Zany, Zealous, Zootime Merriment

Surely there’s a verb that starts with Z that could describe my zoo-going.

My black and white photos were developed! I had a fun time paroosing the zoo even though it was very, very hot out. A lot of the animals, especially the bigger ones, were more interesting in lounging than putting on a good show and posing for me. And since I grew up near a huge city, we had this big nice zoo all through childhood and I visited it frequently. This one in my little college town wasn’t nearly as big, although it was out on some back-road area so it looked way more natural.

As I walked around the zoo, knowing I needed to take over half a roll of pictures and upset that it was so hot and the most fantastic beasts refused to move, I began to wonder. Did these animals enjoy their habitats? Would they rather be in the wild? Do they even know the difference? I’ve never been a huge rally person on rights or anything, but I do care about animals. I had been told these animals were rescued creatures, and this very well may have been true since one of the llamas we saw did have an injury on its face—perhaps it was a newcomer.

I’d like to think that these animals have it good with scheduled meals and certainly here they have employees that care about the creatures. Many of the enclosures had more than enough playthings versus the zoo back home. They’ve also got little rooms here that they can escape to during the most extreme weather. But you’ve always got to wonder, even though the enclosures are often massive, they can easily look like cages versus their natural habitat of the whole, wild wilderness.

Though I say all of this, my friends can attest to me saying “I’ll take you home, I want a tiger as a pet!” when obviously this would be a terrible idea—not only do I have no idea how to take care of a jungle cat, an apartment is no place to keep one.

The Emmys and Other Outstanding Awards

I love watching things like the Emmys and the Oscars. Watching the Emmys with Jimmy Fallon, who I love for his not always funny jokes but for the way he can always manage to laugh at himself, in the year that Lost ended, I feel like it’s a bit closer to my heart this year than usual.

But aside from the shows and movies that we love, we get to see actors, writers, producers and directors being rewarded for what they do best. The most deserving (arguably, in some cases) are called forth and pitted against one and other for the coveted awards. In a battle of the arts the victors rise and spill their hearts and souls on stage upon the acceptance of said awards. I think I enjoy these specials so much because these people that we put above all others—celebrities---are brought back down to earth for a few seconds.

The acceptance speeches are often personal, “thanks mom!” and usually obligatory, “I have to thank Twentieth Century Fox…” But just watching these people up on stage exasperated, out of breath and trembling, you have to just smile and be proud. These people have worked hard and all through the Emmys so far, everyone has stated they’re grateful for their jobs and they love the people they work with. Everyone wants to have a job that they’re happy to go to and is filled with people we love.

I bitch about the quality of programming all the time, but watching these award shows, I’m left biting my lip. I don’t agree that Modern Family is deserving of such great attention, but when Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory won his Emmy, I was overjoyed. You want people you like and appreciate to do well and be happy in life. I could go on for half a day about how The Big Bang Theory relates so much to my life and my nerdiness and all of my engineer/doctorial friends. I, a film major, miss science so much that I’ve decided I want to double major in science.

But right, when we watch the people climb up on stage and fight back tears, we smile. I’m happy for the people and shows that get the awards they deserve and whine when House and Lost have missed the mark. But it really just gets me when people don’t thank a mile-long list of people and they share a piece of themselves instead.

This speech from the 82^nd Academy Awards is one of the most memorable, inspiring things to me.

"Thank you, guys. When I was... I was nine and I asked my dad, "Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8mm camera that was in your drawer?" And he goes, "Sure, take it." And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, "What you're doing is a waste of time." Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you're doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was okay to do that. I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system, so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it; it's not a waste of time. Do it. Okay? Thank you. Thank you." – Michael Giacchino

I firmly believe that anyone and everyone who wants to work in entertainment should, in this day and age, be allowed to do so. If someone seriously wants a career acting and is willing to do the work, they should have someone rooting for them. If not their parents, then this guy.

What we’re aspiring to, writers, actors, aspiring authors and directors; it’s not a waste of time. Even writing here is bettering your communication skills with others and your writing ability. I wish any and all of you reading the best of luck in your endeavors.

Hands On, Cameraman

Cameras. Cameras inspire me. I like to pretend I know everything walking into a camera store, when really I know less about the technology that is cameras than I could throw one. I just like looking at them and envisioning the sharp quality the $1000 machines of metal and glass could produce.

I never took photography in high school. I took drawing and painting until they told me there weren’t anymore classes (thus I was always the youngest in each level) and then started taking digital art my senior year. I never really thought anything of photography, other than “Gee, those cameras look expensive and I don’t know how people navigate around a dark room.”

I personally have never had the feeling that all the girls in photography thought they were hot stuff, most of the photography kids I knew were actually very good with a camera and didn’t wast time taking pictures of lawn chairs and calling it art. They knew how to get the grade and what to take pictures of and truly loved the class and their talent. I know a bunch of people have this thing against photography—oh right you’re just doing this frilly camera crap, how about getting a real job? But when someone has any sort of knowledge about art, they know how to take a good photo. The rule of thirds and so on and so forth; it helps tremendously.

