Those of you who regularly visit my blog must have noticed that I’ve been “silent” for quite a while. “Why?,” you may wonder (or not, but you’ll learn about it anyway…). Well, the last month of the year got quite busy for me.

First, there was this conference on psychoanalysis and film at the beginning of December in Pécs, Hungary. Then I finished work on the upcoming website of the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (to be launched in a couple of days), and started to develop my brand new site which is designed to concentrate my “web presence” into one sole location. I’ll come back with the updates on this, but at the moment I’m not planning to close down this blog either (it will be my English language site, while the new one will be in Hungarian). I am also working on a CD-ROM for Hungarian Studies, and have joined the Hungarian WordPress team as well. And all these are only the “sideblog,” as I also need to evaluate essays, tests, etc. during the exam period… So, simply, I couldn’t come back to this blog as frequently as I planned at the beginning.

That’s all for now, and come back for the updates on my future website!

I have come to the decision of moving my Hungarian language blog from its WordPress.com place to http://dragonzoltan.extra.hu, so I would like to ask those who also visit that blog to switch to the new domain, to the new rss feed or (live) bookmark. Here are my reasons:

1. firstly, I need to emphasize that I have nothing against WordPress.com (that is why this blog, written in English will stay here), one of the things that seriously disturbs me here is though that it does not support Hungarian fully… This aspect has come to be pivotal for me, since I hate to see the “keep reading” or “leave a comment” phrases in an otherwise fully Hungarian post, just to mention two of the problematic terms. However, my new blog still runs on WordPress - only it is now translated.
2. second, it is simply impossible to use code snippets (javascript among them), and one can only embed outer sources when it is supported. I understand the security issues behind this, but I just want to experiment with the software alone, so that I can try new things in design and functions.

These were the basic issues behind my decision to move the Hungarian blog, and give it a new layout and functionality. Right now I am using Derek Punsalan’s excellent desing, which is just great in its minimalist design that contains little “intricacies” that make it unforgettable. I added a couple of things here and there, and probably will try some tweaks in the future.

While my English language blog is planned to stay here, I also created an alternative domain for it: http://zoltandragon.extra.hu, which offers a completely new desing, too, by Utom, whereas the content is the very same as here. I would like to ask you, though, which one you like better - I have pros and cons for both, but I rarely hear the reader’s opinion on this.

So, blog on!

Blogged with Flock

So, here it is: the last portion of quizzes for the American Cinema/American Culture seminar. We covered two chapters, so you’ll get two sets of the multiple choice test, one for the chapter “The 1960s: The Counter Culture Strikes Back” and another one for “The Film School Generation.” Don’t forget that we still have a couple of things to discuss, and then we’ll get down to serious business - i.e. the final test! At this point I’m not sure how I will compile the test, meaning that I have not yet decided on the particular types of questions. At this moment I would rather opt for a mixed version (i.e. multiple choice and essay type), but we’ll see what comes out of it by the end. Stay tuned!

… then you probably don’t really understand why this entry I just happened to find, Confessions of an Average Idiot: Bloggers Anonymous, is really what it confesses: “Funny, True, and Scarey all at once!!!!” Here is the funny-true-scary list of addiction to blogging - something that sends me back to my previous entry on realizing that I may have become a webaholic…

The Top 10 Signs Your addicted to Blogging

10. You check your blog stats a LOT. You occasionally get up in the middle of the night and sneak a peak.

9. Your significant other suspects you are having an affair with your blog. Even when you’re alone with your special person, you do find yourself thinking what your blog might be doing right then…

8. You “mental blog” while driving or on the train, and sometimes even when you are alone in the shower.

7. You filter everything through your post-writing. You can’t watch a movie, see a play, read an article, or share a sweet moment with your child without thinking of whether it’s blog-worthy.

6. You suffer from “blog envy” when another blogger posts something juicy before you do. You suffer “comment envy” when said post gets 40-something comments – the jerk!

5. You “binge blog” 3 or 4 posts at once—only to feel guilty and empty afterward.

4. You ditched all your real friends for blog friends, because, well, “they understand.” You bypass Bowling Alone at the bookstore (who really cares?) while you reach for Naked Conversations.

