I'd like to connect this with my earlier comment on movies whose enthusiasm outstrips their ability. The quality of passion is a hard thing to pin down--St. Augustine argues that a preacher driven by true faith will outstrip the best educated orator, but at the same time, makes allowances that you can't expect that of everyone, even people who do have true faith. This arrangement also means this section is in immediate parallel with Blair's notion that oratorical skill is inherent and natural, and the real rhetoric was in our hearts all along. I'm pretty suspicious of this as a method of teaching rhetoric, but, at the same time, I can't deny that sometime someone actually does pull off "true of heart" oratorical skill. Nothing technically amazing, but delivered like a champ because they believed in their cause.

Thinking of this scene from Men In Black, where J explains to K that "a person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals." J's more egalitarian, it's something about crowd size rather than an inherent problem in the body of the common multitude, but it's built on the same observation that you can't speak to the masses the same way you might talk to a peer. J endorses secrecy for their own good, Vico endorses explaining it in a simplified way, then raising the discourse over time.

I've never read Orlando Furioso, so I can't really comment on it's offbeat character, but I do see a connection here with the so-bad-it's-good style of filming, particularly the movies that win you over as actually good. Like House (surrealist Japanese film with a remarkable poster) or Miami Connection (...just click). If they're found to please...

This is a shot of the pier near Fairway, on the Hudson, overlooking New Jersey

Color stock had not yet entered the mass market for short, news segments like this.

"Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett", a short film by Andrew Filippone Jr. (Funny. But I think Charlie Rose would interrupt himself more often.)

https://www.eyefilm.nl/en

Kodak is making a new analog/digital Super 8 camera, to be released in fall 2016. The price is expected to be $400 to $750. Film cartridge purchase, $50 to $75, will include developing and transfer to digital.

The new camera has quite a few interesting features that set it well apart from Super 8 cameras made in the past. It is a digital/analogue hybrid product that records digital audio to SD cards alongside the film and will have a digital viewfinder.<br> . . .<br> The camera will also feature a "Max 8" gate which uses the space that used to be reserved for a magnetic soundtrack to capture a wider image. This makes it possible to film for a 16:9 aspect ratio with much less cropping and makes even more efficient use of the film available in a standard super 8 cartridge. It has a range of shooting speeds which are all crystal locked: 9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS.

http://www.kodak.com/go/super8

this is fascinating to me - i had no idea of his connections with education. Makes me wonder about Tesla's thoughts on education now. And how he'd feel about filmstrips, which are in essence super cheap motion pictures.