Then there’s just the technology itself—how the hell did someone think up a camera? And the science behind it? The light exposing the film and crystals gathering in certain areas and transferring over in the chemical bath… How did anyone stumble upon this? I have to have a camera on me at all times now that digital cameras are so inexpensive and so…everywhere. I use it to take pictures of my friends and to take pictures of art I like, pieces of furniture I think will work with my apartment, patterns that might or might not match something back home, etc. Digital cameras though, they’re the easy way out, aren’t they?

I went to my 8AM three-hour lab for one of my film classes this morning, yes I did. I don’t know how, because all my other classes start pretty much after noon…but I made it there (not on time. Because I refuse to run for a bus). Same class I talked about in my last post that’s requiring this big personal photo project. In the lab we got to play with fancy 35mm cameras. I haven’t touched one of those in…since 4^th grade. (Math, come on work for me here) Nine years. And what I remember were just the cameras that used 35mm film but auto adjusted and had flash and all that. This is a legit camera.

Also expensive. And it belongs to the school. But we get to play with them for a week before the working on the project.

When I have a camera in my hands, especially one like this, I like to make an effort to take good pictures and to try to make things look vaguely artistic. And boy, oh boy, does the camera make a difference. With this, I especially want to make that effort—given there are only 24 exposures per roll and those suckers are hard to find (and cost money, boo)! Well, black and white exposures are, and since the project’s going to be B/W I wanted to practice with it. But right, knowing this thing has the potential to take fantastic pictures just makes me want to burst out the door and play photographer in the fields and tree-y areas outside. You can only take so many pictures of the interior design before you begin to think you’re wasting film.

Besides, looking over my photo albums on the Mac, there are a very small number of pictures (taken on a digital camera) that hold any artistic value. I’d love to take a few that could be hung up—the last time I took shots that good was, again, in high school when I remember taking pictures of the butterfly garden at the museum.

This was from my trip to Cozumel the summer before last on a digital camera.

I just like art. Good art. It makes me happy and I miss the class!

Memory, My Memory, I Need You to Inspire Me

I survived the first day of classes! And I came home and baked cupcakes for a friend’s birthday on top of that! If only I’d gotten off my duff and gone to the gym this morning, then I’d feel on top of the world. Oh well.

I promise this post won’t be a boring recollection of my hourly adventures on campus. Instead I've got an assignment to share. I’ve come to learn that for one of my film classes (the particularly long one that runs from 5:00-6:30 in the evening), it’s required that the students keep a journal of their ideas. Just any ideas that come to us that pertain to projects. I’ve been told that only a few will be really reviewed and turned in, so I though to myself, why not post the thoughts here? By posting my thoughts here, it’s following the spirit of my professor who would rather see the whole class go paperless (although I really couldn’t function if I were told I couldn’t handwrite my lecture notes).

So here’s the project. Using less than 15 black and white still photographs—taken with a 35mm camera, mind you—we are to tell a story. Oh, but not just any old story. This story has to have some certain special importance to the author. The story must derive from a memory.

The first thing that comes to mind: my life is boring. I have no story from my memory to tell.

But then as lecture goes on and I’m gawking at all the supplies we’re going to have to buy for the projects for this class, a few things come to me. As a kid I fell off a horse. One of my cats died recently. I’ve shot more deer than I can remember when hunting with my dad. It took a good thirty seconds for me to realize that none of these will prove good stories, seeing as I have no access to livestock, I have no desire to attempt to train my remaining felines to lie still and play dead, and it is not deer season.

So I mull it over. I lean over and ask one of my friends why on earth we should pay $100 for a script-writing program that we’ll use once for this class. I think to myself, “You want to be a screenwriter, you’ll use it.” I still question why we have to spend $100. It isn’t until nearly an hour later that I remind myself that this is technically an art class, and they were always expensive in high school.

I think of the drama I encountered in high school and decide against it, knowing many of my fellow high school students followed me to my college. I go further back. I think of how I was in Science Olympiad for 5 years, and all the crazy-sciencey things I did. For fun. (For those who don’t know, Science Olympiad is basically science club, but instead of partaking in a science fair, we compete in certain events that encompass some math or science skill against other schools.) There were countless times when we spent hours practicing only to go to competition and fail. Tears and heartbreak. Oh what little nerds we were…but I loved it and miss it now.

I think that the Science Olympiad idea may require too much building (reconstructing old projects) or too much explanation to squeeze into 15 pictures. I go home, check the mail, my roommate cooks for me (for the first time and I’m estatic!), and I bake cupcakes. I think some more.

I think of things that scared me as a child. I remember being afraid to lock bathroom doors—really any doors—because I thought I’d get trapped inside. This happened to me in a paint-your-own-pottery place when I was in elementary. I was banging on the door and nearly in tears by the time the handle jiggled free, only to find everyone staring at me when I escaped. I think this could be an interesting story if I tweaked it and heightened the dramatics a bit.

Stuff evidently has happened in my life, I just fail to remember any of it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got a difficulty opening up and sharing my life with others—complete strangers, really. I love art and I take pride in my work, but to rip myself open like that and lay it all out on a table for potentially a whole auditorium of strangers to see, it’s hard! Alas, this just means I'll have to spend a lot of time lying around eating the remaining cupcakes and being inspired by life. So difficult, but some how I'll manage it, just you wait and see.

