Rated: NRSynopsis: A sprawling, long-winded, and unabashedly patriotic spectacle, John Wayne's The Alamo provides the definitive motion-picture representation of the 13-day siege that enabled Texas to secure its independence from Mexico. This 1960 epic, a deeply personal project that obsessed Wayne for years and sapped his personal fortune, plays fast-and-loose with historical reality; nonetheless, it admirably conveys the indomitable spirit of the martyred "Texicans" whose heroic defense of an old mission in San Antonio bought precious time for the burgeoning rebel army that ultimately defeated Mexican general Santa Anna. Wayne, who produced and directed the picture (reportedly with some assistance from his old friend and mentor, John Ford), plays Davy Crockett to Richard Widmark's Jim Bowie and Laurence Harvey's William Travis. The battle scenes are lavishly mounted and impeccably staged, but there's more to The Alamo than gunsmoke and cannon fire: James Edward Grant's script is peppered with stirring odes to democracy, and Dimitri Tiomkin complements Wayne's images with one of his most evocative musical scores. MGM's latest DVD release presents the film in its traditional release version of 161 minutes; a longer cut -- the film's "roadshow" version -- appeared on laserdisc some years ago. John Wayne's directorial debut The Alamo is set in 1836: Wayne plays Col. Davy Crockett, who, together with Colonels Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) and William Travis (Laurence Harvey) and 184 hardy Americans and Texicans, defends the Alamo mission against the troops of Mexican general Santa Ana. There's a lot of macho byplay before the actual attack, including the famous "letter" scene in which Wayne craftily rouses the patriotic ire of his subordinates. Also appearing are Richard Boone as Sam Houston, and Chill Wills (whose somewhat tasteless Oscar campaign has since become legendary in the annals of shameless self-promotion) as Beekeeper. Wayne's production crew was compelled to reconstruct the Alamo in Bracketville, Texas, about a hundred miles from the actual site. Dimitri Tiomkin's score, including "The Green Leaves of Summer," received generous airplay on the Top-40 radio outlets of America. Rumors persist that Wayne's old pal John Ford directed most of The Alamo; cut to 161 minutes for its general release, the film was restored to its original, 192-minute length in 1992. Hal EricksonPRODUCTION AND TECHNICAL NOTES:Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)Presentation: Wide ScreenSound: Dolby DigitalFeatures: "John Wayne's The Alamo" documentary; Collectible booklet; Original theatrical trailerLanguage: English, Français, EspañolSubTitles: Français, EspañolTime: 2 Hours 42 Minutes
The siege of the Alamo is the centerpiece of this finely detailed historical novel, set in 1836, when a group of Texans, holding the Alamo in an attempt to thwart Mexican takeover, succumbed to the superior power of the Mexican army. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.
The Boxcar Children arrive at the Alamo to find that a movie is being made there--and they are going to be in it. But then things start to go wrong on the set, and a priceless ring disappears. It is up to the Boxcar Children to solve this new puzzle!
Remember the Alamo? You will with this pretty polyresin set of bookends. The building is set at an angle so you are drawn into the interior. Colored with antique cream there s a portion of the ground in front of the Alamo which showcases the historical look. Site of a famous battle thousands now eagerly visit this piece of history in New Mexico. What a great set for holding a few books on American history. Dimensions: 5.5 L x 5.5 W x 6 H.
THE ALAMO: An epic that evokes films such as HOW THE WEST WAS WON and DANCES WITH WOLVES, THE ALAMO details the key 1863 battle fought to win Texas from the Mexican government. Originally constructed as a Spanish mission, the Alamo provided a secure post between Texas settlements and the troops of General Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarria), protecting the scores of people working to develop the budding territory, including Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), James Bowie (Jason Patric), and Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid). But when it was left in the care of an inexperienced leader, the men stationed at the Alamo found themselves in a deadly ambush by Santa Anna. With an insurmountable advantage in strategy and sheer numbers, Santa Anna led the complete slaughter of Alamo forces, an act that incited the ire of Houston who initiated the turnaround that brought Santa Anna`s quick defeat.HIDALGO: A breathtakingly photographed, epic western like none produced for decades, HIDALGO recounts the life of legend Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen). Set in the 1800s, this family film chronicles the triumphant victory won by Frank and his mustang Hidalgo in the Ocean of Fire, an often-fatal competition in which the best riders and thoroughbreds race across Middle Eastern deserts. For Frank, who is known in the west for his prowess as a Pony Express rider and the winner of long-distance horse races, the lure of the Ocean of Fire is not only the $100,000 purse but also the clear challenge--both of which prove irresistible, and inspire him to travel across the world for this life-altering experience.
