Saeglopur

I'm sure you're all sick of seeing Sigur Ros by now, but tonight they were randomly on my mind and I found myself searching through more of their music. Anyway, I found this one video of their's that had me so confused at first, but I made the connection at one point, and when I did, it knocked me over.

I really love Sigur Ros. This video is so powerful, and so beautiful. Once you understand it, diving deeper into the meaning of it makes it that much more amazing. This is officially my shortest blog post because this is all I'm going to say; this music video can speak for itself--the last thing I want to do is give anything about it away. 

*Disclaimer: There were a lot of Sigur Ros posts... I hope no one posted on this video yet, and if you did, I apologize--I sifted through the blogs and didn't see it anywhere, but I could have missed it. 

Web Comic: Off-White

Kayla's presentation on web comics was pretty cool. I loved seeing the vast range of artistic styles and humor styles that web comics encompass. Her presentation was also pretty educational too about the different kinds of web comics and highlighting what it would be like to try and earn money off of web comics. 

Anyway, I wanted to showcase one of my favorite web comics that I've found. Okay two. 

The first is Off-White. Off-White is a wolf web comic about Iki, a young wolf who is actually one of the Guardians of the Earth. The art of this web comic is phenomenal. The two artists who've collaborated and created this comic are Anna Podedworna and Katarzyna Redesiuk. Each new page is filled with pictures that could stand alone as works of art. However, such good quality has it's downsides--the novel is coming along slowly. I've been following it for almost two years now. The story line is okay; I'm sure once it gets further along it will shape up and be better. 

This is Iki. He's rather...special.
http://off-white.eu/comic

And no, this isn't some dog-nerd, reminiscent-of-12-year-old-life obsession of mine. I won't lie, I follow it primarily for the art, but I think choosing wolves to tell the story instead of humans is, well, a lot more interesting. 

The second comic I find absolutely hilarious and brilliantly drawn and painted is Romantically Apocalyptic. Get hooked on this comic, it's worth it. The creator of Romantically Apocalyptic is Vitaly S. Alexius a brilliant Russian artist by the way, if you haven't heard of him, check him out. 

The main character in this comic is Zee Captain. He has a henchmen, kind of like the typical side kick that literally just gets kicked around. They appear to be the only two humans left on the planet, and neither is really intelligent enough to function like a normal last person on the planet would. Anyway....

http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/archives/page4

I Am Here

This is a tad delayed, I'll admit, but this is my post on the Tree of Life. 

I loved this movie. It kept me enthralled and absorbed the entire time. I didn't find myself nodding off once. The whole movie was incredibly powerful to me. 

At the beginning there was one question that really hit me hard. It was right before the slew of images of the cosmos, the mother, Mrs. O'Brien, asked, "What do we mean to you?" She asks this question to God after constantly asking, "Where were you?" 

Tree of Life is a challenge of life. It asks how live? What is it to live? Does it give answers? Well that's up for you to decide. It gives answers to these questions in the smallest ways, in the seemingly littlest of details. 

Jack says at one part: " Look--the glory all around us, trees, birds. I dishonored it all and didn't notice the glory." 

And it's true; there's glory around us everywhere, and eventually we become so accustomed to it we forget that the mere fact that it's glorious. Tree of Life showed everything from galaxies and planets to the bloodstream and white blood cells eating debris in the blood. 

I think the feeling of being absolutely tiny and reminded of how many things I've forgotten to love and recognize for two and a half hours was priceless. And then, to know that a God who created all the glory--gigantic and small and forgettable--on this earth and the many earths in the universes around us cares enough to be in a stupid little life like mine--I can't put it to words, it's unfathomable. I think I could watch this movie ten times over and still feel my heart in my throat at knowing that there's actually someone out there who genuinely cares and loves and wants to be in a life like mine, enough that He put all glory everywhere, just for all of us little beings. 

The question "What do we mean to you? Where are you?" I felt like every turn, those questions were answered: "I am here. You mean all of this to me." 

The scene with the dinosaurs? That was brilliant, to take something so meaningless to us as a society today and portray a huge act of grace to a hopeless little dinosaur said a lot to me. And to the space pictures: who doesn't love some good universe images? But it makes me wonder, why did God make so much beautiful space? I mean, we can't even see all of it: we assume so much of it! In fact, there's so much of it and it's so far out of our reach that sometimes we forget about it except for the wallpapers on our computer. We forget how truly glorious and incredible space really is. 

And while God played a part in this movie I'm going to agree with the others who said that this wasn't a religious movie, because it wasn't at all. But it really did challenge the viewer to think just what made all of what was seen in this movie, and how could something that made all that also create the love and forgiveness and powerful human emotions we experience? 

There is A LOT more I could say about this movie, but I think this is good for now. Just watch it okay? It's fun to see how people react to it. 

The NaNoWriMo Experience

1. Never proofread your NaNoWriMo novel until you reach your goal. NEVER.
2. Grammatical errors are for proofreading and so, see above.
3. Remember your characters, they're kind of important, even if you'll kill them next chapter.
4. I didn't draw this. 

So Kayla posted a little bit about NaNoWriMo, and I thought it would be really cool to post a tidbit from what I've gotten out of NaNoWriMo this past month. I've never actually reached my goal of 50,000 words, but this year I finished (just today actually) and it's definitely been worth the ride.