Yes, I Will Judge Them By Their Covers

The other day, the last day of summer I’d spend at home before really moving into my college apartment, I was incredibly bored. Most of the day was spent worthlessly lazing around the house, and even though I think I’m rather mellow, spending a whole day in pajamas is no bueno.

So I up and went to a few bookstores once night started to settle in. I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular, there’s 10+ things on my shelf I’d like to read but I know I won’t have time to when classes start up again (tomorrow). They include Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein books, 1984, Ender’s Game, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Harry Potter 7 (which really is just there so I can reread it again before the movie comes out), City of Ashes, The Hunter’s Moon, and Wicked Lovely.

Whoo. What a list. I’ve got a stack of Marvel comics I’ve got to read as well.

But let me get back to the point. Though we are told to not judge a book by a cover, I can’t help it when I walk into a bookstore with nothing on my list of books to buy. I went into Half Price Books at dusk the other day and barely remembered while I was in there that I read a positive summary on a book called Wicked Lovely—it’s about faeries and such, which I can’t really say I’ve read anything focused solely on faeries. Let me just say, if I hadn’t read the summary, based on the cover alone, I would not have even touched this book.

It looks like one of the million of teen/supposedly YA books on the shelves of any given store. I used to be in love with YA books, but now that I’m fast approaching 20 I’m teetering between the more mature YA and “adult” books now. I like fantasy and science fiction and all of that, but when every book focuses on some girl finding this fantastic boy she thinks she’ll spend forever with…and they’re both 16, I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes with every page turn. For all of these stories to end like this…there’s a huge imbalance between reality and fiction. It’s not that I’m against what the stories are saying, it must just be that I’m growing cynical in my old age. Haha.

Although, you can tell from my list that I’ve not outgrown the YA books. Some people never do.

But moving away from YA, I wanted to share a couple covers I saw on new releases that I found intriguing. I didn’t even pick up these books and read their summaries (because we were at Barnes and Noble at this point, and I really dislike buying books at full price), but the covers spoke a thousand words on their own. Often times I feel like covers do that, and that the whole cover game is really hit or miss. I don’t know if the authors get a say on what their covers look like, especially if they’re new authors. If they do, then they know what to put on the book to symbolize the story within in. If not, then the artists chosen to do so have a heckuvalot riding on their shoulders. Because whether or not we want to admit it, we do judge books by their covers.

This one, I will say I gravitated to because of the cat. I love cats. Then I like the look of it—the text more compact and not spread across the cover in boring, proper fashion. Looking at the cover, it makes me wonder if this is a novel about some old lady’s disappearance and whether or not she’s left her twelve cats all alone at her little cottage at the end of the block… Those poor kitties… Never mind what it’s about, this book will stand out against another with a simple background picture and words in a straight line across the center.

Here’s what The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is about:

“Ten-year-old Pia, who lives in the quaint German village of Bad Münstereifel, is having an especially difficult year in school. Ever since the gruesomely freakish accident that claimed her grandmother's life, she has been unmercifully teased by her classmates. Forced to socialize with the other school outcast, StinkStefan, Pia is only able to forget her troubles when their kindly neighbor, Herr Schiller, invites them over for hot chocolate and beguiles them with ghost stories. When young girls start disappearing from their small town, many parents become hysterical, but Pia and Stefan decide to find out who has taken them.”

With this one, the letters being dark and light, all on needle-thin stands, it made me feel like something eery was waiting to creep out of its pages. The letters remind me of Coraline and how I just thought the tale was particularly creepy. Then of course the word “dead” on the cover just solidifies the uneasy feeling. From first glance I would think it was a horror or suspense story, and a lot of people actually enjoy things like that. I love films but very rarely will I agree to a horror flick. So the cover isn’t there to scare people off, but to rather tickle their senses and draw them in with assurance that something will go wrong.

Here’s the summary for Procession of the Dead:

“Moving into the city to work with his small-time gangster uncle, Capac soon finds himself at the service of the Cardinal, the leader of all the criminal gangs and the ruler of the city. Capac enjoys his new life except for a few small details, including the enigmatic blind and mute monks who have a way of appearing at significant moments in Capac's life, and the fact that he can't really remember any of his life before he came to the City. Then he meets and immediately falls in love with a young woman who is determined to dig out the Cardinal's secrets.”

What I mean to say in and among all of this mess about covers is this. A picture is worth so many unspoken words and can inspire the imagination more than mere words can. I’d like to think that the words I read are things to be taken as fact (even in a work of fiction, you have to believe what the author’s telling you), where as a picture allows you to think whatever you’d like about the work. In the case of book covers, this of course may lead you to make very wrong assumptions about a book, but that’s a chance you’ll have to take. If you judge a book by the cover and read it to find that you were wrong, perhaps that’s a sign you should write your own take on it.

