tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42641635293850787732024-03-12T19:41:18.867-07:00The Sound of BushmanTed Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-42941005412728640222017-02-04T15:22:00.000-08:002017-02-04T17:44:23.345-08:00Breaking Bad: What Makes A Man Himself?<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>spoilers for season 2 of Breaking
Bad and mild spoilers for Better Call Saul</i></div>
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Forgive me my heresy, but it is not yet decided whether Breaking
Bad has taken its place among the pantheon of great stories. Anyone
at a party would disagree with me, calling it the first great
masterwork of the new television movement, or probably just the "best
TV show ever". They would cite its critical reception and the
ongoing enthusiasm of those who enjoyed it. But in reality, it's only
been three years since Breaking Bad ended, and so it remains to be
seen if this suburban parable of a high school chemistry teacher who
was so much more and so much less than at first he seemed will last
beyond the lifespan of its milieu.<br />
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<img height="225" src="https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-08/7/16/enhanced/webdr09/original-1944-1438980534-3.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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I have no interest in making a claim
one way or the other, but in rewatching the show I want to zoom in on
a few particular arcs of the show's second season, looking for
themes, character, and meaning. Just as scholars have debated for
centuries the content of Shakespeare's plays, a great work should
stand up to scrutiny and teach us about ourselves, the world, and the
way we live.<br />
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Breaking Bad's first season was only 7
episodes. With the starting gunshot of a cancer diagnosis, it gave us
enough time for Walter White to start cooking meth, under duress to
kill a man who'd tried to kill him and might kill his family, to
bluff his way into negotiations with a terrifying drug dealer named
Tuco, and to begin a series of deceptions that corrupt his
relationship with his family.</div>
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The second season has almost double
that time: 13 episodes, during which the layers of what we thought we
knew about Walter are peeled away, revealing a core that is by turns
exhilarating, hilarious, sad, and frightening. And it doesn't stop
with Walter. Almost every character has moments of complex personal
origami, moments where we see them as more than just their image,
more than just their job, more than just their relationships with
others. It seems that the writers of Breaking Bad are teaching us:
optimistically, they reminds their audience that human beings are not
simply a sum of their reputations or achievements. More
frighteningly, they warn us that a vast disconnect can exist between
what we say we are or what we want to be. In many ways, we can be much less than we pretend to be.</div>
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Walt has many titles we could give him and roles he has chosen to play. At the show's beginning he is a teacher, a father and a husband, but the pilot shows us a corruption in each. As a teacher he is mocked and ridiculed and has to work a second job to support his family. As a father, he feels disconnected from his son Walt Jr. and perhaps fears that he has passed on mortality too strongly to his disabled son. As a husband he is disrespected and feels completely sexually disconnected from his wife. The discrepancies between the life he wanted to live and the resulting existence are a major motivator for him to take on the new roles of criminal, drug dealer, and eventually drug lord.</div>
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Season 2 takes many occasions to show
what each of the characters are trying to be. Human beings generally define themselves around major milestones, and the characters of Breaking Bad each have their own. The major shapes: being a parent, a
teacher, a lawyer, a cop - become the lines in the coloring book, and
each character tries with their behavior to become or at least
convince others that they are who they say they are. Some are more
effective: Tuco, in trying to be seen as a brutal drug lord, kills one
of his underlings with almost no provocation and proves that he is what he claims to be. Skylar lives up time and time again
to the responsibility as a wife to care for her family and her
husband, even when Walter is lying to her and she knows it. Some, like Skylar, genuinely believe that they are what others see. Others, like criminal/lawyer Saul Goodman, know that a good facade is all you need. </div>
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Even Hank says to Gomez after pumping up the DEA with false hopes of finding Tuco: "Appearances, Gomey. It's all about appearances." And in a way, Breaking Bad admits the truth of this. Jessie's reputation as the blowfish makes the streets fear him. Walter's reputation as Heisenberg opens doors and intimidates with extreme effectiveness. But the show is much more interested in the moments of discrepancy, when characters are not exactly what they say they are. As we learn in the show, this is more common than not.<br />
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The obsession with appearances can lead to moments of humor and delight. There's something genuinely funny about Tuco, just after putting down his assault rifle, cooking breakfast for his aging, crippled Uncle Hector. He cares about his family. He's more than we thought. Not a half hour later, Hank surprises us all by proving he's as good under pressure as he pretends to be, taking on a wounded Tuco in a gunfight with only a pistol against Tuco's assault rifle. He's brave and cool under pressure. He's more than we thought. A hilarious surprises comes in the form of Saul Goodman's sharp cunning: kidnapped by Walt and Jessie and taken into the desert, we quickly realize that this chubby lawyer making his money off of public masturbators and down-on-their-luck criminals has, in fact, been at gunpoint before and talked his way out of it. In a surprising power play, not a minute after being on the chopping block,Walt and Jessie are putting money into his pockets. He's brilliant. He's a survivor. He's more than we thought.</div>
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(A brief side note: on second watching and after two seasons of <i>Better Call Saul</i>, it is heartbreaking seeing how fall Jimmy McGill has fallen. This is a man who had meaningful relationships that have fizzled to nothing. Now he's reduced to hitting on his secretary in the parking lot. Talk about someone having more to him than we know about.)<br />
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<img alt="Image result for saul goodman fan art" height="266" src="https://img10.deviantart.net/b499/i/2015/022/d/9/better_call_saul_by_punktx30-d8ezt18.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">art by punktx30</span></div>
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But on the obverse of this coin is a danger and a fear. These characters' places in society depend on fulfilling their roles. Tuco would be weakened if someone thought he had a heart. Saul survives by being underestimated by everyone. Everyone in this world knows that there are consequences if you step outside your bubble, but in season two many character are brought to their limits. Skylar, under extreme stress, smokes cigarettes while pregnant and justifies herself. Marie is discovered as being a kleptomaniac and has to accept it in order to heal her relationship with her sister. The responses of these characters to these tectonic shifts reveal what each of them decide about what makes a person themselves.</div>
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In many examples, people decide to bury or forget what makes them less than their identity:</div>
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In Episode 4, "Down", Jessie tries to bring back the glory days of his band (the horrible name Twaughthammer is mentioned) with an old friend to ask for housing help. But the old friend is a dad now, wearing a striped polo and trying to get his two-year-old to eat carrots. He has left Jessie's world behind a long time ago, and that's easy for anyone to see. He's decided to make himself a good guy, and that means forgetting that his life with Jessie existed, so much that when his wife shows up, he won't even let Jessie stay the night. It puts his position and identity in danger.</div>
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Hank, meanwhile, has to come to terms with a part of himself after killing Tuco. Though he acts proudly in the moment, he finds himself having panic attacks in the elevator, freaking out. When his promotion takes him to El Paso, his fear causes him to run and accidentally saves his life while letting another agent die. How can Hank define himself if he is not the brave cop full of bravado and jokes? At work he keeps up appearances, terrified that therapy would get him resigned to a desk job. Even bedridden, he pretends that nothing is happening. The idea that he might be less than he claims leads to pretending that his troubles are not happening. In a sense, what makes Hank himself is the fact that he buries his inadequacies. He is creating himself by choosing what is "him" or "not". Since his anxiety does not fit who Hank is, he decides it is not happening.<br />
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<img alt="Image result for hank schrader" height="215" src="https://i.imgur.com/NGBHPo3.png" width="400" /></div>
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One of Walt's buried secrets has been buried for decades, and though it is never completely unearthed it obviously is one of the major contributors to his unhappiness. In one of the most visceral scenes of the entire season, Walt and Gretchen meet for lunch after Gretchen learns that Walt has been lying about Gretchen and Elliott paying for his cancer treatments. The show gives us no flashbacks, no unnecessary hints. This is only the third episode Gretchen has appeared in. But both Walter's refusal to accept their money and their scene in the restaurant reveal that Walt has buried something deep about Gretchen in his soul. </div>
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It is revealed in the restaurant that Gretchen and Walt were once a couple, and were considering being married. A few lines (including the clinical "I have not told Elliott. That's a determination I have yet to make.") make it clear that Gretchen is Walt's intellectual match in ways Skylar never appears to be. But her pushing about why he has lied leads him to a cold statement: "I don't owe you an explanation." Gretchen emotionally asks "What happened to you? Really, Walt? Because this isn't you." An understanding she thought was mutual turns out to be completely wrong.</div>
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Walter's voice and demeanor change again as he growls back: "What would you know about me, Gretchen? What would your presumption about me be, exactly? That I should go begging for your charity? And you, go waving your checkbook around like some magic wand is gonna make me forget how you and Elliott - how <i>you </i>and <i>Elliott cut me out?</i>" She hisses: "That can't be how you see it!" He laughs at that, but she insists on her version of the story: "You left me. You left me. Newport, 4th of July weekend. You and my father and my brothers. And I go up to your room and you're packing your bags, barely talking. What, did I dream all that?"<br />
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When he still does not consider her side of the story, she tearfully says "I feel so sorry for you, Walt." He leans forward and in a ringing voice, says, "Fuck. You." And she leaves.</div>
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I am obviously partial to the scene for several reasons. The writing is gorgeous, leaving almost everything unsaid and yet so much hangs in the air around them that it's easy to draw out the real story. The performances show so much more than the simple anger and confusion and reveal what's beneath it: love. respect. and deep, untended hurt.</div>
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And it shows us how much Walter has shaped his perception of himself. How he's twisted his history with Gretchen into a grudge, hidden it deep inside him to hide his pride, his dissatisfaction with his marriage, his envy of Elliott and Gretchen, and his bitterness about the life he now leads. In going down his path towards becoming Heisenberg, he is slowly unearthing the things that led him to it.</div>
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Walt's identity on paper dictates that he should be a happy, courageous survivor, grateful for his life, his family, and the people who support him in his illness. But on almost every count, Walter shows us that none of this is true. He has impressed us already with his display of pyrotechnics against Tuco in season one. He's escaped death on multiple occasions by his cleverness and force of will. He's beginning to like what he's capable of. He's beginning to enjoy it. He is choosing to build a new self, a new Walter, who takes on a new name.</div>
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But beneath all that, the writers of Breaking Bad are warning us that Walt is much less than he thinks he is. His antics at his remission party, giving Walt Jr. shots of alcohol and, when Hank intervenes, his shout of "<i>My </i>son! <i>My </i>bottle! <i>My </i>house!" begin to reveal that despite his noble stated intentions, Walt cares more about power and less about his family than he believes. More heartbreaking, the episode before this, he receives news of remission with embraces and tears of gratitude. He is surrounded by people who care about him, and has a thousand reasons to be happy. But the most permanent remnant of the remission is left on the towel dispenser in the bathroom when Walter, in a fit of rage and triumph and self-hatred, punches it until his knuckles bleed. Chosen identity, buried things, and choices seem to make a man himself, but what is Walter becoming?<br />
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It might be a difficult question to ask, but what are we becoming? The trappings of success (a family, a job, an identity) are not enough to truly make us <i>us. </i>Breaking Bad forces us to consider what we really are, to look down into that crawl space and see what's hidden there, just below the floorboards. We may not like it, but if we want to truly live well, we must face it.</div>
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Throughout the season, several
black-and-white flash forwards hint at the plane crash that ends the
season. They show a plastic eyeball floating in the White's backyard
pool. A scorched purple stuffed animal. And in a magical realist bit
of misdirection, the bodies shown on the White's front porch, the
glasses put into ziploc bags,and the cleanup crew in what look like
radiation suits seem to hint at a horrific fate for Walter's family
coming just around the corner. We imagine that by the end of episode
13, Skylar and Walt will be the ones in the body bags, that the
glasses will be Walter's that he lost when some horrible justice took
his life.</div>
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But this misdirection did not come
true the way we might think. What really happens is a disappointing ending to the
season, and intentionally so. Watchers know what Walt's lies and
crime and violence will lead to, and they assumed that this
foreshadowing was a prophecy for literal consequences.
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But in a sense, those flash forwards
ask us to consider if, underneath the shellacked appearance of good
people doing good things, there are figurative dead bodies in the
driveway. Walter missed the birth of his daughter to make a drug
deal. He let Jessie's girlfriend, his ray of hope, die because it
suited him better to have her dead. In this season, he is creating
rifts with Skylar and his son that he may never repair. Beneath the
surface, he has already broken his family. He has already ruined his
home.
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Because he has chosen to destroy himself.<br />
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Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-35650945851600953492016-02-26T15:51:00.003-08:002016-02-27T19:50:05.797-08:00Here's the Post-Apocalyptic Mormon Video Game I Made<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 0.19in;">Okay, weird confession time. This one's inspired by Graham Ward</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 0.19in;">, who shared his Hobbit supercut. I worked really hard last year on a big crazy thing, and what's funny is that of the hundreds of thousands of people who now know about it, only a few of them are my friends.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">So, if you're interested in Mormons in modern culture, or in video games, or stuff I make, here's a way to experience it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><b style="color: #2c353c; line-height: 22.4px;">Modding.</b><span style="color: #2c353c; line-height: 22.4px;"> Definition: "The act of changing a game to make it another, or add features previously unavailable, old, or previously nonexistent. It is commonly done in PC games."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Last year I spent about 1,000 hours building a mod for Fallout:New Vegas, a 2008 video game that featured a story about post-apocalyptic Mormons. I appreciated the treatment of Mormons but thought it could use more depth and story, and so I taught myself how to program and basically built a huge interactive theater piece inside this game, which was then brought to life by a ton of my friends.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><img src="http://www.arrowheadbb.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/arrowhead-zion1.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">HONEST HEARTS REBORN (the name of the original expansion, 'Honest Hearts' ,with the added “Reborn') tells the story of a post-nuclear-war Mormon missionary named Joshua Graham, who left his faith while a young man and started a horrifying journey as a warlord and oppressor. During this game many years later, Joshua returns to the place where he served his mission (Zion National Park, where I went on a trip with my brother last August), finding the people who he both helped and hurt as a missionary. It's a reflection on how our choices not only change us but the whole world around us, and a reminder that we always have a choice when bad things happen to us. Though I have a pro-Mormon storyline, the player can choose how the story ends, and it isn't just black and white.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">The game was at first received pretty well by the online community, with tens of thousands of views within days of release and thousands of downloads. In the last week, though, a petition went out for the mod to be played through online by the dweebiest (and most popular) Fallout youtuber. He decided to do it and since then has uploaded a 5-hour-long series of videos playing through my game. With his videos, my game has now been by hundreds of thousands of viewers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>WARNING: Swearing, video game violence, and extreme nerdiness in this video.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">The video has lots of swearing, video game violence, and general stupidity (the narrator's reputation is mostly about his nerdy jokes) but what amazes me is that hundreds of thousands of people are interested in this. Viewers said they cried during a recording where a young missionary tells a radiated mutant that God has a plan for him, and will never let him down. One quest has you ask a priesthood leader to give a blessing to a man who ruined that leader's life, convincing him to look past his biases and do what God would have him do. In preparing for the final battle, you can talk to some tribal people who made a covenant not to murder anymore, and ask them if their adult children would be willing to fight, mirroring the Stripling warriors.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">The reactions to religion in the mod have obviously been mixed, with one calling it "Christian propaganda" and a reddit ex-mormon page sharing it as "precious". But what people have liked is the ability to use many approaches to help the characters make complex moral choices. I didn't want to write Joshua's story to be propaganda. He is as likely to go on a murdering rampage as he is to come back to God, and I wanted to make that possible, easy, and, in its way, a satisfying ending. I don't believe that spirituality offers the most clean-cut, euphoric ending 100% of the time. A life with God is complex. But I wanted to explore what those things meant for me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">I feel really grateful. I didn't want to do this for money or anything, really. I just cared about the story and wanted to make it, and see if I could. The fact that anyone watches it at all, and more, likes it, makes me feel absolutely incredible.</span></span></div>
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for your enjoyment, here<span style="color: #141823; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 0.19in;"> are some comments:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">When I announced this mod, a young man sent me this heart-warming message on reddit:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Wow, this mod is like a Dream come true for me! I have [very] personal ties to real-world Utah and Zion so I was EXTREMELY excited to play Honest Hearts when I got into New Vegas. I was alas, sad that the only part of the DLC that really wowed was how nice the canyons looked. Suddenly knowing it's being remade into what looks like a glorious masterpiece is mind-bogglingly awesome!</i><i><span style="color: #141823;">”</span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">A mormon player named linnes16 said:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823;">“<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Well. I'm impressed with this mod. Not only did it overhaul Honest Hearts. It did it in a very respectful and smart way. They dug much deeper into the Mormon side of the DLC then the vanilla did. And it did it with knowledge of what us Mormons actually do and believe. (Obviously theres a lot more that we do and believe, but that's for another day).”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #141823;">Crushric said:</span><span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;"><i>“I adore this idea and mod and everything it stands for.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">NILLOC916 said:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>this is one of my favorite story mods...The voice acting is great, I actually felt sad hearing the "Testimony" holotape. Plus the story has some interesting options, unlike many story mods or even questlines in the base game, I'm unsure what to do and may end up regretting a decision.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Super awesome mod, way better and more moving then the vanilla was!... It was an awesome first mod! It more more moving and lore-friendly then vanilla, and Graham had a more interesting and cohesive feel to his character. The story and diverse amount of locations and npcs were staggering and impressive! Keep working at it dude, Id love to play it again!”</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><img src="http://www.zionnationalpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/joebraun_angels05.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></span></span></div>
Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-60756034954438051212015-12-26T08:51:00.001-08:002015-12-26T10:31:14.506-08:00I Can Do This: Belonging & Inheritance in "The Force Awakens""The Force Awakens" made me think a lot about my place in the galaxy, and the place of my friends. Hopefully these thoughts can do some justice to that.<br />
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In a movie of this size and history, it's not surprising that the movie made a lot of sappy and silly nods to its predecessors. But I am not really a sucker for blank nostalgia, and so most of the moments in "The Force Awakens" didn't illicit so much as a grin from me. All the re-introductions, from Han and Leia and the Falcon to 3PO to Luke Skywalker himself, made me think "Ah, so that's what they decided to do." I was waiting for them like someone watching a horror movie waits for the scary "boo!" moment, with the same half-cringe on my face. That's not what interested me.<br />
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I got teary-eyed, yeah. It was amazing seeing some gifted storytellers and <i>seriously</i> divinely-inspired art designers rip back into this universe like they're all snorting the cocaine of the science fiction gods. But there was one moment that made me absolutely thrill.<br />
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Early on in the film, our two protagonists Rey and Finn are sprinting away from bad dudes who are chasing them down for something valuable they have. Rey is a worse-than-destitute scavenger who days ago was scraping out a life in a busted AT-AT on a quarter ration of blue food, and Finn was a runaway soldier from a group he doesn't believe in. These guys are nobodies.<br />
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<img src="http://justplainsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/StarWars-ReyFinn.jpg" height="200" width="400" /><br />
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But they've got to survive and get away. Rey leaps behind the controls of a spaceship and Finn straps himself behind a gunner's turret. Dehydrated and totally unsure, he gasps: "I can do this. I can do this." Rey, sweating and eyes scanning everything, breathes: "I can do this. I can do this."<br />
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And they don't have a choice. They do. The ship rumbles into the air, they shout jargon and desperately try to keep in the air, and by the time it's over they come back with utter surprise and amazement at each others' success. "How did you do that? You were amazing! No, you were!"<br />
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Star Wars started as a story that valued the power of Greek tragedy and stories of prophecy and destiny. But Star Wars has come to represent something else. Over years of movies, novels, and games that has spread over a galaxy's worth of lives, the message is this:<br />
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<i>There is a place for you here.</i><br />
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At first the series had something for everyone: cool sci-fi, banter and romance, and even some spirituality. "May the Force be with you" has become a watchword, a symbol of the connection we all have. But years later, people know the ins and outs, from mynocks to midichlorians. Even new converts to the Star Wars canon know Boba Fett, a guy who had <i>4 lines</i> in the original trilogy! (My college roommate named his car <i>Slave One </i>after Boba Fett's ship, a name never mentioned in the movies.)<br />
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Now it provides stories for so many people on so many levels. If you don't feel like a Jedi, there are smugglers and ships to be had. There are wars to be fought for the Republic or the Rebels or the Resistance. There are strange creatures to feel akin to: Twi'Leks and Ithorians and the whatever-Yoda-was and the whatever-Plo-Koon-was and even Samuel L. Jackson. It's an inhabitable universe, and to joke about the silly names does nothing to diminish the power of a universe that empowers people, and has empowered them since its creation.<br />
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How did a story of an exclusive order of glow-sword-wielding priests become the populist anthem of generations? How did a dorky space opera fill every household and inspire people to tears and shouts of joy? I don't really know all that, but I think it bears a message for us, and J.J. Abrams' newest installment made me think of three in particular:<br />
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First, <b>There is always something to learn. </b><br />
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Life moves really, really fast. I mean, look at any single shot from "The Force Awakens". I bet you 5 bucks at least one person is running in that shot. If not, there is something important and sci-fi-ish happening. If not that, there is sweeping John Williams music playing or about to play. Now give me 5 bucks.<br />
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My first genuine response to "The Force Awakens" came during the rolling opening credits. Mention was made of "The Resistance's best pilot" who we learn later to be Poe Dameron, and I got tiny chills. "Ooh, someone new," I thought, and I wasn't disappointed. Poe is a powerful character with a strong will, deep love for others, and most of all, enthusiasm and passion for his talent. He's a pilot, and we get to see that excitement over and over again.<br />
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Rey is similar to Poe, even if she lacks his opportunities. While he's flying for the Resistance like a boss, Rey lives in squalor, salvaging little pieces off of ships. But Rey is constantly learning, and working to learn, and this defines her more than her unassuming beauty or her connection to the Force. (For example, when she turns a lightsaber on for the first time, there's a reason her fast learning doesn't surprise us.)<br />
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I loved watching Rey in her house, eating her little power-bread and sitting with her rebel pilot's helmet on. For me, it totally beats the Luke-looking-out-at-twin-suns moment, and Rey is a cooler, more interesting person than him.<br />
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<img src="http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/e/ea/Teedo_Luggabeast.png/revision/latest?cb=20150820202007" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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If I was orphaned and abandoned on a desert planet, I would probably get pretty down on myself. But Rey's reaction is the one that I truly hope to have in my life to adverse circumstances: Learn and grow. Rey becomes an expert on technology, on her world, and on the people in it. She observes closely, she understands systems, and she tries to improve them, rerouting a power problem in the Millenium Falcon and opening doors in the First Order base.<br />
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There are lots of things to learn about the Star Wars universe, if you were ever interested and know how to read a Wiki. But more importantly, there are so many things to be learned about the real universe. Wouldn't it be incredible if every time you encountered something you didn't understand, you learned until you did it? What if you approached a computer this way? A car? A business? A family? A nation? You could learn so much, so fast.<br />
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And true learning doesn't make us cynical. Ignorance is so often full of boredom and disinterest. True learning inspires awe. When Rey sees a green planet for the first time, her face is full of wonder and curiosity. That may not have been what motivated her to learn in the first place, but learning helped her feel it.<br />
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Second, <b>not everyone has vision, and this is beautiful. </b><br />
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In real life as well as in Star Wars, some people have Vision. Some people can connect to the Center of things in ways that nobody else can. They lead. They help others see things differently. Sometimes charismatic but often not, they transform the shape of the future, and help us understand the past. They are like Jedi.<br />
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<img src="http://images.techtimes.com/data/images/full/155345/rey.jpg?w=600" height="300" width="400" /><br />