Kayla touched a bit on how this 50,000 word novel forces you to get ideas down and out as fast as possible. Through this, NaNoWriMo is a great lesson and great exercise. It teaches you to force yourself to trudge through the dull parts of a story, to think about what's going to happen next, or better yet, to not know what's going to happen next and just watch as the words for some crazy scene just start filling the screen. There's nothing more rewarding than watching your own creativity suddenly appear in ways you never thought it would infront of you. With NaNoWriMo, I had this happen a lot.

Boring dialogue would suddenly turn into this intense conversation between two characters that might result in someone dying. Or maybe someone falling in love. I still don't get how the romance showed up in my story, but it did. My favorite part though, is not knowing how I'm going to end this crazy novel of mine, I just know it'll happen.

I am going to attempt to explain my novel. I can't ever really summarize it, but I'll try--or at least I'll try to explain what I have so far.

Nevermind. That could be a bad idea. Short post! Yeah!

Rebound

Abstract art! This is expressing something

After reading Becca's post (awesome post by the way), I want to elaborate off the comment I made on it, because I think this brings up an interesting point.

Becca talked about art being used to record and used as a language in the past, that it wasn't as expressive as it is today. 

While that statement is false-to me- it also has a lot of truth. The more I think about it, the more it's evident that art is more expressive than it was way back when. I think there's numerous reasons for that, one being that humans as a race have learned more and understand more and feel the need to create more. 

I also think humans, while we have more knowledge at our fingertips than ever in the past, we want to know more, but knowing more in a sense of diving further into imaginative and kind of out there thoughts, or knowing more about the feelings in ourselves. 

And, another thought that I have: perhaps our art today seems so expressive because it's more advanced. Think about it, we're still using art as a language and to record, we're just making it prettier, more complex, but still using the most powerful language there is: visual telling. This is kind of bouncing back to my point about how art was always expressing because art is telling your thoughts visually--even depression art is language. Geez, I don't know where I'm going with this.

Anyway, I finished my comment on Becca's post with a question of whether or not the super-expressive art of today is healthy or not. I mean, I just finished an article on the history of Cartoon Network in which the chief content officer said that CN has officially shifted to hiring animators who are out to pursue their dreams and put cartoons out there that are expressing their ideas; "Today, we are all about supporting creative visions and fostering an environment that allows these young artists to pursue their dreams. It's about making the best creative work you can make..." is the specific quote. 

Not that I'm saying expressing yourself is a bad thing. I just...well, I think of Adventure Time and the Adventures of Gumball and all I can think is, "This is expression? This is art?" I'm judgmental  I know. But really, what language are shows like that speaking? 

All right, I'm done now, and I refuse to let myself read back over this rant because I won't post it if I do. Can't let myself think too much on this one. 

*Disclaimer:I haven't read Art and Fear yet, so if it touches on this subject, it might be possible that I'll revisit this and renounce what I said. But

Post Secret Sunshine

Since there are already several well-written blogs on the substance in Secret Sunshine, I want to focus in on the end. Lee Chang-Dong creates these really profound films and completes them with these endings that are open to interpretation.

While in Poetry Mija commits suicide, the ending is only implying that, and knowing the way everything else in Lee's movies work, that might not be the end of it (though I do believe that is in fact what Mija did). Secret Sunshine left off with Shin-ae cutting her hair while Kim held the mirror. After that last scene, the camera panned to sunshine across the dirt in the garden--secret sunshine, the kind of blessings or little graces that often get overlooked.

The ending of Secret Sunshine was, to me, hopeful. While Mija's ending wasn't so hopeful, but rather a plea to remind everyone not to overlook the little things, Shin-ae's ending was one that left room for the rebuilding of a new person in herself. After all, cutting hair is often used symbolically to represent a change in a character, I think the same went for Shin-ae.

As the movie ended, I couldn't stop from laughing because I love how Lee Chang-Dong always leaves the audience off. I like to compare it to being taken on this sinister but beautiful bus tour and then being dropped off a random stop and having the bus leave before you can turn around and get back on. It's funny, while at the same time not at all--and there's always something pretty special to learn along the way.

Speaking Through Art

Poetry was a pretty awesome movie. The more time I put between me and seeing the movie, the more I appreciate it. There was a lot happening in this movie; it's almost like it's an extremely subtle and extremely less violent Inception--you had to think a lot to keep up with the multiple elements introduced and put the pieces together.

My favorite element to the movie was the introduction of poetry to Mija, the main character. Mija was a very empty character. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, so her spacey-ness should be excusable, but I don't think that is the whole reason for why she was constantly absent from reality throughout a lot of the movie.

What struck me right away was that Mija had figuratively had no voice, and neither did Agnes, the girl who killed herself. Both are silent--not by their own means, and while Agnes found a way to finally scream, Mija didn't know how to, she'd seemingly accepted being hushed. As the movie progresses, viewers are able to see Mija start to unearth this type of strength that allows her to start putting her foot down and trying to speak.

But in the end, her attempts at words weren't enough.

Wook, her grandson, disrespects her still even after she tells him she knows what he did and demands to know why. Her most powerful word towards Wook: putting Agnes' picture on the table at breakfast one morning.

When Mija turns down her boss at his -ahem- demand for physical attention, she later comes back to give him what he wants because though she's said no, her word won't ring.