In 1836, 189 American volunteers--led by legendary heroes Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis--battled Mexican dictator Santa Anna`s 4000-man army at a small San Antonio mission called the Alamo. Utilizing rare archival material, expert commentary, eyewitness accounts, and stirring reenactments, the History Channel presents four acclaimed documentaries examining the forces, personalities, and events that led to this momentous battle. The films shed new insight, dispel long-held myths, and offer the most comprehensive and multifaceted chronicle of what really happened at the bloody showdown that changed American history. Includes REMEMBER THE ALAMO, THE REAL WEST: THE BATTLE OF THE ALAMO, THE REAL WEST: TEXAS RANGERS, and BIOGRAPHY: DAVY CROCKETT.
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Battle Of The Alamo 3-5 - The Alamo Falls
Emotional Architecture - Your Home Is In Your Head
What is it that makes a house a home? Do bricks and boards create a room that is comfortable and inviting? Is relaxation a result of finding the right paint color? Does that feeling of being safe and protected come from the choice of wall covering or is it a result of the finish hardware?
These questions seem frivolous on the surface, but after twenty-five years of helping people design, build and remodel their homes, I’ve become convinced that understanding the "emotional architecture" a client brings to a project is a critical part of designing a house that feels like a "home."
In the architecture firm with which I am associated, we are trying to develop a technology that tailors our projects to the true natures of our clients, but it’s not easy.
The issue of "home" is a highly emotional one. Logic seldom comes into it. The fact is, when most people decided to remodel their home or build a new house...they lose their minds!
It’s true. Stable marriages topple like palm trees in the hurricane of home improvement. Pleasant, cooperative homemakers turn into Machiavellian harpies, combating husbands who vow to fight to the death on the ramparts of their own financial Alamos.
Practical, down-to-earth CPA’s suddenly realize they are the reincarnation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Customers lie about their budgets, trying to bargain with the designer as though they were buying their house from a Tijuana sombrero salesman.
Perfectly reasonable people, who would never dream of telling their doctor how to treat a disease or their lawyer how to draft their will, think nothing of telling a professional architect how to design their home. Worst of all, when people begin the process of designing a new home, they forget the basic laws of economics. I long ago discovered that when customers who were over budget came to my office to "trim the fat," they were actually going to add a Jacuzzi, upgrade the ceramic tile, change the plastic laminate counter tops to granite, and then expect the price to drop.
It set me to wondering.
One day I experienced an epiphany. I was converting a group of historic buildings in Round Top into a country inn. The Queen and my kids were still in Houston. Every Monday morning I drove up to Round Top and then drove home to Houston every Friday night. In between, I slept on an air mattress on the second floor of an old pier and beam house, one of several we were restoring. Alone all week, I had plenty of time to think. In the evenings I would sit in an old rocking chair on the wood plank porch. I found myself inexplicably happy. Everything seemed right with the world as I rocked on that porch. I began to ask myself why...and before long I uncovered the source of my unexplained peace of mind.
I remembered a place from my childhood..., my great grandfather’s porch. I called him "Nandaddy." I can still see him dressed in overalls, bending down to pick me up, a broad smile on his face. "Come hug my neck," he would say. When I was a young child, I spent a lot of time on my great-grandfather's porch. I cannot remember a time in my life when I felt more loved or appreciated. He and my great-grandmother lived in a pier and beam farmhouse in Milam County, Texas. It had a wood plank porch which wrapped around three sides.
Years later, the architectural features of a similar porch in Round Top brought back unconscious memories of that cherished time. I had discovered a key feature of my emotional architecture! Suddenly I understood why I kept returning to historic restoration work even though, truth be told, it was less profitable than my other building ventures. I realized then that we all view the world through a broad set of internal associations most, but not all, from our childhood. This internal landscape determines how we respond emotionally to the architecture in our surroundings.