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(Disclaimer: Jedi are not better than anybody else. Sometimes people who could be great real-world Jedi become real-world Sith instead, and sometimes people who want to be Jedi end up working for the Sith because they aren't. Some markers of the Dark Side? Jealousy and bitterness are major ones. If you feel your genius and vision is not being listened to and others are foolish, maybe you're stepping in the wrong direction. You could probably just write a movie blog and pretend people read it to temper your self-obsession. :)<br />
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(2nd Disclaimer: Is it okay not to be a Jedi? I think so. If you want to be important just because of the rush of it, then maybe you're looking at it the wrong way. Though the Star Wars movies make it look like that Jedi are the most important, I think truly important people are endlessly empowering others. Hopefully there will be some more chances to see this in other Star Wars films. If not, I'll make one. With Legos and stop-motion.)<br />
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Some really intense person on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi">Wikipedia </a>says that Jedi are "an ancient monastic, spiritual and academic meritocratic organization...[the Order] mostly consists of polymaths; teachers, philosophers, scientists...the Jedi study, serve, and utilize a mystical power called The Force". Being a Jedi would be an incredible experience and an incredible burden, and definitely where I would want to be were I in the Star Wars universe, if mostly for the deep conversations and lightsabers.<br />
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The burden is revealed a little bit in Rey's vision near the middle of "The Force Awakens". At the pirate conclave, Rey faces a vision of the force that terrifies her, that shows her the darkness of her past and the incredible challenges of her future. The experience is so harrowing that she says she will never come close to it again.<br />
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So, a message to those who might secretly be Jedi, but don't know it: sometimes the Light Side will scare you. It might pull you to overturn old stones and re-open old wounds and help you find healing. It might call you to be thousands of times better than you are now, but don't worry. It will help you. If you don't follow that whisper, it may be that no one will take your place.<br />
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And an <i>even more important message</i><b>: </b>if you are not a Jedi, and you know it, first of all, you might be anyway so look at the last paragraph.<br />
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But if you aren't. If you haven't felt the Force, or don't really feel like you have a mission, keep an eye out for these people. Look at Finn! Finn wields a lightsaber, fights a Sith Lord, connects all the major players in the film, and is deeply important! And though he may be a Jedi, let's say for my purposes that he isn't.<br />
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<img src="http://images.techtimes.com/data/images/full/155350/finn-and-rey.jpg?w=600" height="300" width="400" /><br />
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Finn <i>recognizes </i>something incredible in Rey. He is the key force (intentional word use) that propels her to taking hold of her destiny. So if you are not a Jedi, <i>find them. </i>Find people with vision. Listen to them. Help them. Argue with them when they are wrong, push back when they are stubborn or selfish. Inspire them. Only with your help can they change the galaxy.<br />
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They might be holding the torch and leading the way, but you might be the one flying overhead in an X-wing. They might be the writer of the next big epic, but you might build the world their characters live in. You might walk beside them, or run beside them. Even just being there is worth the whole ride.<br />
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<img height="167" src="https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2499882/x-wing.0.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Third, <b>you are <i>not </i>small.</b><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">There is a place for you. </span>Not just in the Star Wars galaxy, but in the real one. I loved, watching the film, that we got to see a trio of new heroes who came out of nothing, with no prophecies or powers, become a part of the story. I don't think JJ and the other creators did this accidentally.<br />
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Star Wars VII is claiming Lucas' universe as collectively <i>ours, </i>introducing new heroes, planets, and visual ideas, and this is no small thing. Our generation is inheriting all sorts of things: our nation, our world, our challenges, our philosophical inheritance.<br />
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<img src="http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y280/blupride40/flag.jpg" height="183" width="400" /><br />
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We don't have to be afraid that we won't measure up. The difference between Han Solo and Finn is that we know Han's story, but Finn's is just beginning. The difference between George Lucas and J.J. Abrams is that one came before the others. The difference between Star Wars and the next beautiful science fiction epic is that Star Wars has already been seen.<br />
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We don't have to be afraid that we're not special enough. What made those before us special was not their parents, or their upbringing. Having amazing parents can lead to a Kylo Ren as easily as a Luke Skywalker. What made them special was their natural abilities, combined with their choices. They had to learn, they had to fight to get better, and you will too.<br />
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So if we're learning lessons from "The Force Awakens", how about these: Try to find others who will be on your side. Only Sith go at it alone. Friends may be hard to find, and they may at first glance just be orphans on a garbage planet, and some might argue with you, but you can find true friends. And there's nothing more sure to keep you from the Dark Side.<br />
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<img src="http://images.hngn.com/data/images/full/130770/star-wars-the-force-awakens.jpg" height="400" width="344" /><br />
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Right now, you may feel like a nobody. You might be scraping out a life in a busted AT-AT with a quarter ration of blue food. But you are the only you there is. Keep learning. Find what you're passionate about. And when the time is right, jump up into the pilot's seat or take hold of the lightsaber and remember:<br />
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You can do this.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-79842732900782065642015-09-07T13:50:00.000-07:002015-09-09T17:08:16.598-07:00Become Who You Were Born to Be: Destiny in "The Return of the King"I have been thinking about destiny lately.<br />
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I don't mean that in a self-centered protagonistic sense. I mostly mean it in a Lord of the Rings sense.<br />
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My Grandfather says that <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>is mostly a profound moral work because of its sense of Providence--the idea that individuals are being led forward by a powerful force for good, that leads them to final endings of goodness despite travelling through dark clouds and moments of grief. Along the way, so many characters find that they were made for something greater than they knew. That they had a destiny.<br />
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I don't know if I've got one of those. Of course my clinical mind wants to reject the idea, looking around at how normal my surroundings are. How there are no meteoric rises to being wonderful or powerful, how it's all just one little step at a time. I imagine you think similarly--you sometimes dream of wonderful things, but can feel held back by a world that has no interest in you, or by the (perhaps) truthful evaluation that some of your dreams are ridiculous and improbable.<br />
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If you're interested in reading that your wildest dreams will come true and exactly as you planned it, you won't find it in this article. The destiny I see in the universe is hidden, does a wonderful job of making itself invisible, and sometimes only is visible to others. But I do believe that we have incredible capacities as individuals, for caring, for strength, for inspiration. And that kind of destiny--unexpected, beautiful, personal--is all over <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, and particularly <i>The Return of the King. </i>And I think it can teach us something about our own destiny.<br />
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<img src="http://www.imagozone.com/var/albums/filme/The%20Lord%20of%20the%20Rings%20The%20Return%20of%20the%20King/LOTR%20-%20The%20Return%20of%20the%20King%20460.jpg" height="166" width="400" /><br />
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Here goes:<br />
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Aragorn's journey in <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>is so well-worn to us that every step of it seems natural. Somehow, the fact that the pipe-smoking, black-hooded ranger who heals with a weed called Kingsfoil is a logical person to magically become the King of Gondor, Leader of the Armies of the West. But taking away the deep cultural impact that the series has had on us, Aragorn becomes a dark, fascinating figure and a powerful archetype for destiny, and nowhere is his personal transformation and character power clearer than in his eponymous film: <i>The Return of the King.</i><br />
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<img height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKcZlzQPtMWrcI-fymxFvdEWwX4CsNQQuif47FOaDzxudWwH19ao1jeR8pQb3QyaZ2_zSCKIXEOmGsQohexDF8M2P0fhppHNlePkYFVvsOxnOgNjT7pUGxVMw_5jOLyJ-d5wism4M-wDE/s400/Aragorn_in_Forest.png" width="400" /><br />
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Before the films, Aragorn was a ranger. To claim that he was a wastrel and an evader is not a wholly accurate portrayal, but there is a sense that he faces up against smaller challenges rather than great ones. As will be mentioned later, he even suggests to Sauron that he has hidden from him. Though he knew what he was destined to be, there is evidence that Aragorn stood on the sidelines, hanging back out of fear, apprehension, or doubt.<br />
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Late one night at the Rohan encampment, Elrond comes to Aragorn with a warning and a gift. The warning is that they will be outnumbered by the secret fleet Sauron has enlisted, and that Aragorn needs to find more troops. When Aragorn expresses doubt that he will be able to inspire the army that might be able to help them, Elrond shows Aragorn the gift he's brought, saying "They will answer to the King of Gondor."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgigAM8t9v5TDzI5cxTGFZlSu06NEqgzclXw27Tz0BmXVpcP-NOiCj4WiNE92POpyLRSkX4VmAhNKaGHCWGgcQSyc5kpmUPpsYCKFh0RANh7ct6e2eE_Q7oBVr9-Zz1woL-u17V7H5RbQtxohESqnOF-H-lohgwGOtSyvCffN6WjveP_Aw3qF0____RwtXhboQ4ZmRVHazukOeLFH6D=" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://corecanvas.s3.amazonaws.com/theonering-0188db0e/gallery/original/6706_noucolororig.jpg" height="293" width="400" /></a>The gift is a new sword, called Anduril, reforged from the <i>broken shards </i>of his ancestral line's sword. Elrond hands Aragorn the sword and says:<br />
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<i>"Put aside the ranger. Become who you were born to be."</i><br />
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With these words, Aragorn reaches a turning point in a transformation that began when he agreed to help Gandalf lead the Hobbits to Rivendell, that continued when he joined the Fellowship, and that grew to maturity.<br />
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Aragorn's transition to kinghood presents some fascinating ideas about destiny:<br />
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1. Aragorn both honors and defies his family by taking on his role.<br />
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The family of Kings is not without their shames or problems. Isildur, Aragorn's forebear, defeated Sauron but eventually succumbed to the temptation of the ring. That long line of crowns and swords that came in the generations before Aragorn was poisoned by greed and selfishness. No doubt part of Aragorn's hesitation was the knowledge that <i>he, too, </i>was subject to temptation.<br />
(Arguably, his temperance saved him from a similar fate. Would it have been better to have a hero boldly barreling in, assuming he would be unshakable? Isn't that what happened to Boromir?)<br />
But Aragorn honors the family line. The symbol of their greatness, the sword, is <i>reforged</i> to serve his reign.<br />
For those among us who come from families with difficulties, is it necessary to split completely from what fostered us? or is there a way of taking the good shards of a broken thing and improving it? <br />
Embracing destiny is not, as many assume, simply an arrogant "self-making". Aragorn has no fantasies about this. He graciously accepts the help given him and the traditions given him by his royal line. He sees their flaws clearly enough to avoid their mistakes. With the help of the past and hope in the future, he generates something new.<br />
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2. He cares deeply about others while <i>avoiding a savior complex.</i><br />
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<img src="http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc153/estels_evenstar_girl/Fantasy%20Crap/Lord%20of%20the%20Rings/AragornandEowyn.jpg" height="227" width="400" /><br />
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<i> </i>Aragorn's relationship with Eowyn (who I'll talk about at length later in this commentary) teaches another fascinating lesson about his destiny.<br />
In the key conversation with Elrond, they recite a shared bit of Elven lore: "I give hope to men. I keep none for myself." This mantra could turn Aragorn into an overreaching self-destroyer, trying so hard to make everyone happy that he can't, in the end, do anything. But Aragorn sees limits. He understand the value of the feelings of others, encouraging but not making them dependent upon him.<br />
During The Two Towers, Eowyn, niece of Theoden, falls in love with Aragorn. He is encouraging to her, believes in her strength, and goodness, but has no interest in her romantically.<br />
When he leaves for the Dimholt Road after his conversation with Elrond, Eowyn confronts Aragorn. He asks her why she's come, and she answers "Do you not know?"<br />
A man with a savior complex, or a man who thinks any greatness involves sexual prowess or treating romantic success as some kind of badge of honor, might prolong her interest. Kiss her and ride off, or more than that. But Aragorn is honest, clear, and caring:<br />
"It is but a shadow and a thought that you love. I cannot give you what you seek. I have wished you joy since I first saw you."<br />
A person with a destiny, according to this example, doesn't consider the love of others as his highest reward, but for them to be free and happy as possible.<br />
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3. Aragorn fearlessly faces up to his past and possibilities of failure.<br />
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<img src="http://startupbook.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/palantir.jpg" height="172" width="400" /><br />
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In another key scene from <i>Return of the King</i>, Aragorn makes contact with Sauron. He goes into the king's chamber in Minas Tirith and uses a black seerstone like a crystal ball to communicate with the Lord of Darkness.<br />
When he lifts the stone and sees Sauron, he says, defiant despite his reasons for fear:<br />
<i>"Long have you hunted me. Long have I eluded you. No more."</i><br />
In this moment Aragorn faces up against his fears of the past and of the future.<br />
Aragorn believes that who he is, now, is enough. He has faith that even the difficulties of his past have made him who he is and will lead him down a similar path for the future. Facing his destiny isn't a calloused sense that "I am what I am and I won't change". Instead it's a developed something, a musculature that is inherently good. Whatever changes happen, a man has the discipline to hold to what he knows his good. The actor who played Aragorn, Viggo Mortensen, kept this motto on his mirror: "Adapt and overcome."<br />
In his final speech at the Black Gate he reiterates this idea:<br />
"A day <i>may come </i>when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship--an hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down--but it is not <i>this </i>day!"<br />
In the Aragorn archetype of destiny, there is no time like the present.<br />
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Aragorn is the archetypal hero: a man who comes from ignorance and weakness and, via his honor and resourcefulness, achieves a destiny that allows him to save others.<br />
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<img src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ApUu1DA5HCs/maxresdefault.jpg" height="225" width="400" /><br />
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Admittedly, however, Aragorn was in a logical and systemic position to be placed in his position. Despite his apparent worthiness, "destiny" may have had nothing to do with it. And at least judging on the type of government kingship entails, it's unreasonable to think that all of us are going to be Aragorns, living up to some kingly destiny.<br />
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I think many people do have kingly destinies--incredible futures that will involve them changing the world in some large and institutional way. But for many others, I think Eowyn elucidates some important principles of destiny.<br />
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Eowyn is a proper feminist character. When Aragorn asks her what she fears, she says "A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all change of doing great deeds is beyond all thought or desire." A daughter of the House of Rohan, Aragorn assures her she will do things of value, but in a moment of crisis he warns her: "There may come a time for valor without renown."<br />
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For many people (both men and women) without an obvious a chance of open power as Aragorn, this idea can give either encouragement or bitterness. But here are three reasons that I think Eowyn is as incredible a hero as Aragorn:<br />
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<img src="http://cdn3-www.afterellen.com/assets/uploads/2013/08/eowyn.jpg" height="232" width="400" /><br />
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1. Eowyn challenges the boundaries of her society without ire for those in charge.<br />
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Feeling marginalized can often be a prerequisite for striking out against those with power. Throwing fits, getting newspapers to write scathing articles about your enemies, name-calling, etc. It's a well-worn story that rarely does much besides make people angry at each other.<br />
Eowyn has a clear vision of her destiny: to fight and defend the people she cares about. Even in a society where she doesn't necessarily have a chance to do so, she manages to do so without such conflict. She surreptitiously joins the ranks of her Uncle's army, marches to war with the rest, and helps as much as she can in their effort. Did she have to deceive to do it? Yes. Did she make an incredible difference? Absolutely.<br />
In many cases, careful combat against institutionalized evil seems justified. But these people are her <i>family, </i>her <i>people. </i>Would Eowyn really want to tear down her own city because of some tapestries on the wall or some of the stones in the foundation? Instead, her actions <i>honor </i>her people <i>and </i>allow her to help in the way that she intends to. She didn't lose vision of her destiny simply because other people told her she couldn't achieve it.<br />
As a woman, Eowyn creatively seeks opportunities to give her destiny voice, and with equal creativity finds her way around cultural barriers that might stop her from meeting it.<br />
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2. Eowyn saves others.<br />
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Eowyn's relationship with Theoden and the events at Pelennor Fields are a reminder that destiny can often be more meaningful, and incredible when it revolves around individuals than it might be when it ends with fame, fortune, or power.<br />
It should be noted that Aragorn barely saves anyone in the <i>Lord of the Rings </i>films, and sometimes with a bit of drama. He mostly saves Frodo from Weathertop, he serves as a messenger before Helm's Deep, and coincidentally stops Eowyn from dying during Pelennor Fields. But Eowyn's <i>personal </i>defense of Theoden is one of the most stirring events in the books.<br />
During their fight with the orcs, the King of the Nazgul, the Witch-King, riding a freaky dragon thing, screeches down out of the sky, grabs Theoden and horse in one mouthful, swings them around and slams them down on the ground. (We're assuming a broken back for Theoden, if not much worse.)<br />
He is about to suffer a shameful, torturous death, when Eowyn, in disguise as a man, steps in between them.<br />
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<img src="http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070526090957/lotr/images/c/cd/Witchking.jpg" height="180" width="400" /><br />
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The Witch-King laughs. When he was a mortal man it was predicted that he would <i>never be killed by a living man</i>, and so he is all confidence. This is the creature which, moments before, <i>broke </i>Gandalf's staff. To say that he's powerful is an incredible understatement.<br />
Eowyn, meanwhile, is horseless, armed with a completely regular sword. Unlike many others, she has no real titles to defend her. She professes that she will "hinder" the Witch-King. What uncertain language! Is she doubtful of her own strength?<br />
But from nowhere! and from no one but herself, she takes courage. She "laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel.<br />
"'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn am I, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and my kin...I will smite you if you touch him.'<br />
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<img alt="eowyn_rotk_19.jpg" src="http://eowyn-dernhelm.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/eowyn_rotk_19.jpg" height="286" width="400" /><br />
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"The winged creature screamed at her, but the Ringwraith was silent, as if in sudden doubt. ... [T]he helm of secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears gleamed in them. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes."<br />
Almost as remarkable as her courage and her love, Eowyn fights the Witch-King. "A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly" that felled the beast. The Rider's mace shatters her shield and her arm, but given a moment to find the last of her strength, she stabs him through the face and destroys him.<br />
In the book Eowyn collapses immediately and misses Theoden's death, but in an inspired choice, in the film Eowyn is able to be the recipient of her uncle's gratitude.<br />
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<img src="http://data.whicdn.com/images/56786216/large.jpg" height="310" width="400" /><br />
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She refuses to believe he is dying, insisting "I am going to save you."<br />
With a grim smile, he answers "You already did."<br />
If, in whatever judgment is to come, there is some scale of who matters and who doesn't in life, I think it's rather clear to everyone that it isn't based on fame or accolades. In that scale, Eowyn's destiny is just as heroic as Aragorn's. For some, she may seem to be defined by her boldness and defiance of the tradition she lives in. But even if those barriers were taken away, she would be defined by her love and loyalty to the people around her. The greatest destiny of all is to save others.<br />
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3. Eowyn accepts healing from others.<br />
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Lastly, here's a minor anecdote from Eowyn, which I think makes her an interesting archetype: her experience in the Houses of Healing. After the battle with the Witch-King, Eowyn spends most of the book out of commission, overcoming the wounds she suffered. She incidentally meets Faramir here.<br />
But I was interested to see, and this is in the book as well, that Aragorn is the one who heals Eowyn. The little weed "kingsfoil" is actually a powerful healing agent, and he uses it as one of the powers he has been granted as a part of his role and destiny.<br />
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<img src="http://www.councilofelrond.com/albums/Film-RotK-3-5/508_hand.jpg" height="166" width="400" /><br />
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I think it's important to realize that Eowyn doesn't begrudge this. No matter who we are or aren't, it is valuable to take advantage of and be appreciative of the destiny others have that we do not. Often, seeing the glory showered on others by fate (or whatever resembles it in the universe) we can feel bitter that we don't have such things. But in my experience, the world is brimming with Providence. Destiny becomes an interweaving fabric of acts performed by the many.<br />
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In conclusion, Eowyn is a boss, with a message about destiny that any of us can hold onto. Whether or not we are assigned some position of importance by the winds of fate, our influence can be monumental.<br />
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Even if I've focused on two characters, and the division has been mostly about gender, the idea of destiny is not so divided. Many women will be in places of prominence when men will not, and vice versa.<br />
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But I am still struck by the phrase of Elrond's.<br />
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<i>Become who you were born to be.</i><br />
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In terms of fame or power, we can't really know <i>what </i>we were born to be. But that's not really what matters. What matters is not the quality of our lives but the quality of ourselves.<br />
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I think all of us, in some small sense, know what lies within us. I think all of us know the avenues we can begin to explore that will make us what we truly can be. You were born to do it, but you have the choice to become.<br />
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<img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/68/84/2a/68842a400bb08d7ec644866866e3543a.jpg" /><br />
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<dl style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>All that is gold does not glitter,</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>Not all those who wander are lost;</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>The old that is strong does not wither,</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>Deep roots are not reached by the frost.</i></dd></dl>
<dl style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>From the ashes a fire shall be woken,</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>A light from the shadows shall spring;</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>Renewed shall be blade that was broken,</i></dd><dd style="margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><i>The crownless again shall be king.</i></dd></dl>
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***spoilers follow***<br />
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It's a rare action movie that will survive without snappy dialogue and cheap one-liners, or thrive without buxom babes falling head over heels for handsome heroes. It's a rarer action movie that can transport its audience to a truly complex world, spur reflections on our cultural obsessions with war and power, and carry a feminist message in its blood-soaked hands to the hearts of a new generation of young people.<br />
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"Mad Max: Fury Road" does all that, and I haven't even mentioned the freakin motorcycle stunts.<br />
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<img src="http://www.chud.com/community/content/type/61/id/204004/" height="165" width="400" /><br />
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Technically not even a reboot, the Mad Max franchise is continued here by director/writer George Miller (who also, um, wrote both of the Babe films?) following another chapter in the life of a mentally-damaged survivalist keeping himself alive in a deep-orange post-apocalyptic wasteland. In "Fury Road", the survivalist (named Max) finds himself embroiled in a feud between a water-hoarding warlord named Immortan Joe and his five wives, who attempt to escape the malformed tyrant's clutches and find the Green Place, a mysterious land where the fabled Many Mothers live.<br />
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Though the film moves so quickly that you hardly notice this strength, Miller makes short work of attaching us to Mad Max. Within the first five minutes, the bearded wanderer is taken captive by chalk-covered War Boys who serve Immortan Joe. They shave him down, gag him, tattoo his back with important details (blood type, genitals intact, high octane) and he feverishly attempts to escape, all the while haunted by the skulls and faces of people whose deaths he inadvertently caused. (Also he eats a two-headed gecko.) But despite a thrilling chase scene (fast forwarded for added manic energy) Max's leap for escape only gets him a glimpse of the towering citadel of stone where he's kept before he's dragged back.<br />
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<img height="225" src="https://superiorrealities.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/mad-max-fury-road.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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This is a man held together by tenacity and guilt, and there's no one better to pull off that role than Tom Hardy. No longer inflated to play Bane, only a few shades of the Batman villain's voice come across in Hardy's muttering, frantic-eyed portrayal. Under a grated muzzle, in bulky costumes or toting strange weapons, it's nice to know that there is a powerful actor underneath the effects.<br />
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While Max is imprisoned, we get a long, hard look at the world he lives in. And it's a hard look. Immortan Joe is an oversized warlord encased in white powder like his followers, transparent plastic armor, and a toothy mask that doubles as breathing apparatus. What's beneath that mask we never get a good look, but the double chins and wild yellow eyes communicate enough.<br />
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<img src="http://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ct1_317_after.jpg" height="170" width="400" /><br />
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While his followers communicate in a mixed garble of what might have once been english, Joe is eloquent as he speaks to thousands of deformed and pathetic subjects. While they club each other to death over the light spray of water from what seem like infinite tanks, he chides them, "Do not become addicted to water. You will grow to resent its absence."<br />
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As part of this routine of despotism he sends off a War Rig on a supply run for the all-important guzzoline and bullets, driven by one of his highest-ranking servants, the one-armed cyborg Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). But as he sends her off, something appears to be wrong. He sprints through his thriving gardens, contrasted sharply to the drought of his people, opens the vault to his grand-piano-and-pool-equipped bedchambers, and finds the words "Our Babies Will Not Be Warlords" painted on the floor. It turns out that Joe's wives have stowed away aboard the War Rig and Furiosa is underground-railroading them the hell outta dodge.<br />