Mija can't assert herself in the situation with the father's of the boys. I think she couldn't speak because she related so much to Agnes, she saw no use in saving the boys, she didn't want to help serve their purpose. Later she would help to repay Agnes' family and --I suspect-- turn in the boys to the police. So everybody wins, right?

In the beginning of the movie, Mija is struck by the suicide of Agnes. She questions Wook about it and he won't give her any answers. When she hears more, she's eager to learn more about what Agnes' life was like. From the beginning, one could tell that Mija wanted more than anything to get out of her life. She was seeking a beauty, a purpose in the meaninglessness of her life that she'd started to give up hope trying to find.

Her face was always sad. Even when she smiled she was sad. The only time she looked truly happy was when she was absorbed in the intensive process of writing one poem--the artwork that finally allowed her to speak volumes, the hymn of an individual who couldn't speak and couldn't be heard and found a way to speak and be heard, through simple, beautiful words on a paper.

Artists for centuries have figured out how to use a voice by means of art. Sometimes, it's the only way an artist is actually ever heard. This concept is nothing new, but watching this unfold in the way the director/writer Chang-Dong Lee creates it in Poetry is beautiful and hopeful at the same time.

Lesson: If no one's listening, go jump off a bridge.

Of Gods and Men

Lambert Wilson plays Christian, the lead monk in Of Gods and Men...

Of Gods and Men was a movie that portrayed to me the beauty in humble strength. Overall, I give the movie a thumbs down; it didn't hold out well in my opinion. What it did do though, was portrayed the life of eight monks who have become the core to a Muslim community.

In the movie, viewers get to see the tangled lives of these monks as well as the stormy life of the community. I honestly have never taken the time to dwell much on monks and their lifestyle. I never knew how honorable their simplicity is, and how much the communities the serve can depend on them. The movie dwells a while on the interaction between the monks and their community and how both are beneficial to one another. 

However, as terrorists start pressing in on the community, viewers get to see the cracks in the surface of the monks. The doctor monk starts to explain how he's worn, another monk questions his faith, Christian, the leader of the group, is ultimately faced with the hardest question: should he give the okay to leave in order to protect himself and the other monks. 

...And then he plays a prisoner possessed by inner demons in another. What a turn around. *disclaimer: I've never seen this movie, but RottenTomatoes don't recommend it.

All the while the monks trusted God, and searched frantically for the answers to their problems in God's Word and through what God answered their prayers with. 

The monks were able to come to the conclusion that they would stay with the community, no matter the risk, and that's where the beauty lies. They were noble enough to acknowledge that they were in great danger and that they could very well die in order to stay and continue their work in the frantic and dying community they'd aided for so many years. 

I guess I didn't glean what I should have from this movie. Reviews on line talk about the many profound questions and challenges this movie evokes, but I was only repeatedly faced with the question of: would I stay? 

I think that when God calls us to a purpose like that of those monks, we have to stay with it. Jesus talks about taking up our cross and following Him and that he who loses his life for Him will find it (mentioned in the movie by the way--this is crucial because this helped to sway the decision of the monks), so in this case I think it's clear God would have wanted the monks to stay because He'd put them there and blessed their work there.

Overall, I do have a lot of respect for this movie and feel that there was definitely a lot there for a viewer to walk away with, however, it's not one of the better one's I've seen at Signs this semester--but that's just from my viewpoint. 

This sir does not approve.

Rock Fishing

My favorite of the animations we've watched in the past five weeks is RockFish by Blur studios. This was my favorite partially because the style of animation was my favorite, and partially because I love a good "don't let go" type of story.

This animation ties into the readings primarily for the CGI, but I think it also is a good way to communicate some cool ideas to those who watch it including children. I think this short is a great way to talk to children and tell them what it's like to want something bad enough that you hold on even if you lose a thing or two--sometimes really important things too-- in the process.

In the end, the fisher still had all he really needed: himself and his little creature friend. He got his fish too, and really getting the fish wasn't about getting the fish, it was about the chase and catching it. Sometimes it's not about the reward or goal at the top of the latter, but rather the steps it takes to get there. We learn so much more in the process of getting to where we want to be than we do once we're there. And while that's a lot for a little kid to take away, it's still a pretty cool theory one can draw from a well-done short like RockFish.

Let's Be Pretty

Funny how I have another post coming out having to do with "pretty" ideas. Anyway, I went to the Forester Lecture tonight in which Dr. Kimberly Gorman spoke about her journey of overcoming anorexia. After Dr. Gorman gave her pretty compelling story, someone in the audience asked how we as a society can take steps to prevent eating disorders.

I immediately thought of the commercials we watched that Dove has created that display the flaws in what our society has deemed perfect. I love that we watched those commercials, and I love that we watched them in class. While the second one was slightly explicit, I think it's important for us media makers to show how the perfect body isn't possible, and get it communicated as soon as possible.

Bringing body image onto the screen means engaging in a much more personal issue not only for me but for many other people. Eating disorder awareness is out there, it's being shown, and the message that a perfect body isn't out there is being communicated too, but I don't think that either of these are really hitting home.