3. You think, “I can stop at any time.”

2. Your lunch hour has become your “blog hour.” You keep a few posts tucked in your desk in case you need them during the day.

1. After 5 minutes of meeting someone really interesting you ask, “So - do you blog?”

Blogged with Flock

Technorati Tags: web, blog

It’s time to announce my course offers for the next semester as far as the two courses at the Institute of English and American Studies are concerned, since the syllabus for Spring 2007 has been accepted by the Institute Council. One of the courses will be (by tradition) on film adaptation, while the other will concern how the U.S. comes to be represented on the silver screen. I’ve been doing the film adaptation seminar for quite a while by now, and it in fact constitutes the main research field of my PhD dissertation (to come in the future…).

Here is the preliminary course description for Film Adaptation: Drama to Film (or Tennessee Williams Goes to Hollywood):

The objective of the seminar is to examine the adaptation of dramas to film in order to focus on the neglected topic of the “medial break” foregrounded (and veiled, at the same time) by the mechanisms of representation in these media. In the post-war period, Tennessee Williams became the most adapted of America’s playwrights, with his plays providing the source for some of Hollywood’s most critically acclaimed, most popular, and most financially successful films. The primary texts in this seminar include three Tennessee Williams dramas (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Night of the Iguana, and Suddenly Last Summer) and their film adaptations (by Richard Brooks, John Huston, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, respectively). The choice of Tennessee Williams offers an opportunity to investigate the ‘transformation’ of the playwright into a Hollywood auteur, since Williams participated in the shooting of the films to a lesser or greater extent (sometimes he simply visited the shooting location, but often he wrote the screenplay himself. Key issues addressed: question of authorship, the medial break, characterisation, point of view, representation of bodies, settings, gender.

The other course is completely new: I wanted something that relates closely to American Studies, and how the U.S. imagines herself when it comes to film. While you might expect the glorious movie image, in fact there is a strikingly diverse self-criticism involved in the tradition, with various genres interacting on various levels of representation. That’s what makes it intriguing. Here is a preliminary description for the course, America Onscreen:

The course intends to explore, on the one hand, the representations and renderings of America in various films; on the other hand, how America has helped to transform film itself, including the documentary form. Films of the past decades will be discussed during the seminars that occasionally provide powerful link to classic films of earlier generations of directors and actors, such as John Ford and John Wayne, Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart – to name just a few. The course also aims to investigate how direct and immediate continuities obtain between classic and contemporary films regarding central issues of American culture and character, especially pertaining to race, ethnicity and gender. Films to be discussed – among others – are: Crash (2005), Malcolm X (1992), Raging Bull (1980), Monster’s Ball (2001).

Stay tuned for potential updates!

Blogged with Flock

The world is by now full of browsers - they are our vehicle during our surfing, our adventures on the information superhighway (if this phrase is still in use, btw), so perhaps it does matter what your browser does for you. Yes, design may be important, but what if your hip browser hets you on the internet and that’s all - you can browse, search, view sites… ooops, what else can you do?

Well, a lot more! In our age of Web 2.0 applications (whatever it means, let us put it aside for a moment and indulge in the pleasures we are given under this umbrella), how come your standard browser allows you to do only what you’ve been doing since you started surfing the net? Providing you have sets of images on Flickr or Photobucket, videos on YouTube, code snippets here and there, etc., in other words, things to manage, you’ll probably find it rather tiresome to go over the usual procedure of clicking, saving, uploading, inserting images, using several software - and most of your time, which should go into your creative act.

I used to be a MSIE fan, saying it is the fatest, most secure and hippest browser on the earth. Then I started to work on websites, and what I got was baffling… So I switched to Firefox and Opera, and was happy with them - but something was missing, I felt. For my birthday, I downloaded my new browser - Flock. Not heard of it? Well, let me tell you why it’s the best browser ever created.

Perhaps the world does not need another web browser — but it may want Bart Decrem’s. (Jeff McIntyre — Wired News)

When I am thinking of posting an entry on my blogs, I usually think of the content first, and then how it should look like on the page in terms of editing and images. So, I enter my blog’s dashboard, start writing the post, and whenever I need an image, I go and search on the net (if I don’t have it in some of my myriads of folders…), download it, edit it if necessary, then upload it, and insert it (respecting copyright!). Now, it’s quite long, in fact takes almost as much time as writing the particular blog entry.

