Forest Lawn Memorial Parks are the Cadillac of cemeteries. They are beautiful and ornate. The grounds are lush. There is beautiful statuary all over. There are four cemeteries in the Forest Lawn system here in California. Glendale was the first one. Numerous famous stars are here, like Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, and Nat King Cole, to name a few. Forest Lawns DO NOT like cemetery hunters. They discourage people from looking for star graves and ask you to leave if you carry books like Final Curtain or Permanent Californians. Do not bother asking any staff member for directions to stars graves. The Great Mausoleum is private, and cameras are watching the whole thing. There are four locked gardens with stars. Too bad, for most of the greats are here!
Ms. Films Posts
Hollywood Forever, formerly Hollywood Memorial Park, is located on Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood, CA, and is such an intriguing place. Here, some of the luminaries of the screen, both silent and talkies, are here. Yet, it was left in a state of disarray for many years. It has now been restored to a beautiful cemetery, with a fountain in the middle of the lake with the William C. Clark Mausoleum and well-kept lawns, with private, outdoor mausoleums. It is the final resting place of stars like Valentino, Tyrone Power, and Douglas Fairbanks. Sadly, the former owner of the park (who has since died and is now resting in the Cathedral Mausoleum), embezzled most of the endowment funds.
Calvary is another vast Catholic Cemetery. Most of the notables are in the Mausoleum. Most everyone is easy to find except Ramon Navarro. I do not know how helpful the office is, but I have been told they dislike people taking pictures. Some have told me the office would take a picture for you….for a price. I do not know if that is true (big disclaimer here). So, go to the office at your peril.
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, is the second cemetery in the Forest Lawn chain and not as restrictive as Forest Lawn, Glendale. There are no private mausoleums or gardens. Everything is open space. This does not mean that the staff is any more helpful, though. Don’t bother even asking for locations. But this place is pretty well-marked and easy to maneuver.
The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing – actors, lighting, décor, props, costume – is called mise-en-scène, a French term that means “placing on stage.” The frame and camerawork are also considered part of the mise-en-scène of a movie. In cinema, placing on the stage really means placing on the screen, and the director is in charge of deciding what goes where, when, and how. David A. Cook, in his book A History of Narrative Film, points out how a mise-en-scène is formed by all the elements that appear “within the shot itself, as opposed to the effects created by cutting.” In other words, if it’s on the screen and if it’s a physical object recorded by the camera, then it’s part of the mise-en-scène.
While screenwriters and directors are a movie’s first and second storytellers, editors are the third ones. Since editors are given a limited amount of footage, it may not appear so. Still, through editing techniques, the editor may construct or deconstruct a narrative or documentary and shape it to his or her own will.
How Do I Become a Film Director?
During the production of a film or other piece of video media, film directors supervise actors and the production crew. They interpret a writer’s script, direct actors’ performances, and manage choreography, lighting, music selection, and many other aspects of filmmaking. Directors are responsible for the artistic direction of a film and must have good communication and leadership abilities in order to deliver on their ideas. They will also be involved in a project’s post-production, collaborating with musicians, editors, and producers to make sure the finished product is exactly what they envisioned. Here are 7 habits all future film directors should be doing:
What is a Narrative Element?
Man has been telling stories much before he learned to write. Through cave paintings, through epics passed on to generations as an oral tradition, and then subsequently through different forms of the written word, poetry, plays, novels, operas, songs, comic books, photo features, and eventually cinema, the human urge to tell stories has never been satiated, nor has our desire to listen to one. Between all these forms or media of communicating a story, there have been some common elements, and then there have been story elements unique to a certain medium.
Though it is not without its flaws, the movie D.O.A. (1950) is considered by many to be one of the best examples of classic film noir. When I first started watching old movies, I didn’t watch much film noir, however after watching and enjoying movies like Scarlet Street, Woman in the Window, and Out of the Past among others I developed a new appreciation for the style. Now I am on a quest to learn as much as I can about it and add many more to the list of those I’ve already watched.
Was anyone else a big fan of Rachael Ray’s tv show “$40 a Day?” If you’re not familiar with it, it was a show on the Food Network where for each episode Rachael would spend 24 hours in a certain city with only $40 per day to spend on meals and snacks. The cameras would follow her around each city, and she would give tips on what local attractions to see, how to find bargains, and how to eat on a budget. That brief description doesn’t really do the show justice, but I’ll just say that I absolutely loved watching it, and it inspired me to want to travel more and take short trips to various cities throughout the United States.
Barbara Stanwyck is my second favorite actress behind only Bette Davis, and as I’ve had the tendency to do with many of the classic movie actors and actresses that I love, I created an image in my mind of what I thought she was like in her personal life based on how I saw her in some of her movies. I even once compared her to comfort food in a review I did of her movie No Man of Her Own to convey the feeling of warmth and familiarity I got when watching her movies. Ah, the silly things I said as a new blogger!
“I never told you I was anything but what I am. You just wanted to imagine I was.”
That claim, uttered by Jane Greer as the devious Kathie Moffat in director Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, is not entirely true. The character is an exercise in self-construction, spending much of the film behind an array of masks designed to please whichever man she is trying to manipulate at the time. But at heart, she is far from pleasing, for Kathie is undiluted feminine poison, crossing, double-crossing, and triple-crossing everyone unlucky enough to come into contact with her. By turns innocent and evil, virtuous and dishonest, she operates entirely without moral compass or conscience to guide her, and in the process she destroys not only herself, but all of the men in her orbit.
I have a bad habit of saying I don’t like things when I haven’t even given them a try. I’m sure that habit has caused me to miss out on some great things in life, and I really should learn to break it. Well, except maybe when it comes to beets it would have been wiser to stick to the stubborn “I don’t like them even though I’ve never tried them” declaration that I made for so long. Beets really are gross!
According to author Marc Eliot in his book, “Jimmy Stewart, a Biography,” Stewart had for some time wanted to make a movie about Glenn Miller, a man with whom he shared several things in common. They were both small town boys with music in their backgrounds and both had served in the Army Air Force. Stewart had long admired Miller’s work, and in 1953 he got his wish to play the trombonist, arranger and bandleader in the movie The Glenn Miller Story (1954).
What hotels do celebrities stay in Chicago?
I have a fascination with hotels that started at a very young age. Growing up, we didn’t have the money to take expensive trips to places like Disneyland, but my sisters and I were perfectly happy going on smaller trips to places nearby. Often times we would just stay at a hotel to enjoy all its amenities, which for us kids meant mostly the swimming pool!