Donkey Kong Country…Returns

The first time I heard news of this game was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, of all places. I will admit I didn’t keep up with E3 that well, other than there was some stuff going on about Harry Potter and the 3DS, but those are different apes entirely (haha, see what I did there?).

When I heard them say, “we’re going to play this game” and saw the screen in the background, I was in shock! I had no idea that a worthwhile DK game was in development. I'm still moping about losing my DK64 cartigride and spent a fair amount of last summer playing the original Donkey Kong Country to make up for it.

...and I’ve had my SNES since I was probably 6 or 7, and never had I gotten to the final boss, King K. Rool in the game before. I was tickled. Really, I was just thrilled with the game overall, because it wasn’t so difficult you didn’t want to play it, and it wasn’t so easy that it was boring. What really got my attention for this game was the art and the graphics. The pre-rendered sprites and the beautiful sets blew everything else out of the water in 1994. It was design like this, colorful, imaginative and all and all just good-looking art that originally made me want a career in video games.

Of course I loved the characters as well, and the general gameplay (racing through nature and using parts of the course to advance from point A to B, like the vines and barrels) that made me keep buying Donkey Kong games. I had DK Country and Diddy Kong’s first game for the SNES, one game for the old black and white Gameboy that I’m quite fond of, and then DK64. The original was most definitely my favorite, though I liked the length and complexity of DK64 just as much.

Though the plot of these games might not have always been the best thing (DK, hire some security for your damn bananas if you must), King K. Rool was always a favorite villain. Who would have thought to put crocs up against apes? The games were heavily linked to nature and really, to a certain degree believable. Animals are territorial and are protective of their stuff, and animals fight out in the wild.

So as for this new game…



The geekiness center in my brain just explodes. How many new Zelda games have we gotten in between DK64 and this? At least a couple, right? Donkey Kong was due for a new adventure game. I didn’t even bother with DK Jungle Blast because I’m leery of buying specialized controllers, and the controls plus game just didn’t seem very fun at the time. Then Nintendo started pulling DK out of Mario Party as a playable character, so it seemed like the ape just fell off the radar for a while. Thankfully come November 21st, we’ll be reunited again.

But I’ve got a couple qualms upon watching the demonstration on Late Night. Though it’s nice and traditional, why…is this game for the Wii…a side scroller? The articles I’ve read go on and on about the entire game being rendered in 3D. Why is it I’m not able to explore in every direction, including that third dimension? Boo. Third dimensions tend to make things more interesting and far more open. Red Dead Redemption is being celebrated because of its massively open map that lets players do whatever they so choose. Zelda’s Twilight Princess was so very open. DK64 had a pretty big home world map too, if I recall correctly. Although I suppose if this game wasn’t a side scroller, a lot of that “traditional” feel would be gone. (Also I am reminded that the New Super Mario Bros. was quite a nice game and it too was a side scroller.)

The second potential issue I see is the difficulty of the controls. Maybe it’s just because Jimmy Fallon is a bad gamer or he’s just getting acclimated to the Wii that this looks like a problem. But having to stop and thrash the Wiimotes around to break a crate open or beat up on an enemy seems distracting and difficult and like another enemy could easily come up and kick your tail because you’re not moving when you’re shaking the remote. I dunno. I’ve not actually gotten to play it myself. And then again, I guess that’s what we get for it being on the Wii—the interactive gaming system. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point to this reboot, other than cooperative playing and better graphics, I suppose.

…one more. You took the Kremlings away? Nintendo! I shake my fist at you. Bowser’s been around for sixty trillion years. How dare you axe another beloved villain of the reptilian persuasion?

In the end, I’m sure this is going to end up on my Christmas list and that when I do get my hands on it, it will be the cause of some extreme nostalgia.

X-men: the Fate of the Future of this Franchise

X-men. I like it. But as of late, I’m wanting to tell Hollywood GTFO of it.

For the past three weeks (probably more, to be honest) I’ve been hearing “so and so has been casted as character xyz in the new X-men prequel (X-men: First Class)!” Like we’re all supposed to drop our jaws and applaud every time the casting managers do their job.

I don’t have anything against the casting managers or the actors. I’m sure they’re nice people just trying to make a living. But really, I feel like I need to be there telling them what’s what, and I don’t even know everything there is to know about everything. What I do know: a fair amount about the comic’s origin.

The movies X-men and X2 were, for probably a couple years, my absolute favorites. Bryan Singer quickly became my favorite director. I saw these films for the first time late 2005, mere months before…the atrocity….came out. My mother repeatedly told me the films would be right up my alley, but when I was a wee teenager, it was cool to not listen to your mother’s suggestions (as I did with this series and Lord of the Rings, both of which became favorites of mine).

…and here’s where this story turns to tragedy.

Looking back on it, I don’t know why I loved Cyclops and Jean Grey as much as I did, except that maybe I sympathized with him for being, in a way, blind, because I’ve had glasses since I was a kid. Maybe because he was built up as the good-guy boy scout who could never do wrong. Maybe I just liked them because they’re likeable folk. Whatever the reason, once X2 ended, I was dying for more. I read the Phoenix Saga and poured over X-men comics, reading every last detail and knowing in my head that the next X-men film would be the absolute BEST thing because it was going to cover the life and trials of Cyclops and Jean Grey.