I wonder if media makers showed the more powerful side of the disorder we could communicate the real message of the monster of anorexia. When you don't eat--if you're cutting your caloric intake down to just 1200 calories a day--your body 1) starts to lose fat 2) starts to lose muscle 3) stops producing hormones 4) blood pressure and sugar drop drastically--you can't stay warm 5) can't ever get enough sleep 6) organs start to eat themselves to sustain life 7) heart shuts down. And not to mention the social seclusion and the inability to focus. Suddenly your in this world of absolute emptiness, and all that's there is food. Food is your only friend, and you can't even have that friend.

There is no love here. There's nothing but depression and utter hate for yourself and whatever the heck it is you've become. And you figure, why try to change this anyway?

Wouldn't it be cool for media to give these people hope? The problem is, a person with an eating disorder doesn't want to hear it. They don't want facts, they don't want messages, they don't want love, they don't think they deserve it. But they will dream, and if somehow media can give them the right dream that gives them hope enough to accept some sort of love, that can be it, that can save someone.

Pretty

....I'm siding with Matt!

It's interesting to call my view tailored to the squeaky clean CGI that I've grown up with or the nifty animation of Disney princess movies. While I'll be one of the firsts to stand up and say a lot of the animated shorts we've been watching the past several days in class turn me off because of lack of aesthetic appeal, I don't see myself as corrupted view from being fed Pixar films [I also want to note here that I've seen plenty of kinds of animation growing up: I wasn't strictly a Disney/Pixar girl, and never will be]. 

It's all about a good story, but I won't lie, even some of Pixar's films don't impress me in the least. While I've come here to HU and have been plenty open to having my view on films and animation altered in the aesthetic sense, there's a problem: I haven't changed a bit. 

I like pretty. I really do. I like aesthetic beauty and complexity and detail and big pictures that you have to make my eye and head wrap around. Sand on glass is creative, and it's admirable that Caroline Leaf made pretty spiffy animations using that medium, but that's something I will probably never watch again. 

Part of the magic I look for in media has to do a lot with aesthetic appeal. And this goes back to one of my posts from a while back when I talked about the definition of art not really existing because art is subject to opinion: you can't call an artist's piece good or bad or ugly or pretty and expect everyone else to agree. 

Well the same goes for animator's art. Personally, Caroline Leaf's simplistic style isn't enough for me. The stories are powerful, but the aesthetics are too weak to keep my mind absorbed in the story. Call me a child of America's senses-blasting special effects, but I'd be hesitant to label me that seeing as I haven't watched more than maybe five movies a year for the last three years of my life. 

Is it sad that I'd rather create fantastical worlds that are real and are something that I wish I could have stepped outside my bedroom window into at night as a child? Is it bad that I think shorts like "Two Sisters" might reveal an ugly truth behind them that we all need to know but doesn't deserved to be watched twice? Sure, I'm pretty stiff about it. 

So technically, Final Fantasy has very non-realistic elements to it; I definitely agree to that much. 

I understand the disturbing and unsettling animations we watched in class are meant to be that way. I understand that there are disturbing, ugly truths that humanity needs to get smacked in the face with in order to feel the need to do anything about it, but my raw, unedited and blatant nature is that I don't like these films. I understand abstract disturbing, but I also understand realism and fantasy, and really part of realism is disturbing. Real is gross. I like to think that real can be escaped, just for a moment, and that in that moment, one can figure out how to beat real. [Don't write me off as a "Thomas Kinkade" yet]

"Two Sisters" has a truth behind it. And a story. Confusing maybe, but that makes me think. But because the imagery was so bashing to my senses I don't want to think about it. I can't sympathize with the characters anymore now that I'm outside of the moment. And even "The Man Who Planted Trees" made my inner artist want to claw someone. Am I the only one who missed the inspiration of that short? 

I like realistic animation, I won't lie. And I do realize it's a huge challenge, takes a lot of time, money, dedication, and so forth, but don't give up on me yet, I never said I was going to go out and animate real looking people. Who knows?

*I appreciate all the different kinds of animation we've been watching in class though. While I didn't like some of them, I have respect for all of them, and I really, really enjoyed the style of some. Like somewhat mentioned before, I understand that some animation styles were geared toward unsettling the viewer while others were more children's tale like to evoke the sense of being in a children's fairy tale book. I enjoy seeing work of animators greatly.

Boy A

Sleep is hard to come by tonight, so I'll blog instead.

Tonight's Signs and Wonders movie, Boy A, was really good, and I wish more people could have came to see it. The premise is Jack Burridge has just been let out of jail after being in jail since he was a child. He is now a young man and really has no clue how to live a functional life. He gets help from a man who plays the role as his "uncle" named Terry, and Terry views Jack as his "greatest achievement" because basically, Jack is successful at getting himself off to a good life.

Sadly, his name isn't really Jack.

And he has a twenty-grand bounty on his head.

And his life has only just begun before it's all over.

I discussed this a lot after the movie, so sorry for those who were present and have to put up with me saying it again, but I almost feel like this movie is an extension off of today's class. Jack 's road to becoming a child-aged murderer is one that occurred because -I think- he was lacking that love and structure of a family and/or friends.

In order to find acceptance and companionship from someone Jack befriended a boy named Phillip Craig, who's temper and evil nature wound up engulfing both of Jack and Phillip. But the common denominator between both these boys is the fact that both had no family behind them, and really no example to follow.

Phillip went home and got raped by his brother. Jack went home and got yelled at for having sympathy for his dying mother, and had a drunk and ignorant father. And while these circumstances are horrid, they reflect a lot of familial situations well, even if some families aren't yet to this extreme.

