JohnCon is the annual convention of JHU's very own Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (HopSFA). The con is held in Levering Hall, continuously (yes, non-stop) from 5PM on Friday evening until 5PM on Sunday. There are movies, board games, anime, laser tag, panels, Dungeons and Dragons, and best of all, many like-minded people who understand the respective souls of sci fi and fantasy.

What’s that? You think you can invent a board game that will capture the world’s imagination (and also make you rich)? Perhaps you can – pick up some pointers in Game Inventor’s Guidebook. It’s an e-book, so you can read it right now.

Ah, you’re more of a video game creator? Try these e-books about how to market them. Are dragons your thing? Check out the intriguing subject heading “dragons in art,” which includes such titles as Dracopedia: a Guide to Drawing the Dragons of the World.

And we have anime -- take a look at these books and films; amaze your friends with the fascinating facts you'll learn from The Anime Encyclopedia. Manga? Covered.

So enter the fantastical world of HopSFA this weekend!

Is that Oscar buzz wearing off? Awww. You only have a scant eleven months until the next round of stellar stories vie for competition. Of course, the Oscars are more than just the winners and losers, it's about the celebration of the wonderful performances and artistic achievements of a medium. But does the medium ever use the medium to celebrate itself?

Not to get all Charlie Kaufman, but yes, that does happen. Let's take a look at three films that celebrate the power of film, through film.

Cinema Paradiso
In a small town in Sicily, Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio) is mesmerized by the local cinema. By befriending the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), he discovers not only the ways of filmmaking, but of love, friendship, and hardship.

In After Fellini : national cinema in the postmodern age, Millicent Marcus describes Cinema Paradiso thusly:

"Cinema Paradiso is a film that makes film reception its privileged object, and it is here that [director] Tornatore offers his distinctive contribution to the contemporary cinema of nostalgia. Though critics faulted Tornatore’s citations of film classics as arbitrary and unsystematic, his method can be justified as an accurate mimesis of the way in which cinema was experienced by the provincial public of Giancaldo. Tornatore’s random cinematic allusions represent the indiscriminate cinephilia of 1940s and 1950s popular culture, which made of all films, no matter how diverse, one vast invitation to imaginative escape."

Hugo
The titular Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in the Gare Montparnasse train station, minding its clocks. When he repairs an automaton—the last remnant of life with his father—he finds that there is someone special spending their days in the station as well.

Based on Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, this story details the life of early cinema and the magic of the movies. As a film historian himself, Martin Scorcese could not help but have deep personal connections to the story, something that Roger Ebert noted in his review:

"Leave it to Scorsese to make his first 3-D movie about the man who invented special effects. There is a parallel with the asthmatic Scorsese, living in Little Italy but not of it, observing life from the windows of his apartment, soaking up the cinema from television and local theaters, adopting great directors as his mentors, and in the case of Michael Powell, rescuing their careers after years of neglect. …

Scorsese has made documentaries about great films and directors, and here he brings those skills to storytelling. We see Méliès (who built the first movie studio) using fantastical sets and bizarre costumes to make films with magical effects ­— all of them hand-tinted, frame by frame. And as the plot makes unlikely connections, the old man is able to discover that he is not forgotten, but indeed is honored as worthy of the Pantheon."

The Purple Rose of Cairo
During the Great Depression, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) frequents the local movie house to escape her loveless and abusive marriage. After watching the titular film a number of times, the actors take notice of her presence, particularly the handsome Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels).

The draw of films as a form of escapism is a very powerful one. Arguably, it is the main attraction of films. In American Quarterly, David Grimstad breaks down Ceclia's attraction to films as such:

"For Cecilia, the 1930s Purple Rose offers escape from a troubled life, contact with a world she can't know directly, and a source of encouragement for her gently humane values. It offers her dreams of "a penthouse, the desert, kissing on the dance floor," and contact with a world where people are "so beautiful" and speak "so cleverly." Such possibilities are partly material (she tells Tom with gentle yearning in the penthouse, "Oh! the white telephone. Oh! I've dreamed of having a white telephone"), partly scenic (the exotic desert with its pyramids), but primarily romantic and human."

• With a romantic comedy about chocolate lovers, who can go wrong? Read some reviews of Romantic Anonymous (or Les Émotifs anonymes) by Jean-Pierre Améris.
• Werner Herzog's recent critically-acclaimed documentary will be shown, giving us insight into the wonderful prehistoric drawings found in the Chauvet cave in France: Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
• The Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki shot his film Le Havre in 2011. It is his second film in the French language, after La Vie de Bohème from 1992.
• Bertrand Bonello’s film House of Pleasures describes the life in a brothel at the end of the 19th century.
• Tales of the Night is an animated movie by Michel Ocelot. Some of this director’s works are available in the library.
• Moi, petite fille de treize ans, a documentary by Elisabeth Coronel, Florence Gaillard, and Arnaud de Mezamat, presents the memories of Simone Lagrange, whose family was involved in the Resistance during WWII and who was a prisoner in Auschwitz.
• Incendies, by Denis Villeneuve is adapted from the play Scorched by Wadji Mouawad.

