little dog turpie

I loved this film. I was a bit disturbed until the guy put the dog back together though. It seemed a little "scary," or at least it might from a child's point of view, but how can there be good if there is no darkness or evil? I thought it was interesting how the film portrayed punishment for doing something "foolish." The dog kept barking for no apparent reason, so it was cut up and hung on the railing. Then the man got his reward for being foolish when his wife was kidnapped. Recognizing his fault, he put Turpie back together and sent it to devour the kidnappers and free his wife. Then, as sort of a twist of fate, the husband was cut into pieces and hung on the railing, by his wife. The man, in the beginning, had been too caught up in his own world and cares to even try to see what Turpie was barking about, and it cost him. We're like that too sometimes. Too busy focused on the now, whether it be good or bad, to see warnings or signs of what is to come, or to turn our gaze heavenward. Or to gain wisdom from others. Luckily, the husband could put Turpie back together thereby reversing his mistake; we have grace. God's grace and mercy redeems us from our mistakes, but sometimes we must still deal with earthly consequences - just like the man in pieces on the fence.

Children's Lit

I totally agree with the articles we read. Children's literature touches us in a way no other literature can. Tell me this - how many times have you read your favorite book from your childhood? Many, many times right? Now what about that latest New York Times Best seller for adult fiction you just picked up off the shelf last week? When you finish it, what is the likelihood that you will ever read it again? I have read the Chronicles of Narnia once and listened to the radio theatre of them too many times to count. I'm still moved by Aslan's death, the lilies at the world's end, and the shouting of "further up, further in!" However, many of the adult fiction books I've read, like novels by Dean Koontz or Nora Roberts, I will probably never pick up again. I know what happens, and there's no more mystery in them than that. I think movies can work a little like that too, at least for me. Though I love my disaster movies, dramas, and TV series sets, I am starting to collect films that I watched when I was a kid. There's just something more magical and believable about fairy tales, trolls, a little boy discovering the power of "Nightmare Land," and a big fuzzy grey squirrel-looking animal named Totoro. These films never lose their magic. Some of the most complex things in life are more easily understood if looked at through a child's eyes. Think of our faith. In the Bible, Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children. We must come to Christ with a childlike faith - our "grown-up" faith asks too many questions and has too many doubts when Jesus simply wants us to Believe and Follow. I think a passage I read in Luke last night sums it up rather well: "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ' I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.'" (Luke 10:21)

Rocks and Chocolate

I really enjoyed this film. At first I thought the little girl was buying the chocolate bar for herself, but was pleasantly surprised at the end when she gave it to her father. I also thought the scene with the dad/daughter rushing home to save the eggs was pretty touching. Its always interesting to see how different generations work together to get to a common goal. Overall, it was a great story about generosity, that the little girl gave up money to be spent on her to buy a birthday present for her dad. She also gave up story time to set up the surprise of the gift. I think adult forms of media try too hard to look at the big picture. By looking at a small, very personal story, a great virtue is presented and given great value.

Space

So, about that space thing we were talking about. I knew before about flat space and deep space, but I gotta admit limited and ambiguous space are a little new to me. They make sense though. Some of those photos Leeper showed us were kind of tricky. Anyway, I thought the discussion of space would give me a good excuse to post some wacky camp photos. The first picture, I believe, is an example of limited space - there are three distinct frontal planes - the front row, the second row, and the back wall. There is overlap though, which prevents it from being flat space. The second photo (the mud one) is an example of deep space - there is overlapping, size difference, and aerial/textural diffusion.
Now for what's going on in the pics, in case you were curious. I work at a Girl Scout Camp during the summer and we do all kinds of wacky stuff. The first picture is of all of the "pieces" to our life-size Clue game. We tape off the floor in the main building as the gameboard and six of the counselors get to dress up as the characters or game pieces. Campers are then split into teams and take turns moving their character around the board trying to solve the mystery. I was thrilled that I got to play Mr. (or in this case Miss) Green this year. The second photo is of mud wrestling. That's right, we mud wrestle. I'm realatively clean in this shot because we had just started and Ana (the other counselor in the photo) was new at this whole thing and a lot smaller than me - hence, I won in about 2 minutes. You should see what I look like at the end of losing a match! Anyway, those are some examples of space for ya - feel free to ask me about camp too - I'll always bend your ear with a tale or two, or three, or . . . !