Anyway, when Jack is released and is trying to create a life for himself, he falls in love.

At one time, he says to his girlfriend Kelly--who by the way is not a stick like most of female actresses the audience likes to see today; she's a real, genuine and pretty woman that's [oh no]  overweight [oh the shame]--- "I never thought I'd say those words to anyone or ever have anyone say those words to me." He's talking about when she says she might love him by the way.

It's a cruel end to what could have been a well meant life. Society ultimately won't accept Jack. And while I could see that coming early on in the movie, I like to focus more on Jack not accepting Jack. His real name is Eric Wilson, and I think that keeping Eric Wilson a lie would override Jack's good intentions in the end.

A neverending, crying Andrew Garfield

There's a certain price to pay when it comes to sinning and then using more sin to cover it up. This arises a discussional point that Leeper brought up after the movie but we never really concluded: What if Jack had gone on living as he had begun and no one had figured out he was a criminal? Would his life have been good?

I think that Jack's using a lie--which he felt guilty to use--to cover up that he was a murderer would have more vices than not. My mom has always told me "Your sin will find you out" and so far, it always has, whether through someone else or through eating through me. I'm a believer in not being able to cover up a sin with good deeds, or even good intentions.

But then again, committing a murder when one was a child with monumentally different context is warranted to having the individual change in say a decade or so. A lot of correction can happen from childhood to adulthood, so maybe Jack was in the right by lying and starting over?

And, while I'm contradicting myself, don't Christians often end up sinning and covering it up by smearing good intentions or deeds over it? Isn't repentance itself a good intention? But repentance is absolution and absolution is the end of it but what if it wasn't really meaningful in the first place? I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm hoping no one will read this anyway you see, because it's pretty long. Long blog posts can be intimidating. No one goes to a blog to read a book, so I'm riding on the hope that no one will actually read this far down. :D

Entertaining

I am really the wrong person to post on this subject but: Art is Entertainment.

I've kind of been stuck when it comes to trying to decide what art is: it's undefinable because art is opinion. I think the same goes for entertainment.

When I think of art though I automatically think of entertainment too. In class we talked about movies made solely for the purpose of entertainment, but to me, that's why every work of art is made. Even the stupidest, most pointless, violent movies are art to me. Movies, shorts, blocks of color on canvas,  are all works of art to me, even if there's nothing about them that evokes any emotion from me (which is hard to do). 

If I'm not feeling much about a film or am contemplating my life because of it, it's entertainment. I might walk out of the theater and never think about it again. But it was entertainment, and it was art. 

And in historical hindsight, "art" originated because of humans' love for entertainment. Caves with the first little drawings scrawled on the inside of their mouths are art. But maybe to the aspiring film students back then they were just cruddy entertainment. Oh wait...

Greek theatre originated on threshing floors with nothing but imagination and people's love to just watch and turned into the astounding plays we have today with crazy special effects and film. 

Not a movie, but a story in itself. Titled, "Wonder Boys," it has hardly anything to do with Superman but a lot to do with superheroes. It's art that's entertainment.
http://michaelo.deviantart.com/art/Wonder-Boys-273699837

Maybe art is really refinement, taking entertainment at it's face value and infusing it with these wholistic ideas that only beauty and the dragging of nails across heart strings can evoke. 

Movie not many people are too fond of...(and it's a superhero movie!) Entertaining? Perhaps not your cup of tea. Art? Definitely. But might not be your artistic cup of tea.

I don't know. All I'm saying is that I believe art, whether it's the ill-composed, cheesy movie you paid too much money to watch in the theater, or that 6'x8' canvas splattered with utmost technique, is entertainment, even if only for the artist. Art tells stories, movies tell stories, stupid tells stories, and I think stories are entertainment.

Strange

I have a new appreciation for strange. Not because of the movie that I'm about to talk about, but just because of college so far in general. You're all strange. I mean, some of you are stranger than others, but you are all really, really strange. And so am I. Strange is beautiful, not physically so to speak but it's just really beautiful to know we're all super strange and in that strangeness we can come together.

On Sunday at Signs and Wonders we watched Lars and the Real Girl. Lars is a socially awkward 27 year old man who lives in the garage of his brother, Gus, and sister-in-law, Karin's property. Oddly enough, Lars is loved by everyone in his life. Karin wants him to come to dinner or breakfast, or lunch, anything with her and Gus. At work, Lars' coworkers love him, and talk to him genuinely even if he doesn't respond. It was awkward to watch these people, especially those at Lars' church care about him when he didn't respond in a socially expected way. I was shifting around in my seat and making fists anyway.

Moving on. While Lars really made me rediscover what social awkwardness is, he had a kind and loving heart. He'd do favors for people, and he was incredibly polite when he would talk. It gave me hope for Lars.

And then he ordered a sex doll. As soon as Bianca came, Lars became a new person. Suddenly he was coming to dinner with Gus and Karin--never without Bianca. He would talk to Bianca, his coworkers, to Gus and Karin, this love suddenly made Lars lovable. Hm, reminds me of a class, "something can't be lovable until it is loved" or something along those lines.

