Are you a fan of Jackson Rathbone?

Who?

Excellent news, fang-bangers: TwiCon got booted from its location in downtown Toronto thanks to this little thing called the G20 summit, so they relocated to Landsdowne Park. Say, what? Yup, Ottawa was on the radar, and now it's the place to be June 25 to 27 for TwiHards, TwiMoms, and people who like Sam from True Blood. He's going to be here, and, as your ace vampire reporter, I'm going to have to be there. It's the least I can do. Just like showing you this photo from Eclipse.  You're welcome.

We're just learning that famously reclusive American author J.D. Salinger died yesterday at 91. Ninety-one is a good, long run, so there's nothing to be said here along the lines of "so young" or "too soon" (though, in some ways, it's always too soon). Because he stopped writing and hid from the public eye for so long, Salinger was more myth than man during my lifetime. He came to stand in for his most famous creation, Holden Caufield, and Holden came to stand in for sad, lost outsiders in pop culture in a way that eventually came to do the character and his novel a disservice (I remember thinking, while re-watching  (500) Days of Summer recently, that the movie wore is allegiance to The Catcher in the Rye a little too on its sleeve). 

Anyway, I've never been one for eloquence in the face of death, so I've gathered instead a few pop culture influenced thoughts:

• Franny and Zooey was Judy's favourite book on Once and Again when she added herself to her Book Lovers wall.
• The "Fuck You" monologue from 25th Hour is probably my favourite reference to The Catcher in the Rye in anything I've ever seen, in no small part because it references my favourite passage of the book.
• Pretty much the only thing about the late 90s Fred Savage-starring sitcom Working that I remember is the episode where Fred finds out his boss never read Catcher and recommends it, only for it to convince the boss that he should run away in order to be more like Holden. Specifically, he wanted to ride the rails, hobo-style, and I was disappointed when I read the book, and Holden didn't do that. Holden takes the train like a regular passenger and is depressed crumby luggage. I think the point was that eventually you get too old to read The Catcher in the Rye for the first time, the same way I was told that I would outgrow Ferris Buller's Day Off after I finished school. Neither of these things are true.

Goodbye, J.D. Hope no one writes "fuck you" on your tombstone.

I'm delighted to tell you that after a brief "Weekend Viewing" hiatus, there are tonnes (yes, metric tonnes) of movies to go see this weekend. Yippee!

On the Hollywood side of things there's the Fame remake, which sounds like it might not be too bad as it hews closely to the original's formula (no protagonist, just moments from four years of hard work), Pandorum, staring (Cult)ure fav Ben Foster, and Surrogates, where people have surrogates and Bruce Willis solves crimes and it's all fairly boring-looking. 

Much like our dear Mr. Foster, in the Canada column we've got the second TBP movie, Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day, which promises to be funny and inventively profane. 

The man who almost single-handedly defined 80's cinema died of a heart attack yesterday. 

John Hughes wrote and/or directed seminal 80's teen films such Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, and 80's comedies such as National Lampoon's Vacation, Uncle Buck, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  In the 90's, he wrote successful family films such as the Home Alone series, Beethoven, and Flubber.

Hughes was a huge influence on filmmakers like Kevin Smith, and his films will be remembered and embraced for decades to come.

I used to have these anxiety dreams all the time where I'm late for hockey and I can't get my goalie pads done up in time to make it out onto the ice before the start of the game.  I'd wake up in a horrible cold sweat.  It was awful.

Now that I've been doing lots of interviews for (Cult)ure, an entirely new anxiety dream has started up:  I'm interviewing someone and my voice recorder won't work properly!

Last night's version of the dream starred Lucas Grabeel, better known as Ryan Evans from the High School Musical films:

With only two classes remaining, my students are likely feeling the crunch as they try to stay on top of their blogs and assemble their final projects. Thankfully we move into a universal topic for the final week: sex. Or more specifically teen sexuality. It's been a pervasive theme throughout the course, although one we haven't touched on directly. Tonight we're focusing on male sexuality, tracing the recent changes in culture and advertising that has created the "new man" who gentle, emotional and has washboard abs. Instead of watching American Pie or some other randy sex comedy, we're focusing on Larry Clark's contribution to teen films and watching two queer shorts: one Dutch (To Play or To Die), one American independent (Bugcrush) - and nary a happy ending in sight. Ideally I want my students to make the connection between these films and themes/topics from other weeks, including instances of bullying, violence, cliques and teen delinquency. Come back Thursday as we turn our attention to female sexuality.