The Brothers Grimm

Okay, so I'm a big fairy tale fan and I decided to go see the movie The Brothers Grimm. Oh my word! It is such an awesome movie! But anyway, I realized that I cannot just watch movies anymore (thank you Prof. Leeper!) At first, I kind of tried to notice things about the space, since that's what we talked about last, but something kept jumping out at me - red. Yeah, if you want to see a movie that REALLY uses the assigning color thing we were talking about, go see this film. It starts out as tiny pieces of red - on red riding hood's coat, on Gretel's blanket, on an apple, on the image of the mirror queen. When you reach the climax of the movie, though, there is a TOTAL ONSLAUGHT of red. There are even a few minutes where the only color you see is red. I can't quite get my head around what red was assigned to though. I kept getting a kind of "enchantment" vibe but I'm not sure - anyone got any guesses?

The filmmakers also played with other colors. Most of scenes in the town and in Jacob's world - a world where the fairy tales are really true - most of the colors are muted. It goes back and forth from golds and browns to grays and whites. Sometimes you are even smacked with a brilliant white background at the start of a scene. Memories, however, and the "real world" have more color to them, namely green. And the very end of the movie returns to color with lots of green grass too. Curiously, the soldiers and general also have some color assigned to them, though they appear in the scenes with the muted colors. Anyway, I posted a couple of pictures, one of the mirror queen, and a generic shot of the town. You can really tell the color difference (and notice the red on the queen). This film also has really fabulous visual effects. Gotta love the creepy crawly bugs, the moving trees, and the climax. (I won't tell you why the graphics in the climax are really, really cool - I don't want to spoil it for anyone) Anyway, if you get a chance, go see The Brothers Grimm. Oh, by the way, there's a really awesome story line too - hee hee! Check out the link if you want to see more photos or see more about the film.

Baby Got Tastes?

Let's talk about "Baby Got Book." At first, I gotta admit I thought it was funny, I guess in that twisted way that sometimes something that's making fun of you is funny. The more we talked in class though, the more I didn't like it. It's true, I would NEVER show this to a nonbeliever. I think part of what drives people away from any religious belief is when you dumb it down and make fun of it. I mean, couldn't that person argue that if that's all that religion was, then what's the point? It's also really dumb that it seems to say that the real point of Bible study is to "hook up."

The film "Gay Boyfriend", although slighlty odd, was actually pretty good. It has a catchy tune (I can't get it out of my head on occasion), and it looks like they had way too much fun making it. It does make a pretty good point about how strait guys have a bad habit of letting their eyes wander. I don't agree with homosexuality, but I think its a pretty good little film. The only thing that bugs me about it is that one of the girls sings off pitch the entire movie!

Ash Sunday

Time to be doing what I'm suppose to be doing. I really, really liked the Ash Sunday film we watched. At first, I didn't see the spiritual content of it. I did recognize though about the girl trying to break out of the box and that she couldn't do it alone. That's so true of our salvation too, isn't it? We can't save ourselves, or others for that matter, but only through the power of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ do we break out of the worldly box we are put in. I also appreciated the ending, where the girl outside the box (now consumed by the Holy Spirit) saw someone else trapped inside of a box of their own and went to share with them. That's what we're called to do - to share our love and hope in Christ with others. Overall, I thought it was a very beautiful film.

More moo

This is the magical cow fairy. It's the only cow I've ever drawn with horns. And the only pink one too. Except for that Easter bunny one . . . Anyway, I promise I will start talking about the videos we saw in class soon. Oh yeah - clarification - !Hero the Rock Opera (see pics below) is a SHOW not a rock group. I'll see if I can find the link to the sight so you can see what I'm talking about.