Lars was having a delusion. He would love and see Bianca as real until he didn't need his delusion anymore. This was Lars' brain's way of helping him cope with something drastic in his life that he couldn't face anymore. Meanwhile, the small town Lars lives in went to work playing this delusion with him. Bianca was helping out at the local school, getting involved in the church's ladies nights out, volunteering, and so forth.

"I have a school board meeting. Bianca got elected, so... " -Lars 

Soon though, Bianca begins to die. Lars is the one who allows her to develop this illness that ultimately causes her death--this marks the ending of his delusion. Okay, while I'm pretty sure real delusions don't work this way and I think a community in this day in age would be pretty hard pressed to play along with Lars' delusion, the movie was great.

I'm going to leave out the love interest and the Lars' portrayal of how to play a good boyfriend even to a sex doll and the controversy on other mens' opinions of how to treat women for the one thing that struck me in the movie: what I think created Lars' delusion.

Lars' mother died while giving birth to him. He never had a mom, and his dad was always heartbroken. So if you think about it, Lars' childhood was depressing and he never really learned what it felt like to be loved. Of course Lars is loved, but that's at 27, and while it's a kind of love that most of us search after, Lars was looking for the kind of nurturing love that comes from a mom.

Ever heard the saying, "Mom is a little boy's first love?" You don't have to believe it, I really don't, but I think in this movie, Lars is trying to find a love that he never had. He wants that special kind of companionship where you can love and nurture someone, and they'll love and nurture you back. Karin, Lars' sister-in-law, is pregnant throughout the movie, and as she becomes more and more pregnant, Lars seems to discover what it's like to want to one day have a life with someone and love them enough to want to have children that he can nurture and love and call his own. But Bianca can't have children, and Lars states that not long before Bianca's disease starts to make her die.

Overall, I think it took Lars delusion with Bianca to see what love really is, and to discover that love that was absent to him for 27 years. In the end he gets a real girlfriend by the way, and all along throughout the movie viewers see him kind of giving her wondering looks like, "Huh, wonder what it would be like to have her around" which I found a little humorous. Lars' numbness to love thawed at the end of the movie, and it seemed like he discovered that he didn't have to hide from it.

So as strange as Lars was, he got it in the end. And his strangeness was really what brought a community of people together, and their strangeness helped him to get it together.

"We are here to celebrate Bianca's extraordinary life. From her wheelchair, Bianca reached out and touched us all, in ways we could never have imagined. She was a teacher. She was a lesson in courage. And Bianca loved us all. Especially Lars. Especially him." -Reverend Brock

And Lars thought that people coming over to sit and knit and give him food while Bianca was upstairs deathly sick was strange. 

Glow in the Dark

When we were talking about Christian society's growing fascination toward darkness today in class, several things struck me. Not only is it true, but I think that curiosity isn't the only thing to blame when it comes to the "good" dallying in the darkness.

The world is growing more and more sinister. Humans are inherently evil at heart, and with the revolt against God in more recent generations, the ideas of goodness and morals have been tossed in the God boat and set to sea. The US culture is pretty much in shambles. Our culture is selfish, dark, and full of the wrong, unrealistic kind of hope. And while media is often times more dark than light, I think it's wrong to assume that every film is solely dark, and that while lighter media is good, I think it's less relative to most viewers.

My reasoning for the disdain for happier, "good" films is that we live in a dark world. This world is evil, and portraying movies with small conflicts that don't need a thrilling, heroic action to end the darkness seem quite frankly less hopeful.

Anyway, back to dark films. Within those films there's the positive light that's often the protagonist or a sudden sway of events that make the world in the movie a better place, but it's those type of things that make me believe that society, regardless of dark media, still values light. Light isn't sexy like darkness, but it's powerfully conquering, and I think the only way to truly show that is through the worst of darkness.

This type of conquering in darkness is probably partially why Christians are so fascinated with dark media. In a world where we're becoming a minority but aren't an endangered species yet, we have it slightly comfy when we stay out of the way. But when we stay out of the way we still want desperately to be in a situation where we can boldly proclaim that there is real hope and light, and that idea is great, but hard to put to practice sometimes. Dark media gives us as Christians the chance to feel that momentary bravery of feeling what it would be like to be that good conquering the dark--without doing anything but watching.

Another point I wanted to hit in regards to what makes darkness so intriguing to people --even Christians-- is freedom. We talked about that in class, how darkness has no rules. In society today, rebellion and disrespect and just feeling free are becoming more and more essential. Even those of us who recognize that boundaries are good actually have this rebellious attitude somewhere inside us that we feel entitled to liberties and privileges. So no matter how good light is, there's going to be apart of goodness that's going to disagree with some part of our darker shaded parts and when that happens, we automatically rebel or struggle with it.

I feel like just having any liberty I could possibly want is what helps make darkness so appealing. I won't lie, in movies like Star Wars I honestly think it'd be cooler to be on the Dark side most of the time because heck, everyone's scared of them and they can walk around and do whatever they want. And the Dark Side empire is huge.

But there's the challenge in goodness and light. And I think opting for a challenge to obtain admirable power is better than getting power which means nothing later. So that's the end of my ramble. I hope it makes a little sense.

Oh To Be an Ostrich

One of the things I do after watching movies in SignsNWonders is bing (no google here. O_o) the movie so I get characters' names down pat for when I blab about them. When I binged The Song of Sparrows, I naturally stumbled across a few summaries of the film.