In case you cannot make it to all these sessions, our library will soon own copies of each of these films in our collection.  And we have many other resources that you may find interesting, including a library guide and a large collection of DVDs and video tapes. Would you like to read materials related to these French films? There is a guide for French literature and culture, too. Enjoy!

Many cultural and religious traditions, relying on the lunar calendar or lunisolar calendar instead of the Gregorian variety, choose to celebrate their new year on other dates and in other ways. Chinese New Year is perhaps the best known of these alternative folkways, due to its colorful public celebrations infused with an aura of ancient ritual and belief. And there’s no better way to immerse yourself in this fifteen-day-long holiday than to view the video First Moon, a rich, lively illustration of how the new year is celebrated by the world’s most populous nation. It’s available in VHS format from the Sheridan Libraries; but if you don’t have a VCR, why not view First Moon on the spot in the MSEL AV Center on A-level?

Another lunisolar new year’s celebration with an age-old lineage is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah (literally, “head of the year”). A central aspect of this holiday is the re-rolling of the Torah scroll (the first five books of the Old Testament) back to its beginning to recommence a year-long reading of its contents. If you'd like to see some of the library's old and rare copies of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language, pay a visit to our Special Collections Department. A shofar, or traditional ram’s horn trumpet, is also blown during the celebration. Unlike the more public Chinese New Year celebration, the Jewish New Year is focused on the place of worship and the home, where festive holiday meals often play a central role.

In Islam, the New Year is also part of that religion’s lunar-based liturgical calendar. The Islamic calendar, or Hijri, dates from the year in which the prophet Mohammed made his famous journey from Mecca to Medina. In contrast to many other new year’s celebrations, Muslims are likely to observe the new year of the Muslim calendar in quiet contemplation and remembrance. If you’d like to become more familiar with the life of the prophet, use Catalyst to put a request on the library’s copy of the DVD “The Message (Al-Risalah).”

These are just a few examples of the celebratory genius of the human spirit on display as one year ends and another begins. Indeed, one website dedicated to New Year’s traditions provides informative summaries of 62 different national, ethnic, and religious versions of the event.

So why do we make such a big deal about this arbitrarily-defined day? It’s because the New Year—wherever, whenever, and however its arrival is observed--infuses us with a sense of new possibilities and new beginnings, the chance to start over with a clean slate. It reminds us that we live in a universe of repeating cycles and continual renewal, that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Janus-like, it fills us with a deeply-felt admixture of nostalgia and hope.

Have a happy and hopeful New Year!

Inside a Hobbit hole

Each of J.R.R. Tolkien's three famous Lord of the Rings books (1954-1955) was made into a movie (in 2001, 2002, and 2003, respectively). But The Hobbit only has about 317 pages.

Then how will they get three movies out of it?

Look at the end of the final LoTR volume, The Return of the King – there are six appendices that could furnish a lot of material:

• Appendix A: Annals of the Kings and Rulers -- More about Aragorn, and kings and heirs of Gondor, Isildur, and other realms
• Appendix B: The Tale of Years -- Marvelous details about the First, Second, and Third Ages (the last of which ended with the defeat of Sauron)
• Appendix C: Family Trees -- Including those of Baggins, Took, and Brandybuck
• Appendix D: Shire Calendar -- First of all, every year begins on the first day of the week, which is Saturday
• Appendix E: Writing and Spelling -- Includes pronunciation
• Appendix F: The Languages and the Peoples of the Third Age -- Background about elvish, dwarvish, and other tongues, including the Black Speech of the Orcs

Behold its awesome Power

Amazing! This man was obviously very devoted to this world he created.

He was indeed. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) loved languages, literature, and mythology; he even wrote a book about the legend of Beowulf. Since about 1915, he had been constructing the story which would eventually become The Silmarillion, as well as the languages used by the people in those tales. This book was finally published in 1977 by Tolkien's son Christopher. (By the way, you can't beat the excellent Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for information about anyone who "shaped British history and culture...from the Romans to the 21st century.")

Several of the elder Tolkien's friends, including C.S. Lewis (perhaps best known for his Chronicles of Narnia), encouraged him to complete the Lord of the Rings epic, which Tolkien began writing at age 44.

In addition to the aforementioned appendices, there are rumors about other material that may be used in the movies, such as events mentioned in The Hobbit but not elaborated upon, and some of The Silmarillion. We'll just have to wait and see.

