Approaches to Literature (week 6)

※When Harry Met Sally

When Harry Met Sally is a 1989 American romantic comedy film written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. It stars Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The story follows the title characters from the time they meet just before sharing a cross-country drive, through twelve years or so of chance encounters in New York City. The film raises the question "Can men and women ever just be friends?" and advances many ideas about relationships that became household concepts, such as "high-maintenance" and the "transitional person".The origins of the film were derived from Reiner's return to single life after a divorce. An interview Ephron conducted with Reiner provided the basis for Harry. Sally was based on Ephron and some of her friends. Crystal came on board and made his own contributions to the screenplay, making Harry funnier. Ephron supplied the structure of the film with much of the dialogue based on the real-life friendship between Reiner and Crystal. The soundtrack consists of standards performed by Harry Connick Jr., with a big band and orchestra arranged by Marc Shaiman. Connick won his first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.Columbia Pictures released the film using the "platform" technique, which involved opening it in a few select cities, letting positive word of mouth generate interest, and then gradually expanding distribution over subsequent weeks. When Harry Met Sally... grossed a total of US$92.8 million in North America. Ephron received a British Academy Film Award, an Oscar nomination, and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for her screenplay. The film is ranked 23rd on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list of the top comedy films in American cinema and number 60 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". In early 2004, the film was adapted for the stage in a production starring Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan.

※An Affair to Remember

Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant), a well-known playboy and dilettante in the arts, meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) aboard the Transatlantic ocean liner SS Constitution en route from Europe to New York. Each is involved with someone else. After a series of chance meetings aboard the ship, they establish a friendship. When Terry joins Nickie on a brief visit to his grandmother when the ship anchors near her home at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, she sees Nickie with new eyes and their feelings blossom into love. During their visit, it is revealed that Nickie has had a talent for painting, but has dropped said trait due to his critical attitude towards his own art. As the ship returns to New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months' time, if they have succeeded in ending their relationships and starting new careers.

On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, in her haste to reach the Empire State Building, is struck down by a car while crossing a street. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Nickie, waiting for her at the observation deck at the top of the building, is unaware of the accident and, after many hours, finally concedes at midnight that she will not arrive, believing that she has rejected him.

After the accident Terry, now unable to walk, refuses to contact Nickie, wanting to conceal her disability. Instead, she finds work as a music teacher. Nickie has pursued his talent as a painter and has his work displayed by an old friend, an art shop owner. Six months after the accident, she sees Nickie with his former fiancée at the ballet, which she herself is attending with her former boyfriend. Nickie does not notice her condition because she is seated and only says hello as he passes her.

Nickie finally learns Terry's address and, on Christmas Eve, makes a surprise visit to her. Although he steers the conversation to make her explain her actions, Terry merely dodges the subject, never leaving the couch on which she sits. He gives her a shawl that his grandmother left for Terry after she died. As he is leaving, Nickie mentions a painting that he had been working on when they originally met, and that it was just given away at the art shop to a woman who liked it but had no money. He is about to say that the woman was in a wheelchair when he pauses, suddenly suspecting why Terry has been sitting unmoving on the couch. He walks into her bedroom and sees his painting hanging on the wall, and a wheelchair concealed there. He now knows why she did not keep their appointment. The film ends with the two in a tight embrace, each realizing that the other's love endures. In closing, Terry says, "If you can paint, I can walk; anything can happen, don't you think?"

※Sleepless in Seattle

Chicago architect Sam Baldwin loses his wife Maggie to cancer. He and his eight-year-old son Jonah start a new life in Seattle, Washington, but Sam continues to grieve. A year and a half later, on Christmas Eve 1992, Jonah—who wants his father to find a new wife—calls in to a radio talk show. Jonah persuades a reluctant Sam to go on the air to talk about how much he misses Maggie. Hundreds of women from around the country who hear the program and are touched by the story write to Sam. One of the listeners is Annie Reed, a Baltimore Sun reporter who is engaged to amiable Walter but feels there is something missing from their cordial relationship. After watching the film An Affair to Remember, Annie impulsively writes a letter suggesting that Sam meet her on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. She does not intend to mail it, but her friend and editor Becky does it for her and agrees to send Annie to Seattle.