Eight years later, I lived in another old farmhouse. I felt happy and very much at home. Built in the 1840's, the restoration was never really complete. The downstairs was cold in the winter and the upstairs a hothouse in the summer. Bugs find it easy to get in and the AC finds it easy to get out. The old place required constant maintenance.
You would think these things would have been annoying, but I sat on my porch in the evenings and think about how lucky I am. You see, it wasn't just an old German farmhouse to me. It was the place I raised my two youngest children. Those old walls held the accomplishment I felt at having been able to leave the big city and make a new home in the country. My best girl slept there in a bed I made with my own hands.
It was a place filled with memories of all the good times I'd had with the people I love. I came to realize that these emotional associations are the actual bricks and mortar of my experience of "home."
It's obvious if you think about it. A robin takes great care to build a nest and guards it jealously until her chicks have flown away. Then, that cherished nest is just another pile of sticks. We humans are not that much different.
A house is a material object. A "home" is of the heart.When people are looking for a new living space, they are really looking for how that new space "feels," and how well it fits the day to day reality of their lives, and the values that are important to them.
With this key realization guiding the way, I began to seek a technology to uncover the features of my clients' emotional architecture. It seemed to me, that if a designer could uncover the emotional associations of his client, he would discover powerful clues to a design that would create that illusive and individual experience we call "home."
Now, years after I had that first realization, I am finally approaching my goal. The human mind is complex, and my skills and training are limited, but after years of research and working with clients, I have developed a systematic process that combined psychological testing and architectural programming in a way that actually identifies what specific features of a house inspire an individual or a family to "feel at home."
But before I brag about my accomplishment, let's consider a critical question. What exactly is the advantage of knowing for yourself what features of a building or a location will inspire you to feel at home?
In his book, The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander says "The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead they keep us locked in inner conflict."
Mr. Alexander's theory says that architecture gains aliveness by reflecting the patterns of behavior of those who inhabit it. In other words, the day to day repetitive actions, events and activities of human beings, naturally organize space in a way that is healing and nurturing. When those patterns are ignored, he suggests, we have the type of architecture that now fills our cities...dead, mechanical boxes, impersonal and cold. If is possible, as Mr. Alexander believes, to bring humanity to architecture?then it seems to me that the unconscious world of emotion that lives within us must be a primary source for much of our design criteria.
In our firm, we make it clear to our clients that a successful design is the result of a good partnership between the designer and the client. My partner and I may know a lot more about architecture and construction than our customers, but our clients are the experts on their own values, tastes, lifestyle and budget. Time and again however, we find that clients approach us with a broad set of assumptions about cost and design, assumptions that are often poorly grounded in fact. These misconceptions tend to color their requests, often causing them to misrepresent their needs and desires.
In other words, people think they know what they want, but are often wrong about significant parts of it. Over time we have found it important to serve as a "devil's advocate" and challenge our clients' preconceived ideas if we were to truly discover their most basic priorities. It soon became obvious to us that if we were sincere about trying to get at these deeper issues within our customers, and not just impose our own design ideas on them, we would have to take them on a journey of discovery.
Each person has a unique relationship with the aesthetics of space and form based on a number of factors, most of which are unconscious and purely emotional. If these items can be identified, and included in their design, they feel psychologically more at home in their new space.
The reason we believe this is that modern neuroscience has effectively proven it to be true.
Here are some facts about how your brain works that illustrate what I am saying. Modern Neuropsychology suggests that less than five per cent of human actions are determined by planned, conscious thought. The remaining 95% of human behavior is strongly impacted by emotion, feeling (sensory and somatic), and other unconscious influences.
Decisions about homes are particularly vulnerable to these types of "irrational" decisions as homes serve an ancient and instinctive role in human life, one that has substantial unconscious cultural and instinctive underpinnings.
In real practice, though consumers give lip service to rationality when changing their living space, their decisions are often highly influenced by factors that are beyond their conscious awareness. They are motivated by developmental or instinctive environmental cues in memory associated with past experiences. Those memories and instincts elicit neurotransmitter and/or hormone stimulated emotional response.
