James Stewart
"In a career of extraordinary range and depth, Jimmy Stewart has come to embody on screen the very image of the typical American.... His idealism, his determination, his vulnerability, and above all, his basic decency shine through every role he plays..."--
The American Film Institute.
The Nature of Film and Acting
When film was young, acting was overdone. Low quality cameras could only record large movements; posing and enunciation were overstated as a result of theater acting; the development of the character was limited to a script. Starting in the 1930's film acting became more natural. Actors could interpret scripts to find emotion and motivation in their characters.
Good acting relies on a kinesthetic, an intrapersonal, and an interpersonal intelligence, all of which work together to form a creative expression. There exist limitless styles of acting; there is always something to learn.
The physicality of the actor is the most important part of the creation of the character. Since all experiences are interpreted through a physical means (i.e. our senses), the kinesthetic actor can evoke a response from his audience by connecting his actions to their lives, memories, or emotions. By having distinct facial features or a certain body build, the actor's mere physical presence can convey some detail of his character. However, the most important part of the kinesthetic intelligence in acting is the knowledge of one's body, where it is, what it's doing, and what message it's conveying. This is more than just muscle movement. It includes physique, timing, rhythm, voice and mannerisms.
When we watch movies, we notice emotion and characterization mainly in the eyes and mouth. However, a man can not just act from the neck up. What his body tells us is just as important as what his face tells.
Try It! Make your body tense. Tighten every muscle you can. Now, smile. How do you feel? How would you appear to feel?
For the actor, the hands are a good place to release energy, but conveying meaningful messages through the hands is hard to do. Also, overuse of gestures can be dizzying to a viewer. Voice is another excellent means of communicating the unstated. From sincerity to sarcasm, we can tell as much from the way something is said as from the words themselves.
Underneath the physical lies the actor's presence. The intrapersonal unconsciously comes through in the form of a persona that the audience can further relate to.
The Duke takes his place in history. John Wayne, one of America’s greatest actors and directors of all time. His fame and superstardom led to many problems in his career. His image as an icon of American individualism and the frontier spirit has overshadowed his career to such an extent that it is almost impossible for the fans and writers to separate Wayne the legend from Wayne the actor and Wayne the man.
Solitary confinement ranks as one of the most controversial forms of governmental punishment. The controversy regards the constitutionality, or in other terms the humaneness of prolonged isolation. The justice system regards prisoners who are assigned solitary confinement as potentially too dangerous to be permitted any form of interaction with other inmates or prison guards. Solitary confinement is the isolation of a prisoner in a small, artificially lit cell that is generally about eight by four feet in dimension. This containment lasts for approximately 23 hours a day, and when permitted to exit the cell for an hour, the prisoner still receives no amount of significant social interaction and is simply allowed to pace in a longer isolated
For most prisoners, solitary confinement is, by far the worst and most unhealthy place one could be sent. Each criminal that is automatically placed or eventually sent to solitary confinement is isolated from cell mates, peers, friends, and visiting family, relying solely on the prison guards themselves. Even more so than within the basic prison setting, a person sent to solitary confinement is extremely closely monitored and controlled, having very little space, and little to none fresh air, sunlight, or activities to keep themselves occupied. This form of punishment was coined by Eastern State Penitentiary (E.S.P.). According to, E.S.P.’s website, solitary confinement officially ...
If you were to ask any person what acting was, they would most likely give you an answer along the lines of: portraying the life of another person, talking and acting like a character, bringing a fictional or representational character to life. While actors may appear to be inseparable with their characters while one is watching them perform, once they go home and take off the stage makeup, they change; Mark Ruffalo is no longer a 10-foot green monster, and Bradley Cooper is not a sadistic bionic raccoon. However, Konstantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor and writer of the late 19th and early 20th century, felt as if these actors should adopt the characteristics of their character as best they can in order to be able to actually become the characters
The first question is why use "commedia dell' arte" as a training tool for modern actors at all, since drama and the business of acting has hopefully moved on since the Italian Comedians finally left Paris. The fact remains, however, that the dominant form of acting today that both exists as the aspiring young actor's performance role model and as a category of performance in itself is T.V. naturalism. We are lucky in that something both inspirational and technical has survived from those heady times. When contemporary acting technique does not provide all the answers that actors may be looking for, it is not surprising that they look towards the past for inspiration. It is in this grey area between researching historical certainties and reconstructing guessed at acting technique that we must look. These Martinellis and Andreinis were the superstars of their day and the question that most often gets asked is "how did they do it?"(Oliver Crick).
After playing a convincing role as an action hero in a new film, a movie star exits the stage, leaving his character behind, and attends a press conference claiming that he did all his own stunts, becoming both an actor and a liar. When it comes to the difference between these two characters, clear differentiations are not immediately apparent. In this example, in order to impress his audience, both the actor and the liar are untruthful regarding their accomplishments. Both require a skilled performer who is well versed in the various protocols. A good liar must display flawless body language, careful not to reveal the truth. At the same time a good actor must abandon the habits of his true-life and replace with them with the inclinations of his specific character. Overall, the practices of acting and lying share countless similarities and many people view them as synonymous with one another.