The Last Stand sure as shit proved me wrong. Since it’s release, I’ve learned that getting excited for a seemingly good movie is often a bad idea.

I can’t even talk about X3 without getting angry and falling into a literal hour-long rant. I will spare you the pain and save that discussion for another day. I blame the change of director, and I really believe that Bryan Singer is the only person capable of tackling the universe. I wrote my college entrance essay on Singer and how I aspired to be a director like him.

So going back, it’s like the media is trying to force me to be excited about First Class. “WE GOT SO AND SO AND ITS GONNA BE GREAAAAT!” No. Please. Besides, there’s no guarantee that even if all of my favorite actors were signed on for the new X-men that it would turn out to be a good movie. Half the time Marvel doesn’t even have their shit together and their fantastic leading men fail horribly. Over and/or pre-hyping this thing to me says that the studio’s reaching.

I’m just so leery of this movie since Singer was forced out because of scheduling conflicts. The fact he’s producing is a good sign, but it just broke my heart when I heard the news of the director shift. At least if Singer was still helming the whole thing and it turned out to be crap I could blame myself for being too excited. Now I can point fingers at the new directors and the new writers who threw out Singer’s script…ahhh…. And I didn’t even like Kick-Ass and that’s the director they pick? That movie was completely devoid of the comic book spirit. Can’t they just let me direct the thing? They don’t even have to pay me. I just want it done right.

I guess we’ll just have to wait until 2011. But until it hits theaters, I'm taking the advice of the poster overhead and still wishing for Singer's return.

Television (and everything else) of Yesteryear

As I’ve grown, I’ve noticed that I have a fascination with media from the decades before I was born. Just today I heard the song “Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac on the radio for the first time and have since downloaded it, and then watched a special on HBO about the comics of today when they were younger—it was taped in 1986 and threw back to segments from the 70’s. And then its just a basic rule of thumb with me that I really don’t like any of the “country” music past about the year 2000.

Last summer I was obsessed with watching movies from the 80’s, only to be told in my fancy-smansy (and expensive) film classes that the stuff coming out of the 80’s was the worst of all time in film. I laughed to myself, thinking, “Of course it was, since I like so much of it.” Within the last two years, I saw many 80’s movies for the first time in my life: Terminator, Back to the Future, Nightmare on Elm Street, to name a few.

Honestly, I'm glad I didn't see Terminator or Elm Street until now, they likely would have scarred me as a child. This scene in T1 gave me the creeps--the terrible jerky effects of a robot chasing Sarah Connor got me at 18 years old. Elm Street didn't get me until I realized I couldn't go upstairs and go to bed in the dark.

I saw The Expendables the day it came out, mostly because my dad loves Sylvester Stallone and Rocky, but also because I was interested to see exactly how it would play out and if it would actually end up a decent movie. It wasn’t bad. In short, it was a bunch of guys punching and yelling at each other while explosions went off in the background. I would have been a bit happier if Jason Statham had gone shirtless, but alas, it wasn’t so.

KABOOM. I was one of three female viewers in my theater.

Also, last summer I was very sad to hear of Michael Jackson’s passing. I was at college orientation when one of my friends texted me, and lo and behold it exploded on the news shortly thereafter. Only three celebrity deaths have really startled me, his, Steve Irwin’s, and Heath Ledger’s. All three because I felt like I had a personal tie to them, I loved The Crocodile Hunter so much that I did a report in 6^th grade on the man. My friends and I loved 10 Things I Hate About You and fawned over Heath Ledger, wishing he went to our high school and would sweep us off our feet. When I was in middle school, one of my best friend’s sister taught us the dance to Beat It, and whenever it came on, no matter where we were, we would always dance to it. I bought a Michael Jackson Greatest Hits album when I was in middle school. It got plenty of my attention last summer in the wake of the news. Between watching the documentaries on the man and watching so many 80’s movies I hadn’t seen, I wished I’d been able to live in the decade.

Thriller was great, but Bad is by far my favorite video. Smooth Criminal is a close second.

I’m sure one of the big reasons I’m so interested in the older stuff is because I never had the chance to experience it at the time. I was born in ’91. The other reason? I’m certain it’s because the world we live in today is so completely obsessed with HD and CGI and the best graphics possible. Some times (more often than not), this trumps good story telling. HD’s great, of course, but we see in HD every day with our own two eyes. Sure, it might be in bad lighting, but our sight is the most crystal clear thing we’ve got (provided of course you’ve not got some type of injury or blindness creeping on). Avatar’s beautiful and wonderful and proved its worth by making billions of dollars. But now it’s going back in theaters less than a year later after being released on multiple sets of dvds just because it’s got nine minutes of footage added. Please. Avatar was good, but in our economy, re-releasing it is just a terrible, greedy move in my opinion.

Being able to turn on my 9000 channels of cable and find old shows and old movies, it puts a smile to my face. I’m so happy I can still find the stuff. I wish I had a channel that played nothing but 80’s media. I’ve also thought to myself that it would be nifty to one day write a novel set in the decade, but that writing one in the 90’s might be a bit easier and more humorous on my part, given I lived through its questionable trends.