With Flock, however, I am at a huge advantage: I can use my Photobucket or Flickr account, where I upload images all the time anyway, and Flock opens a bar for me right in the browser window, and I can drag and drop the image I would like to use into the post. I’m doing it right now with the illustration for this process:

You see the “quiz” image on the darker lane, and I simply drag it to where I would like to see it, and drop it. That’s all, push “publish” and it’s ready to roll! Or you can play with it whether you want your visitors to stroll over your uploaded images or not, or you may want to style your image - but you would do it anyway, unless you’re just quick and want people let to know of something, and styling is not your cup of tea. What’s more, uploading images to your accounts is a piece of cake as well: you do it the other way around, grab the image on a website and simply drag it to the darker lane of images and drop it. No right click, save, edit, upload, insert… Bottom line, it’s up to you, and your browser only shows the potentials you can go with. Now, this is something really different from your everyday use of browsers, isn’t it?

To give something more, let me tell you that you don’t even need to enter your blog’s administration panel: you can post without even visitng your account! Flock has a built-in blogging tool, which gives you an editor similar to your blog editors, you enter the text (and images), click post, and there you are.

Oh, and one more thing for geeks: whenever you find a site that uses interesting texts or code snippets, you just click on an icon on the right bottom of Flock, and it saves it for you - all you need to do is to revisit the icon, and it will give you the desired snippet. Easy, hah? And a great help, too.

There are a lot more features that I haven’t yet tried (or will never), but I guess it is just quite obvious why Flock (avowedly a Firefox offspring which takes browsing a step or two further) is a must. Browse happy, and make the web your own at last!

We have arrived at the next installment of quizzes, notably two of them: one on the chapter on Western, and another one on the chapter on Cold War. Remember that we will tackle two new topics next time (Counterculture and film school generation), which means we need to be rather economical with our agenda.

As a very quick and unstoppable idea, I created a new pool for the news and announcements of the field of film studies in Hungary, called Film Studies Herald (Filmtudományi Hírmondó). The aim of this blog is to collect from existing websites and journals all the pertaining information and present it in a focused way so that everyone interested in such issues would only need to go to this blog first, and could get a redirection to their specific interest. It is in Hungarian, and you can access it at http://filmologia.extra.hu. There is no catch in this new initiative: everyone who sends in posts can only gain (and gets to the front page immediately ).

Surely, everyone have had a day when they decided to map the best websites in a given topic - but the project ended in some degree of frustration: you either get too much, which is difficult to handle, or too little, which would not help you. And even if you the search brings some success, when revisiting your favorite websites you may be surprised that it no new content had been submitted for quite a while - or its opposite, too much to read… Besides, who has the time to surf all the webpages for a perticle of information on a specific conference that does not have a website, for instance? Film Studies Herlad puts an end to this - as far as the situation of film studies news channels in Hungary is concerned.

The aim of Film Studies Herald is to pull together relevant Hungarian news, cfps, book reviews, links, etc. and thus serve as a starting point for students, instructors, researchers and everyone interested in the topic. I do hope that the project will turn out to be a real success and the website becomes a genuine community blog. Everyone’s help is appreciated - there’s no restriction, only the topic.

I sincerely hope that conference organizers of Hungarian film studies events and the sphere of professionals will see the common interest and gain in this initiative, so that we can work together for a better film studies situation in Hungary (besides, it’s too little a country with a relatively small academic community working in this direction to hinder one another, I guess). Blog on!

As a movie fan myself, I thought it may be a good idea to put the most recent news from the world of cinema on my website, so that you, dear visitor, will be able to pick your interests. The reason for this is simple: I planned to give information and links on films and directors I like, but it turned out to be a difficult task, as by the time I would be ready writing a post, there surely would be a new issue around the particular topic that should be included…

No more waiting: check out the bottom of my sidebar where I placed an rss feed from Yahoo’s movie news page. If you find something interesting, all you need to do is to click on the title of the post, and there you are. Blog on!