Assigned Entry #6

   Blogging is a term that I’ve been around for quite some time now. I remember when I had a Xanga so that I could keep up with all my friends that I had made through chatrooms and fan stuff. After that I moved up to livejournal in 2003 where a lot of my friends and I had moved. Later on Tumblr came into existence and it was as if that is all that has ever been by many younger people standards. The entire concept of keeping up with a social network of people is just something that I grew up; so I prefer to keep things online usually since it leaves little room for outside interactions that get messy. This was mostly because I grew up moving around a lot so I was used to the entire idea of writing letters or emails to people to keep in contact when I wasn’t going to be in a place for too long.

   With these writing assignments and blog entries, I really did try to keep myself serious with them, but I also tried to keep a lot of me in them as well. I was used to writing very plastic papers in the past and they just were boring to me. I didn’t connect with them personally so I was usually very bored when it came to doing those assignments in the past. This time around I used a slightly different approach and I found myself enjoying it a lot more. Putting myself out there and sharing stuff that I actually enjoy talking about made everything infinitely easier to finish them in the end.

   I do feel like this part of the class is something that allowed many of us to peek inside some of the other classmates around the room. Personally I do hate to usually talk to my classmates since that goes hand in hand with outside interactions, but with these assignments I was allowed to see how some of the students in the class were actually very interesting people. Like Tony for an example, I might not really talk to him even in class aside from little things here and there, but his blog became one of my favorite things to check in on since he posted awesome things for people to read or watch when he did his blogs. There were many people that did similarly awesome things and it just made the entire experience great. I’m sad that the Spring 2012 session is coming to a close since I know that I won’t see many of the people in this class that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting again. So while I have a chance now I’ll just wish everyone the best of luck with their future classes and majors. ♥

Coming Out?

A topic that is often very heavy with debate, not just within the United States is when someone finally ‘comes out of the closet’, revealing to people that they are not straight. While this is usually just a personal matter that shouldn’t exactly involve strangers to give some kind of input on the matter, it isn’t a perfect world, so these things become hot button topics and news for us. Depending on what level of popularity you might have changes where this is going to be discussed though. If you are a small town person that is speaking to their parents for the first time about it or if you are a celebrity of some sort, both will most likely draw some kind of reaction.

In the movie Bully, there was a girl that was made out to be some kind of pariah when it became known that she was a lesbian. Everyone in this small town started to treat her like she had some kind of disease that could possibly be caught just by way of getting too close to her. Her parents also had to deal with the bully that came with their daughter coming out. People stopped associating with them, refused to look at them, or talk to them. Ultimately the girl had to move with her family since the school was not a very conducive environment for her.

That is what you might get from a small town knowing that your sexual preference is not similar to the ‘norm’.

On a grander scale there are quite a few public figures that have come out. Some with welcoming responses and some with hushed. One of the more recent figures that caused quite a substantial shock to people that hadn’t been in the loop before was Frank Ocean. He was hip-hop artist that had written many different songs, be it love, and be it anything to his prerogative. Last year thought he wrote a blog post about his first love last year, that first love turned out to be a ‘he’ instead of a ‘her’.  While this was shocking in itself, the people that stepped up to support him after were more shocking. Tyler the Creator, someone that has often been called out for his homophobia slurs, just happened to be one of the first people to congratulate him for it.

The most recent outing happened just yesterday, it was Jason Collins, a veteran for the Washington Wizards. While there has been a former NBA player to come out as gay in the past, this is one of the first to come out while actively playing still. This is usually a sport, along with football, where you won’t find lots of people trying to admit this openly since it makes other people possibly perceive you as feminine or girly in some way. In spite of this though, he has received tons of support since coming out from other basketball players and other sports related men as well. Even if there is still plenty of hate from people that lurk behind the anonymity of the Internet to try and oppress this man from stepping up and coming out.

Personally on the matter, I’m looking forward to the day that it isn’t national coverage news when someone comes out. When that day happens I’ll know that we are finally moving towards a better understanding of the LBGT community as a whole and no longer seeing this as some kind of spectacle to watch and study.

Assigned Entry #5

Zombie Craze in Media

Media has a way of changing the way a people as whole view things. Back in the day when we were living off fictional tales of this and that, we were introduced to the idea that somehow there could be come kind of viral outbreak that would leave only a small number of people to survive. The remaining individuals would have to fend off attack from those that were uncontrollable and violent. This left a very terrorizing image to those that had never really thought about any such thing happening. Fast forward to now though it’s almost an everyday occurrence. Be it video games, books, comics, zombiewalks, and movies.

