A Distributed Multilevel Force-directed Algorithm

The wide availability of powerful and inexpensive cloud computing services naturally motivates the study of distributed graph layout algorithms, able to scale to very large graphs. Nowadays, to process Big Data, companies are increasingly relying on PaaS infrastructures rather than buying and maintaining complex and expensive hardware. So far, only a few examples of basic force-directed algorithms that work in a distributed environment have been described. Instead, the design of a distributed multilevel force-directed algorithm is a much more challenging task, not yet addressed. We present the first multilevel force-directed algorithm based on a distributed vertex-centric paradigm, and its implementation on Giraph, a popular platform for distributed graph algorithms. Experiments show the effectiveness and the scalability of the approach. Using an inexpensive cloud computing service of Amazon, we draw graphs with ten million edges in about 60 minutes.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016

“No Stropping, No Honing”: Modernism’s Safety Razors

“No Stropping, No Honing”: Modernism’s Safety Razor

American Audiences on Movies and Moviegoing

A unique perspective on half a century of American cinema—from the audience’s point of view. Tom Stempel goes beyond the comments of professional reviewers, concentrating on the opinions of ordinary people. He traces shifting trends in genre and taste, examining and questioning the power films have in American society. Stempel blends audience response with his own observations and analyzes box office results that identify the movies people actually went to see, not just those praised by the critics. Avoiding statistical summary, he presents the results of a survey on movies and moviegoing in the respondents’ own words—words that surprise, amuse, and irritate. The moviegoers respond: “Big bad plane, big bad motorcycle, and big bad Kelly McGillis.”—On Top Gun “All I can recall were the slave girls and the Golden Calf sequence and how it got me excited. My parents must have been very pleased with my enthusiasm for the Bible.”—On why a seven-year-old boy stayed up to watch The Ten Commandments “I learned the fine art of seduction by watching Faye Dunaway smolder.”—A woman’s reaction to seeing Bonnie and Clyde “At age fifteen Jesus said he would be back, he just didn’t say what he would look like.”—On E.T. “A moronic, very ‘Hollywoody’ script, and a bunch of dancing teddy bears.”—On Return of the Jedi “I couldn’t help but think how Mad magazine would lampoon this.—On The Exorcist A refreshing antidote to dry statistical summary, Stempel’s entertaining tome offers a different perspective on a half-century of American cinema. —American Cinematographer A highly charming and provocative study of audiences. —American Studies Deflates ‘artistic’ opinions about directors by using box-office grosses and audience response as a measuring rod. —Choice A sprawling look at the last fifty years of American movies and how audiences responded to them. —Cineaste Does something that most academically oriented cinema-related books don’t: he gets in touch with the magic of the movies. —Creative Screenwriting Obligatory reading for serious film goers and film makers alike. Written with charm and style, this book gives the audience perspective on movies as no other book has done. Insightful. —David Brown A fascinating glimpse into history. —Express Books In drawing our attention back to the audience, he has rendered a service by reminding us that a reciprocal relationship exists between the filmmaker and audience. All too often we tend to ignore the latter. —Film & History The results reflect the ideas of anyone who has ever sat down with an overpriced combo of popcorn and soda: some movies are great, others are stinkers, and when it comes right down to it, the opinions of professional critics don’t amount to a hill of beans. —ForeWord A great idea for a book. —Lexington Herald-Leader In this book, ordinary people talk back to the screen, describing early movie-going memories, family nights at the drive in, growing up with movies in the early days of television, and loving and hating movies in the 1960s. Other topics include the always popular subject of sex in the cinema . . . and the our changing response to movies as we age. . . . . Lively, divergent reactions to classics and box-office hits are also included. —Library Journal Stempel draws upon his considerable expertise to examine the complex relationship between the audience and the movies. . . . Very highly recommended and unique reading for students of film history and American popular culture. —Midwest Book Review Gives voice to the audience. —Plushttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1006/thumbnail.jp

Volume 18 - Issue 21 - April 18, 1983

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman\u27s independent student newspaper.https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rosethorn/1823/thumbnail.jp

Volume 18 - Issue 21 - Friday, April 15, 1983

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman\u27s independent student newspaper.https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rosethorn/1791/thumbnail.jp

Gangstas, Thugs, Vikings, and Drivers: Cinematic Masculine Archetypes and the Demythologization of Violence in the Films of Nicolas Winding Refn