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<img src="http://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEFX5wo1VSgWJI_2_a.jpg" height="210" width="400" /><br />
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Furiosa is a wonderful character with as much complexity as Max. Her rig is an example of her own planning, full of secrets that Max and the others explore. She has been engineering this kind of opportunity for years, and it shows. Charlize Theron has a tough job being the most talkative character in an alien wasteland, and sometimes she seems a little too normal, too contemporary. But these faults are easily forgotten.<br />
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<img src="http://i0.wp.com/nerdbastards.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/madmax222.jpg" height="169" width="400" /><br />
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It is in Immortan Joe's retaliation that Max, still a slave, has a chance at the narrative, because a young War Boy, too dehydrated to fight, decides that joining the search party and driving a pursuit car might be his chance at Valhalla, and to have the energy for the chase, he straps Max to the front of the car and uses him as a human IV. When the resourceful wives and Furiosa take down the War Boy's vehicle, Max takes control and joins forces with them in their escape.<br />
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And that's the first half an hour, minus some amazingly-choreographed action sequences and beautiful nuances. Some images slam into your brain as if they'd always been iconic: War Boys pulling skullish steering wheels off an altar like Crucifixes and kissing them, Max coming around the side of the truck and finding five beautiful, exhausted-looking women in white taking a drink from a hose like some greek painting of naiads. Motorcyclists vaulting over the truck and tossing down grenades seems more like ballet than war. It's just a gorgeously depraved story in a richly-depicted world.<br />
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<img src="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2015/05/Mad-Max-Storm.png" height="225" width="400" /></div>
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A lot of people are praising Mad Max for its surprising depth, its feminist messages, and for its strong characters, while some think it's a glorified car chase. So what is it?<br />
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It's fantastic science fiction.<br />
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<img height="238" src="https://cameronbarrettstewart.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/mad-max-fury-road-picture-51.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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Science fiction is very rarely escapism, as Marvel and its subsidiary brothers would like us to believe. Following with tradition, the film's world is full of symbols and touchstones that are not only commentaries but a sort of prophetic warning of what our present actions mean. This is not a genre for the thoughtless or isolated. The fact that it happens to have enormous action scenes (one too many, in my opinion) and to be largely enjoyable doesn't take away from how deep it is.<br />
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Our protagonist is a nameless wanderer, haunted by the dead and devoid of any dietary scruples, and in that sense he's a symbol of post-apocalyptic man: built only for survival, full of personal dissonance, but largely incapable of changing it or facing it. The world around him is a harsh and dramatic allegory which, of course, asks us to take sides. The War Boys, Joe's servants, are desperate to please him, filled with hope of Valhalla, selfish and self-deprecating. The wives are the oppressed women of the world, hoping for a life free of the violence and objectifying society they come from. It is, as has been said in many places, a massive feminist anthem.<br />
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<img height="224" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/slTH9lFJjKU/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Whatever one may say about its message, seeing the feminist agenda in this light helps one recognize its gravity. Immortan Joe's world of imprisonment, chastity belts, and disregard is not far from many past societies, and the war-and-power-mongering insanity of his people is frightening to compare to our own. In this story, who do we want to be as men or as women? Are we fighting for our personal Valhallas, or scavenging for survival without thinking of others? Are we holding ourselves back by allowing others to see us as objects when we could make positive difference, or be a part of a society that will recognize our contributions? Is it easier to just be beautiful, or just be strong, rather than to be truly selfless?<br />
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The other aspects of the film's lore require more attention and add their own thematic questions. The Gasoline-traders and the Bullet-Farmers are mentioned early on, and in good fantasy fashion each have their own twisted, beautiful moments and shocking visuals. The Many Mothers, when they appear, are welcome and wonderful--old women full of wisdom and experience but not all that much hope.<br />
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<img height="224" src="https://54disneyreviews.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/mad-max2.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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(As a side note, the Many Mothers are a good reminder that feminism is not new, even in this genre. Science fiction and fantasy's history of feminism stretches back long before the contemporary wash of facebook articles. Look at Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" or "Tehanu". Today's sci-fi & fantasy magazines are overflowing with fabulous women and feminist writers. Before descending into vitriol, opinion, straw men and argument, we should remember that feminism has a strong hold among intelligent, kind people of all political and moral walks.)<br />
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My short answer is, of course, to go see the film. It is disturbing in many ways, and violent. Its fight and chase scenes are excellently-choreographed, full of gasp-worthy moments, and its visuals are stunning.<br />
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<img height="225" src="https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5YUp7tb9iIiSvqm1jFA7F2KEivU=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3697674/mad-max-screen-3.0.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
My only major qualm with the film is about its ending. The story is a reflection on power as much as it is on women, as most of its characters obsess over cars and guns because they are representations of power. War is, in its basest sense, a testosterone-fueled competition about pride and victory. Thus it strikes me as sad that, in a way, the film's conclusion is that in order to save humanity, all you need is the right regime change. The final images of the film show its new victors being pulled up to the heights of the citadel by the same slaves who hoisted Immortan Joe. Will anything change. or will the cycle of tyranny begin again?<br />
<br />
In my experience, equality of the sexes does not involve one person stepping out of a throne and another stepping in. The future I hope for is one where we change the way we see power.<br />
<br />
True power in "Mad Max" is shown in both feminine and masculine ways. Of course there is the stoic killing of bad guys, but real power is the scene of forgiveness in the back of the rig where one of the wives touches the lips of a wrecked War Boy, showing him the futility of his search for Valhalla. Real power is the scene where Max tries to use his mumbling medical knowledge to save Furiosa's life. Real power is self-sacrifice, not in hopes of salvation, but because of real love.<br />
<br />
Also, guys, that scene with the spiky cars. Dang, I loved that.</div>
Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-43807886684457066502015-03-16T07:57:00.000-07:002015-03-16T07:57:25.192-07:00Unimpeachable Underdog "Hamilton" Just WerksEarly on, in his eponymous onstage role as Alexander Hamilton, composer-lyricist-bookwriter-arranger-actor Lin-Manuel Miranda refers to himself using the word "unimpeachable", and his onstage offering, a politically-steeped biography of one of the great Founders of the American financial system, fits the word precisely.<br />
<br />
Off-Broadway at the Public Theater (but soon to swagger to Broadway, apparently at its own bravura-filled whimsy), "Hamilton'"s ambition crosses every border it reaches. The racial narrative of American history has never been treated more boldly, optimistically, or cleverly than here. It takes biographical drama and renders it 1) as simple and comprehensible as the masterworks of Disney's golden era and 2) a portrait so complex and understandable that it shocks, surprises, and delights. In terms of accessibility and musical sophistication, Miranda somehow wondrously creates a piece that is explosive, plosive, melodic, and quixotic, an album as full of jams and sick vocal licks as it is of dense lyric depth in rhythmically complex rap.<br />
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There's more, but you're not gonna believe me so I'll stop right here.<br />
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<img height="266" src="https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/hamilton.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<i><br /></i>
"Hamilton" tells the story of ambitious, quick-tongued, quick-witted Alexander Hamilton, a Caribbean-born unlucky kid plagued by failures, who writes himself out of poverty and tragedy, fights for American independence at George Washington's side, and argues a nation and a financial system into existence alongside the ego-driven bigwigs of his time. Does he sound like a 1700s financier or kinda like a rap artist? It should sound like both.<br />
<i><br /></i>
By all accounts, everything about "Hamilton" shouldn't work. It takes history seriously but makes jokes left and right, including a pop song sung three times by King George, characterizing him as a prissy, pouting monarch. Its cast, which includes at most four white people, colors in the founding fathers in a technicolor statement: "They were immigrants, we are immigrants. The question is not our color, the question is what we believe we can do." Also, it makes for a slightly more believable hip-hop musical that the cast of "Hamilton" bears no resemblance to any production of "1776".<br />
<br />
Writer Miranda was inspired by Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, and his research reflects Miranda's nerdy love of history and his passion for stories. The first act, telling the revolution so fast and so thoroughly it'll give you whiplash, is well-researched, concise, and it also happens to be completely 100% perfect theater. It's got enough laughs, enough romance, song after exhilarating song, and the high-brow audience member will be wading up to her armpits in theme and characterization.<br />
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<img src="http://d3rm69wky8vagu.cloudfront.net/photos/large/8.207212.jpg" height="299" width="400" /><br />
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The second act reminds more of "In the Heights" with a lot of thoughtful songs accompanied with arpeggiated piano lines and emotive performances. The subtlety and combination of historically-accurate ideas is diminished as big words like "Forgiveness" get sung, like a big fat subtitle, by the background choir, or when Burr, in a fit of jealousy, busts out about his desire to be a part of the intimate workings of government ("The Room Where It Happens"), an emotion as applicable to career ambition or competition between friends as it is to American history. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Andy Blankenbuehler work overtime in Act Two to try to tell the rest of the story (which becomes significantly less compelling once the war is over) and at the same time bring it home to us as audience members. (Spoiler: They succeed.)<br />
<br />
Although plenty of written genius fuels the success of "Hamilton", it is sustained and given life by its diverse, electrifying ensemble. The story is told largely through fluid scenes effected by an ensemble of six incredible dancers, who through a mix of hip-hop, period dance, and contemporary movement, make boots, breeches, and period jackets look really, really hot. The "Helpless" sequence, when Eliza Schuyler falls for Hamilton, the revolution battles, and the final bullet sequence particularly deserve attention.<br />
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<img src="http://d3rm69wky8vagu.cloudfront.net/photos/large/7.207207.jpg" height="299" width="400" /><br />
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Leslie Odom Jr.'s Aaron Burr, playing the man who would eventually kill Hamilton in a duel, is the unexpected narrator of the piece, entering to a chorus of snaps and a low piano with the wordy opening question:<br />
"How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore (and a Scotsman!) dropped in the middle of forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished in squallor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?"<br />
He ranges from funny asides ("trust me, baby, I'm a trust fund baby!") to a hero of his own story, to a jealous rival with grace and dripping confidence. Like almost everyone else in the show, his vocal performance shows a few points of weakness that only accentuate his charisma as storyteller. Ironically, he is arguably the protagonist, singing and rapping much more frequently than Hamilton himself.<br />
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Phillipa Soo (of "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812" fame) and Renee Elise Goldsberry shine as the Schuyler sisters, Phillipa as the ever-faithful Eliza who marries Hamilton and Renee as Angelica, smart enough to match Hamilton but also smart enough to know she should marry up. Their first number together (an "I Love New York" number in a musical about the Founding Fathers!) and the songs "Helpless", "Satisfied", and "Take a Break" bubble with energy. There are too many incredible riffs and moments of vocal prowess to bother trying to write them down, and man, it is unexpectedly boss to watch these girls pop little hip-hop heel moves in bustle dresses.<br />
Phillipa's soaring, ethereal voice is used very well, and Ms. Goldsberry matches her skill, not to mention that she raps as well as the gentlemen, with thrilling ease. Miranda gives race a subtle scouring in the piece, and he doesn't forget women either in his telling. Even if they get less stage-time considering their lack of political involvement, their emotional weight in the story is more than equal to the men, and their performances as much rewarded or more so.<br />
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<img height="266" src="https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/riedel_hamilton1-1a.jpg?w=720&h=480&crop=1" width="400" /><br />
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Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos, and Christopher Jackson must be mentioned. As a variety of major characters, including Hamilton's son Phillip, Thomas Jefferson, and Jackson as George Washington, these four men set the show on fire. Rapping, dancing, or translating George Washington's real-life final address as President into song, they are incredible.<br />
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Lin-Manuel Miranda as Hamilton is darker, fierier, but just as joyous and boyish as Usnavi was. With a wheezy singing voice that belies the passion of his oratory, Hamilton is not always likeable, but he is always comprehensible, usually fascinating, and occasionally heroic.<br />
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Why does such an ambitious show, balancing high-brow biography, historical comedy, rap and hip-hop, succeed? First of all, it offers something for everyone, which I won't go into again.<br />
<br />
Secondly, "Hamilton" invites us to reconsider how we look at history and how we look at our own lives. The figures that populate history were not defined by breeches and riding boots and quills, in the same way that we are not defined by fake glasses, the internet, or jeans, and by the end of the show the audience sees pretty clearly into the hearts of the men and women who helped in their way to make our country what it is. Instead of telling us which party to side with or who won the battle of history, "Hamilton" ends with a statement: We have enough time.<br />
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<img src="http://d2npu017ljjude.cloudfront.net/images/poster-178275/w178/5520-3.gif" height="400" width="258" /><br />
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Burr informs us, with bitterness: "Life doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it takes and takes and takes." Miranda's musical is not a call for justice as much as it is a great triumph of justice. Telling the Founding Fathers story as an immigrant tale reminds us that our differences don't divide us as much as we think. It also isn't a call to support one party or another.<br />
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I think, it's a call for excellence, for striving. Hamilton's life, hurried and untenable as it was, was full of purpose. Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn't come out and moralize about whether Hamilton's choices were all good--that would defeat the historical genius of the piece, which fails to show clear winners or losers. Unlike other historical musicals, "Hamilton" doesn't pretend that there's a consensus, even in the past. He leaves it to us to look at history, and to look at ourselves.<br />
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Alexander Hamilton lived 49 years. He was born a bastard, orphan, son of a whore, and he grew up to be a hero and a scholar, a father of a crazy, incredible thing. He couldn't control who lived, who died, or who told his story, but he could choose to live a story that he wanted, whether or not anyone else saw it as he did.<br />
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The next question is painfully obvious:<br />
<br />
What's your story?Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-72251523907821485682015-01-24T02:31:00.002-08:002015-01-24T07:06:57.316-08:00Community's Production of "Into the Woods" Turns Out Real NiceBy Len Lansbury<br />
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If you've been to Quizno's this month, you've probably seen the posters outside the Disney Municipal Theatre Center for their little production of "Into the Woods" they're doing. Or better yet, you've probably heard about it from your neighbors. As the city's foremost independent journalist (freelance seemed too dependent) I'm here to tell you that it's a really fun show, the actors are having a good time, and it's probably good for your kids.<br />
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Some bigshot musicmaker from Broadway city let Disney do some adjustments of his award-winning musical. Here's the deal: It's a story of four fairy tales--Cinderella, Jack and the beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and one new one about a Baker and his wife--that intersect as each person seeks after their wishes. Cinderella wants to go to the ball, Jack and his mother wish for prosperity, Little Red just wants bread to bring her granny, and the Baker and his wife want a child. The result is a fast-paced, funny, and surprisingly emotional and complex story about wishes, what it takes to get them, and whether or not getting what you want actually makes you happy.<br />
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<img alt="INTO THE WOODS" src="http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/Into-The-Woods-03912_R-1024x683.jpg" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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Most of you probably know that it's a really good musical. Though I am a respectable independent journalist, I will admit that I have friends who like "Broadway" and "musical theater" and "belting" and "booking", and they tell me "Into the Woods" is the most accessible musical by the incredible rhymer and morally elusive composer Stephen Sondheim, whose musicals "Sweeney Todd", "Company", "A Little Night Music" and many others challenge the happily-ever-after attitude of most musicals with biting wit and complex music. A couple of my Broadway friends also said his work is 'boring' or 'too complicated for me'. I guess I should say they 'were' my friends before I deactivated my myspace in disgust.<br />
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I agree with the people who like Sondheim, and "Into the Woods" is one of his best. Throughout the Disney Center's production, I was reminded how smart and beautiful it really is. It takes some getting used to in style, especially if you don't know musicals very much, but the performances and orchestration here are lush and bring the score to life for a contemporary audience. (Also, the script by James Lapine is reduced a little bit but generally remains unmarred.) Sitting down for the first number, a fourteen-minute introduction to the varying plots that culminates in all of the characters heading off into the woods, was completely exhilarating and nearly-perfectly-executed. Disney's sets are ominous and pretty, the costumes are vivid and evocative, and the overall effect is a little dark but pretty much spot-on.<br />
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But let's be honest, this is a musical, so the real concern here is not whether the themes are told properly or whether or not the material has inherent value. What really matters is who got cast as the leads. So is Disney's cast the best ever? Did the coolest, most talented, most deserving <strike>kids in the school</strike> actors in the tri-state area get the right parts?<br />
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<img alt="INTO THE WOODS" src="http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/Into-The-Woods-01037_R-1024x683.jpg" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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James Corden and Emily Blunt play the Baker and the Baker's Wife, whose story becomes central to the musical. As the hesitant, stubborn, idiosyncratic Baker, James Corden's turn is comic without clowning, charming without posturing, and touching without being all that deep. He nicely fits this generation's ideal version of the good husband: kinda chubby, sensitive, with a beard. Next to him, Emily Blunt plays the Baker's Wife, a legendary role who wants to be an equal part in her marriage, but who also sees clearly that if she is going to get what she want, she might have to act selfishly. To be effective, the Baker's Wife needs to be both likable and cunning, and Emily Blunt pulls it off nicely. Whether anyone could have been that unabashedly beautiful in feudal fairy-tale land begs verisimilitude, but this is a musical. Could other actresses have done it better? Perhaps. But in a sense Blunt is the perfect choice for this current production. She is just famous enough for us to recognize her and just anonymous enough for us to want to see more of her.<br />
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<img alt="INTO THE WOODS" src="http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/Into-The-Woods-07188_R-1024x683.jpg" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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Plenty of girls are gonna be ticked about Anna Kendrick, who plays the to-be-princess Cinderella. Kendrick's voice is mediocre, her look is awkward, and since she never seems to feel anything besides confusion it's difficult to care about her, or to connect with her eventual journey. People including my brother disagree with me about her, and that's fine, I suppose, but she didn't really do it for me. But like Blunt to a much further extent, Kendrick is Hollywood's current darling, and that's how these things work. I remember watching "To Have and Have Not" starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. At the end of the film the gorgeous Bacall leans against a piano and begins to sing. My mother and I, watching the film, burst into unquenchable laughter, hearing this beautiful woman singing in a voice that sounded like the Gettysburg address translated into cow-speak. De gustibus non est disputandum.<br />
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<img alt="INTO THE WOODS" src="http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/Into-The-Woods-00670_R-1024x683.jpg" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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The rest of the cast does nicely. Meryl Streep is one of the great divas we cheer for and gives the iconic Witch basically everything she needs. I do wonder, however, if we might cheer too much for the fact that she gets to wear that cool dress and crazy blue hair than we do for her performance of "Children Will Listen". The Princes, played by Chris Pine and handsome blonde doofus, were just great for what we should expect from the Disney Municipal Theater Center--community theater with pretty people.<br />
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Johnny Depp had to be in it, because he's neighbors with the director and, I mean, he would feel weird. He's always playing some funny role in the musicals here and honestly, we'd be sad not to see him. It's a matter of comfort rather than artistic boldness that he be a part of it, and isn't that just fine? Jack and Little Red are great kids with some smart acting choices. I haven't mentioned their singing voices, mostly because the sound guy at the Center decided to autotune and adjust a lot of it. So they all sound a little bit like singing robots who like putting unnecessary scoops on melodies that would be fine without them. But it didn't bother me all that much. "It Takes Two", "The Last Midnight", "Moments in the Woods", "Steps of the Palace", and "No One Is Alone" are musical standouts despite.<br />
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In the end, no matter qualms about casting or slight changes to the script, it's wonderful to see a great piece of theater transferred to a place where it can be seen by lots of people and given to a new generation.<br />
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To be honest, I've always dreamed of seeing a perfect version of "Into the Woods", one that has me guffawing in laughter, sighing in love, and crying like a fool as the girl who came with me holds my arm in confusion at my weirdness. But I haven't seen it yet, and I might never. The really fantastic thing about musicals is that they come back, again and again, and like Passion plays or the pageants of old, they find new casts.<br />
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<img alt="INTO THE WOODS" src="http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/Into-The-Woods-00754_RC-1024x683.jpg" height="266" width="400" /><br />
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The stage will sometimes be manned by strangers and you will enjoy yourself and walk away with your belly full and your mind distracted. If so, they have done their job. You've had fun. Everybody's happy.<br />
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At other times those roles in the pageant might be filled by people who matter to you: the baker you know from town, that witch from next door who's been like a second grandmother to you, your nephew as Jack and your niece as little red. Or someone you don't know but who you've heard is a really good person, and whose virtues become a part of the character they play. Watching these intimate personages on stage, the story becomes different. Being in that theater at that time, you are a part of a bigger story, the story of our tribe, all wishing and wanting and blundering through the woods. When you walk out of that one, you might just know what it means that no one is alone. You might be careful the things you say. You might listen and learn.<br />
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Whether or not something like that happens at Disney Municipal Theater Center's production, we'll keep putting it on. We can all keep going and watching people singing and acting and stuff. That's a pretty good place to start.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-12763340026619172482015-01-07T03:55:00.002-08:002015-01-07T03:55:41.788-08:00The Question, Part 2: Among the Sleep<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I've been thinking about you for a
while.</div>
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You know who you are. You've dabbled
with the addictive Netflix bingeing culture and tasted some
hollowness, you're sick of the social media mud pit, and you want a
little bit more out of the stories you pay for and consume. As we've
talked about <a href="http://soundofbushman.blogspot.de/2014/09/the-question-youve-all-been-asking-me.html">before</a>, you have wondered if these video games I play
are a new avenue for interesting storytelling and entertainment or if
they're a sexist, violent, nerdy dark corner of the male psyche.</div>
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</div>
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When you and I counseled about these
things by the marble fountain those months ago, and after we had sat
in the rain in Bryant Park for an hour on that dismal afternoon, I
kept thinking about this, because I think you deserve a legitimate
answer. I gave you a first reply with Child of Light, and I think
you've enjoyed it, or at least given it a try. As we knew then, the
only way to answer your question was to show you the games that I
think have true value, that break the stereotypes of male-centric,
exploitative, mindless entertainment, but which are still enjoyable
and provide a great experience.</div>
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The next one is called “Among the
Sleep,” a kickstarter-funded indie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_person_%28video_games%29">first-person</a> puzzle and horror
game produced by Krillbite Studios. The game started as a
university-level project, and later they got
support enough to make it into a full title. (If you are worried
about games being unartistic drivel spouted out by huge soulless
companies, you should know that <a href="http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/">this kind of story</a> is common. The
gaming world is full of tiny teams making games that are able to
spread just as widely as AAA titles. It's an underdog-friendly world,
and the indie game scene is thriving.)</div>
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<img height="166" src="http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/3/30405/2438635-1341458716-among.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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In “Among the Sleep”, you are a two years old, and it is your birthday. Following a rather glum birthday
party attended only by your mother, who is interrupted by an angry
knock at the door and comes back without explanation, she sets you to
bed early and you wake up in the middle of the night to find your
Teddy Bear dragged into the dark and the house transforming around
you into the place of your nightmares. When you free Teddy from
almost-drowning in the washing machine, he tells you what you already
know: you need to find your mother. The rest of your journey is spent
exploring the house and the strange landscape of horrors that await
you in your dreams.</div>
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</div>
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Being a first-person game, you spend
the entire experience from the viewpoint of your character, exploring
a 3-dimensional space by looking around and moving. For a new gamer,
getting used to this system can be disorienting, nauseating, and
frustrating, but unless you're my dad, you'll get the hang of it.