P.S. I LOVE OLD FASHION. I can’t fathom how the fashion of today will be viewed by my generation’s offspring, but I’m sure that someone in the future will be just as insane as me and love our skinny jeans as much as I love the outrageous hairdos and neon legwarmers.

Define “Superhero,” will you?

It’s hot out. Summer is a special time of year when the wild creatures known as “blockbusters” creep into the theaters and delight us with their entertaining displays. Among the blockbusters, one can find a special breed—the comic book movie. Fun, entertaining, and able to completely change the view points of its viewers, comic book films are simply one of the great story-telling wonders. For psychological studies to pull these stories down, well. They can say whatever the hell they want, but that doesn’t make what they’re saying right.

The first comic book exposure I had was to the old Batman films. Colorful, dark, strange villains (and Tim Burton!)…the me of the present day doesn’t doubt why I loved the Batman movies as a kid. To this day I can barely stomach a film with Jack Nicholson in it because I just thought he was so damn creepy as the Joker.

But that’s besides the point. Batman: the story of a boy whose parents were killed, leaving him billions in inheritance. The kid goes on and grows up into a playboy with a bone to pick. His need to avenge his parents evolves into a need to protect the corrupt city of Gotham (for the longevity of the series, most certainly). Bruce Wayne owns his own technology company and makes his own weapons. He is a self-made hero (as many of them in the comic world tend to be) and decides to fight crime without help from the law. If a man in a bat mask and black cape saved you from gunfire and then turned around and punched the assailant in the face, the initial reaction after shock would likely be in thanks to the masked man.

This is how heroes have generally been defined—saving those who cannot save themselves. Fighting crime when others won’t, can’t, or when there aren’t enough police to take care of the population. Heroes, then, are supposed to be a solution to the lack of police forces in the world, correct? This is how we have seen them for years. Superheroes are those who have taken it upon themselves to do GOOD. It’s only later when many story lines have passed that authors consider the possibility of this going bad. What if the person who fought crime became a criminal himself? Although in these stories, the readers/viewers generally know that the heroes are being blamed for doing something bad.

An article I came across today says that the superheroes of today aren’t heroes. A study done by psychologists states that the “modern-day superheroes” are different from those “your parents watched and read many moons ago.” They use Iron Man as an example, and I would like to say that is bull. They even reference that the Iron Man we’re watching in the theaters was pretty much inspired by a story line from the 70’s. What’s changed is society as a whole. Things in life and modern day fiction have become (ala Daft Punk) harder, faster, stronger.

Iron Man in particular is a good example of one of the points they’re trying to make—that he’s not a role model for children. Dear God, I said this immediately after seeing the first movie. By the time Iron Man hit theaters, I’d been treading about knee-high through the comic book world. I knew the X-men universe up and down after falling in love with the first two movies and wanting more (that piece of work entitled X3? Might as well not exist in my opinion). I knew very very little about Iron Man going in. But after it, as I did with X-men, I read several comics with Iron Man in them, and that solidified my train of thought: Iron Man is not, and should not be a child’s idol. Anyone with any knowledge of the character knows he is a drunk that likes to stick his nose where it’s not wanted. He tends to be vicious and headstrong, and as the study says he does like to “exploit women, flaunt bling, and convey [his] manhood with high-powered guns.”

The study does have a point. A lot of the “heroes” coming out of comic book films are anti-heroes, Wolverine and Deadpool are two of the most blatant examples I can think of. They kill who they want when and how they choose, more often than not simply for personal gain or to get even. My problem with this study? People, parents of young children/boys in need of heroes, people need to do research. Parents need to be heroes to their children. They should teach their children real values. The trend in the comic world as of late has been to show the characters behind the masks, the demons they face and the consequences of their actions and the toll this takes on their beings.

The bottom line is that Iron Man is still a hero. He is the same character he was years ago, if not more of a political character today. He is an alcoholic who has trouble with women. He, though fictional, is a human being. The general story is that he chose to fight those who took advantage of his technology and have used it for evil. He is cleaning up his own mistakes in an attempt to make good. Unfortunately that isn’t exactly what gets the main focus, what with all the women and the partying around Tony Stark. In the end superhero stories are stories about people, good or bad, rich or poor, unfortunate or not, they are individuals who have made a choice to better their world.

Article can be found at Yahoo. http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-study-superheroes-might-not-be-such-super-role-models.html

The Thoughts on Tragedy

Tragedy is fulfilling because it allows you an emotional release. It calls for emotional investments in the characters and then allows you to weep for their loss. It allows for a socially acceptable cry? Perhaps, sure. For those of us locked in the same day to day schedule, this is healthy, so we’ve been told by doctors and news articles time and time again.

As my cat plays with a set of earphones next to me, I am beginning to wonder if the cheap $20 headphones will have to endure a tragedy of their own.

Truth be told, I consider tragedy now, as Public Enemies is on the television. I consider tragedy after watching reruns of Fullmteal Alchemist and knowing what horrible trials the characters will have to endure. I’ve mentioned two different types of tragedy here—that found fiction and that of history.