This thesis considers how the depictions of masculinity in the films of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn function as a critique of mainstream Hollywood cinema’s perpetuation of the notion that violent male behavior represents a heroic ideal for men to emulate. In films such as Pusher, Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive, Refn constructs and presents his male characters by drawing upon recurring archetypal figures such as the gangster, the gangsta, the gunslinger, and the samurai. These figures recur throughout popular culture and across genres, and they perpetuate and reinforce a specific version of masculinity that emphasizes individualism, stoicism, and violence. Mainstream Hollywood films in general and male action cinema in particular often present this narrow and rigid vision of masculinity as a heroic manly ideal, and this, in turn, can inform how male viewers construct their own masculine personae. The male characters in Refn’s films serve to critique and destabilize this ideal by demonstrating how an insistence on appropriating or conforming to this sort of violent masculinity results in negative consequences for both the individual and the society around him

Advancing the Empirical Research on Lobbying

This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and effective use of the main types of data available for research in lobbying. It closes by discussing a number of open questions for researchers in the field and avenues for future work to advance the empirical research in lobbying

Deleuzean hybridity in the films of Leone and Argento

In this comparatively brief chapter I begin by introducing my central research proposition. I then introduce my corpus of films and establish their significance both in their own right and as somewhat representative examples of a broader area of cinema. Following this I introduce my corpus of theory. Throughout, I seek to position my research within its wider context, identifying precedents for the approach I will take, alongside the originality of the thesis as a whole. My central contention in this thesis is that the films made by the Italian directors Sergio Leone and Dario Argento between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s are distinctive instances of a Deleuzean hybrid cinema. Gilles Deleuze suggests that we can identify two main, contrasting forms of cinema. These are the cinema of the movement-image and the cinema of the timeimage. As a philosopher of difference, Deleuze tends to present the two cinemas as alternatives. This is enhanced by their most important respective manifestations. The movement-image is associated with classical Hollywood genre cinema, the time-image with modern European art cinema. Accordingly, a Deleuzean approach leads to two contradictory hypotheses on the nature of Leone and Argento’s films. On the one hand, that they are genre works (westerns, gangster, thrillers and horror films) suggests they are movement-image. On the other hand, that they are post-Second World War continental European films suggests they are time-image. My contention is that we can resolve this apparent contradiction by considering the films as including combinations of movement-images and time-images. This entails reading Deleuze’s theory somewhat against the grain, by suggesting the existence of a continuum between the two image regimes. Crucially, however, there are a number of precedents for using Deleuze’s ideas to investigate hybrid cinemas, with these also demonstrating the value of modifying or extending his theories. In addition, I would suggest that we can deploy notions of hybrid cinema as a means of exploring the career trajectories of certain directors, by considering the proportions and types of movement-image and time-image apparent over their filmographies. My main corpus of films comprises fourteen works by Italian directors Sergio Leone (1929-1989) and Dario Argento (1940-). The Leone films span the period 1964 to 1984 and are all westerns with the exception of his final film, which belongs to the gangster/crime genre. The Argento films span the period 1970 to 1982 and are all giallo thrillers or fantasy-horror films, with some overlap between these genres. The Leone films are A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck You Sucker (1971), My Name is Nobody (1973) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984). The Argento films are The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Tenebrae (1982). The exclusion of Argento’s later films allows for a clearer and closer comparison to be made with Leone’s films, my contention being that the two directors were doing similar things in their respective genres during this time period. Argento also broke into filmmaking through collaborating with Leone upon Once Upon a Time in the West

Spartan Daily, February 4, 1975

Volume 64, Issue 3https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/5936/thumbnail.jp

The Gamut: A Journal of Ideas and Information, No. 23, Spring 1988

CONTENTS OF ISSUE NO. 23, SPRING, 1988 Louis T. Milic: Editorial, 2 Bearing Witness to the Best Vincent Dowling: Interview: The Abbey Theatre-For Ireland and the World, 5 New artistic director charts ambitious course for international Irish drama. Barbara Green: Machiavelli and the Problem of Evil, 17 Does Machiavellian have to mean evil? Bruce A. Beatie: John Griswold White and His Libraries, 29 The Cleveland Public Library\u27s unrivaled collections of chess lore, folklore, and Orientalia. George A. Mauersberger: A Stage Set, a Bucket, a Cave, 43 Portfolio of drawings. Samuel M. Savin: The Great Earthquake of \u2786, 52 A look at the unstable earth under our feet. Ian Hancock: Romani: Language of the Gypsies, 61 John Gerlach: Fiction, 66 Jugglers Sibley W Hoobler: Jared Kirtland and His Warbler, 75 A remarkable man and the remarkable bird named in his honor. Jack A. Soules: Artificial Intelligence, 79 Can machines think as we do? And do we want them to? A Fistful of Poets Robert Wallace: After a Time, 88 When You Buy a Big, Old House, 89 Ron Houchin: A Short History of Fire, 90 Noreen A. McSherry: First Communion, 91 Jeff Gundy: Media Inquiries, 92 Christopher L. Domin: For Three Who Drowned Young, 93 Diana Jachman: Fiction, 94 The Scouthttps://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/gamut_archives/1020/thumbnail.jp