First-person exploration allows for a beautiful type of storytelling
that only video games achieve: you, as the player, are able to
observe and come to conclusions based on what you see. The cameraman
doesn't have to frame it a certain way for you (though the experience
is much like heightened cinematography) and there can be secrets and
insights all around. A child's drawing on the floor can be walked
over or you can take a moment and learn something about your
character. “Among the Sleep” has some beautiful moments of
ambient storytelling, and in this way can serve as a wonderful
introduction to the great first-person games, games like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2">Half-Life 2</a>,
the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/arts/video-games/bioshock-infinite-irrationals-new-video-game.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Bioshock</a> series, and<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishonored"> Dishonored</a>.</div>
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The game takes advantage of your
position in the world to great effect, and was one of the game's
great successes for me. As a toddler, walking upright is slower and
more clumsy than crawling, but it's only when standing that you can
hold your Teddy Bear, comforting you and creating a little golden
light in the sometimes-pitch-black darkness. The limits set for you
create an amazing sense of smallness: doors and drawers can be very
finicky to open, climbing onto surfaces is clumsy and accompanied
with frustrated baby noises, and interacting with objects changes in
difficulty depending on their size. Basketballs seem like immovable
boulders, hanging dresses seem like silent specters, and hallways
seem endless. I found myself so drawn in to the role of a child that
I felt unable to speak aloud—something I occasionally do in
frightening games—and felt powerless in the face of the terrors
before me.</div>
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<img height="150" src="http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/06/AmongTheSleep4.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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If you're like me, you may want to know
how frightening “Among the Sleep” is before you consider getting
it. It's honestly not that bad. There are no bodies, no bloody scrawls on the wall, no psychologically disturbing images. The game relies on suspense and your feeling of
helplessness to create its experience. The sound design is full of
strange noises and creaks that will make you swear under your breath
when you open a squeaky door or break a bottle. The level design is
somber, dark, and creepy, and there are a number of moments to make
you jump out of your seat. There are monsters that had me breathing
heavily and crawling like a jitterbug for my baby life, and the
sequences of being pursued are heart-pounding, but the game will not
give you nightmares.
</div>
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It is, in itself, a nightmare, a
beautiful artistic depiction of what makes children afraid. Rooms
that seemed familiar to you are transformed, a playground filled with
somber-faced owl statues becomes a creaking, foggy marsh, and
indistinguishable arguing adult voices float in the background,
hinting at the real-life dramas that might influence this child's
fears. The result is an experience that is chillingly nostalgic,
recalling primal moments of childhood when the words “No, honey,
not now” were the equivalent of a death knell and when the darkness
seemed ready to swallow you up.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<img height="224" src="https://40.media.tumblr.com/056c4153db2a8714e87e282b2f222e27/tumblr_mn0nss1SqO1ry171qo1_500.png" width="400" /></div>
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(I'm amused as I write this at how
similar it is in theme to Child of Light. Why games about childhood?
Partially, I suppose, to refute the idea that all games are about
killing people, and even the ones which portray it are often about
more than that. Partially because art about children affects me a
lot.)</div>
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</div>
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Why do I think you will enjoy this one?
I enjoyed it because frightening first-person games are much more fun
than horror movies. I can't stand horror movies, but in a game like
this you have to choose to go into the dark room. No camera angle is
forcing you to see the scary thing (I spent probably more than a minute and a half hiding behind a refrigerator door because <i>something </i>was moving on the other side aaaaagh). If you want to follow Teddy's
advice and find your mother, you've gotta move your chubbiness into
the dark and see what's waiting there. It's an exhilarating, chilling
way of experiencing a story. The puzzles are interesting without
trying to stump you, and the pace and length is very good for an
introduction to the genre—about 3 and a half hours, depending.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
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It has a few weaknesses. Its voice
acting, besides a few really shining moments, comes across as clunky
and passionless. Though the sound design is fabulous, the music
doesn't really shine very much and has very few memorable moments.
This may be intentional to imitate a child's understanding of music,
but I would have liked to have something to hold on to when I got to
the end. And this third is a strange weakness, but a small prologue
that was developed later (now included in the game when purchased)
has been added on, and it showcases a slightly-better-designed
experience that shows how the game could have been better with more
time in development. But both are still the same world experience and
quite enjoyable.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<img height="282" src="https://41.media.tumblr.com/870ea743d88cf8010ef2510a7bb1a357/tumblr_n6fvsbJT9D1r980sno1_500.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So give it a go. Find someone who you
won't be embarrassed to get scared sitting next to, cuddle up one
late evening, and walk into a nightmare together. “Among the Sleep”
speaks a language that children understand—a language of toys and
memories, of moments with Mom and of childhood fears, and the result
is so clearly-communicated that I recommend it wholeheartedly, The
story, seen through a child's eyes, is surprisingly moving for a game
about finding your way through a scary dream. I want to talk to you
about it when you finish.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Among the Sleep” is available for
$19.99 through a legal and safe internet client called Steam. If
you're lucky, you'll find it on sale, as I think the game would be
better priced at around $12.00. </div>
Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-84458728712788375542014-12-19T03:38:00.000-08:002014-12-19T10:35:43.837-08:00Mormon, Breaking Bad, and the Morality of Art<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The penultimate author of
the record known as The Book of Mormon, an almost-thousand-year
history of a doomed people, describes its waning days vividly and
horrifically. The spent general, whose name now adorns the book since
he compiled it, lived his final years leading doomed armies, while
attempting to finish a history that had almost no chance of
surviving, hoping that one day his genocidal foes would find it and
their descendants would regret the bloodshed they had caused.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “It is impossible,”
he writes, “for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a
perfect description of the horrible scene of the blood and carnage
which was among the people...and every heart was hardened, so that
they delighted in the shedding of blood continually.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But in the chapters that
follow and some preceding, Mormon continues to give us glimpses of
the horrors. Rape and cannibalism and human sacrifice rank high among
these crimes, but for the soon-to-die prophet/historian, nothing
seems to cause him more misery than the body count. As a general, he
knew what numbers signified, and the absurd numbers that mount into
hundreds of thousands.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “O ye fair ones!” he
laments, words one can imagine him shouting at the piles of bodies
mounting across the fields, “Behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows
cannot bring your return.” The despair, cynicism, and sorrow
written across the final chapters of the Book of Mormon strike a
sharp contrast to the clinical historicism of the Old Testament and
the mix of stories, doctrine, and discourse in the the disconnected
New Testament.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<img src="http://history.lds.org/bc/content/images/media/walter-rane/usethese/1080x810/alone.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Mormon makes a caveat for
his readers. He is very sensible of those who might one day read
this, and is careful about their feelings:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “I, Mormon, do not
desire to harrow up the souls of men in casting before them such an
awful scene of blood and carnage as was laid before mine eyes.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> He is concerned about
upsetting his audience. Having seen the horrors of war and
wickedness, he doesn't like the sight of them and isn't trying to
shove them in people's faces. He continues:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> “but I, knowing that
these things must surely be made known, and that all things which are
hid must be revealed upon the house-tops...therefore I write a small
abridgment, daring not to give a full account of what I have seen,
because of the commandment which I have received, and also that ye
might not have too great sorrow because of the wickedness of this
people.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The doctrinal point
Moroni brings up is that in the final judgment, all wickedness shall
be made known. There will be no secrets, no things hidden, nothing
brushed under the carpet. He explains that he is partially using the
record of these horrors to teach something. He isn't trying to scare
us or make us feel sad about evil, in fact, he says it <i>twice. </i>He
is careful to be brief about it, and to leave out the gruesome
details, but the story he tells is not whitewashed, changed, or
defended. He wants the people who read his book to be changed. He
wants them to know what evil is, how it is born, and how it
ends—horrifically.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I
have recently been watching “Breaking Bad”,
created by Vince Gilligan. I am partway through season 2, and if
you're watching the show I'll be talking about details of the show up
until my current place, trying to avoid major spoilers. Honestly, I
don't think you should worry about it. The show moves so fast that
spoilers are coming every episode. I'm sure I'm on the edge of some
new insanity. I want to write about a million posts about this show (its kinship with Shakespearean tragedy, its structure, its acting, its character-development) but today I'll just do a bit of an overview and talk about morality.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
<img alt="breaking bad Schlimmer gehts immer: Warum Breaking Bad auch in der fünften Staffel einzigartig ist" src="http://felixdisselhoff.de/wp-content/upload/2012/07/breaking-bad.png" height="250" width="400" /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Vince
Gilligan's massive yarn centers around a single man, Walter White.
Walter is a chemist, a high school teacher in his middle age who is
powerfully overqualified, having once contributed with his work to a
Nobel-prize winning project. He is married to the lovely and uptight
Skyler and has a high-school age son with cerebral palsy.
To make extra money, he works at a car wash. Walt collapses one day
at work and learns that he has terminal lung cancer, and has less
than two years to live.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> By a
strange series of events involving his brother-in-law, the bawdy,
chubby DEA agent who brings Walt on a drug bust for crystal meth, and
a former student Jessie Pinkman who is the dealer of said crystal
meth, Walt, an extremely clever man, makes the strangest possible
play for his family's benefit and his possible recovery: he decides
to use his chemistry skills to make and sell crystal meth.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Its
setting is so normal as to happen in our backyards. The Arizona
mountains and suburban houses and issues are as everyday as “what's
for breakfast?”. In a milieu of TV shows set in CIA offices,
invented lands, and far-off planets, Breaking Bad is chillingly <i>now
& here. </i>There is very little
room for distance when family discussions and dramas come so
blindingly close to our own. Though Walt's secret is at times much
greater than most people could possibly claim, the challenges are the
same. Walt is a man who desperately wants his family to be happy and
safe. Its very simplicity and familiarity make the violence and
conflicts deeply disturbing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> <img alt="Breaking Bad Family Schlimmer gehts immer: Warum Breaking Bad auch in der fünften Staffel einzigartig ist" src="http://felixdisselhoff.de/wp-content/upload/2012/07/Breaking-Bad-Family.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The
show leaves no stone unturned and no dark corner unexplored when it
comes to normal people descending into the world of organized crime,
drug abuse, and eventual murder. Episodes can hinge on police raids
that end in exploding land mines just as much as they hinge on
tearful conversations between family members who are coming to
distrust each other.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> At
its core, the show is about evil. The title Breaking Bad contains
several meanings (chemistry involved) but one of its most fundamental
is that the center of the show is a tight handful of questions: What
does it mean to be bad? Who is bad? How does one become bad and at
what point do good intentions become bad? What does the good/evil
composition when it comes to human nature? How does it work?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> To
answer this question it displays an array of human sins and human
goodness. Skyler's sister chooses to shoplift, and makes a habit of
it. Her husband is an ignorant racist, pushing down Latinos and
refusing to learn Spanish in favor of his stereotypes. Skyler, under
extreme stress, smokes three cigarettes while pregnant. A drug lord
named Tuco bashes in the ribs and heads of his disobedient minions.
A pair of meth heads have had a child who they ignore completely, who
in his squallor watches informercials and says only “I'm hungry”.
Walter chokes a man to death with a bicycle lock.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But
on the other hand, these people act in courage and goodness. Skyler's
sister is a faithful friend and gives many of her stolen items as
gifts. Her husband saves Walt's life in a daring gunfight where he
displays such heroism as to seemingly erase his ignorance, stupidity,
and lewdness. Despite her fear at Walter's strange behaviors, Skyler
is incredibly faithful to helping her husband, devoting all of her
energies to his survival in the face of cancer. Even Tuco, the
murderous drug lord, owns a small piece of property where his aged,
ailing grandfather lives, who he takes care of in his old age with a
strange maternal sensibility.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Walter's
journey takes him deep into the world of crime and into his own
morality. A sort of atheist, he still writes on a pro's-con's list of
the decision of whether to commit murder: “Judeo-Christian Values”.
He shudders before his own decisions when he must contemplate them,
but then acts boldly in pursuit of his goals. The name he takes upon
himself, “Heisenberg”, after the Uncertainty Principle becomes
the way the audience sees him—an unguessable mystery, making
breakfast for his family in the morning and starting large scale drug
warfare in the evening.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It's
hard to tell if “Breaking Bad” delights in bloodshed, which
Mormon clearly opposes, or if it is an indictment against it.
Personally, I think that there are obvious moments where the
filmmakers are excited about what they are showing. They know the
moment is shocking or frightening or fascinating, even if it is
violent. But I don't think the writers for a single moment (at least
so far) delight in it. The show spends time and time again slogging
through the trough of justification, watching characters we believe
in decide to do horrible things despite our knowing they shouldn't. The promotional materials make these characters seem like action heroes, but the writing makes them human beings.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMqGpHNGDjucxzhOl0c7CI2LdJRNFuH9S2zDEs3bRMtol2M2dZxxtqXxGHviLrkLuEoNofxV4w4tEcR-FJHIvds65Xyo-61atIy03omMVY28Vs5Q_2GNWkyfGvhDfEUkSQ_2_wCwKNG-l5/s1600/breakin+bad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMqGpHNGDjucxzhOl0c7CI2LdJRNFuH9S2zDEs3bRMtol2M2dZxxtqXxGHviLrkLuEoNofxV4w4tEcR-FJHIvds65Xyo-61atIy03omMVY28Vs5Q_2GNWkyfGvhDfEUkSQ_2_wCwKNG-l5/s1600/breakin+bad.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Many
people say of this story that it justifies Walter, that one comes to
love him and root for him despite his evils. And of course, in a
sense, it does. We watch things fall apart and think “no, no, no,
don't let everyone find out what you're doing”. As with ourselves,
we want Walt to find an escape, to be safe doing what he wants to do
without consequences.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> But
his sin is clear. Walt is the personification of pride. Spurned by
the universe in the form of his wildly-successful former colleagues
Elliott and Gretchen, he feels that his middle-class, cancer-ridden,
unfortunate existence is the result of some great plot against him by
the universe and so he decides to reverse, gauging himself as smarter
than chance. When things turn against him in his everyday life, he
can use his power in his second life and prove that he is better.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Who
of us does not feel like Walt, or his brother-in-law, or his wife?
Who does not feel that our worth hasn't been amply reflected in the
rewards we've received? Who doesn't feel that our status in whatever
sense doesn't excuse some bigotry, some lustfulness, some unkindness?