Now, I’ll be honest, I’m only halfway watching Public Enemies, and I’ve only seen it once before at the midnight showing last year. I will admit that really the only reason I saw it was because Johnny Depp was in it. (He is most definitely one of my favorite actors, and I intend to see all his films.) And sheesh, I don’t remember any of it except the end. ….it was a really hard movie to sit through at 2:30 in the morning. Political and serious and what not. But really, the end its what’s important to my argument. In regards to historical fiction (Public Enemies, Valkyrie are two I’ve seen recently, perhaps Inglorious Basterds could fall under this headline) the endings can’t be changed. We know going into things like this that John Dillinger will die. Hitler will live, despite so many heroic efforts against him. People will die, despite the characters whose story we are presented with, whose goals we want to be achieved. In Nazi movies its obvious why we want these people to succeed, but what about in the case of gangster films?

Is it because life was just so horrible in the depression that we yearn for the excitement, even if it’s of the criminal sort? John Dillinger was been said to be a real Robin Hood figure. Even still, in Public Enemies these men are criminals who have no problem wielding a gun against the police trying to bring them in for their wrong doings. The director paints the cops in a bad light, obviously so because it is Dillinger’s story and we are supposed to root for him. I’m curious and left wondering, why is it that people do this? Why do we tell stories of criminals as if they’re heroes? I could take a stab at the answer, but seeing as I’ve never produced such a work I don’t know the true answer—seeing things from a new perspective is always interesting and thought provoking (I LOVE 'what ifs'). Robin Hood is a classic and much loved story, too. I personally remember watching the Disney version on VHS more times than I could count in my childhood days.

Aw, but he looks perfectly innocent!

Anyways, now that we’re rooting for the criminal, the Nazi-hunters, whoever, why do we endure these stories we know are bound to end up in failure? Its very satisfying to think that their efforts will succeed in the end. In the case of the Nazi-hunter, its very affirming to know that efforts were made against such a horrible and very real evil in the history of the world. In the case of John Dillinger, perhaps its because we want to think that we can get away with anything if we put our mind to it. That we can all have the rich and fast lane life if we so choose. Yet once we get to the end we are slapped in the face, told “No, no, no” a dozen times. You cannot do whatever the hell you want. Whether it be criminal acts or attempting to fell a historic beast, no you cannot. Gah, history is so mean!

Well, if we know its bound to fail in history, why do we then turn to tragedy pieces in fiction? If people couldn’t get away with such heroic attempts in real life, why even bother with the books and movies? Here, generally, there is a better chance of things making a turn for the better at the end. If something does incorporate elements of tragedy (ala Fullmetal Alchemist as stated before), it generally aims to have a happy ending. Such is the way of so many films that aim to make the big bucks. Audiences generally like a happy ending. I say I like tragedy, but I really mean the sort of tragedy that can be over come in the end. Deaths avenged, wrongs righted and the like. That sort of fiction is so truly gratifying to me. The heroes of the story are backed into corners, bound and hurt in ways that most of us couldn’t even believe or really perceive. And even after all of that suffering—losing friends, family, faith and their sense of reality, these people still fight. When the stakes tower over them and the cards are stacked against them, they keep moving forward because they believe they can right the wrong.

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Makes me think that there must be real heroes out in the world still, for where would the artists be drawing their inspiration from? Now if only the X-men were real, I'd just be tickled to death.

Secret Villains! Shhhh. Don’t tell.

Who else likes secret villains? Ones you never expected, or ones you honestly thought were gunning for the good side? They’re probably my most favorite versus the all-out evil dudes because they really punch the audience and the heroes in the gut. A couple nights back I was really stressing over…really everything, as this is what neurotic college students do when they start thinking of their futures. So in an attempt to think of something, anything else, I was left channel surfing and this is what I settled on.

I saw this movie I believe on opening day, since my birthday is on the 4^th, several friends and some family went to the theater to see this as my “birthday party.” I thought it was great. Those of them who hadn’t read the comic or were expecting a regular action flick might have thought otherwise. But let me clarify “I thought it was great.” I don’t think that this is a favorite film of mine, despite the fact that I love the stylistic elements, the costumes done just right, the effects…etc, etc. (I love sci-fi insanity and GOOD special effects. My appreciation of these elements is why I think I am a bad film student. The rest of them tend to look down on these things that I hold so near and dear. I think film should be more of an escape, something in which you tell a fantasy story rather than focus on the seriousness of life, which is something you have to deal with in real life as it is.)

I love the story behind Watchmen. When reading the comic, you have the ability to skip over the bits you don’t want to read, or rather skip over the images you don’t want to see. Watchmen both the book and movie, are horrifically graphic. At least the book allows you some methods of escape, you can skip the page, skip the image, or put the book down and walk away, taking your mind off of whatever atrocity. The movie, any movie for that matter, does not allow the same escape. Most violence does not bother me, although the film Watchmen had me squirming a bit.

Story. Right. (There will be some spoilers if you’ve not seen/read it, beware.)