What materials does JHU have about Tolkien and his works?

We have a lot! Put the single word tolkien(remember that the library catalog is not case-sensitive) into the search box, and you get 147 results.

The Master of Middle-Earth

Wow, did he write that much?

No, he didn’t – the results include 134 books that are mostly *about* Tolkien and/or his works (11 of which are e-books), as well as 5 non-musical recordings (including J.R.R. reading and singing his works, and his son Christopher reading one), 3 films, 3 serials, and even a musical score.

To see the list of languages, authors, topics, and other information about our Tolkien holdings, use the list of filters on the left.

How soon should I review The Hobbit, the appendices to The Return of the King, and The Silmarillion, so that I'm prepared for the movies? 

Start now! The first one, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, will be out this December (2012)! In December 2013 will come The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; and finally in July 2014, The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

Carlos Villarías as the famous vampire

In time for Halloween, let's dig into some creepy films that make use of the world's second most popular language.

Until recently, when pouting and glittering in the sun became the familiar visual for vampirism, most were familiar with the caped and widow-peaked Bela Lugosi as Dracula. What most may not be familiar with is a similarly caped and widow-peaked Carlos Villarías in the same role.

As the film industry transitioned away from silent film and into talkies, they were faced with a problem: they could no longer simply swap out the intertitle cards that contained the film's dialogue for dialogue in another language. Dubbing and subtitles had yet to be embraced, so they resorted to another option: Filming an entirely separate movie with the same sets with the same equipment as the English-language version. Native speakers were swapped out for the English-speaking Hollywood actors and their scenes were filmed during the downtime of the English-language production.

What is interesting about the Spanish-language version of Dracula, however, is that the Spanish-language crew was able to see the work of the English-language production and decided to try and top what they were doing, resulting in a more compelling and artistic picture:

"The American compositions are remarkably flat, like a plan performed on a narrow stage apron. [Spanish-language cinematographer George] Robinson's camera work is distinguished by its use of multiple planes of focus and action. Foreground objects create tension and depth, while middle-ground devices (cobwebs, windows, branches, bars, etc.) further split and define the visual field."

- David J. Skal, "The Spanish Dracula", American Film, September 1990

Fast-forward 80 years. In the 21st century, things are actually going the other way: Spanish filmmakers are producing films in English as a way to expand their audience to a global level. A good example of this trend is the 2001 haunted-house-with-a-twist flick, The Others. Despite being set in British Jersey, the movie was shot by director Alejandro Amenábar (Abre los ojos) in Madrid and the Cantabria region of Spain.

With nary a lick of Spanish spoken, it was a gamble for a Spanish production, but The Others proved to be highly successful. It won 8 Goya Awards (Spanish Oscars), including Best Film--the first English-language film to do so. Internationally, it collected $209 million at the box office. Not too shabby. (Casting Nicole Kidman as the leading lady didn't hurt, either.)

Another creepy English-language Spanish production that pulled the same trick is the Christian-Bale-as-mental-anorexic flick, The Machinist. This time, a Spanish production company and an American director used the outskirts of Barcelona to double for an anonymous American west coast city. Whoda thunk?

Some other Spanish-language chillers include:
The Orphanage
Pan's Labyrinth
REC
The Blood Spattered Bride
Tesis
The Devil's Backbone

Good books on Spanish-language cinema in general:
Blood Cinema
100 Years of Spanish Cinema
The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema

Research tools to find our more about scary Spanish films:
Film & Media Studies Research Guide

The online Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us that Saints Crispin and Crispinian were brothers from a wealthy family who came to Soissons, France (not far from Agincourt) in the third century A.D. to set up shop as humble shoemakers and live a devout Christian life—hence their designation as the patron saints of shoemakers, tanners, and saddlers. Unfortunately, this was a period of persecution of Christians throughout the Roman Empire, so the brothers were pressured to renounce their faith. Even when they were tied to millstones and thrown in the river, though, they managed to escape injury and remain true to the teachings of Christ. Eventually, Diocletian’s co-emperor Maximian had them decapitated.

Now for the English angle (no pun intended): First, there’s the legend that after the brothers’ martyrdom, their bodies washed up on the shore of Romney Marsh in the County of Kent, England. And in a variation on the English connection, another tradition has it that, fleeing persecution, Crispin and Crispinian came to Faversham in Kent and plied their trade at a house on the site of the present-day Swan Inn (where there is a plaque commemorating this fact). The local parish church even has an altar to the brothers; as recently as the 17^th century, local and foreign pilgrims visited the site.