Sample blogs:

http://iwastherebel.wordpress.com/

http://michellesblogisamazingmostdef.blogspot.com/

http://editsuite99.wordpress.com/

http://chadjico.blogspot.com/

http://stam2-stam2.blogspot.com/

- Posted by Joe

As the class officially tips over the halfway mark, we move into darker subject matter. Last week we screened Battle Royale, the Japanese dystopian near-future film about school kids forced by adults to kill each other and tonight we're watching Elephant, part 2 of Gus Van Sant's 'Death' trilogy (the others are Gerry and Last Days). No students signed up to provide context for the film, which prompted me to conduct my own research on the film.

For those who have seen it, the film is Van Sant's 'take' on the 1999 Columbine Massacre, in which two students killed 13 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide. The Massacre is the fourth largest school shooting in history, but received unprecedented media coverage on news sites such as Fox News and CNN, including graphic footage from security tapes as well as images such as bloodied students trying to escape the library. The film itself is interesting for its position on the cause of the shootings; that is, it doesn't pretend to understand the factors that drove the two boys to kill, although they do play videogames and watch violent movies (both were factors blamed in real life). Researching school shootings was surprisingly inconclusive: academics seem generally divided between the effects of media and videogame violence. Some suggest that these media, paired with violent or satanic music, prompt responses in the brain associated with emotional responses (anger, loss of control). Others suggest that these studies are inconclusive or suggest that the correlations discovered should not imply causation. It's an interesting debate, one that I think I'll put to the students.

We'll turn our attention to censorship and the role of the bard in these kinds of violent tales on Thursday when we screen Tim Blake Nelson's long delayed adaptation, O.

Here are what I consider the best blogs to date (don't tell the students!):
http://mattrodrigues.wordpress.com
http://teenagekicksblog.blogspot.com/
http://sosayeththewatcher.wordpress.com/
http://iwastherebel.wordpress.com
http://editsuite99.wordpress.com/

Follow along with Prof. Lipsett and his students as they study Teen Cinema.

So we're now in Week 3 of the course, which means the damn thing is already almost half over (crazy reduced summer schedules!). So far the students have been slowly easing themselves into the material, so I'm hopeful the ultraviolence of Battle Royale will kick-start a deeper level of analysis.

The past few classes have becoming increasingly focused on the difficulties of maturing, the conflicting relationships between teens, their parents, their peer groups, and the cliques that dominate high school. With tonight's film, we take these ideas to extreme ends as adults deal with delinquent students by putting them on an island and forcing them to kill each other (If you haven't seen the film, it's like the Running Man meets Lord of the Flies and has never been distributed in North America - look for it at an independent video store). The group of girls who will present on the film (by placing it in context in terms of production, distribution, exhibition and reception) have done a bang up job, so be sure to check out their blogs here and here, and leave your thoughts!

Posted by Joe

I don't know because I don't watch that sort of thing,* but apparently the New Moon trailer premiered at the MTV Awards.  Can't tell which part is funnier: that they focus so heavily on what's, as I recall, they first two chapters of the book; that I'm supposed to believe Bella could outrun Laurent for even a second; that a guy who is part wolf would be body hair free (but the vampire has chest hair? c'mon); or the wolf. See for yourselves:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSFMmkMfQ5Q 560x340]

As always, don't forget to open the post as its own page to view the video. 

Hi (Cult)ure readers. Welcome to what will (hopefully) be a regular blog feature: Follow the Bouncing Ball - aka read along with me for the next two months as I attempt to navigate the shark infested waters of a return to high school.

No, I'm not auditioning for Never Been Kissed 2: Drew Barrymore Boogaloo. I was recently granted my third teaching assignment as a contract instructor at Carleton University and I'm teaching on Teen Films. I previoulsy taught courses on Slasher Films and Cult Works, so this time around I'm going for something a little more female friendly.

Each time I teach, I like to change up the way I run the class. Last summer I asked students to develop their own course syllabus (with both positive and negative results), so I decided to try something new this year. I've asked students to blog about the class, the readings, and their own experiences, so, in the weeks to come, keep an eye out for featured blogs by students. It should be an interesting, immersive experiment for everyone.