 Practically each one of those summaries talked about a dad who failed, got fired, and started losing sight of his family and the real values in life because of it. And during the discussion after the film last night many of us talked about Karim, the father and protagonist of the film doing just that.

Now before I say that's all wrong, I will agree that I do think Karim began to lose sight of his some of his original priorities.

But I didn't feel like Karim came across that way. I don't think Karim ever became oblivious of his family's real needs, but rather took that vision to the extreme out of fear. I think most of Karim's quirks after the stability of a -ostrich rancher- job arise out of fear for himself, his future, but more importantly his family.

Karim ventures into the city (or the world in symbolic correlation) originally for his daughter's hearing aid to be fixed, only to find he has to conjure up the money for a new one. As he's leaving the city, he stumbles upon a pick-up job that can supplement for his lack of income after being fired.

Working in the city provides Karim with a lot of eye openers, knowledge, money, and things. Karim starts bringing home whatever he thinks might be useful for his family, whether his family needs it right now or not. Essentially he becomes a hoarder, a busy body, and selfish about whatever he works to bring home.

In the meantime, Karim's children are excited about the things their dad brings home, but Karim's wife, Narges, sees Karim is losing it. Karim also becomes more harsh as a father, discouraging his son's dreams of becoming a millionaire off selling fish, and even slapping his daughter when the kids get together on the roadside to try and make money selling flowers. I get the impression that Karim is worried about the safety of his children, a worry that has developed on the back of the anxiety from being fired.

Now, bouncing back to fear, I see Karim's stern paternal methods in regards to his son's dreams as Karim knowing what it's like to lose a dream and not wanting his son to have to feel that, as well as perhaps anger that his son has a dream and is trying with all he has to make it areality, something Karim is frankly terrible at doing.

Karim wants the best for his family, and I think that bringing more and more stuff home is Karim's sort of self-gratifying way of somewhat accomplishing the best he can at the moment for his family. Karim is afraid that losing his job mean's he won't be able to obtain the best for his family and keep them happy, but in bringing home all the stuff he can, he's trying to get the slightest grasp he can of keeping his family happy [even if he is very wrong in thinking this].

Among the vast amount of symbolism in this movie, the most striking for me was probably when the group of boys (including Karim's son) finally got their fish only to have the bucket the fish were in break and spill everywhere.

To me, this was symbolic of Karim's newly hatched dream that he'd been fostering for the duration between his employment and his accident shattering and needing to be let go.
It also struck as symbolic in Karim's hold on his children: he needed to let them fly too, he couldn't force safety on them and hold them back from where they need to go.

And last but not least, the runaway ostrich reminded me symbolically of Karim himself. The ostrich decided to take a gander throughout the world and realized it's better to be where there are ostriches who love and support it than running around laying eggs that get smashed and eaten all the time. When the ostrich came home at the end, so did Karim.

Because Ostrich racing is real, and I was really hoping that's where this movie was going at first.

Steel Tears

Truth is, I'm a sci-fi geek at heart, and toss me a sci-fi film complete with a touching, almost cliche story but top it with stellar special effects (using completely open sourced software programs to do so mind you) and you'll have me hooked. I stumbled across this pretty cool sci-fi short today, and fell in love with it right away. I fell so in love with it, I'm gonna share it on here.

Steel Tears was made using Blender, which is very similar to Maya. It's a complete open sourced project experiment in regards to programming, however, for shooting funds (ie practical funds) were provided through the Blender Institute and pre-dvd sales. But basically, the budget for the project was $0.

We start out seeing a spaceship taking off. Then,viewers are introduced to a couple, Doug and Celia standing on a bridge in slightly futuristic Amsterdam. They're in a fight, and while their fight almost seems petty, they both have different dreams.

"Look Celia, we have to follow our passions. You have your robots and I just want to be awesome in space!" -Doug 

But it comes down to Doug telling Celia that her robotic arm is scary.  *There is horrible acting employed in this scene, for your warning.

Now we jump forward to 40 years in the future, when robots have taken over and mankind seems at a severe loss for...well anything. A group of scientists are hiding away using computer technology to reconstruct the sequence of Celia and Doug on the bridge in the past. Doug of the future is using the simulation to send him back to the past to make things right with Celia, because Celia was the one who created the robots that are destroying mankind.

"You broke my heart. You forgot me on earth..." -Celia

There's some pretty cool discussion topics that I think this movie can spark. Anyway, watch and -hopefully- enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6MlUcmOul8&feature=player_detailpage

Akiane

I want to introduce an artist I've been cynical of for years. When I first picked up her first book and began reading, I thought 1) She couldn't possibly be real; there was some sort of weird
work at play here and 2) I was right away extremely jealous.

Akiane Kramarik is a child prodigy in both painting/drawing and poetry. She works roughly two hundred hours on a given painting; paints anything from a horse or swan to Jesus with his arms lifted high. The really, really awesome thing about Akiane? She does all of this for God.

Grr, more terrible quality. x_x Anyway, this is a painting of Jesus talking to God when he was 14 as according to Akiane.

Akiane was born in Illinois to a relatively simple family. She has four brothers and two parents who don't pursue any kind of art. At the age of 4, Akiane had a life changing experience (I need to read the book again, I can't remember exactly what happened, but I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of a dream) that brought her to God. She hadn't gone to church previously, neither was her family religious.

