Watching 'Singing in the Rain'

We had a movie shown in our 'Art of Theater' class. 'Singing in the Rain' by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. It was a musical romantic comedy produced in 1951/2. The stars included Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagan.

The story starts with the premiere of the movie 'The Royal Rascal' in which Don Lockwood(Gene Kelly) and Lima Lamant(Jean Hagan) and Don tells about his struggle to become such a superstar. Don is silent screen star. He is very famous and adored by the fans. One day running away from the fans he meets Kathy Sheldon(Debbie Reynolds) who says that silent movie actors are not real actors. Don is surprised but falls in love with her. They meet again at the after screen party and she runs away. In the meantime, the producer, owner of Monumental pictures introduces the talkie. The first talkie 'The Jazz Singer' is produced and becomes a huge hit. The producer think of making a talkie starring Don and Lima. They produce "The Duelling Cavalier". Many technical problems come and the movie is worst. Then Don, Cosmo Brown(Donald O'Connor) and Kathy plan to turn it into a musical. They put some new songs and dances and Kathy dubs the voice for Lima and the movie turns into a huge success. Lima envies Kathy and tries to take all the praises of the movie herself. But her actual voice is displayed when she tries to make speech and sing. The movie ends with Kathy and Don in love and becoming a huge movie star.

The movie is hilarious and energetic. The dance sequences of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor is wonderful. Music, by Adolf Green, is beautiful too. The story is simple and reveals a lot about the film industry of late 20s when talkies were just introduced. The performance of all the actors is good but Donald O'Connor and Jean Hagan have performed extraordinarily. Specially, O'Connor is awesome with his one liners. The choreography is fabulous. Overall, the movie is entertaining as well as informative.

Preacher MOSS's comedy lecture

Whichita State University Student's Activities Council invited Preacher Moss for lecture on "Racism". He was comic and deeply effective in his style of presentation. It was nice to hear from a black muslim american and everybody roaring with laughter.

His message was loud and clear. He just wanted to say that there are no such things as race. Every problem on arises when we talk about races. In USA if you call a black person an American everything is ok why do we need to call that person a black. The root of all racism is clinging on a thought a refusing to change, which he calls 'constipation'. If you can't digest new ideas then you are surely constipated. And constipation surely is helping to flourish racism. The other effective things he said was at the end of the lecture. He asked everyone to stand and put forward our hands and open the palm. He then talked about the five letter thing. We are 'human'
and we live on 'earth' . 'Black', 'White', 'Latin', 'Asian' everything has five letter. 'Unity', 'Peace', 'Happy' all have five words each. Other stuffs included his personal experience of being victim of racism.

Overall, he was hilariously serious. His wit and knowledge was deeply compelling.