Who doesn't feel that our love of others excuses our sometimes-insane
attempts to make them do what we want, or act in a way that accords
with our hopes?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Breaking
Bad, </i>unlike any piece of moral theater I have ever witnessed,
weighs all acts as the same. Like the record of Mormon, it knows that
all sins will be shouted from the housetops, and it gives every sin
its time. The message that rings out to me is desperately clear,
which is: evil is evil. Justification is the same for everyone, and
some things require more of it, but it is all meaningless. Does it
matter to be the greedy meth-head calling his girlfriend a skank at
every opportunity, or the girlfriend who, in a drug haze and at the
end of her wits with his cruelty, crushes him bodily with an ATM
machine? In their filthy house where a child sits abandoned and
ignored, the question of blame is beyond us.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The
vision of <i>Breaking Bad </i>shows our world, so crippled by sin
that we want to look away, to pretend it doesn't exist, to hide it
under the rug. But every characterization is careful. Every
stereotype is thrown aside. Nowhere are such morally real characters
represented than in this show, and as I watch the train wreck that I
am sure will some day soon fall upon Walter and Jessie, I think of
Mormon. The people he mourned for were dead and gone, but today we
are not yet dead. There is time to repent. There is time to pull
away. Though I rarely feel like rejoicing after an episode, I feel
like remembering. I feel like understanding, I feel like considering.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Vince
Gilligan's sprawling parable of pride and choices reminds me of the
great teller of parables. Christ told of robbers who left a man naked
and left for dead on a highway. He spoke of a man trapped in hell,
wishing for just a drop of water to place on his tongue. He spoke of
vengeful servants who killed the landowner's son to steal his
inheritance. He wanted to teach us. He wanted us to pay attention. He
wanted us to learn something.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Watching
exploitative or pornographic television shows for enjoyment has many
harms, can disconnect people from reality, and encourages our
imaginations to allow new and sometimes awful possibilities. Watching
morally responsible works of art can frighten us, harrow us, and
teach us anew the difference between good and bad. Only we can be
responsible for why we do what we do, and how it affects us. I firmly
believe that a rating is not the difference, but our own intention
and preparation can make the difference. I don't recommend that
everyone watch <i>Breaking Bad, </i>I'm recommending that we learn
from the stories that we take in.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Do we need more sacred, uplifting art? Yes. Do we need to reject the difficult art? Not always.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It
does not matter if you are a stressed-out mother or a
maternally-minded drug lord with a horrible temper problem. It does
not matter if you are an addict, a high-schooler, a brilliant
chemist, a DEA agent, the man who won the perfect girl or the man who
felt like he always settled, you have a soul. You have a life of
which you can choose to make good or ill. You can choose in the name
of whatever petty outcome you hope for, but in the end there is
almost nothing more precious than goodness: true selflessness, true
honesty, true humility.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I
learned that from Walter White and the prophet Mormon.</span></div>
Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-19589541266804913262014-09-20T14:25:00.001-07:002018-03-22T10:17:40.343-07:00The Question You've All Been Asking Me (A Review)My friends, you often approach me with a question.<br />
<br />
"Ted," you ask, adjusting your hip glasses, or putting a thoughtful hand to a thoughtful chin, "I'm open-minded and fascinated by the arts and what they can accomplish. You are a storyteller by trade, and we have spoken of these things because we are friends. You seem to enjoy video games and the stories in them. If I was to play a video game, what would you recommend?"<br />
<br />
My friends, you have asked me oft, and I have become ponderous. At the masked balls where we have spoken, or under the vaulted ceilings of museums or cathedrals where we have met by chance, I have not been able to find a response.<br />
<br />
I think I finally have found the game, or one of them. Each of you have your own likes--some in the flying of spaceships, some in the wielding of swords, some in the touching stories of well-written characters, and so on--so I may have to write several such articles. But here is the first: it is called <em>Child of Light.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<img alt="Image result for child of light" height="225" src="https://ubistatic19-a.akamaihd.net/ubicomstatic/en-us/global/search-thumbnail/childoflight_search_mobile_156272.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
<em>Child of Light </em>is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-scrolling_video_game">sidescrolling</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game">RPG</a> developed by Ubisoft Montreal, drawing on Active Time turn-based <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_role-playing_game">JRPG</a> elements. I see you're lost already, but don't be afraid. I have made some of the words blue so that they lead to further knowledge. The others I will explain myself.<br />
<br />
The game is about a young girl named Aurora, the daughter of a duke, who dies in her sleep. She wakes up in a dark, moody land full of strange creatures, where she makes friends with a firefly that might be able to lead her to find her father, and a way out of this dark place.<br />
<br />
<em>Child of Light</em> might work as your first game because it is a simple, traditional game, and one of the most moving experiences I have had recently in which the mechanics of a game have allowed me to better understand my life. Aurora's journey through a difficult land shows the melancholy journey of a child learning about sadness, and the power of friends.<br />
<br />
A BIT OF EDUCATION: Role-playing games like <em>Child of Light </em>generally have three parts or activites: first, the visiting of towns or cities, which consist of talking with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-player_character">people </a>and obtaining quests (because, in RPGS, you are the only person capable of helping anyone else out, which can become rather fatiguing), second, exploring dungeons, caves, and fortresses and defeating evil things, and third, completing quests. Quests can be completed in many ways, for example by clearing the old woman's basement of crabs, rats, or giant ants, by convincing the Czerka Corporation that their exploitative terraforming measures are going to destroy life on Telos IV, or by vanquishing the dragon/demon/Sauron/Ganon and lifting the veil of darkness over the world.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Image result for child of light" height="225" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81%2BoWW1%2B0XL._SL1500_.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
<br />
I recommend <em>Child of Light </em>partially because of its art. Completely composed of hand-drawn illustrations, the world Aurora explores is at once inspiring and unsettling. The deftly-animated protagonist floats from dark twisted woods to ruined castles. She finds a city filled with mice that talk about the stockmarket, a village filled with Scottish dwarves who have accidentally been transformed into ravens, and she dives into the lava-filled innards of a mountain giant woman. The music that accompanies it is often sad, yearning, and filled with a sense of searching. In sequences of exploration, I felt connected to Aurora's search for her father, because in this world everyone is looking for something, and here it is easy to become lost in frightening places.<br />
<br />
I won't ruin the story, but there is a lot to it. It has some weaknesses--the whole thing is written in one of the worst rhyme schemes I have ever read, but I got used to it. And in light of its dark subject matter its comedy can come across as less intelligent than its design. But these are all forgivable in light of its strengths.<br />
<br />
<br />
Another important aspect of RPGs I think you will like is your party. Like the Fellowship that goes from Rivendell to Mordor to destroy the ring, a party in an RPG is a group of people united by a cause, each with their own strengths and weaknesses and their own story.<br />
<br />
<em>Child of Light</em>'s cast of characters, like Aurora, recall the serious psychology of children and the deep sadness of life. A circus artist's air balloon took a wrong wind and she has been separated from her brother. A dwarf wizard is afraid of spiders, but needs to face a cave full of them to save his tribe. A non-party character, the giant Magna, is old and tired because her heart has been taken over by evil creatures, and a long quest must be taken to remove them and heal her heart.<br />
<br />
Their characters come even more to life in combat. When you fight foes in Child of Light, you enter an intricate turn-based system that will take some getting used to, but which is very rewarding and enjoyable once you've acquired the knack. In order to defeat your enemies, Aurora and the party must work together in strategic, well-timed tandem, and their abilities reflect their relationship with Aurora: her sister Norah in particular has no attack abilities of her own, but can speed up Aurora or slow down her enemies. What a beautiful game-based metaphor for the influence of a sibling's love. <br />
<br />
It made me wonder what my role would be in such a party. Would I be a healer, capable of bringing my friends back when they're down? Or would I be a wizard, with the power to vanquish fears and enemies with powerful spells? Would I be an archer, capable of holding back many oncoming stresses, and preventing danger to my friends in advance? And I wondered, in turn, about you, my close friends.<br />
<br />
<br />
<img alt="Image result for child of light" height="225" src="https://apollo2.dl.playstation.net/cdn/UP0001/CUSA00339_00/FREE_CONTENT2Rlftn8qSzUkDDpGLyUe/PREVIEW_SCREENSHOT5_53412.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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It was hard being a kid. The world was and is full of scary things, and children, having never faced them before, can fear them more. You remember when you broke a dish and thought your parents were going to follow through on that facetious promise of eating you alive? Or when a playdate with someone who you were scared of turned into a nightmare that might have no end? People tell me they wish they were kids again because life was so carefree, but I look back and remember being the thoughtful child who worried a lot, afraid I didn't have any friends and never would, or worried that I had ruined everything with my latest blunder. In the end, what changed that for me was making friends.<br />
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In this fairy tale and in your own life, the protagonist wakes up in a land that is unfamiliar and difficult. As it always is in these stories, something is wrong with the world--a dark queen of night rules the land, and the young mostly-helpless child must save it, with a little help from her friends. <em>Child of Light </em>reminds me how you, my friend, can help me fight darkness, and that we can be characters in someone else's party, used in a battle against a boss at the moment when we are needed.<br />
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<em>Child of Light </em>is <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/256290/">available</a> for $15, downloadable through a completely legal and safe internet client called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)">Steam</a>.</div>
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Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-22655700849677191092014-08-07T12:09:00.002-07:002014-08-07T12:17:56.613-07:00"The Newsroom" Pitches An Inspiring Angle<br />
I don't watch the news, and I'm not sure Aaron Sorkin does either, but I like what he's been reporting on HBO these days. His offering, an hour-length TV drama, follows the journey of Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and Mackenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer) as they attempt to make personal and journalistic integrity the center of their nightly news show. With a characteristic cast of choleric, charasmatic newscasters, Sorkin tells an idealistic story that, in the end, is less about the news and more about modern-day challenges of integrity. While its politics vacillate between delightful incisiveness and patchy melodrama, its real heart is in its well-portrayed core cast and the optimistic perspectives of its author.<br />
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<a href="https://lh6.ggpht.com/M7eHc21Z5Ama6wrzbCD8z9w6Fwk_izrNTDxwu_pqjVxolkwF8LH7FSrNy5oOjya04dc=w1264" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://lh6.ggpht.com/M7eHc21Z5Ama6wrzbCD8z9w6Fwk_izrNTDxwu_pqjVxolkwF8LH7FSrNy5oOjya04dc=w1264" width="400" /></a><br />
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Aaron Sorkin is a TV-writing legend, mostly because of <i>The West Wing</i>, which he wrote for four seasons before it was passed on. He also wrote "The Social Network", a film about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of facebook. His writing is characterized as fast-paced, wordy, and intelligent, and he is so popular among theater and film practitioners that words like "Sorkinesque" exist and are used with frequency. I knew what they meant before I had seen anything the man had written. So that's cool, and of course begs the question of <i>The Newsroom</i>'s place in his oeuvre and in the newly-exploding television medium. Is this the peaking triumph of his career? Is it a sold-out side dish to his better stuff? Sadly as I have not watched <i>The West Wing </i>(I've gotta finish Galactica, which I have been working on for two years) I'll have to tell you some of that later.<br />
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The show is really quite fun to watch. Shot in the hustle-and-bustle of a spic-and-span newsroom, the show focuses on the enjoyment of watching people do what they're good at. Jeff Daniels as McAvoy is a bitter hero, an anchor who has suffered for his honesty and for his temper, and who now begins a "mission to civilize" at the behest of his ex-girlfriend, who now is also his executive producer, a clumsy and emotional idealist played by Emily Mortimer. She's a fantastic actress, and though she's a little underwritten, her relationship with Will is believable and a great through-line for the series.<br />
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The greatest strength of the Newsroom's cast, however, is its young people. Jim Harper is the new kid on the block but takes charge immediately, and John Gallagher, Jr. is the kind of guy you want to trust as your peer and your boss, devoid of ambition but full of passion. He develops feelings for Maggie, a frenetic, hilarious associate producer played by Alison Pill with exactly the right balance of timidity and courage. Their furtive-glances-but-she's-got-a-boyfriend relationship is what TV is made for, allowing the audience to groan over how good they are for each other and how much tension is building up.<br />
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The other characters create a dynamic team: Maggie's temperamental boyfriend Don (Thomas Sadoski) provides inner conflict and impatience, while Neelamani Sampat (Dev Patel) is stereotypically tech-savvy and nerdy but as a fully-fledged human being, emotionally clear-thinking and a faithful friend. Olivia Munn's economics expert Sloan Sabbath provides humor as a total bombshell who thinks more about the debt ceiling than about human feelings. The other supporting characters, while well-written and performed, pale by comparison with the young people, whose aspirations drive the whole show.<br />
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The story is patchy, sadly. Most episodes attempt to pair personal ethical problems with news stories, for example an episode about the Tea Party and lying on television mirrors the news story with questions about personal honesty. At best, these episodes can be smoothly built, aerodynamic, and a rush to watch. At worst, they seem heavy-handed and one-sided. (Sorkin's McAvoy is apparently a card-carrying Republican but spends most of the show throwing stones at his brethren, and it gets a little old even to this moderately-minded observer) Still, with the snippy dialogue and strong throughline stories, the show's flaws come across as forgivable.<br />
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We live in an era of anti-heroes, and <i>The Newsroom</i> can look silly in that light. Maggie and Jim wouldn't last ten minutes in Westeros, and Walter White wouldn't give them a second look. There are no hidden dead bodies, no decapitations, and I was shocked to have finished half the season of this HBO series without any exploitative sexuality and barely any innuendo. Sure, there are F-words aplenty, but they are for emphasis, not cruelty. In terms of content, the existence and relative success of <i>The Newsroom </i>is a marvel.<br />
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My conclusions about <i>The Newsroom </i>are not about politics; they are about people. Sorkin presents and believes in a good world full of good people trying to do their best. Each of the individuals he presents deserve to be loved by people who understand them. They make mistakes that are less related to crime and more to emotional oversight or unkindness. This is a light that I am happy to see myself in.<br />
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In <a href="http://soundofbushman.blogspot.com/2013/07/star-trek-rises-above-mediocrity.html">my review</a> of <i>Star Trek: Into Darkness </i>I praised the idea of having a crew, how if we want to change the world, we must work alongside our friends. Sorkin, I think, realizes how much television and stories in general are life-fuel for people, and that messages like this can inspire us. He knows that somewhere watching, there is a young woman who might eventually be president, a young man who might eventually be a news anchor, and a multitude of people who already live in a world where moral decisions are made and moral consequences exist. <i>The Newsroom </i>reminds us that integrity is a fight worth fighting.<br />
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The fact that cynical critics pan outright optimism does not kill its benefits. <i>It's A Wonderful Life</i> was called "Capra-corn" and my father hates it, but it still inspires me to serve other people and live a selfless life when me and my mom watch it on Christmas eve at 1 a.m. I believe that life is a fight worth fighting, and I appreciate art that reminds us of our moral agency in it. And as a character on the show states, if that term is too vague for you, look it up. Then watch <i>The Newsroom</i>, then go be a good influence in the world.<br />
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Not necessarily in that order.<br />
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<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-24662390030362267012014-05-30T19:14:00.001-07:002014-05-30T19:14:48.430-07:00Godzilla, Science Fiction, and Polymaths<img height="225" src="http://images.moviepilot-cdn.com/godzilla-2014-hd-wallpaper-godzilla-is-a-box-office-success-sequel-coming-up.jpeg?width=1920&height=1080" width="400" /><br />
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I saw "Godzilla" on Memorial Day.<br />
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It was pretty cool, I suppose. Lemme give you the rundown.<br />
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Scientist Bryan Cranston and stuff-nasal-voiced hunk Aaron Taylor-Johnson are sad because BC's wife died in a suspicious prologue. They have to overcome their father-son issues, I think, which involve dad being the kind of scientist who (loud sigh) posts newspaper articles on the wall. "I know, it's the worst idiosyncrasy, but the only way to respect your mother's memory is by becoming a conspiracy theorist."<br />
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Then for plot reasons, there are huge. huge. monsters. Partially I don't like them because none of them are <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=MOthra&newwindow=1&safe=active&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ziqJU9-uH-nesASSioF4&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=775#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=ZrrP9-O4hKnPXM%253A%3BxNW_ONaJRDXoUM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmothrakingdom.weebly.com%252Fuploads%252F1%252F5%252F6%252F2%252F15627926%252F4867863_orig.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmothrakingdom.weebly.com%252Fshowa-mothra.html%3B690%3B301">Mothra</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&safe=active&es_sm=93&biw=1600&bih=775&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Ghidorah&oq=Ghidorah&gs_l=img.3..0l10.204641.205866.0.206211.8.7.0.0.0.0.329.1494.2-2j3.5.0....0...1c.1.45.img..7.1.264.jOdNzog3UQI#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=tom1A9U5KCz_nM%253A%3BX3O7_6WbP9Z_wM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252F3.bp.blogspot.com%252F-sjwV4j7pWOo%252FUg3CjfjUiXI%252FAAAAAAAAEhs%252F3JEbK3FanuE%252Fs1600%252FKingGhidorah01.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fstu-topia.blogspot.com%252F2013%252F08%252Ffavorite-godzilla-monsters-other-than.html%3B1600%3B900">Ghidorah</a>, or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Gigan&newwindow=1&safe=active&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=LiyJU4yeH5POsAS0soDYDQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=775#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=82HZFy-19yPz4M%253A%3BSNzO85uTWF5E4M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fi133.photobucket.com%252Falbums%252Fq54%252FInfernoRodan%252FToho%252FShowa%252FGigan.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdestroyers-editorialsandreviews.blogspot.com%252F2012%252F05%252Fmonster-of-week-gigan-showa.html%3B483%3B356">Gigan</a>. Then Godzilla shows up, more like an afterthought than a built-up, meaningful Second Coming, and fights them. And then there is destruction and smoke and fog and a lot of staring at intense stuff, and then the monsters are gone and the movie's over. Seriously, done deal.<br />
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I loved these films as a child largely because of the monsters and largely because I was a child. I know that I am using a much less appeasable instrument (adult brain) and comparing it to distractable ten year old brain, but I watched half an hour of "Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster" on Netflix and enjoyed that much of it Way more than this new, apparently good reboot.<br />
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The new reboot is not good. Trying to find the flaws in Godzilla is not hard. The problem, in fact, is listing them. The film is more about being a reboot than anything related to monsters or Japan or even Bryan Cranston. It relishes in greyscale. It refutes campiness by resorting to a tone of unending dreariness, so much so that Ken Wanatabe was payed (hopefully) a million or so to STAND LOOKING OUT AT THE WATER WITH WORLD-WEARY WORRY. He probably has six lines, one of which is the obligatory (never happy) only sighting of the world "Godzilla". The monsters fights are mostly skipped over, as if saving us from the experience we paid money to see. Pacific Rim was thirty times more fun and even if the writing was campier I actually enjoyed the freakin movie.<br />
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I'm just gonna stop reviewing the movie right now and tell you what's up, and this is actually what this post is going to be about: Movies are doing fantasy and science fiction wrong.<br />
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I repeat: They're doing science fiction and fantasy the wrong way. "Why do you say that?" you ask, adorably naive reader, "There are sf & f movies all over the place? All these comic book movies, not to mention all of the adaptations of children's lit like <i>Hunger Games </i>and <i>Divergent, </i>plus <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>and <i>The Hobbit </i>and everything else that's been engendered by it!" You're right, they exist, and some have been nice, but most aren't right.<br />
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Science fiction is a place to explore new ideas. You would be shocked to know how many incredible inventions and ideas of today can be traced back to a few writers. William Gibson's "Neuromancer" is theorized to have played a key role in the invention and development of the internet. Neal Stephenson's novels have never been smarter or cleverer commentary on culture and technology. And fantasy is no exception. Where science fiction makes science into magic, fantasy makes magic into emotional reality. Great fantasy writers like China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, and others allow us to see the world in splending, colorful new ways.<br />
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The entertainment machine, the hydra with such recognizable heads as Disney, Legendary Pictures, and HBO, has seen half of this world--they have seen the money. They've seen nerdy boys apprenticed by their fathers in the way of science fiction, given books that change them. They've seen how these nerdy boys spend money--lots of money--buying more books, or games, or comics, or whatever. It inspires something in them, and inspiration, as we all know, means box office sales!<br />
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But it also means reduction, which is our first (1st) problem. "Yes, we can make movies with spaceships and dragons and robots and all the things you want, but they're going to be movies. Action movies, with lots of explosions and enough drums and percussion so no one gets bored or has to think too much. Delving with issues or figuring out themes that matter is for dramas. Except those will probably just be more about sex or murder."<br />
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So that's obvious. I'm not saying anything new, just complaining about the commercialism of film. Obviously they are trying to entertain. Or I should say "we", as I am also a professional in this business at least to a degree. Entertainment is important, and selling tickets is important, and though people are not as foolish as to simply want explosions and violence, they also aren't looking to read some new philosophical manifesto every time they walk into a theater.<br />
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So our second (2nd) problem isn't related to money. It's related to the entertainment industry and specialization.<br />
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Specialization is an old time-honored thing. You want to do something, like be a film director. You get training, whether it be from Obi-Wan Kenobi or from a university or both. Then you are qualified to a degree and join the ranks of people who have specialized. Other people, who have not had the training and are thus not a part of the community, simply are not a part of it because they don't have the specialized skills. They're not "special" in the right ways.<br />
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This system has worked for a long time, and is failing us now. Why? There are lots of people who want to do entertainment. Lots of people want to be film directors and writers and actors, and so it's hard to know who to trust. Walk down the street in NY and ask for a raise of hands "Who's an actor?" You'll get a lot. Even though you're weird for asking for a raise of hands in public.<br />
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So now, instead of <i>just </i>specializing, we network. Afraid of unknown quantities, communities of artists become centralized, trusting certain people and working with them. This works great for many individuals and many communities--people get to work with people they like again and again, and they can feel comfortable and safe in their careers. Entertainment can be especially scary, so it feels very safe to have a group of friends who are also co-workers in a sense.<br />
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But <i>This. Hurts. Art</i>. There are diverse individuals in different communities who could work well with each other. It's amazing to me that a mind like Neil Gaiman's and a mind like Christopher Nolan's have never met up and done a project. It's far more likely that director Guillermo del Toro will turn to some friend from college to co-write his screenplay than to call up China Mieville, who would be an incredible match. There are science fiction and fantasy authors out there capable of writing incredible films. It's not like there are no good writers and we Have to turn to some doofus to write the screenplay for Godzilla. Get a real writer to do the science fiction, and Max can put it in screenplay format. I mean, the science used in Godzilla is at about the seventh-grade level. The big reveal of the movie revolves around the idea of ECHOLOCATION. I knew what that word meant in second grade, and I knew it related to bats and communication. Who pooped out this screenplay? Yeah, the formatter doofus.<br />
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The world values polymaths (Renaissance Men, people who are experts at many things), and so we all want to be them. Joss Whedon is an inspiration to lots of people because he has roots in SF & F but makes great movies and writes great dialogue and also writes music, why not. And so everyone wants to be him. Every young director wants to write and direct, and hopefully star in his movies. But being a polymath is not a matter of ego. When it is, you often make crappy movies.<br />
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Being a polymath is a matter of being abso-freakin-lutely insane. Polymaths are obsessive. They are nerdy and often socially difficult. They work their butts off day and night to keep up with the things they are good at. Sometimes they might pick up new skills, but it's never without effort or work. It's because they are willing to put in the time an really do it right. There are incredible people, but "just being you" doesn't qualify you. Even if you are hardworking or talented, it doesn't qualify you.<br />