Homeostasis, what is it? Homeostasis is the balance between systems to keep living organisms alive and healthy. For an organism to maintain homeostasis its body systems must react and respond to changes in both its internal and external environments. Majority of body systems in organisms, like a respiratory or circulatory system in animals, are part of their internal environment. One body system that is very important for maintaining homeostasis and is common among many organisms is a respiratory system. The respiratory system is responsible for disposing of carbon dioxide and in taking oxygen (vice versa for plants). Some parts that make up a respiratory system are the lungs, windpipe, and cilia in animals. Another body system important to homeostasis and common among animals is a circulatory system, used for bringing nutrients like glucose and oxygen to body cells. Some parts that make up a circulatory system are a heart, blood, and tubes for the blood to travel through (veins, arteries, and capillaries) in animals. There are many more body systems important to homeostasis, but if one is disrupted it’s vital for it to be restored to normal.
The acting itself is seen as both exaggerated and over-the-top, by which past and present actors try to employ in carrying out Shakespeare’s plays (Britannica). Shakespeare meant for his audience to be engaged throughout the entirety of the play. The uniqueness and shear passion of the plays have helped in the continuum of their success.
the basis for the method that Stanislavsky created, now the most common acting style in Western theatre.
The acting was superb! James Stewart will always represent the good guy trying to make his way through life in an honorable way.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Penguin, 2000. Print.
Al pacino said, "The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers". In other words, "Acting is simply more than walking out on the stage" as Dr. Stevenson would put it. It is more than just reading the lines. To be a true actor, I believe it takes inner capabilities such as learning life. In all the books I have read, all the chapters we have reviewed in class, and in all honesty…Al Pacino is an actor I cannot forget.
The nonverbal communication and our body language play an important role in our social interactions. Gestures and facial expressions can be sometimes even more important than our words and they definitely influence the way other people perceive us. Handshake, eye contact or the specific poses we tend to use tell a lot about how we feel at the moment and also express our attitude towards the other person. In fact, the nonverbal communication can reveal much more than what we actually say. Sometimes we control the body language and we are aware of the message we want to share by our gestures or mimic, but there are situations when our body language operates on the unconscious level as well. It can support the verbal language; however, in many cases it does not match our speech, but creates a contradiction as it goes again it. The interesting and important situation where body language plays a significant role is the first impression: a short time period when we are forming the impression of others by analyzing their physical appearance as well as their behavior. Several studies have proven the importance of first impression as we tend to hold on to that first picture we created about someone, even though he or she might behave completely differently in other interactions. Job interview, oral exam, admission process… those are some of the situation where the first impression can be the ultimate key to success and where the nonverbal communication is often even more evaluated than the verbal one. My aim is to describe the role of body language and its relation to the first impression in social interactions and also discuss if it is possible to learn a specific gestures or facial expressions so they would work in our favor when we need...
According to Argyle (1978), more than 700,000 forms of body language are expressed by human from head to toes. Also known as Kinesics, body language form can happen through posture, gesture, stance, and movement (Birdwhistell, 1952). Posture refers to how we control our body that can show the information about a person’s feeling as the hints of personality characteristic such as confident or unassertive, and gestures is the movement that made by our body parts such as hand, eyes, arms, and fingers. Kinesics can be used to support or accentuate what people saying and content information about the feeling and personality of people through their expression (Martin & Remland, 2009). Its include how we approach and greet each other, body posture while we sit and stand, facial expressions, our appearance, tone of voices, eye movements, stand distance between each other, and how we touch others (Rugsaken, 2006). Refer to Ekman and Friesen (1969), there are five types of Kinesics consist of emblem - the signal make by hand movement such as the signal that mean ‘OK’ and ‘Good’, illustrators – the movement come
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina shows the fall of a high societal woman as she gives up everything for love. She resists society’s expectation of women to submissively dismiss their passions and live for raising a family. Anna and her lover Vronsky attempt to create their own life, separate and independent from society, believing that their love alone will sustain each other. However, they tragically discover that isolation is not a life that they can endure. Vronsky’s love does not mature; he does not know how to develop it beyond passion. He needs ambitions, accomplishments, and admiration, and Anna longs either for Vronsky entirely, or for approbation: at least enough courtesy or civility to not be openly scorned and humiliated in public. Unable to empathize and appreciate what each other need and what each other have given up for one another, hostility and resentment stockpile. Anna’s suicide is as much a punishment intended for Vronsky as it is as an escape from here own despair as it is way of securing his love for her eternally. The ultimate irony then is that Levin and Kitty achieve what Anna and Vronsky so desperately sought, a fulfilling and happy life, free from society.