Jennifer Dean

Acting v. Feeling

March 21, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

I am currently matriculated in an MFA program in Production (after already completing an MA program in Film Studies). As part of my directing class we are reading Judith Weston’s Directing Actors. Before going back to school I spent several years in the acting world and it’s interesting approaching it completely from the other side (I have always had one foot in production). I have often myself been plagued by the preconceived notions that actors are not dedicated enough or […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film

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Empathy

March 14, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

Today I read The New Yorker article where Peter Lanzing shares his story with journalist Andrew Solomon, The Reckoning. It reminded me of a similar piece I read years after the Columbine killings where one of the mothers of the perpetrators recounted her struggles – and I couldn’t help but think of the Lynne Ramsey movie We Need to Talk About Kevin. There is no question that the grief of the victims in mass killings is justified but the parents of those who […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: ethics, film, New Yorker

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Oscars in Memoriam

March 7, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

Catching segments of the Oscars this past Sunday I was struck by the very brief mention of the assistant camera woman who recently lost her life on set after being hit by an oncoming train. After the various names of stars and Academy members who had lived long lives with prosperous careers seeing the name of this 27-year old woman who senselessly died on set seemed particularly poignant. Today I read the Hollywood Reporter article How Sarah Jones Lost Her […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film, women

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Not making money in movies

February 28, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

I read an article today on the wonderful world of internships in the New York Times – Millennnials Feel Trapped in a Cycle of Internships with Little Pay and No Job Offers. I have read many an article and heard many an argument regarding the twenty-first century internship dilemma. Who can intern after college without having some sort of support from their family? Once again limiting opportunities to those with money and family connections, not only in terms of family […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, film, New York Times

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Making Movies

February 21, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

After a short hiatus last week I return with my weekly reading on movies. To make up for last week’s sojourn I will quote two passages from the iconic director Sidney Lumet’s book Making Movies. It reads like a behind-the-scenes featurette on a Criterion Collection DVD, only for more first-rate movies than you can imagine (not just one)! When I first started trying to make movies myself (fairly recently), after having produced theatre for many years, I lamented the lack […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film, gender, women

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Uncertain Futures

February 7, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

In preparing for a presentation today on early film history I was reviewing some notes and came across one of my favorite quotes from Mary Pickford’s autobiography Sunshine and Shadow. It’s part of a letter written to theatre mogul David Belasco by director William de Mille concerning young Mary’s decision to start making movies: She says she can make a fairly good living at it, but it does seem a shame. After all she can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: film

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Thinking Yoga

January 31, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

I digress from the topic of film this week because this morning I was struck by a pair of articles I read on yoga. I was first directed to Erika Nicole Kendall’s An Open Letter to the XOJane Writer Who Complained About a Black Woman in Her Yoga Class and then thought I should first read the letter itself (Jen Carol’s It Happened to Me: There are no black people in my yoga classes and I’m suddenly feeling uncomfortable with it) […]

Categories: Jennifer Dean, ZiR • Tags: exercise, race relations, racism, Yoga

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Movies and the Mafia

January 17, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

My reading this week seems to be an appropriate follow-up to Tucker Cox’s post yesterday on guidebooks… after all my reading is part of my travel to Utah. This week I was researching all of the movies I can potentially see at Sundance – my first time attending the famous film festival – and as these things can happen stories of the mafia seem to be following me. I finished Rich Cohen’s Tough Jews last week and then heard stories of Whitey Bulger […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: film, Mafia, movies

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Making a Getaway to the Movies

January 10, 2014 by Jennifer Dean

This week I started reading a book on the Jewish Mafia passed on by my friend Rick Mester (who read it for research while writing his novel). Tough Jews is one of those non-fiction books that reads like fiction, describing characters in detail and constantly setting the scene for the reader. Of course I could not help but picture it as a movie and had to laugh when I read the scenario below: The troop later found out what had happened. After […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: film, Hollywood, Jewish studies, Mafia, movies, novels