New page for Marshall Mcluhans book

The Medium is the Massage

artwork by Albane Simon aka Dyn

The Authorship of Wes Anderson

3 Films Reviewed:

Rushmore

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Grand Budapest Hotel

         Our assignment this week was to pick a Director from a list of about twenty and watch three of their movies, and then give a brief explanation about what makes a movie belong to them, or how it is that someone can watch a movie and just know that a specific director made it. I chose Wes Anderson to write about.

      I think the defining characteristic of Wes Anderson s  Films is his use of the camera to capture action and drama. He makes the most use of tracking shots that give movement and momentum to his stories, and symmetry mixed with an amazing color palate to bring his viewer into his movies, and give them a unique look into the world he creates. The symmetry of his shots seems to be hard to notice at first, but once it was pointed out to me, I was amazed at how dominate this particular technique was.  If anything these techniques can keep a movie going even during those unexciting parts that bathroom breaks are reserved for.

     He keeps a very fluid cast, with many actors and actresses appearing time and time again. For example Bill Murry has been in every single Wes Anderson film, save one, and Angelica Houston is also a Wes Anderson veteran with many reoccurring roles. With his movies being so character driven, he has made a great choice to stick with Bill Murry because he does so amazingly well in those types of acting situations.

     In the movies that I watched there was a very real feeling of family and kinship that took center stage as a general motif of course always paired with a great antagonist to keep the narrative moving along. Each one of the Movies I watched were set in a particular period, and in this I think it also reflects a repeating characteristic of Wes in that he loves a good period piece.

     

     

Comic Book form adaption to a scene from the movie

"Kids"

Response to 3 questions from NewsWorld

by: Todd James Pierce

1) Are there any prominent symbols in this story? If so what are they and how are they used?

     

     I noticed many symbols in this short story. The most prominent being the Plywood cover over the San Francisco Earthquake exhibit. I felt that the  story was describing adolescent boys who were trying to break-thru to maturity in how they managed their emotions. They did not know exactly how to feel about the attacks of 9/11 when posed a question on the topic by their teacher, but over the course of the story the author uses breaking into and thru barriers as a motif to symbolize the age old tale of the boy coming of age.

2) What connections did you make with the story? Discuss elements of the story with which you were able to connect.

     Being that I am male and in my mid twenties at the time of the attack on the World Trade Center, I am able to connect deeply with this story in its whole. I connected deeply with the sense of not knowing what happens next after the attacks, and a longing for how simple it seemed before that time. Another way in which I am able to connect to this story is how the boys felt in general about not knowing what exactly was going on in their heads when it came to expressing how they felt about something that was difficult to describe. I think it was in the way the author described the boys dads. He had made mention of how they were suburbanites who at best would say something like"Kick Ass at the game today Son!," which in a way is hard for me to connect to. I had a different kind of dad, the perpetual drunk step-dad .. dad, but what is interesting to me is that even with very different upbringings from the sound of it, we had similar complications in expressing emotions as adolescent boys. 

3) What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? what changes would you make?

     I imagine that I would change this story into a short film. The story make me think of "Stand by Me" and I can fully imagine a short rendition of it. I would probably change the order in which things happen to support the film better. I might have the summer time job at the park and all of the events of normal boys at the beginning instead of as more of a memory. I would do this to give greater impact to the boys emotional discovery in the park after seeing the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

     

       

Link to a really bad rendition of a monologue by Benedict from Much Ado About Nothing

disclaimer: I did not want my face visible on a video published to the internet.
additionally, I am not quite sure how my inner Batman makes its auditory presence known, but it does, and i'm sorry.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

by: Karen Russell

 I am not sure if I have total clarity about what this weeks’ assignment is asking for. We are supposed to  "Post a discussion on your blog about an aspect of the way in which the text of "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," Karen Russell is situated." We are supposed to take the text in context and relate it to some other work along whatever thread,...of context?, we chose. So here goes, I'll give it a shot.

     When I read Vampires in the Lemon Grove I got a feeling of admonishment of fear. A kind of cleansing of all of the fears that people say are a requirement of certain rolls in life, both figuratively and literally. Clyde, the main character of the short story, is a Vampire... living for the time being in a Lemon Grove in Italy where he has found solace and reprieve from the pains of his bloodlust partly from lemons, and partly from his new found (yet 30 year friend, wife, lover) Vampire companion Magreb, A female Vampire who is Clyde's kindred spirit. She convinces him to shed all of his fears about what others have embedded into him as his weaknesses as a Vampire and proves them all false, to some degree or another. By overcoming this barrier Clyde is free to seek an eternity free of the constraints placed on him by the outside world.

     The main take away in the context for me is the sense that lifting restraints often leads to a more pleasurable existence. This is such a fundamental thread in stories that it is becoming very hard to narrow the scope of just one or two works that relate to this idea as a whole. I guess something that stands out most in my mind is the story of Siddhartha 

(probably because it is still so fresh in my mind). The story is ... as a very brief summary, a story of a young man who is trying to shed himself of what everyone says he needs to learn or to be to be truly happy. 

     This feeling of overcoming fears permeates our culture, and will most likely be drawn upon as a well of inspiration for years ... even centuries to come.

     

     

The Dew Breaker

by: Edeidge Danticat

      I read about 4 of these short stories and surprising myself I found many things that I could relate to on a personal level. For instance the way the woman in the first story was so worried about ther father who had gone missing. I felt the same way when my father left my family. Only it would be another fourteen years before I would see him again. 

     In the second short story a Haitian man comes to America to save up money and send for his wife, although it takes 7 years to happen, and he left Haiti the day after they were married. My first wife and I we separated in a similar fashion, where straight off of us both living on the street we both went to Job Corps in Astoria Oregon at the same time and got pregnant while we were there. She completed before I did and went to live with her parents in central Oregon until I was done (about 3 months). After I completed the program they got me a job in Massachusetts of all places, 3000 miles all the way across the country working for an Interior Plaster company. I got a very small apartment while there and had to work much longer than expected to make enough money to bring her and our six month old Daughter out there. when they did arrive I was living with the same guy that I had been since I got there, another Job Corp Graduate from Baltimore, I don't recall his name, but I am sure he experienced quite a shock when they actually got there. Going from living with just another dude to having a full fledged family in the apartment with him. Needless to say it all didn't really pan out and we were all 3 back in Oregon within a year.

     The last one that I read was about woman who was grieving about a child she had lost in the womb, and the broken relationships that followed with her then lover and her mother and father. I do not know of the monumental loss that she experienced, but I do know about not wanting to call home for extended periods of time because I was feeling inadequate. The woman in the story was puropsely neglecting to call her parents, and I did the same thing while I was on my own at the start. I kew my mom worried for me because I was a seventeen year old out on the streets, but I just did not want to hear about it all the time, so I barely called. I have matured much since those days and have a much better relationship with my mother.