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But heck, don't worry about that. Polymaths are not the solution to bad movies, or bad science fiction and fantasy. The solution is people doing what they're good at. It's really seeking to make good art, even when we have to put aside working with our friends or the people we like, or getting the most money for it. I think that really, really matters. And even if he can't always tell the difference, I think ten-year-old Ted does too.<br />
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<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-66040903057566389122014-04-21T13:26:00.003-07:002014-04-21T13:26:31.044-07:00Surviving and Not Much Else In '12 Years A Slave'In her review of '12 Years A Slave', Roxane Gay said: "I am worn out by slavery and struggle narratives. I am worn out by broken black bodies and the broken black spirit somehow persevering in the face of overwhelming and impossible circumstance." Despite the incredible praise that has been lavished on "12 Years a Slave", Gay and other reviewers bemoaned that the film is rehashing another version of the same tale, packaged for Hollywood audiences in yet another way. I have sometimes felt the same things about "historical suffering" pieces.<br />
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So I came into '12 Years a Slave' looking for something other than guilt and sadness. I came looking, perhaps selfishly, for strong performances by actors, and for elegant writing. I found both. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man from the North who falls in among the untrustworthy, finds himself abducted and sold, and spends (obviously) a dozen years as the property of a lineup of southern white men. In his performance and in the screenplay, I found not just what I was looking for, but also some questions about human beings that I think elevate the film above melodrama and into the realm of art.<br />
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Human beings are all anyone encounters in John Ridley's screenplay, and they come in many shapes. Solomon's first hawker, a well-dress Paul Giamatti, tells his customer (Solomon's future owner Ford, played by Benedict Cumberbatch) "my sentimentality extends the length of a coin." Overseer Tibeats, played by Paul Dano, commands a new batch of slaves to clap for him on their first day as he sings a demeaning song about runaway slaves. In a chilling scene, a black woman who has gained a life of relative ease by marrying the white plantation owner who loved her invites Solomon to sit for tea and reflects eloquently on the world she lives in: "If [enduring Master Shaw's pantomime of fidelity is] what keep me from the cotton pickin' niggers, that's what it is to be. A small and reasonable price to be paid for sure."<br />
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Like almost everyone in the film, these characters are survivors. Slaves "say and do as little as possible" to avoid the whip or the noose, guilty slave owners must pay their debts, and the others scrape out their living where they can in the established system. Only Solomon seems to dream of something else, proclaiming: "I don't want to survive. I want to live."<br />
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But as the film shows us, living is barely an option. I rejoiced vocally when Solomon stole the whip from Tibeats and made him scream with whipping, and even breathed a sigh of relief when another overseer told Solomon that he would protect him, but the subsequent moments left Solomon hanging by his neck from a branch, his feet barely touching the ground and keeping him from death. In an agonizing long shot slaves and slave owners alike ignored the hanging man, save one girl who brought him a sip of water and hurried away.<br />
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It is in this and other scenes like this that slavery can be understood as it truly was--a monster of civilization, nearly indestructible and impossible to fight.<br />
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Praise is deserved for the many actors who contribute to this. Cumberbatch's Master Ford barely has four scenes, but his rich voice and manner embody the period and the kind of goodness that men like Ford offered--scripture, attempts at justice, protection, but in the end not much else. Dano's Tibeats is despicable, sniveling, and hateable. What a sad career that guy is having. And it's impossible to forget Michael Fassbender's wild, egomaniacal Epps, a lusty, boozing farmer. Fassbender plays him as part Nazi, part Shakespeare villain, reduced to nothing but desperate selfishness.<br />
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Solomon is a treat to watch. Ridley's text is heightened like Arthur Miller's Crucible, and no one gets it right quite like Mr. Ejiofor. His performance is at times so subtle as to almost disappear, but when the fire burns, it burns, and it's hard to take one's eyes off him. Lupita Nyong'o plays Patsey, Epps' concubine and the best cotton-picker on his plantation. Ebony-skinned, with wide eyes that rarely look at anyone, Patsey is a pathetic symbol of the race--hopeless, meaningless, making dolls out of grass and fighting the most desperately when it comes down to a bar of soap, as she screams at Epps: "I stink so bad I make myself gag!"<br />
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For those who saw the trailer and Solomon's vigorous declaration: "I will not fall into despair!" This statement is tragic. Despair is much of the film's purpose, and by the end the words echoing in my ears were not Solomon's wife's final comfort but instead Epps' wrathful cry in Northup's ear: "I <i>own you! </i>I <i>own you</i>!" In the end, Solomon Northup survives more than he lives, and we can hardly ask ourselves why after such a display of brutality and evil.<br />
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One of my favorite moments takes place at a graveside. A slave fell dead that afternoon picking cotton, and at the funeral a woman begins to sing "Roll, Jordan Roll". As the others sing around him, Solomon begins to sing in a pleading, anguished bass voice: "Roll, Jordan, roll--my soul arise in heaven, Lord, for the year that Jordan roll."<br />
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But as the film shows in Solomon's many scenes of playing the fiddle as a slave, and in contrast to many Hollywood approaches to racism, music is not life. Slavery was the birth of the music that shaped America, but like Solomon whipping Tibeats, this kind of music is still protest more than rejoicing.<br />
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The lash-marks of slavery may not be much felt in the nation's politics now, but it seems from my limited perspective that they are still felt in the people. Other non-whites still feel more comfortable than blacks in many aspects of American society. Black music may dominate above most others, but what about their lives? Are they (and people of all races) still trying just to survive? Have we forgotten that we can live? Are the words of the devil and other men, screaming "I own you!" still ringing in our ears?<br />
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I am still digesting '12 Years a Slave'. I imagine I will for a few more weeks, and I think I will think of it often for many years. The adage says we are doomed to repeat history if we do not know it, and I think 12 Years a Slave has taught me enough that I will refuse to be powerless. But goodness gracious, I'm glad that at least some of that is over.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-4834759406864334782014-04-20T23:27:00.000-07:002014-04-21T12:25:55.611-07:00Prophet Can't Catch A BreakIt's a tough life in the Old Testament. Anyone who knows the Sunday School stories has already encountered more than a dozen morally ambiguous, complex stories about God's relationship with man, from a questionably foreplanned Fall from Grace in a garden, to the first child killing his brother in a jealous rage, to a tragic fall with a righteous king watching a woman bathing...<br />
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It just gets worse. The Bible is difficult literature for anybody, spic-and-spanned as it may be by parents attempting to teach their children moral lessons that let them be strong in a complex world. Noble as this often is, seeing the story in some of its darker, more original light can be useful. "Noah" as told by Darren Aronofsky, is a challenging tale because it does not affirm faith, it tests faith, and the result is a stressful, gasping film that explores the dark side of devoted monotheism.</div>
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From the beginning, it is clear that this Prophet is not the one we imagined. The earth of Aronofsky's Pre-Deluge imagination has been industrialized into black soot and tree stumps, and Noah and his family live off of lichens and herbs. Black-clad barbarians roam the land, killing animals and men at will; it is Noah's particular virtue that he refuses to kill or eat animals.</div>
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The environmental message is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the story, but strikes a strange chord. In the first two minutes we have seen him as an adult, he chides his boy for picking a flower and seconds later has killed three men who were hunting an animal. I don't think even the vegans in the audience would cheer at such a display. The journey that Noah goes through takes him even deeper into hatred of humankind, but I think seeing tenderness from the man would make us feel more for the awful crucible he goes through.</div>
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The rest comes as we're familiar with it. While staying in the wilderness, Noah has a dream. He sees rain falling from the sky and making plants out of nothing. He finds himself in water, surrounded by floating, dying bodies. The imagery in these dreams is gorgeous--in ways, it is the most fascinating portrayal of divine communication we've seen in film for a long time. God does not say words, but Noah understands, and his wife (played by Jennifer Connelly) is willing to believe.</div>
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The film balances between Biblical accuracy and Kabbalistic reinterpretations, and while audiences will be thrown off by the arachnoid rock-angels, everything else in this story is a part of the world created for it. I felt drawn into the world, separated from the incredible evil of humanity, where women are traded for meat and Russell Crowe looks down to find blood in the soil between his toes. It is disturbing, terrifying, and stressful. One particular image, where the family sits in the ark listening to the screams of a thousand people trying to hold onto an outcropping of rock, is reminiscent of a Gustav Dore illustration of Dante's inferno.<br />
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For a devoted Mormon, Noah brought up a question I didn't expect to find here: "Is it worth it?"<br />
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Is it worth to try and follow this God? He demands everything--for Noah and his family, they lived on almost nothing. A life of depriving oneself of what is normal for everyone else--for Aronofsky, a life without meat and industrialism, and for Mormons it might be those things as well as pre-marital sex, booze, coffee(?!), and more. Sometimes it is easy to live without these things, and sometimes one can really feel as abandoned and friendless as Noah and his family did.<br />
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'Noah' only very rarely gives us glimpses of hope--a miracle is followed by a passionate kiss between Ila (Emma Watson) and Shem. Noah joining his wife to garden in the post-deluge world and their glances tell of the birth of something more than just new plants. And the famous covenant symbol of God's--the rainbow--make a startling appearance. Still, these things come at a cost, and many character bemoan not being able to hear or understand the voice of God.<br />
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Eventually, though, in my experience, we will. Personally. Individually. Truthfully. And Noah points out where these things can come from--from God, mostly, whether it be through a servant (Methuselah), through a child, through a new world. It's easy to choose the short-term things to make us happy, as the wicked did in Noah's time, but in 'Noah', Aronofsky points out to us how much a prophet or even a person really has to do to earn it.<br />
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Hopefully, unlike Noah for most of the movie, we won't forget that happiness is a part of it all.</div>
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Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-45919765627467908162014-02-25T00:08:00.000-08:002014-02-25T09:04:12.566-08:00"Big River" Goes Through Rapids and Still Waters (Theatre Review)<div>
In the middle of a dark, wet night, two men huddle on a raft in the Mississippi River. One, a slave named Jim, curls a blanket around his shoulders, and a teenager named Huck sits, singing to himself, letting himself get drenched.</div>
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In the Hale Center Theater Orem's production of <i>Big River</i>, this image is brought to us uncluttered by choreography or overdramatic singing. Not only that, it's enhanced by a silent, slouching Greek chorus on the sidelines--hat-wearing musicians strumming away at guitars, crooning on a violin, or making frog noises.</div>
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<i></i>Director Christopher Clark has brought the piece to life in a way that remains fresh for its two hours traffic. A small group of actors, all white except for two black characters, transform to fit Huck's episodic experiences. Sets and moods change as mutual efforts between the actors and the intimate space in the Hale Theatre--music, noises, and characters bloom out everywhere, like a swampy garden of strange-smelling flowers.</div>
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The cast consists almost completely of skilled multitaskers--musicians, character actors, singers, dancers, and creators of ambiance. Under musical direction from Justin Bills (who clunks away with us at a disguised keyboard in a hat), the musicians seem (besides a few hiccups) to be completely in sync and in control. Guitarist Kris Paries takes as many chances as he gets to shine, and Spencer Carter and Ben Parkes keep the show rolling with their consistent musicianship. It's a bit of a gamble to try and have live instruments supporting microphoned singers, however, and at a few too many moments a certain inequality makes one party or the other seem overbloated, making a singer seem unsupported or a singing ensemble get swallowed up.</div>
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Great performances abound in this production. The female ensemble gets less credit than it deserves, playing dogs, Western saloon girls, boys, and more, and giving some pretty specific life to every role they take on. The men work hard as well, though it's clear that all their juggling of different roles has them a little confused at times (except for Spencer Carter, who creates four or five extremely specific characters who are so easy to distinguish that I breathed a sigh of relief when he appeared on stage.) Melanie McKay Cartwright sings beautifully as the underwritten Mary Jane.<br />
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But the real star of the show is undoubtedly Jim, played by Conlon Bonner. He first enters during the opener, setting up chairs and carrying umbrellas for Aunt Eller and the Widow Douglas, and though he doesn't say a word, he draws the eye more than anyone on stage. Like a classic Disney character, his movement is specific, humorous, and energetic, and like great characters of any kind, there is a bloody, beating heart at the center of his performance. Oh, and he's got a real pretty voice, too.</div>
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Andrew Robertson has just about a perfect look for Huckleberry, with a heroic face and the body of a boy ready for manhood but not quite there yet. There's no overdoing it for Mr. Robertson, who narrates the play in a very understated manner, and whose singing is pleasant.</div>
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Sadly, his performance struggles from a problem that hangs over the whole production. The Great American novel Huck Finn tells a pair of stories--one is about slavery and America, about injustice and pathos inside the heart of the simpleton slave Jim. The other is about white people--lots of 'em. Frontier folk making towns out of nothing, living in their own forms of abject poverty and stupidity. But where Bonner's Jim is uneducated but soulful, the poor white folk on the shore of this big river are barely caricatures. </div>
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This is thrown into even more contrast when some more real characters appear onstage. In a violent, rowdy turn (did he say "bitches" on a Utah stage?) Daniel Fenton Anderson plays a mean Pap, who rails drunkenly at the government and then tries to kill his son with a shiv. This whole sequence, however, seems pretty glossed over, and even if Pap is generally a despicable guy, he still seems to know that he's fallen far, saying "I hope you'll remember your father in a better time." The Duke and the King are rather vile men, but in moments where they audience should want to strangle them a lingering sense of comedy remains behind, and their full symbolic potential remains unlocked.</div>
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It seems that white people forget that privilege, middle-class-ness, and Christianity are not their birthright alone, and that brokenness, drunkenness, and self-justified evil are not the diseases of lesser peoples. Huck's journey is not only a journey of shrugging off racism, it is one of understanding morality in general. When Huck reaches up to the heavens and says "I have lived in the darkness for so long/I'm waiting for the light to shine", he's not thinking about slaves. He's thinking about his own soul. In a sense, this journey seemed never to surface, even though it really is the current that pushes the play along.</div>
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Perhaps another cousin of this weakness comes in the performance of the music. It is impressive, without a doubt--the whole show is a darn masterful accomplishment for community theatre--but much of the music lacks energy. The overture seems less like a river and more like an algae-ridden pond, beautiful, serene, and quiet. The few pieces that really drive and lift the audience come from the black characters. But looking into any sort of impoverished population, one finds how important music becomes as entertainment and sociality. I ached for some foot-stomping, some rowdy shouting, and some passion in the score, but much of it involved some very serene-looking musicians standing quietly swaying in the corners. (Thought it should be noted that I saw a Monday night performance. Who knows what it looks like on Friday nights?) </div>
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Still, these complaints are asking for perfection when all the reviewer saw was pretty excellent. I commend the cast and crew of <i>Big River </i>on an enjoyable evening, and obviously one that made me think a lot. And for those of you reading, go see it. We can't expect our innovative theatre to thrive if we don't support it.</div>
Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-32919772503929708282014-02-13T13:05:00.002-08:002014-02-13T13:08:11.851-08:00"The LEGO Movie" Kinda A Dream Come TrueThe LEGO Movie is, at a one billion times scale, a bit like the movies I used to try to make as a kid with a stop-motion camera and a bunch of Legos. From the first moment when a camera soars through a lava-filled <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+nether+minecraft&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=rij9Uo2hL8vtoASmmYKgDw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1680&bih=949#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=G_iAsAl-c_DgxM%253A%3BlVv26e9xSB3F3M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fstatic3.wikia.nocookie.net%252F__cb20120930211161%252Fminecraft360%252Fimages%252Ff%252Ffe%252FNether.jpeg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fminecraft360.wikia.com%252Fwiki%252FThe_Nether%3B2048%3B1152">chasm</a>, the dreaming adults feel a tugging awe, and the film never lets go. <br />
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With a mix of real stop-motion animations and CG, every environment and character brings us into a layered world. Even with a brief, trippy journey to the human world, the LEGO movie needs no introduction. The characters live in their own universe. The shiny cities, castled landscapes, and vast deserts live on their own, evocative and beautiful. <br />
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Still, signs of humanity still exist--a villain threatens a minion with the "Cloak of Band-A'yd", a relic we recognize immediately. In a delicate touch, when the light hits the characters right one sees fingerprint marks on them, as if the game is being played for us to watch, in the detail children wish could happen.<br />
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The story follows Emmett (Chris Pratt), a totally normal, enthusiastic LEGO man. His morning routine says everything about him. Emmett follows all the instructions given by President Business (a well-coiffed Big Brother figure voiced by Will Ferrell) which tell him how to dress, how to act, and how to work. <br />
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The lifestyle of the LEGOS in Bricksburg, while exhilarating and fun to watch with its pop music, coffee, and colorful characters, is clearly degrading to Emmett. But the prologue with the wizard Vetruvius and the Evil Lord Business has already told us what was gonna happen.<br />
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Emmett finds a mysterious relic designed to save the world from destruction at the hands of Lord Business, who wants to freeze everything in an aesthetically pleasing position forever, so that the world can conform to his way of seeing things. (You seeing a theme here?)<br />
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So Emmett has to be rescued by the Master Builders, who have escaped Lord Business' fascism and live in the cracks of the Lego universe. Even though he is a totally uncreative goof, they join in an epic quest to take down Lord Business and allow everyone in the world to do what they want: build cool stuff without following directions.<br />
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Great performances abound. Chris Pratt can do little wrong with the silly, improvising Emmett. Elizabeth Banks gives sass and emotion to a pretty underwritten love interest. Will Arnett makes fun of everything he can as Batman. Liam Neeson kicks butt as Bad Cop.<br />
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Still, no set piece or amazing lego set or fight scene can hold a candle to Morgan Freeman as Vetruvius. As a pastiched Gandalf figure, the white-haired wizard consistently delivers the films most unexpected, hilarious quips. Morgan Freeman can jump from delivering deep thematic wisdom in his chocolatey voice to making silly ghost noises or saying something like "I know that sounds like a cat poster, but it's true" without a sense of embarrasment or missing a beat. It seriously, no joke, I mean I really mean it (but for reals), is my favorite performance he has ever given. <br />
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The film has already been praised for its non-conformist, anti-business message. When WildStyle, one of Emmett's rescuers, learns that he listens to popular music, she is plunged into deep disappointment. How could he be such a conformist? The next message, surely, is how to show Emmett what good music and culture are. But she never does, and when Batman shows Emmett some of his "real music," it turns out to be just as stupid as Lord Business' heavily-produced stuff.<br />
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And the non-conformist characters are often portrayed as being just as silly as Emmett. A Uni-Kitty from Cloud Cuckooland shows Emmett her kingdom of rainbows and candy, warning that there is no sadness, no negativity, no bad in her land. WildStyle points out astutely that Uni-Kitty's mantra is full of the word "no". And when Emmett suggests his one original idea, Vetruvius states firmly that "that idea...is just the worst." According to the LEGO movie, bad ideas are bad ideas. Period. Praising non-conformity for its own sake has no value.<br />
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Of course, in the end, the film praises originality: do the best that you can do, and it will be good enough. Nowhere is this more awesome than with Benny, the 1980's space guy, who after trying to make a spaceship the whole movie, finally makes one and flies around ecstatic, shouting "spaceship" for like two minutes.<br />
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And this is basically the right message for the Lego movie. We all know the conflicts that come up playing with Legos. Someone wants to make a spaceship. Someone wants to just follow the directions. Someone wants to work only in black (and very very dark grey). Someone wants to make a rainbow kingdom, and someone just makes dumb stuff. The point is that it's better to do things together, play together. The great victory of the characters of the LEGO movie is not when they fight Lord Business, but when they all work together and make somethings--by common consent. <br />
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Let's admit it. This is a commercial, but it's trying to point out the best things about LEGOS. Not that they're retro, or cool, or non-conformist, but that they're fun, and even cooler when you're part of a team.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-73317377924823296042013-12-26T10:42:00.001-08:002013-12-26T10:53:34.275-08:00Despite All the Glitter, "Smaug" Breathes Real FireI wrote last year about Peter Jackson's first installment of his turned-trilogy adaptation of Tolkien's hardly-masterwork, The Hobbit. Reminiscent and yet cartoonish, thoughtful and yet embarrassingly brainless, the work seemed like a confused story from someone's family history. Its sequel, "The Desolation of Smaug" comes across somewhat similarly. As I saw it on Christmas day and I was thinking of food, I discovered that "Desolation" consists of a delicious, perfectly roasted Christmas turkey, into which has been stuffed thirty-five unwrapped Hershey's chocolate bars. There's enough there to chew on without the dessert already inside.<br />
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In short, even though the Hobbit's showing-off is as excessive as Gandalf's fireworks, the saga continues to live on with beautiful emotional fire, thanks to a good deal of love and respect for J.R.R. Tolkien, though the torch-carrying facebook mobs moan otherwise.<br />
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A problem is that much of it is puppy love--a sort of adolescent "Wow!" like a kid destroying his father's meticulous train set. Peter Jackson throws us a few absolutely ridiculous bits: a twenty-minute barrel-ride, a silly magistrate-with-a-combover side story, a trippy Sauron flashback complete with lava lamp animations, and some dialogue and scenes that are just plain stupid. Parts could easily turn into a drinking game: How many orc heads will roll? How many times will Legolas slide across the screen like a tobogganer? How many times will Peter Jackson try to make us believe that Bard and Thorin are as cool as Aragorn?<br />
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In other moments, however, the love for Tolkien seems like it is walking hand in hand with the Old Master himself, bushy-eyebrowed and weird and wise. One can imagine Tolkien pointing out the potential allegories here, laughing at a few little moments that bring churning blood and changing soul to <i>The Hobbit. </i><br />
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Nowhere would he be prouder, I think, than with Martin Freeman's Bilbo. Bilbo doesn't get enough screen time in this film, and yet he dominates as the scurrying, scheming, steel-hearted would-be burglar. He tells the great dragon near the end of this film's journey "I am he that walks unseen." Watching Bilbo come to his own, two parts burglar and one part hero, is the most compelling journey of the film.<br />
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Freeman finds time, in a movie obsessed with cutting orc's heads off, for wordless soliloquies that express more than some characters do with speeches of babbling. His relationship with the ring is only mentioned once on screen, but every time it appears we know what it costs him to use it again. Because of Bilbo, a morality finds its way back in to a powerfully moral world which, if Peter Jackson's boyish side were left unchecked, might have disappeared entirely.<br />
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There are others to thank for the film's real emotion and beauty. Peter is actually one of them. His invented romance between Kili (the one dwarf who, looking at, you would legitimately consider dating) and the wood elf captain Tauriel flavors the story with a relief we need. Played by Evangelline Lilly, who here secures my embarrassing and eternal devotion, Tauriel is a soulful addition to a world that benefits from her presence. A few moments of their romance are silly, but one scene in the prison shows us the reason we believed that Peter Jackson could bring this world to life. The wistful Tauriel sighs to Kili, who complains that the light of the stars seems cold and remote:<br />
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"All light is sacred to the Eldar. Woodland elves love best the light of the stars. I have walked there sometimes, beyond the forests and into the night. I have seen the world fall away and the white light of forever fill the air."<br />
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As fantasies often do, <i>The Hobbit </i>and <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> pit dark against light. For writers who don't know what they're doing, it's easy. "Oh, the light is the good guys and the dark is the bad guys." Scenes like this, however, and many moments of <i>The Hobbit</i>, attempt to explore what the "light" really is. The quarreling races wish for different outcomes--Thranduil wants sanctity, Biblo security, the dwarves a homeland, the people of Laketown prosperity--and they fight over their different hopes. The film calls for unity. The message resounds in Tauriel's question: "Are we not part of this world?"<br />
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The other elf that steals the show is the arrogant, cold Thranduil, (father of pre-Weight-Watchers Legolas) played by Lee Pace. The macho actor might have not seemed like the right choice at first, but his slithering, overconfident King slides into the world of The Lord of the Rings as naturally as Madame Blanchett as Galadriel, and five times better than Hugo Weaving.<br />
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And let's not forget the reason we came to the mountain in the first place--Smaug, the massive gold-hoarding dragon, voiced by the renowned Benedict Cumberbatch. His scene with Bilbo is as iconic and well-written as the Smeagol-Bilbo scene in the first film, and in many ways it does not disappoint. Bilbo's wordplay delights, and in terms of a visual feast it's a hard contest between the dragon and the actor.<br />
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The dragon stuns visually, bathing in that sea of gold or soaring or breaking things. Sadly, despite Mr. Cumberbatch's best efforts, the post team went to town on his voice and left a grunting cacophany. The classical actor's clever inflections and smirk are mostly lost, though if you're listening for them, you may find them. His dialogue flips between the beauty of Tolkien--"my teeth are swords, my claws are spears, my wings are a hurricane"--and silly things bad villains shout "I am fire! I am death!" His conclusion, like other parts of the film, sacrifices meaning and character for tricks and trifles.<br />
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"The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug" will not bowl over diehards or newbies, but it is another heartfelt and exciting installment in one of my favorite sagas ever. Even if it isn't the great story about fighting against despair, it's a reminder of why we must stand together, and the kind of world it makes when we don't.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-6721864563894106862013-11-29T12:04:00.000-08:002013-11-29T12:26:44.542-08:00"The Hunger Games" Sequel Is A Cut AboveIt's been a while since we've been faced with a real trilogy.<br />
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There have been a couple of threes lately--<i><a href="http://soundofbushman.blogspot.com/2013/05/iron-man-3-is-2013s-odyssey.html">Iron Man 3</a></i> happened this summer. The Chronicles of Narnia got around to three before it sputtered and went out. Harry Potter got us to eight, somehow. <i><a href="http://soundofbushman.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-dark-knight-rises-high-flying-post.html">The Dark Knight Rises</a></i> brought us to three for the new Batman franchise. But we haven't seen trilogies as a thing since <i>Star Wars </i>and <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i><br />
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About an hour into <i>The Hunger Games: Catching Fire</i>, I realized that I was in the middle of one for the first time in years, and I started to think about the whole thing differently. By the end, I was convinced that we were looking at a pretty darn good one.<br />
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Trilogies are a tough business but they make a gorgeous structural challenge, with beautiful potential. Look at the Star Wars films--if we only had a sequel, we would get Hoth but not Endor, Yoda but not Jabba. If <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>ended with <i>The Two Towers</i>, we would explore Rohan but not Gondor, Theoden but not Denethor. A trilogy gives a chance to explore deeply the world we have already met once, and to change our relationships with things we thought we understood.<br />
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Gosh, am I getting emotional? So <i>Catching Fire </i>starts us in an unspecified amount of time after the first film, when Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Malark (Josh Hutcherson) jointly won a yearly massacre funded by the Capital of Pan Am to appease and distract the starving inhabitants of its Twelve Districts. In order to win, Katniss and Peeta staged a sort of on-screen love affair that the world got attached to. Katniss did it against her judgment, as she still had some sorta feelings for Gale back home, but Peeta from all accounts seems to reciprocate.<br />
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Katniss is a tough protagonist this time around. At first glance, she seems weak. Katniss is still haunted by the murders she committed the previous year, and Gale (whose only apparent virtue is being Liam Hemsworth) is still haunted by all the smackers she laid on Shorty McBreadmaka. And of course, like any self-respecting pseudo-boyfriend, he stays mopey about it for the entire movie. Still, Ms. Lawrence's Katniss is still the most kick-butt heroine we've seen on screen for a while. The middle installment of the trilogy shows a near-manic side of her, but the things we value her for (her love of her family, her self-sacrifice, and her prowess as a fighter) remain unchanged.<br />
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She seems weak, however, because she rarely makes decisions or follows clear objectives. To her credit, Ms. Lawrence is not afraid of contorting her face in anguish, grief, or fury, but Katniss is even more accidental of a heroine this time than she was last time. When attacked by a frightening sound of her sister being tortured, she curls up into a ball, showing no nerve. When helping a wounded woman, she can do little else but give her a watered cloth and say "That should help" and run away. At first this bothered me, but I think it's somewhat necessary. In order for Katniss to come into her own as a powerful figure in the third film, she must go through a time of weakness here.<br />
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The film's story is surprisingly elaborate and surprisingly long, and both of these surprises thrilled me. In an age where good stories are being compressed for movie-munching mindless audiences who can't sit still for two and a half hours, Francis Lawrence and company take their time, and it pays off. <i>Catching Fire</i>, while full of heart-pounding action sequences, interesting characters, and an epic story, takes enough time to balance it with quiet moments of conversation, character development, and feeling.<br />
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Numerous characters stand out, and one of the film's strength is that all of them mean something to us by the end. From Donald Sutherland's difficult tyrant President Snow to Jena Malone's elevator-stripping, f-word shouting Johanna Mason, portraits in Catching Fire always come three-dimensionally. The film doesn't let us write off characters as bad, self-centered, or stupid. Of particular note: Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin), an arrogant-rival-turned-friend, shimmers with complexity. Mr. Claflin balances shirtless shallow-boy with selfless caretaker, and his journey for the audience is an achievement by the whole team. Plutarch Heavensbee, the enigmatic new Gamemaker, is clearly important because he is played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but even the Great PSH manages to live in the world of the Hunger Games believably and with the proper weight.<br />
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But the real star of the film is Mr. Hutcherson's Peeta Malark. In an early scene with Katniss on a train, he admits "I don't really know you. Friends tell each other the deep stuff." "Like what?" she replies. "What's your favorite color?" he asks. "Now, that's going too far," she answers. I connected with Peeta because in a world where any sort of normalcy or friendship seems impossible, Peeta is trying to make things work. Where Katniss often stands by, mouth contorted by fear or pain or wrath, and does nothing, Peeta steps in. He makes bold moves. He tries to help people, even as they are dying in his hands. <br />
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This might come from his need to be loved. Everyone loves Katniss, but Peeta admits "Nobody needs me". It's the same old unrequited love story, but Peeta gets the credit that is due to many unrequited lovers--they fight for what they want. He is made even more heroic by Haymitch's description of him to Katniss: "You could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him." In yet another stroke of subtlety, the film doesn't let us love people simply because they are handsome or romantice--it asks to question why we do.<br />
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Like a good trilogy, <i>Catching Fire </i>lets us look at the characters and the story through a new lens. The political commentary is never terribly deep and the moral lessons are surprisingly shallow for such a twisted story, but the characters make it worth seeing and experiencing. It asks us to question our American-Idol style celebrity worship and asks us why we follow people, why we believe in other people. This is still young adult literature, but rarely is such material treated with this kind of respect.<br />
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<img height="266" src="http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/starcrush.com/files/2013/05/catching-fire-poster-katniss-cliff-1000.jpg" width="400" />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-82967486356280009162013-11-27T18:25:00.000-08:002013-11-27T18:53:56.507-08:00"Ender's Game" is Beautiful, ThoughtfulWhen I was eleven, my mother brought me to an audition for a Children's Chorus. I capitalize those words for a reason--the three years I spent there demanded excellence from me in ways I had never expected. In my first audition we were given a piece of music, taught it in a group of 300, and asked to come to the front of the group and sing for the rest. Seeing a pattern in others' manner of doing things, I gathered my wits, memorized the words, and set down the paper on the auditioner's table before singing. I was part of the eighty or so children who moved on from that audition and joined the chorus.<br />
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I felt like a loner for almost my entire experience in that chorus. I accidentally hurt myself very stupidly in school during that time, and several other singers mocked my bandages, reinforcing my sense of absolute loneliness. I barely made any friends, even at the summer camps we attended, and I spent all my energy trying to sing as well as I could. Not make friends with the leaders, not make friends--I worked as hard as I could. I saw other singers as rivals, and when I got solos over them, I rejoiced inwardly. I was not a child prodigy, but I fought like one. Perhaps for this reason, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is one of the shaping stories of my childhood. Though it surely is not perfect, Gavin Hood's adaptation does a passable job of bringing it to us untainted and unhindered.<br />
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"Young people integrate complex data more easily than grown-ups," says Colonel Hyrum Graff, the hard-bitten recruiter (played with a thoughtful ruthlessness by Harrison Ford) to Ender, the young strategical prodigy<i>. </i>Graff has a hard job: enlisting young minds to help humanity wipe out the aliens that almost killed them fifty years ago.<i> </i>His journey and Ender's--not only to save humanity but to become adults in the process--is the basis of one of the most powerful, emotional, and effective pieces of science fiction ever written. <br />
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The story is centered on children fighting one another. Even in his small school on Earth, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin beats everyone. His strategy makes a much bigger boy call him a cheater, and when the boy corners Ender after school, Ender gives him a beating that makes the other cronies tremble. He is not only smart, he is vicious--characteristics that make Ender at once frightening and fascinating.<br />
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Ender's nature as a fighter is very much played down in the film. Asa Butterfield's performance shows a consistently compassionate, thinking boy who cries more than he shouts. Though the screenplay shows him talking too much about his near-psychopathic brother Peter, he is clearly more like his sister Valentine (played lovingly but not very deeply by Abigail Breslin) whose compassion made her unfit for Battle School.<br />
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But fit is exactly what Ender is, and a housecall from Graff and a Colonel Anderson (Viola Davis) sends Ender skyrocketing up into orbit, where a few score children under the age of sixteen train for combat, leadership, and the eventual command of Earth's Fleet.<br />
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And this is where the games begin. Once there, Ender and his new friends (enemies) are thrown into a zero-gravity space game that allows them to experiment, lead, and fight one another. The film presents the idea more excitingly than could have possibly been done even ten years ago, and it is a sight to behold. The few matches that we actually see are gripping and exciting, and the victories are satisfying.<br />
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The great weakness of the film comes in its first forty minutes. Main characters are introduced and voiceovers tell us why they are important, but rarely do we get to see the interactions that make them that way. Bean and Petra, key characters from the book, never have true interactions with Ender to show us why to care about them. Thus their quips, little glances, and interactions later do not come with the emotional impact that makes the end of the book so moving. The entire story clips along so fast that even Ender's family does not draw us as much as the beauty of the game.<br />
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Though it weakens the film completely, it still is somewhat appropriate. <i>Ender's Game </i>reminds us how believing children are. If they are told that the people around them are their rivals, their competition, they will believe. They will fight one another, even when it makes them depressive, even when it makes them insane. This game that may not be as serious as everyone believes comes to rule these children's lives, until they are willing to kill one another for it. <br />
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But the movie also explores compassion as an antidote or even a companion to competition. The game begins with a text quote from "A.E. Wiggin" saying "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him"--an axiom that, though arguable, brings up some interesting questions. Ender thinks constantly about how to deal with his opponents compassionately, or more significantly with those he commands. In order for him to succeed, Ender must know the weaknesses and strengths of his friends as well as his enemies.<br />
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The rest of the film brings us farther from the battle room and from Earth, to simulations of space battles with the aliens. These antlike creatures, called Formics, possess a massiveness and terror that, through impressive work on the part of all the creators involved, become beautiful in their own way. Ender's journey questions what the effect of any battle, even a simulated one, has on our consciousness and the way we view the world.<br />
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In the end, Ender's most impressive quality is his story. The film can have all the weaknesses it will, but the depth of its story and the issues it considers might make it one of the best science fiction films ever, easily surpassing the <i>Star Wars </i>series for depth of meaning and emotional imagination. Given these things, it is incredible that portions of the film community can brush off something so intelligent and worth-considering because of opinions held by the original author or (worse) because of the man's religion. Such a thing is so petty that I wonder if even these children would do it.<br />
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I highly recommend <i>Ender's Game</i>, the film, and the book even more highly. In watching it I considered myself again. I have never been to Battle School, never fought aliens, but I have been a child who thought he had to fight other children in order to be better. I have thought winning was better than friendship, that survival was better than love. This book helped me recognize the cost of excellence, and though I do not think that I am perfect yet, I am glad to be able to look back and say that I have found, like Ender, a higher purpose. I hope someday to teach this to my children, and when I do, it might be after we watch the 2013 film of <i>Ender's Game.</i><br />
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<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-27934019971334153052013-11-19T21:46:00.000-08:002013-11-19T22:04:49.212-08:00'Thor' Is Not The Hero We NeedA few years ago, in another superhero galaxy, we heard: "He's the hero that Gotham deserves, but not the one that Gotham needs right now. So we'll junt him.". Batman, made a criminal, rode off into the night in the twilight of the best superhero movie perhaps ever made. The world considered anew what it meant to be a hero, the human toll of obsession, and the insanity of unbridled self-reliance.<br />
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Last night I watched "The Dark World", and as armored, red-caped Thor (Chris Hemsworth) bounded from a London street into a dark red cloud of CGI Evil, a shot of his lover-girl Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) showed a big red bus in the background. The ad on its side blared cheekily a false movie poster, for a film called "Moral Sacrifice". You, like me, might sense a lack of literary value.<br />
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Despite its clunkiness, "Thor: The Dark World" starts explosively. The beginning sequences shovel heaps of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings onto the pile, and it's admittedly glorious. Asgard soldiers (read Elves) swing glowy swords (read lightsabers) at white-helmed laser-shootin (Stormtroopers) foes, dark forces are locked away, and ashy landscapes in The Dark World contrast with the gold, fertile castles of Asgard. For anyone who has ears to hear, I kept waiting for some Protoss to show up.<br />
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More impressive than the animators and art designers, however, is the establishment of characters. Tom Hiddleston's ever-Shakespearean Loki arrives in chains like an imprisoned Aaron (Titus Andronicus),Thor himself arrives making quips like Petruchio, and a particularly well-written scene shows the romantic tension and unrequited interest between Sif and Thor. Some of these moments are so believable, creating characters with whom we can connect, that I can legitimately compare it to the Lord of the Rings. Elegant, deep, simple.<br />
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The rest of the film fails on this. Sif, easily the most compelling and least predictable character, is shunted out of the limelight before she's had two seconds in it. A lengthy subplot with Loki, instead of bringing any changes to his and Thor's relationship, resorts to name calling, even in a scene on a boat that had at least some potential.<br />
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Natalie Portman gets entangled in the plot, which seems basically to be: The bad guys need the red goo in order to destroy the universe. The good guys fight them. Poor Jane Foster gets some of the goo in her blood, making her dangerous and doing absolutely nothing to her in any other way. (Another shoutout to the animators for the scene where is examined by Asgard "doctors" using some very fun equipment, clearly touch screen but cooler even than what us earthlings have.) Portman pales in comparison to Freda (Thor's mother) and Sif, who not only are totally awesome fighters and independent women, but stay modestly dressed throughout the whole film (if you're worried about nudity, Thor's impressive breasts are thoughtfully considered by the camera at one point).<br />
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The story is predictable, the fights are interesting but never emotionally compelling, and worst, Thor does not change in any way. As a hero, he has no characteristics to admire or dislike. He is blandly righteous, blandly temperamental, and blandly self-sacrificing. Sort of. Even when he is in danger he comes out with wounds that avoid his beautiful features.<br />
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Here I know I am in a comic book, not a story about heroes. Thor is a brightly drawn figure with very few defining lines, drawn by animators who make money on making more books. He "sacrifices" for his friends, and it leaves us thinking, "you know, I would do that. I would walk through fire for the people I care about". What a good thing to be encouraged. But that's rarely a story we live. Rarely are we faced with someone near death who we can heroically save. But we are faced every day with people who need help. Little things can be cries for help. We can help even when we are not asked, instead of waiting until it makes us look heroic. We can choose to open ourselves up and be vulnerable, allowing our faults and failures to be seen. We can choose to care. Thor does none of those, and still gets offered to be the King of Asgard. It doesn't seem to be a good recipe for me for real heroism.<br />
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If Marvel is really hitting its stride in Thor, it is in connecting it stylistically with its source material. Comic books were intentionally numerous, serialized, and individually rather bland. We can feel comic book sensibilities in the naked Dr. Selvig running around Stonehenge, with Thor's hammer chasing him around the nine realms, with Jane's silly sidekick.<br />
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Perhaps it is a success, then, just not in my style. The reboot genre has become a medium with value because it allows us to reconsider old things. Thor: The Dark World is instead a loving revisiting of the same old melodrama.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-61555168262052728232013-09-20T16:03:00.002-07:002013-09-20T16:41:50.509-07:00The Math Solves All The Problems in Formulaic "Safe Haven"I watched this movie on the 9-hour plane ride from London to Minneapolis. In my state of time confusion, "The Place Beyond the Pines" was a little too intense and deep, I'd already seen "Gatsby", and "Oblivion" didn't catch my interest. So I tried out "Safe Haven", which I'd seen trailers for and thought "I could like this for an hour and a half."<br />
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It tells the story of Katie, a girl who flees home because of a danger we don't understand and settles in a tiny North Carolina town. There, she makes the acquaintance of Alex, a cheery widower who runs a little shop for people taking the bus through town. He's got two children--adorable gap-toothed Lexie and disobedient, stern Josh who misses his mom. I bet you have no idea where this is going. If you really don't, I'll give you a clue.<br />
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Yeah, let's just say surprise is not really a part of the story. She ends up with the guy, big surprise, he helps her solve her problems.<br />
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The first line that stuck out to me was a transaction. She comes to his little store after escaping scary-man-Dan, and she buys something, and he says "That'll be 97 cents." I wonder what on earth these days costs 97 cents! Did he not make her pay taxes? The reason it stuck out to me is, because, like the rest of the movie, it was too <i>easy</i>. The math works out. You only have to pay three cents in change. I was struck by this when she came <i>again</i> to get groceries, and he said "That'll be 18 even. Out of 20?" Once again, two bucks change. Let alone the romance, I just can't believe that all that food is this cheap.<br />
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"Safe Haven" falls into a genre of movies where unchallenged audience members watch people in an almost-perfect situation find their way into a basically-perfect situation. What self-respecting girl doesn't want to come out of a bad breakup with the wrong guy and immediately encounter a selfless, gentle, normal guy who will take care of her come hell or high water? And what self-respecting small-town convenience store widower doesn't want some humble, beautiful girl to come along, revitalize your life with a jolt of love, and become best friends with your kids who you feel you can't raise by yourself? There's a soothing quality to watching things work out okay. Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel have a nice chemistry, she appears to be able to speak English and look like an absolute bombshell all the time, and he actually acts most of the time, and it's nice.<br />
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The North Carolina setting is charming and underused, and the little girl is adorable even if she is so unrealistic and perfect as to be ridiculous. The villain is only useful for making Judd Fry jokes. It's a shame that it's so predictable, as I found myself pausing the movie and wondering how they intended to fill in another hour and a half of it. Luckily I had a book with me to read during the boring parts.<br />
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Still, there's something to be said for a world in which such movies exist. Besides the mathematics of love, which abound here, another idea surfaces, that of Tribe Dynamics. Not only is Man lacking one (1) female, Woman needs one (1) protector, and both children need one (1) mother. The real satisfaction of this film actually doesn't come from seeing beautiful people fall in love and vicariously enjoy their emotional and physical pleasures. It comes from watching roles be filled and a narrative of happiness take place. That's why it's a Tribe movie--not only does Katie come to love Alex, she comes to love the city and to be a part of it in a special way. She fills a role, many roles, and I realized watching the movie that transcending non-entity status to become something is, for many, the great relief of life.<br />
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Literary folk and critics gawk at such a base display in a film (you know, such an elevated medium with its long history of not-shallowness) and thus give it a probably deserving 13% on Rotten Tomatoes.<br />
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Still, I think it's fascinating that humans find Love to be such a big deal, as it is such an everyday feeling. The welcome arms of acceptance and the thrill of being able to make someone else happy drive us to complete the tasks that civilization lays upon us like bricks on Egyptian slaves. And "Safe Haven" shows a sort of naive view of how it could work, a fantasy of seeing things work out okay, and only costing 97 cents. I guess that's the part that's naive and predictable.<br />
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You probably don't have to watch "Safe Haven". You could watch the trailer and get most of what I got out of it. That is, if you're human. If you're an alien, this is a great anthropological study about some pretty basic human ideas. And it's got pop music in the credits, if you need incentive.Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-54617973031470640822013-08-22T11:55:00.001-07:002014-08-04T21:46:01.711-07:00"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" Is Gaiman's Anchor WorkThe teeny little book that a friend gave me as I visited home, a thin hardcover that seemed bite-sized compared to the last four books I'd read, proclaimed itself <i>A Novel </i>under its big title and beautiful cover art. I gave a knowing little <i>hm. </i>Neil Gaiman was selling this book differently. I wondered why, a little, and then forwent the thinking about it and just read the darn thing.<br />
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Neil Gaiman gets by on many things, but the key is charisma. Tall, curly-haired, with a sort of knowing glint in his eyes, he draws an audience like a flea draws varmints--in multitudes, apparently. He is the Joss Whedon of fantasy writing, and it's little wonder.<br />
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Those caught up in the dank labyrinth of Game of Thrones love George R.R. Martin, but the enormously-bearded man is not a peerlike, inquisitive sage, but instead a crafty, devious storyteller who has it in for everyone in his stories--the bloodier, the better, especially if they get naked a few times beforehand. Supporters of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Jordan are more like archaeologists than bookworms, and Brandon Sanderson lovers "really dig" the dude who writes such "awesome" stuff.<br />
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Fantasy writing has its nuances, just as any genre, and Neil Gaiman avoids a certain camp: the camp of making-up-your-own-names, inventing crazy new species, making a storyworld you could play D&D in. Gaiman pulls out of mythology, folklore, and the urban obscure. Besides <i>Stardust, </i>his major works are universally set in the modern day, with protagonists living normal lives presented with the delirium, confusion, and beauty of the Other world. And this is where he finds his niche, his charisma, and his magnetic draw:<br />
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Whereas other writers spin fantasies out of their dreams to amuse, startle, and teach, Gaiman always seems, just a little bit, to <i>believe. </i>His fiction shows the reader a world that lurks beneath their apartment building, or at the other end of the pond behind their house, and instead of a neat moral to tie things up, the final temptation always asks "Why don't you take a look?"<br />
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Considering this introduction, it's important to point out that <i>The Ocean at the End of the Lane </i>is, essentially, a Neil Gaiman novel. It follows his patterns, reads in his understated, clearly enunciated voice, and charms and enraptures as he knows so well how to do.<br />
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But <i>The Ocean at the End of the Lane </i>is more.<br />
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The book tells the story of an Englishman coming home for a family member's funeral and, by a sort of driving autopilot coincidence, visiting the backyard of an old neighbor. Behind their house at the end of a long lane sits a pond. The neighbor in question, the long gone-away-to-Australia Lettie Hempstock, called their pond an ocean, and this memory triggers a leap back into the man's memories as a seven-year-old. His memories are the substance of the story.<br />
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The story of a young boy and his relationship with a family who turn out to be much, much more than they seem follows the same path as many fantasies. There are dark things at work in his town. One feels ripples in the water--ripples coming from <i>Coraline, MirrorMask, </i>and <i>Something Wicked This Way Comes</i>, an ebb pushing from <i>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell</i>, and a deep undercurrent from the tradition of English fairy folklore and other myths. <br />
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The story itself is a precious, well-hewn tale that walks down familiar paths with all the fear, wonder, and depth that we felt before, but where Neil Gaiman has spent his career as a jazz musician of folkore, improvising and riffing on what has already been told, <i>Ocean </i>draws it together. It connects all of the stories of its kind ever told, and what's more, it tries to explain them to us, through the eyes of a seven-year-old. For the first time, or at least in a new way as fresh as a homegrown tomato, Neil Gaiman hands his audience his heart and the reason that he tells the stories he does.<br />
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When facing off against a frightening aberration that is tormenting his family and now threatening to destroy him, our protagonist observes: "It did not matter, at that moment, that she was every monster, every witch, every nightmare made flesh. She was also an adult, and when adults fight children, adults always win."<br />
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<i>Ocean </i>is so obsessed with children & adults that at first I worried for its well-being. So many of those stories simply stop at "children are better than adults, they have that intuition thing" and it seems like a cop out to be escapist and displeased with growing up.<br />
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But that is not what the book is trying to do. Like a young religious seeker, Gaiman dives into a secretive world trying to find answers. Though seven-year-old eyes see the story, the man remembering them is middle-aged. He is trying to come to grips with a past that he only somewhat understands and remembers.<br />
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The beauty of <i>The Ocean at the End of the Lane </i>is how many answers he finds. This seven-year-old sees "the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty", and though he dreams of escaping to the world in Lettie's "ocean", what he eventually discovers is much deeper, much more real, and ultimately, amazing.<br />
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Note: (Added August 4th, 2014) Gaiman's book is not perfect; few are, and even perfectly-engineered books can seem silly. But the book has grown on me. There are passages here as powerful and mysterious as the Gospel of John, and just as the fourth gospel brings purpose to the story of Christ as the others cannot, so <i>Ocean, </i>I think, is telling the story of what nerds and geeks and dorks are really after. Less mature, emotional works can celebrate the educated elite that make up those demographics, showing the innovation and smarts and community grown out of it. But Gaiman looks past these things to the childlike sense that there are things beyond reality:<br />
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"I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.” There is fear and terror here. But beyond it there is purpose. When presented with a beautiful possibility of knowledge without hurt, a young witch tells the protagonist boy that knowing everything is no fun, because it means you can't play. "Play at what?" he responds.<br />
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This is the real quest of the nerd kingdom, whether they seek after it or not. And though it may perhaps sink into obscurity, Gaiman's work may become the Gospel of John of the Bible of Geekdom, and hopefully, of all those who choose to imagine.<br />
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I recommend <i>The Ocean at The End of the Lane </i>without reservation to any human being, fairy, hobgoblin, kobold, spirit, selkie, or shadow creature that might come across it, or that uses currency to purchase books. And more especially to those who do not read fantasy, I implore you: Read this book. Step into this ocean and see things a little differently. Or maybe a lot.<br />
<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-62066536008395716482013-08-19T13:54:00.000-07:002013-08-19T13:58:32.958-07:00Mercy is the Mark: Morality, Murder, and More in "Dishonored"<div>
WARNING: This review contains what might be considered emotional spoilers. No plot points or characters are revealed, but important events are discussed.</div>
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One reason I think I like to write reviews is because I like to read reviews. I try not to watch R-rated movies unless I have some idea what's made them rated that way, and the MPAA is less than helpful, so I find myself reading three or four reviews of a movie before I watch it.<br />
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I was even more stringent when I was considering buying Dishonored. The 2012 stealth/action game was praised for its setting in the deep, dark city of Dunwall, its exhilarating, creative gameplay, and some gorgeous art design. Powered on whale oil and choking on a rat-borne plague, I breathed in Dunwall like secondhand smoke, crawling around on rooftops among smoke-belching chimneys and sneaking through houses where plague-ridden wackos set up shrines to the mysterious, malicious Outsider.</div>
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The game puts the player behind the eyes of Corvo Attano, the Lord Protector of Dunwall, who returns from a voyage just in time to witness the assassination of his close friend Empress Jessamine and the kidnapping of her daughter Emily. Guards accuse him of the murder, and Corvo is sent off to prison and condemned to be executed. Through some fortuitous circumstances, he escapes and meets up with an undercover team of dissenters trying to take back power from the people who stole it from Corvo.</div>
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A video game attempt at "The Count of Monte Cristo" ensues, but instead of wealth, intrigue, and betrayal, Corvo gains supernatural powers from the Outsider, wears a frightening mask, and sets out to eliminate the people who killed the Empress and blamed him for it.</div>
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This is where the morality comes in. Early in Dishonored's creation, developers revealed that part of the design of the game was to allow players to win the game without killing anyone. Corvo's targets can all be killed with a flick of the knife (or, more often, a gruesome, bloody shoving match) but every mission rather clearly presents a possibility to stop them from doing evil while still leaving them alive. A religious character can be branded with a mark that makes him excommunicated for life, leaving him living but friendless. Corvo has the opportunity to find a hidden voice recording of a high-ranking official, which, if played over public loudspeakers, is the equivalent of political suicide, rendering him imprisoned but unharmed.</div>
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In simpler situations, Corvo sneaks around guards and plague-wild Weepers instead of fighting them, or creeps up behind and knocks them out. Their snores assure the player that the person they've taken out isn't dead, and will wake in the morning with a sore neck but little else.</div>
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This idea fascinated me, and motivated me to buy the game even if the trailers looked like a messy, blood-gluttonous massacre. That option exists, and I won't talk about it much because I didn't experience it. I did fight a few times, and it was fun. Once I accidentally lopped a guy's head off and gasped so loudly that my roommate thought I was having a heart attack. It seems fun but way too gory for me, and (important and cool) the game changes depending on how you choose to play, as well as the ending. So I decided not to have that experience, and was interested in what emotional journey the game would take me on.</div>
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For much of the game, my choice disappointed me. The Outsider as a deity is pretty shifty, and blesses Corvo with an array of gruesome abilities, such as sending forth a gust of wind to blow enemies off ledges and Splat-style deaths or summoning a horde of vicious, bloodthirsty rats to rip your enemies to shreds. Using a short-range teleportation spell called Blink, the rather-awesome Possession, and the obligatory Night Vision, I felt limited. Weapons, as well, seemed useless, though I did use a couple of incendiary bolts from a crossbow to draw the attention of guards before I sneaked up on them from behind and knocked em out.</div>
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Still, this was actually a small issue for me. I am just as satisfied to explore a gorgeously designed world (which it is) and meet interesting characters and discover a deep, three-dimensional world as I am to use an array of weapons to destroy my enemies.</div>
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But here's the problem: The world isn't three-dimensional. When Corvo stepped out of prison into the Hound Pits Pub, it was clear from the first look that the men and women enlisting him to help were not motivated by noble ideals. Seeing echoes of City 17 and Half-Life 2 (carried over with the handiwork of art director and conceptual artist Viktor Antonov) I expected a world like that--dark, frightening, but filled with people to whom I could relate. </div>
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The world of Dishonored, instead, is filled with people I didn't care about, and who in many ways I abhorred. Their dialogue has no hope, no connection to other people in their lives. I read a few books that detailed bizarre rituals or showed perverted sexual plots from plays. I asked myself for the first several levels: "Why, if Corvo is a deeply moral man who cared about the Empress and Emily, does he agree to join Havelock and the rest? They offered him revenge, but what does he care about that? Why, if I refuse to kill, do my missions revolve around getting rid of people?" I failed to see a motivation for Corvo, and without that the story fell flat. Part of this came from the choice for Corvo to be a silent protagonist. I finished Bioshock Infinite a few months ago, and understanding Booker's amoral, hardened background, I had very little difficult roleplaying in his persona. Violence was normal to Booker, and his motivation was strong--"Give us the girl and wipe away the debt." Even if I didn't agree with him, I was able to learn from being in his shoes for a few hours.</div>
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At one point later in the game, everything changed. A plot turn yanked Corvo from safety to being imprisoned again, and I had to find my way to my captor (a man with great significance from earlier in the game) and take him down. Suddenly Corvo had motivation--people I cared about were in danger, and time felt short. I escaped in a hurry and, immersed in the character, I didn't take the time to sneak past the people guarding me. I dispatched them and hurried to find the man who was responsible for much of this.</div>
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The best scene of the game followed, and the conversation and one-on-one fight that follows are well-written and gripping. I chose to spare his life, to which he replied: "And you choose mercy. Extraordinary."</div>
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Corvo escaped into the dim evening and watched a train dump plague corpses into a trench full of the dead, and overheard a sick man talking to his friends in desperation, still hopeful for his own life. On a bridge above us, two men talked about how they would escape the plague district, their cluelessness and despair becoming very clear. </div>
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In the course of a view moments, I was transported from a hostile world of sick, unpleasant people who I could only really help by not stabbing in the face. Instead, I entered a deeply wounded city, where people dreamed of many things that I could not give them, but wanted desperately to. I snuck by them and hurried through the insanity raging around me, desperately trying to find the one person who still mattered to me.</div>
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Because of this experience with its last few levels, Dishonored won me over. Its message came through for me--that in a world full of evil, it is hard for good to make any difference. For most of the game, it seemed that no one cared whether I had integrity--whether I cut people to pieces or expended enormous effort to keep everyone alive, people greeted me the same way. But by the end, it made a difference to me. I loved the people of Dunwall with their flaws (though I could have loved them sooner if they were written better) and wanted to help them, even if it was harder for me. It taught me, to some degree, that goodness is not always rewarded by the world, but it is rewarded in small ways.</div>
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If we did a do-over, I'd say to the developers: To give more strength to your peaceful-playthrough idea, make the missions about things other than getting rid of the bad guys. Give us a chance to see what the people of Dunwall need. Could Corvo get supplies to the flooded district? Who would he have to convince, or steal from, to do so? What about his mother? Does she live in the city? Wouldn't he want to find her and make sure she's okay? These kind of missions would be much more engaging, and allow us to care about what we see, grieve for the sadness, and fight for better things. </div>
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Anyway, I don't make video games, but that's what I think.</div>
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Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-31817345082551259632013-08-01T10:52:00.001-07:002013-08-01T10:52:54.239-07:00Small Things Make Big Differences in 'World War Z'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In a troop-carrier plane en route to South Korea, impetuous, passionate Harvard grad Andrew Fassbach (Elyes Gabel) tells bearded U.N. tough fella Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) something about the disease that for an hour of screen time has been ravaging the planet.<br />
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"Mother Nature is a serial killer," he says, a lilt of excitement in his voice, "No one's better or more creative...[but] she leaves crumbs. Now the hard part, why you spend a decade in school, is seeing the crumbs for the clues they are. Sometimes the things you thought were the most brutal aspect of the virus, turns out to be the chink in its armour...and she loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths."<br />
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Fassbach's insight turns out to be invaluable for the people trying to find a cure for a virus that, twelve seconds after infection, transforms people into ravenous, mindless flesh-eaters. One might say the same of certain movies as he did of Mother Nature--that a film disguises its weak plot with big action, disguises its two-dimensional characters with big plot points or big actors, etc. That is not the case about with World War Z--in fact, the opposite is true.<br />
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'World War Z' thrives on its own imaginative and emotional steam, even if the final product doesn't look quite like the blockbuster some expected. What some might see as weaknesses are in fact its strengths, and the result is a film that brings to tears more often than it elicits a frightened scream.<br />
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The story starts with a montage of news clips, most of it meaningless, some mentioning a particular virus. Pundits incite worry and other pundits mock the worriers. Meanwhile, shots of insects are interjected into the slanted opening credits. Ants devour huge beetles. Ants eat each other. It's all a little freaky.<br />
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But then we're thrown right into the very human lives of Gerry and Karin Lane (Mireille Enos) and their two daughters, having a normal day in Philadelphia, PA. Dad is called upon to make pancakes for breakfast, Mom asks the older daughter if she's got her inhaler, little daughter hears some words on TV and asks "Daddy, what's martial law?" He answers cleverly "It's like house rules, but for everybody."<br />
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The film's greatest strength is established in this sequence, and it sustains the whole film: it is people. Pitt and Enos (a BYU acting alum, at which I shout for joy) try desperately to live normal lives, but it is clear that they have lived difficult things before. Their performances are grounded and understated, and following them around for the first forty minutes just trying to find somewhere safe makes up the most gripping, moving experience I have had in a theater this summer.<br />
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I am tempted to tell the whole story, but it begs being experienced. My near-nonexistent understanding of Max Brooks' novel is that it attempted to be a what-if-it-really-happened scenario. It is not supernatural, no aliens are involved. The characters in it, including high-ranking members of the U.N. and U.S. governments, are clueless, cut off, and trying to figure things out with extremely limited resources. It is precisely the natural quality of it that makes it stand apart from other zombie movies.<br />
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So what are the other little things that make it good? The zombies do not immediately seem to be that incredible an achievement. In fact, one on one, they are positively mediocre. Just make-upped actors twitching around (though the transformation process, making a helpful human friend into a ravenous foe in a few spastic seconds, is chilling) and shuffling in the normal zombie fashion. Heck, they look like characters out of "Warm Bodies." But it is in groups that they are like insects, swarming in thousands. Shots from the trailer show thousand of ravenous humans climbing on top of each other, trying to get to the top of a huge wall, and hundreds of people leaping onto a bus, making it so heavy that it falls and crushes their friends. This careless, insect abandon contrasts sharply with the character's intimate attachment to each other, leading to the next thing that works.<br />
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The film is full of tiny roles. In fact, every role is tiny. The little girls have a few scenes (and they are wonderful and believeable) and Gerry and Karin anchor the entire thing, but the rest of the film hops around from Philly to the Atlantic Ocean to South Korea to Israel to North England and plenty places else.<br />
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I wrote in my review about Man of Steel <a href="http://soundofbushman.blogspot.com/2013/06/man-of-steel-reaches-for-heaven-misses.html">here</a> that human beings weren't portrayed honestly enough. They seemed like idealized caricatures, beautiful people who we didn't want to see die just because they were people. World War Z succeeds brilliantly where Man of Steel failed. A man who at first terrifies us then makes us cry with gratitude when he gives something invaluable to our protagonist. A soldier in South Korea (played with integrity by James Badge Dale, who you may recognize from another movie this summer) (first to know it without looking it up gets points) appears to be another Call-of-Duty playing American dude thrown into incredible circumstances. He's not a terribly honorable man. He's a jerk. But he is as real as they come, and that's what we need as an audience. <br />
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I could talk about more people--the Tenth Man in Israel, a girl who Gerry saves and who helps him out later, and others. The film is full of them. Matthew Fox makes a cameo as a helicopter pilot and I'll be surprised if he says five words or even has a shot of his face in the movie.<br />
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While 'World War Z' reminded me and will remind you that people matter most, I was struck by something else watching it. I am an actor and many of my good friends are actors, and watching this film I saw actors. But because of the measured reality of the writing and the integrity of the performances, I began to watch people instead. <br />
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Film and theater are a shared illusion. The audience must trust all the artists--actors, writers, directors, designers, technicians--in order to truly experience something that will change them. The audience themselves must decide to agree to the illusion, and believe it themselves. It's hard to do that when writers and actors portray life falsely, whether it be through making things too dark or too light, too sexual or too chaste, too complicated or too simple. <br />
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It is not easy, and it is not common, but when it happens it affects us. And it may just be that I've seen too many superhero movies this summer, but because of a lot of little things, that's what happened to me when I watched 'World War Z'.<br />
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<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4264163529385078773.post-72975959404860434112013-07-24T22:19:00.001-07:002013-07-25T00:02:28.353-07:00'Star Trek' Rises Above Mediocrity Thanks To Inspired Source MaterialMy best friends and roommates love Star Trek. Hopefully they'll appreciate my thoughts, even though it took me so long to see J.J. Abram's newest installment in the franchise.<br />
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I enjoyed the film a great deal. The first one went completely over my head, as I had never before been introduced to the world of Star Trek, and mostly saw it as <i>Star Wars </i>with much less creative-looking aliens (mostly people with weird makeup) and a lot of dealing with kind of menial problems (let's fix the engine, watch out for the radiation, ya gotta put down your shields before you can beam people out). Plus some weird-looking, kinda boring outfits. All of these things are true, but there's some smart stuff behind it.<br />
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The film starts with a bang, as a crew of space travelers escape from a really red planet where a bunch of scroll-worshiping aliens are mad at them for taking the Scroll. In the end, they save these aliens from getting destroyed by a supervolcano, but in the process they get seen, breaking one of the rules of their commanding unit, called Star Fleet.<br />
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The Captain of the ship, James Kirk (Chris Pine), is a smart-mouthing, rule-ignoring bro who likes sleeping with hot aliens and doing what he wants. His sidekick and first officer is the hyperintelligent and unemotional Spock (Zachary Quinto), who is half-human, half-Vulcan. He reports Kirk's actions, and Kirk gets summarily fired from being a Captain.<br />
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That is, until a terrorist blows up an important research lab and kills many leaders of Star Fleet. We learn later (spoken through a really open mouth) that his name is (seriously, open your mouth wide) KHAN, and he escapes to a far-off world. The film's plot has Kirk and his ethnically diverse crew of idiosyncratic friends diving into the depths of neutral space trying to find the guy and bring him back to Earth for a fair trial. In case you're interested, the role is played by the fantastic Benedict Cumberbatch, whose Shakespearean actor voice and presence make us wish for a little more from his character.<br />
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Since its first days as a 60's TV show, <i>Star Trek </i>has operated from a moral center. The Prime Directive, the idea that runs Star Fleet, posits that "observers could have a negative effect on the sociological development of alien cultures, and necessitated that explorers...avoid discovery." It's an anthropological idea that is bold and defended religiously, and <i>Star Trek </i>has always had things to say. The writers fought against things they thought were wrong and made no quibbles. There was a moral to take out of most episodes, some of which involved the setting aside of religion and God. From a science fiction standpoint, the humans in the <i>Star Trek </i>universe had passed beyond the petty dilemmas of our age, eliminating poverty, much corruption, and violence, and have no need of extraterrestrial help--they are the extraterrestrial help.<br />
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This gives <i>Star Trek </i>a maturity that almost every summer blockbuster never bothers with. At an early point, when Kirk and his crew are ordered to kill the terrorist immediately, Spock says that this action may cause war, which is "inherently morally wrong". Those ideas of right and wrong, though they encounter pushback, are generally not abandoned. From my place as a moral person, I cheer at this.<br />
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In our age of relativism, however, it is clear that the writers fail to take strong stances. Terrorism, the taking of life, and government corruption raise their bleary, overused heads, but these are easy things to unite against. The film is clearly a commentary on the September 11th Attacks, and it is actually one of the more respectful and thoughtful ones I've seen, but it is easy to call out "literary cowardice" without reservation.<br />
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One thing that fascinates me about Star Trek is that the characters rarely have families. Captain Picard (of Next Generation, we don't see him here) is even frightened of children. Star Fleet mostly consists of individuals, united in the cause of exploration, but unattached to family units.<br />
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<i>Star Trek: Into Darkness </i>draws an immediate connection between crew and family. The terrorist Khan spends most of the film trying to preserve and bring back to life his cryogenically frozen buddies, and he asks Kirk: "Is there anything you would not do for your family?"<br />
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The great strength of the film is how deeply we care about this family. Sulu the cool-headed Acting Captain, Bones the colloquial, antiquated Doctor, Scotty the fiery and hilarious Scotsman, all of them have their personalities that we recognize and care about. More important are Kirk, Spock, and the beautiful, superbly acted Uhura (Zoe Saldana) who spends most of the film in a fight with Spock about his unemotionality in their romantic relationship. In one scene, they are descending to the surface of a planet before a dangerous situation, and a conversation that lasts almost three minutes of screen time shows them talking about their problems emotionally and resolving them. It is easily the best part of the film. <br />
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Zachary Quinto's Spock is unfaltering, and his moments of emotion are absolutely mesmerizing, Saldana's Uhura teeters on the edge of the teary girlfriend, but eventually falls into the land of three-dimensional characters (a great place for literary real estate, if you're on the lookout), and Pine's Kirk is...well, he's mostly okay, and sometimes pretty good.<br />
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Sadly, the film shows more gunfire (laserfire, I can't tell the difference) than these interactions, but they are frequent enough that it hit home far more deeply than most of the films I've seen this summer. The destruction wrought on the Enterprise was so connected to the people inside it that I felt pain at its hurt.<br />
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Watching <i>Star Trek: Into Darkness</i>, I asked myself who my crew is, and what we are fighting for. Unlike many of the characters, I have a family, but I also have people my own generation, people who are exploring the world and learning about it. Sometimes we fight against the generations that came before us (in the film, this comes from the lovely Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) who fights against her father, the corrupt politician, supporting the morals of her friends instead) and sometimes we fight against each other.<br />
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The great lesson of <i>Star Trek</i> is that in order to succeed and be happy, we cannot only be insular and family-focused. We are all connected, and live in a universe that is desperately in need of help. There are always distress calls and challenges to be faced, and if we wish to succeed we must face them together. At times we will disagree and we will always encounter trials that we fear worse than anything else. That is when we need each other.<br />
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Bushman out.<br />
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<br />Ted Bushmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13810974197584731935noreply@blogger.com0