Bookmarking other sites for future reference

Some sites I know I'll want to link to, either in the main sections of the site or on the links page:

General movie-related

• Ebert's Little Movie Glossary (collection of movie cliches compiled by Roger Ebert and his readers)
  
• The Internet Movie Database (general movie information; also fun for playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon -- but I digress.)
• Movielens (an experiment in social movie recommendations; rate movies and get recommendations based on other users with similar tastes)
  
• Rotten Tomatoes (collects links to movie reviews)

General opera-related

• The Aria Database (exactly what it sounds like: information on major arias from lots of different operas)
• Culturekiosque (reviews and interviews)
  
• The Handelmania Podcast (terrific podcast by a dedicated opera fan with a very large recording collection)
  
• Operabase (enormous database of performance information)
• OperaGlass (from Stanford University; libretti, synopses, performance histories and more)
  
• Opera Today (reviews plus streaming audio of recordings)
  

On opera in the movies

• Alex Ross, "An Unequal Partner Raises its Lovely Voice," New York Times, March 12, 1995 (article on opera in the movies by a music critic)
• Classical Music in Movies (a long list from Naxos)
• Charalampos Goyios, "Living Life as an Opera Lover: On the Uses of Opera as Musical Accompaniment in Woody Allen’s Match Point" (article from the e-journal Senses of Cinema)
• Top 10 Best Uses of Opera in the Movies (a list with video clips, worth it for the Bugs Bunny "Rabbit of Seville" clip alone)
  

Note to self for later reference

I think my "list of operas referred to" would do better as a database that the user could query and sort by composer, opera title, and referring movie. I don't yet have the programming skills to do that, though. So someday in the future, if this site grows into something larger, I might have to think about how to make the database thing happen. As it is, I suppose a couple of simple lists will do, especially since the site isn't going to be enormous in its initial version.

Houston, we have a URL

A very sketchy preliminary version of the site is now up in my dunx space, under 652/final/. The end product will probably look nothing like it. I kind of like the turquoise background, but I suspect the final color scheme will be more geared to go with my logo.

And I've got to fix a few rogue URLs. Dreamweaver likes to save files as ".htm" even when you've told it you want them as ".html."

Outlining the content

Here's a preliminary stab at a list of content for my site:

1. Introductory section, explaining what the user can expect to find (capsule movie reviews and recommendations), as well as what kinds of films are covered (feature films in various genres) and what kinds aren't (documentaries, entire operas on film).
2. Movies about opera performers and composers
• Amadeus
• Celestial Clockwork (a.k.a. Mecaniques Celestes)
• Così
• Farewell My Concubine
  
• Farinelli
• Meeting Venus
  
• A Night at the Opera
• Topsy-Turvy
  
3. Movies about opera fans
• Diva
• Fitzcarraldo
• Moonstruck
  
• Puccini for Beginners
4. Honorable mentions: movies where opera isn't a major plot point, but which have a relevant scene or two
• The Age of Innocence (Philadelphia's Academy of Music makes a cameo appearance in an early scene)
• Citizen Kane (alas, Susan Alexander Kane is not cut out to be an opera star)
  
• The Fifth Element (blue-skinned space alien sings Donizetti!)
• The House of Mirth (several scenes take place in a box at a performance of Così fan Tutte)
  
• Philadelphia (Tom Hanks plays Maria Callas recording for Denzel Washington)
• Pretty Woman (Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts to see La Traviata)
  
• The Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins broadcasts Mozart to the prison yard)
5. List of operas referred to
6. Further reading

In search of visuals

So I'm thinking about images to use on the site.

I like this one, a detail from a painting by Edgar Degas. I may try to combine it with something cinematic (film frames, a projector, a camera) to make a logo. If I can find an image of a movie theater with a blank screen, maybe I'll Photoshop part of the Degas image onto it.

(Photoshop: best procrastination tool ever devised. But it's productive procrastination!)

Hello world

Short introduction

They say new blogs are created every second, or something like that. Here's another one!

Longer introduction

I'm working on a master's degree in library science at Drexel University. This blog will serve as a repository for updates, meta-commentary, and general pontification about the website I'm designing as a course project for Info 652: Internet Information Resource Design. My site is going to be a guide to movies about opera, from the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera to the alien-diva scene in The Fifth Element. It'll be scintillating. It'll be witty. Outtakes will be posted here.