Her family became saved as Akiane painted more and more images for her Creator and became more and more zealous in proclaiming the good news about God.

This piece is entitled, "Returning Home". Excuse the bad quality (it was hard to find a pic of this one). This is probably one of my favorite works of Akiane's simply because there's so much in it, and it's so beautiful.

What really made me cynical of her is how she comes about her inspiration for images. In her book, "Akiane--her art, her life, and her poetry" Akiane talks about being blessed with visions to paint. This isn't the case for each of her paintings, but, for example, in this painting, "Prince of Peace", Akiane was given a vision of Jesus. She explains more in her book, but she'd received some sort of detailed image and felt she had to paint it. So at age 8, so did just that.

Needless to say, I've decided to not try and understand these visions of Akiane's, and I've decided that it's better to just admire her incredible work. It's beautiful, and every single one of her works leads back to the Creator who gifted her with her incredible, awesome talent.

Please go check out her website! Her pieces are incredible, and read the descriptions too because they are amazing.

http://www.artakiane.com/

Quiz: Bunny

There are plenty of thought provoking movies we've watched thus far in Leeper's class. Probably the most powerful for me was Bunny--strangely enough. The reason why "Bunny" is so cool for me because in the end the bunny was reunited.
I'm going to take this to a deeper level for a moment; the persistent moth that keeps bugging the Bunny is sort of like God when I'm closing him out. I see Him as a pest and toss Him out the window or try and throw Him out of sight.
"Not now, can't you see I'm busy?" It's something I find myself saying way too often to God, when really, I should be excited to have Him want to be "bugging" me at all.

It's clear throughout the entire clip that there was something missing in the film that made life for the Bunny completely empty and dull. It wasn't until the moth mystified the Bunny into following it that the film shifted from empty to bursting with life, and the Bunny was reunited --with it's best friend and love once more.
That is the most beautiful part of this film; the rediscovering of love and unity after the painful gap that's kept the bunny feeling the echoing loneliness.

Bad Case of Nostalgia?: Midnight in Paris

If you missed Signs and Wonders last night, shame on you [as if I have right to dole out shame after missing last week..]. Anyway, last night's movie, Midnight in Paris, was truly a wonderful and artistic movie.

The premise is, a screen-writer and aspiring novelist, Gil Pender, is in Paris with his fiancee, Inez and her parents. It's clear right off that Gil's creativity is annoying and looked down upon by his fiancee and her parents. While Gil sees Paris as a magical world, his fiancee can't wait to get back to America.

"I don't get here often enough, that's the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!" -Gil

"You're in love with a fantasy."-Inez

But then, Inez meets an old crush, Paul and his girlfriend, and suddenly Paris is enlightening to her. She's swooped off her feet by Paul the know-it-all and begins to see Gil even more negatively than before. Only Gil doesn't see anything going on with his crumbling engagement through his mask of jealousy for Paul's intelligence; Gil does see, however, that something is wrong, and he knows he's miserable.

By mishap, Gil winds up at a street corner where he is picked up by a strange, vintage vehicle that drives him right into 1920's Paris. Here, Gil meets famous writers (Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald), artists (like Picasso, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, etc) but more importantly makes friends and actually feels at home.

That's all I got for summation for now. I'm going to move on to some things that really struck me in this movie. The most important lesson for me to learn from this movie is how to fully appreciate the present. I've been experiencing my share of longing to just go back in time, or go forward in time, or just not be here, which is what Gil faces--however reluctant he is to see it. Nostalgia and longing to be in the past is Gil's form of escapism.

"Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present...  "-Paul, Inez's crush. 

Gil's novel in the works is about a man who runs a nostalgia shop, which is what prompted this line. But, in hearing this I was jetted into what we've been talking about in class with fairy tales and talking about escapism. I think it's interesting for find out about the many ways of escapism that we humans create for ourselves. Not only do we set up amazing, fantastical worlds to run to, and we use the past to hide from the present too. And there's so many more ways to escape than just those two forms.

And why do we want so badly to escape? I feel like Gil sums it up.

"That's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying." -Gil

As Christians, we know life is unsatisfying and why it's unsatisfying, but was also know it doesn't have to be that way. I think the truth to this movie is that Gil is looking for something, to fill the "God shaped vacuum in the human heart" (Pascal quoted in A Family of Faith). And while at the end Gil comes to terms with the present and satisfaction with his life [meaning he dumps his fiancee, thank goodness, oh and decides to stay in Paris], he did so not by Godly means but through faith means: faith in himself. Having faith in yourself is great, but having faith in yourself alone is bad, but that's another blog post entirely so I'll steer clear of that for now.

So in a way Gil found a way to satisfy that God shaped vacuum. And we'll leave it there.

Another line that stuck me was one that the character Ernest Hemingway said, and one I absolutely love.

 "I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving, or not loving well, which is the same thing." -Ernest Hemingway

So this goes back to Tuesday's class when we were talking about something not being lovable until it is loved. Not only that, but when that love is true, there is no fear anymore. Hemingway was talking about the complete absence of the fear of death and feeling supernatural upon finding real love [specifically kissing the right woman, but I'm broadening perspectives here and I can't share that experience so]. And,  [I'm sure you can tell where I'm going with this] that corresponds back to Christianity and how, our love for God and our relationship with Him makes us unafraid of death.