Sam begins dating a co-worker Victoria, whom Jonah dislikes. Jonah, a baseball fan, reads Annie's letter and likes that it mentions the Baltimore Orioles, but he fails to convince his father to go to New York to meet Annie. On the advice of his playmate Jessica, Jonah replies to Annie, agreeing to the New York meeting. While dropping Victoria off at the airport for a flight, Sam sees Annie exiting from her plane and is mesmerized by her, although he has no idea who she is. Annie later secretly watches Sam and Jonah playing on the beach together but mistakes Sam's sister for his girlfriend. He recognizes her from the airport and says "Hello," but Annie only responds with another "Hello" before fleeing. She decides she is being foolish and goes to New York to meet Walter for Valentine's Day.

With Jessica's help, Jonah flies to New York without his father's permission and goes to the Empire State Building searching for Annie. Distraught, Sam follows Jonah and finds him on the observation deck. Meanwhile, Annie sees the skyscraper from the Rainbow Room where she is dining with Walter and confesses her doubts to him, amicably ending their engagement. She rushes to the Empire State Building just moments after the doors to the down elevator close with Sam and Jonah inside.

In spite of the observation deck being deserted, Annie discovers a backpack that Jonah left behind. As she pulls out Jonah's teddy bear from the backpack, Sam and Jonah emerge from the elevator, and the three meet for the first time. On the advice of the elevator operator, Sam indicates they should go and offers his hand to Annie. The three then enter the elevator together before the door closes.

※20/20

20/20 is an American television newsmagazine that has been broadcast on ABC since June 6, 1978. Created by ABC News executive Roone Arledge,^[1] the show was designed similarly to CBS's 60 Minutes in that it features in-depth story packages, although it focuses more on human interest stories than international and political subjects. The program's name derives from the "20/20" measurement of visual acuity.

※Cathedral

A cathedral (French: cathédrale from Latin: cathedra, "seat" from the Greek kathédra (καθέδρα), seat, bench, from kata"down" + hedra seat, base, chair) is a Christian church which contains the seat of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. The counterpart term for such a church in German is Dom from Latin domus ecclesiae or domus episcopalis; also Italian Duomo, Dutch Domkerk and cognates in many other European languages. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and some Lutheran and Methodist churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appear in Italy, Gaul, Spain and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches and episcopal residences.

In respect of the church buildings in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the English word "cathedral" commonly translates katholikon (sobor in Slavic languages), meaning of "assembly"; but this title is also applied to monastic and other major churches without episcopal responsibilities. When the church at which an archbishop or "metropolitan" presides is specifically intended, the term kathedrikos naos (literally: "cathedral church") is used.

※Parody

A parody (/ˈpærədi/; also called a spoof, send-up, take-off, or lampoon) is a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work—its subject, author, style, or some other target—by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms), animation, gaming, and film.The writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche ("a composition in another artist's manner, without satirical intent") and burlesque (which "fools around with the material of high literature and adapts it to low ends"). Meanwhile, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot distinguishes between the parody and the burlesque, "A good parody is a fine amusement, capable of amusing and instructing the most sensible and polished minds; the burlesque is a miserable buffoonery which can only please the populace." Historically, when a formula grows tired, as in the case of the moralistic melodramas in the 1910s, it retains value only as a parody, as demonstrated by the Buster Keaton shorts that mocked that genre.

※ Compact Cassette

The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is a magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback released by Philips in 1962, developed in Hasselt, Belgium. Compact cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a pre-recorded cassette, or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. It was designed originally for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. The first cassette player (although mono) designed for use in car dashes was introduced in 1968. Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s, the cassette was one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the LP record and later the compact disc (CD).Compact Cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which a magnetically coated, polyester-type plastic film is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural analog audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second (pair) when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette, or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement and head respectively ("auto-reverse").

※Video Tape

Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog signal or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) or, more commonly, videocassette recorders (VCRs) and camcorders. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram.