"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, November 29, 2010

Project Progress

I spent a hefty chunk of my Thanksgiving break working on my project. I finished watching the last three films, and the page for each film is essentially done. I may mess around with the transitions, and I'll probably change some of the colors to make for easier reading, but the bulk of my main pages is completed.

I'm nearly completed with some of my supplementary pages as well. My 'Actors' page is giving me a bit of trouble, as there are two in-site links that refuse to work for some reason. I may just delete the text for those links and make them again.

I haven't begun working on my 'Source' page yet, but I've been organizing my source information. I decided that I'll have a main source page, and the citation for each film will be accompanied by a link to a minipage for screencaptures from that film and their citations. That will be easier than trying to fit over 50 images on a single page.

I have a few more citation questions. First, people credited for films (director/performers) aren't credited "Last Name, First Name" the way that authors are. However, Wong Kar-wai follows Chinese name order - Wong is his surname. I'm assuming I can credit him in the citations as "Wong Kar-wai" instead of "Kar-wai Wong?"

Also, I'm not sure whether to credit films according to the year they were made or the year the DVDs I watched were made. For most of the eight films I watched, this isn't an issue, but there are two special circumstances I'm unsure about. For the film "In the Mood for Love" (2000), I watched the Criterion edition, which wasn't put out until 2002. More significantly, I watched a remastered edition of "Ashes of Time" (1994), a DVD that didn't come out until 2009. With that film, I understand that entire scenes from the original were replaced, as some of the film stock was badly preserved and couldn't be remastered. Am I right in thinking I should credit the film as being from 2009 and give it the name on the box ("Ashes of Time Redux")? I'm not quite sure how to reflect the specific edition I watched and still include the actual age of the film - MLA guidelines don't offer much insight.

2 comments:

  1. Your assumption about the treatment of names is correct.

    Your questions and observations about treating the dates of the films are really good. Actually, MLA specifies that we should give the release year, which I take to mean the release of the film itself, not the DVD. However, in situations like the ones you mention, there would be reason to include the date of the DVD release. I would in the first case ("In the Mood for Love") treat the film like we would an edition. After the movie release date, you could add Criterion edition, 2002. In the other instance, you could simply follow your own advice and use the Redux name and the 2009 date. Since Redux is a common term indicating another version, this would be reasonable. Other questions? Let me know.

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  2. Thanks, Judy. There are so many clear rules for citing various editions of books, but the information for films is a lot more sparse.

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