In other words, they make most of their decisions based largely on how they feel, while being reasonably certain they are making thoughtful, rational, conscious choices.
Evidence of this fact is that the home improvement industry in the U. S. is perennially the largest source of consumer complaints by industry sector. Many of those issues are issues that are caused by the fact that designers and contractors all misunderstand the true goals of their clients.
Real estate agents - despite their central role in the largest sector of the U. S. economy outside of government - are consistently rated amongst the "least trusted" professionals in the nation. According to a May 2006 Harris Poll survey, only 7% of those polled trust real estate agents completely, while 20% trust them not at all. Among 13 types of professionals, only stockbroker advice was trusted less than that of real estate agents. Why? Because agents and their customers ignore the deep emotional and subconscious goals that create the "buy decision."
The custom home building and home improvement sectors are enormously fragmented and inefficient given the vast scope of their activities. Building a single home typically involves as many a twenty or more distinct installation and service businesses - all with separate management, employees, policies and procedures - involved directly in the manufacture on a single small building. Hundreds and even thousands of products are involved, most with an enormous overlap in their functions. No other industry of that stature has escaped what is typically an inevitable centralization of providers in the marketplace, despite the obvious economic advantages involved. Most consumers now assume there is no holistic way to approach altering their living space and for the most part, they are right.
On the home front, interpersonal issues between co-habitants during the planning and construction of home improvement projects are so common as to reach the threshold of legendary. Everyone on the street knows someone, or has heard of someone, who had a traumatic or at least highly-stressful experience with building or home improvement.
Couples are often unaware of the impact that architectural issues have on small incompatibilities in their relationship. I sometimes tell a story about a couple for whom I designed a project a while back. It was an addition that included a master suite. As I usually do when designing a master bath for a couple, I had drawn a vanity with "his and her" sinks. They liked the design but the wife assured me they did not need to go to the expense of having an extra sink installed in their bath. She said they were used to a single sink and that was all they would need. I played devil's advocate and began to ask them about their habits in the mornings.
After a while, I discovered they had an argument almost every day while preparing for work. However - the wife explained - their conflict had nothing to do with the sink. It was her husband's fault. He always left his whiskers in the basin when he shaved! Neither of them had been able to see that it is much easier to add a sink to a bath than to change the habits of a spouse! That may seem obvious, but I have found that such oversights are common.
Almost all of us find it hard to separate the forest from the trees when it comes to our immediate surroundings. In this same vein, I had a customer who refused to design in appropriate storage because his wife would "stack things everywhere anyway." That's what's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy. All of this tumult, inefficiency and disorganization is caused in large part by a misunderstanding about the true nature of a home. A home is not a building. It is a suite of emotional experiences. The old saying "a house does not make a home" illustrates this fact.
Intuitively, people are aware of this reality, but in general business practice, this fact is largely ignored. For years we offered the methods we learned in our firm to solve this problem in a workshop we call Truehome, but now we have created an automated web-based software product. My partner and I were on the brink on offering consumers and professionals the fruits of almost a decade of work. We are now able to predict for each individual and family, what features in the architecture, location and style of a house will actually produce for them the emotional experience of home.
That experience is close to the heart, inextricably intertwined with safety and comfort and family. Complicated emotions come into play when the issue of home is on the table. Decisions about the design and cost of our homes are often the single most significant financial choices of our lives.
The pressure is on when you take on a major project. The emotional fire is hot. Building and remodeling our homes can lead to considerable stress. But the story can have a happy ending. Sometimes dreams do come true...and dream homes. In our hearts is a special place. Surrounded by the memories, special attachments and fond impressions that create our emotional architecture...is a warm and comfortable sanctuary just waiting to be discovered.
It's called "home."
About the Author
Christopher K. Travis wears many hats. He's the Managing Partner of Sentient Architecture, LLC., a full service architecture firm.He was a restoration, remodeling and new home builder for almost 30 years.He's the CEO of Nidiant Corporation, an Internet start-up that recently launched the revolutionary new Truehome.net internet startup. That project and Travis have been extensive covered by the press including a major article in the New York Times.Christopher K. Travis is a writer and the publisher of the humor and commentary regional quarterly, the Round Top Register, which was called the "Prairie Home Companion of the Lone Star State" by the New York Times.