Humanity as a collective force that’s being shoved towards something beyond their control and almost inevitable. “Superheroes” turning their backs on us: ‘They will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no.”’ The fate of many being determined by a few. Huge moral consequences to face left and right in this story. Is what they’re doing right? Is he truly evil? Whose side are we really supposed to stand on?

Watchmen is in a lot of ways a medium meant to tear the superheroes from the pedestals we’ve put them on. The main focus is almost always on the six hero characters, and if not the book is showing us blips of humanity before some ultimate destruction falls on them. Humanity is always at the disadvantage, not really knowing what’s going on or what to do, just aware that times aren’t good and don’t seem to show promise of looking up. Since the readers know the book is set in an alternate world of the 1940’s-1985, as one goes through the story and sees the helplessness of humanity and the heroes struggling to straighten out their demons, the reader knows that something awful is brewing, something inevitable and irreparable, leaving us with a sour feeling in the gut and just a general feeling of “this is wrong.”

This is a common theme in many stories, humanity being left helpless or what have you, as in many alien movies, Terminator, Jurassic Park, and many others I can’t think of. I appreciate that in Watchmen it’s not about some alien race or dinosaurs taking over. The “villain” of the story is purely human. Even the superheroes in this book all started as human beings. It is humanity fighting itself, which is a delightfully tragic concept in fiction. (Just tragic and frightening in real life.) But really, Watchmen takes it a step further—one of the former heroes has taken it upon himself to actually save humanity by doing damage so horrific that in the end it will surely unite mankind to stand together against a misdirected force of evil. Hence the ‘secret villain.’ This likely would have never happened if these heroes hadn’t been worshiped by mankind. The guy wouldn’t have a hero complex if humanity hadn’t been so willing to take the Minutemen/Watchmen in to solve all of the problems humans were too lazy to face.

And Watchmen just has this moral ambiguity that leaves its audience on edge. Anyone with any sense of a moral compass would say that Ozymandias’ actions were wrong. He sets off multiple nuclear explosions that the world believes are Dr. Manhattan’s doing. Instead of going to war with Russia, all of mankind is united against the superhero that they believe did them wrong. WWIII is avoided, but at the cost of millions of lives, as Ozymandias puts it, “A world united in peace, there had to be sacrifice.” The man who betrayed his own teammates and then put the blame on another essentially gets away with it all, because exposing the truth behind the explosions would mean all was for naught and WWIII would still be upon them. Is this right? The death of so many people at the hands of one man, a former hero at that, is not. It’s not. Murder is wrong according to our laws. But think about it—15 million lives versus the whole world at war again, 15 million would be a fraction of the costs of a third world war. But we still say that this is wrong. We want to hang on to that glimmer of hope that says ‘but what if the world came to its senses and didn’t go to war at all?’

Oy, this is heavy stuff. It gives me chills when I think on it. Just thinking about someone with so much power bestowed upon him, so loved and worshipped whom then turns around and decides that this is best for the world.

“I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.”

“’In the end?’ Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

Another thing I find very interesting in the world of comics is the idea of humanity abandoning their superheroes or making efforts to stop their escapades. Since it has been ingrained in our minds for years that “superheroes” are forces of good (Superman’s been in print since 1938) that always fight for the right thing and that they are supposed to stand as role models for all ages, the concept of finding fault with superheroes seems just…inherently wrong. I love these stories though. When mankind rages against their former heroes in these stories, it is we, the readers, who really know the truth. Our heroes are still our heroes, it’s just usually that they were forced into a bad situation, tricked, or lied to. Marvel’s Civil War arc I think does a good job of this when heroes are pitted against each other over the morality of whether or not to make “superhero registration” mandatory, and consequently the losers are sneered at and are kicked down to the same level as criminals. Similar stuff goes down in the animated movie Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, in which they are accused of crimes they did not commit. How easily humanity can be swayed…although the fictional humans are right to question superheroes, for once suspicion is thrown out there, it would be hard to look at someone with arms the size of tree trunks and laser vision in the same way. Now let’s tie this back to Watchmen…if I could take you back to the beginning…Rorschach believes that the Comedian is offed by some government-backed program to eliminate all costumed heroes. Once again, the minds behind Watchmen are trying to irk us. It’s not as if these government officials would know how these people carry themselves on a day to day basis (the Comedian was a pretty awful guy and that makes it seem like he deserved his death)…or would they? Regardless, Watchmen opens with this theme of ‘don’t trust these people, despite all the good they’ve done for us while wearing masks,’ which just completely contrasts with everything we’ve come to expect out of comic books.

It’s all about making the heroes more human… They’ve got problems just like us, between holding down a job, dealing with what may very well be mental illness, infidelity, backstabbing former coworkers, what have you. I love this about Watchmen, the fact that it’s main focus really is on the lives of the heroes, versus their actual…heroics. I love it when comics do an about face and show their heroes at their high points, where the characters think they’re gods, and then let them fall—its usually only when the heroes crash and burn that we see they are just human after all. That, dear goodness, is one of my favorite things because it proves that these people have feeeelings and you feel for them too.