso (1956), director Henri-Georges Clouzot creates a new type of art documentary: one which manages to capture art at the very moment of conception. The transparent canvas allows the camera to capture each stroke of the artist's brush in real-time, beginning in stark black-and-white, but then moving on to color. Later, Clouzot employs stop animation to account for the mixing and application of color in several pieces.