Now that you’re one of the “happy few” who know the story, why not celebrate the Day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian by:

• Checking out both Henry V films from the library and comparing how well they resonate with modern audiences.
• Reading (or re-reading) Shakespeare’s beautifully and compellingly written version of the Henry V story and other books about this beloved but short-lived king.
• Walking in the shoes of other Christian saints—which can be far more interesting than you might have imagined—by reading their biographies. You can either browse through our extensive collection of print materials on this topic (including some old and rare volumes accessible through Special Collections) or go straight to the print edition of Encyclopedia of Saints or even Saints for Dummies in e-book format.
• Stepping into some of our titles on the history of shoemaking to see how the profession evolved from the lowliest of occupations to the darling of the high-end fashion industry.

Happy St. Crispin’s Day!

Okay, I made up the “everyone knows,” but I think that’s the prevailing opinion. Too much of the story has to be told in a different way, or left out entirely (like did you know that Scarlett O’Hara had other children? And that Jane and Michael Banks, from Mary Poppins, had other siblings??)

Here are some good books that are about to be made into movies, listed by release date:

• The Hobbit -- Bilbo's amazing journey with his companions across Middle Earth is a classic. It's a good read, whether or not you read the Lord of the Rings trilogy or saw the Lord of the Rings movies. In fact, you might want to considering owning a copy of this book - it's that good! In theaters December 2012 (Part I) and December 2013 (Part II).

• Ender’s Game – It's impossible to describe the Battle School and how its chosen students learn military strategy, and why. This extraordinary book is on lots of people's lists of “books that should never be made into movies.” I'd suggest you read this book even before you see any movie trailers. In theaters November 2013.
• Catching Fire – My question is, what can possibly be in this Hunger Games sequel when so much of it is based on stuff that was left out of the first movie? Quick, I'd suggest you read the whole trilogy (you can interlibrary loan them, too) before the movie comes out. In theaters November 2013.
• Ready Player One – For an interesting take on this book, you might want to read or view one of the many interviews with author Ernest Cline, like this one. The world is a broken-down, overpopulated mess, but if you have a computer, you can go to OASIS, a fantastic virtual existence. Now the genius billionaire who created OASIS is dead, and if you can solve the puzzles that he left, it can all be yours. This book is great fun, whether you're a gamer or not. Release date indefinite; likely 2014.

Finally, I'll mention the beautiful Never Let Me Go, by Kazuro Ishiguro. Even though this is already a movie, I'd advise that you read the book to join the innocent young people at their English boarding school. That way, you can slowly, gradually understand why they're there. (If you don't know anything about the story, you might ruin it by reading reviews.)

See you at the movies!

Book

At this moment, on the McNaughton shelf on M Level, find the stunning novel about The Night Circus, which "Opens at Nightfall, Closes at Dawn." The luscious descriptions of this mysterious circus, its gifted performers, the sights ("the tent full of people...performing tricks with bright white fire"), the smells ("smoke and caramel"), and the grand contest taking place amidst it all kept me reading and reading and reading.

Movies

Don't miss two extraordinary movies about magicians that appeared at virtually the same time: The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, and The Prestige, starring Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine. The twists and turns in these movies will keep you mesmerized.

Music

While you're thinking about your magical summer, enjoy Magic To Do, a song from the 1972 Broadway musical Pippin, performed by the legendary Ben Vereen.

Does the library have more materials that involve magic?

Why, yes, it turns out that we do! If you do a catalog search with just the word "magic" in the TITLE, you get more than 2,500 hits. In addition to more than 2,300 books, there are are 140 musical recordings, 46 DVDs/videos, 41 musical scores, 17 dissertations, 10 journals/newspapers, and 6 manuscripts/archives, among other things -- astonishing! By the way, this breakdown of materials is always to the left of your hits list.

One of those choices is DISCIPLINE -- let's choose Medicine and see what we get: cool! The first hit is Jonathan Swan's Quack Magic: The Dubious History of Health Magic and Cures. (And look -- it has a subject heading for "Quacks and quackery -- history"!)

So enjoy our stunning books and riveting movies about magic, and have a magical summer!

The festival showcases films from around the world and around the corner. Check out the complete schedule to get a sense for the scope and variety of movies. There is something for everyone.

Can’t make it to the event? No worries, have your own in-house movie marathon viewing films from the library’s collection. We’ve got films in every genre, including: comedies, dramas, horror films, Westerns, thrillers. And, films by local directors like John Waters and Barry Levinson and legendary folks like Fellini and Bergman. A TV junkie? No worries, we’ve got you covered, too.

For film nerds (like me), don’t forget to use our Film & Media Studies Research Guide to find scholarship about film, reviews, screenplays, and basic information. Sure, IMDb is good, but we’ve got even more.

Whether you’re at the festival or on your couch, sit back and enjoy!