With this though, it seems that we go through bouts of fads every decade here in the United States, at least when it comes to mythical creatures of sorts. The main part of it typically being some kind of fascination that comes from things that are outside our own physical possibilities and fantasize about all the ways that we could someday either have real issues that deal with them. As most people know I have my own fascination when it comes to movies and video games, but combine that with zombies and I will most definitely have to own it at some point in time.  It’s just something that is interesting and easy enough to fall into without too much of a fandom war here and there. Usually the biggest one might result in ‘zombies shouldn’t run’ or ‘zombies shouldn’t be intelligent’.

Most recently in the zombie film area there was a new title called Warm Bodies, this is a movie that delves into the possibility that when you die and rise back up again that there might very well be some kind of human existence still within you. This is a sharp contrast to those that are usually intent on either exterminating the entirety of the zombie race or some how trying to weaponize it for military use. This change is a sign to show how the effects of a saturated market in regards to zombie love in the media has swayed what might have been considered entirely outside the norm and not for the public audience.

So with the influence of media we have been able to turn the monsters that would creep in the night into something that we can become friends with.  Zombies are no longer something we are entirely terrified anymore, especially if they can be so easily personable. True Blood and The Vampire Diaries were a similar thing for vampires and Teen Wolf was one as well for werewolves. Our admiration for things that are otherworldly has progressed over the years.

Fandom: A Closer Inspection on Kpop Fandom

As I’ve stated in the past I’m a fan of Korean Music and one of the largest pieces of this interest comes with the collective of the fandom. Personally I’m not usually one to be extroverted, but when it comes to things like concerts or fanmeets…well this is one area where I will actually go out so that I can join the masses so I can actually experience something with the crowd. It’s an amazing experience that is hard to really put into words, but being able to see something first hand and getting to share it with thousands of other people at an event is just one of the best feelings in the world to me. Plus I’ve made many friends when going to these events and I’ve been given a chance to meet many people from other states and countries that I met previously via online due to being in similar circles involved in fandom.

That being said though, there is a negative to fandom that can be quite deterring when you’ve been a part of it for so long. When you're in a fandom where a good majority of the girls involved are probably in the 13-18 demographic it is common to find things involving jealousy when a band member either is casted in a movie where he has to kiss a girl or a scandal breaks and he is suddenly in a relationship you knew nothing about. Just recently the news broke about Lee Taemin of Shinee getting a chance to join We Got Married. This is a show where two idols are paired together for a season and go through all the steps as if they have been married and the ups and downs that can come with it. Previously his bandmate Kim Jonghyun had a scandal that involved him dating Shin Sekyung, which ultimately resulted in a large drop out of Blingers (fan name for Kim Jonghyun fans) in the fandom. It was only when the news came out that they had broken up that he really found his footing again with some of his fans. 

The negative though that I am getting sidetracked from is about delusional mindsets. When fans stop realizing or taking into account that the people we enjoy to watch and fanboy or fangirl over are actually 'people'. Not just some supreme being that does everything right and is forever just commercially produced for our enjoyment. They have a job, they are doing their job to entertain us. They are also people that need some sense of joy outside of that job also and they shouldn't have to worry that any little misstep of theirs is going to lead to the fallout of the fandom for them. It's days like this that I feel like the latter person above. I wish to sometimes step back from the fandom so that I only have to support the music group while not partaking in the fandom side of it anymore.

Assigned Entry #4

Capitalism: A Love Story

    Outside of the facts that are covered throughout the majority of the movie though his use of satirical humor at times distracts me from his message entirely to me. So much so that it has caused me to dislike most of the works of his that I’ve seen over the years despite some of the really positive messages that he is trying to deliver to the viewer.

Yes, I know capitalism is bad.
Yes, I know that the government is in bed with the banks and Wall Street.
Yes, I know it is horrible that the way things are cause people to lose their homes.

     I don’t take someone serious though when they are going to the banks with armored trucks to try and get the ‘peoples’ money back from the banks. Sure this causes people to take notice of what he is filming and to maybe ask questions, but it does not actually for those people. It only allows for him to gain a few laughs from the people in the theater when bank owners have him thrown out or flat out ignore him. He is like Howard Stern in some aspects. Trying to go for that bigger shocking reaction that is going to make everyone stare in disbelief about what just happened. He’s found success with this method and I guess the old adage of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ works for him.

    Overall…the movie was a just that, it was a movie. Michael Moore has become a culture icon through his tactics when it comes to his documentary style and he knows what will grab the attention of the common movie watcher and I’m glad he has found a way to express his creativity.

Movie Trailers: To watch or not to watch?

If you've ever seen a movie in the theater, or watched television commercials you just might have come across a trailer for an upcoming film. Nowadays though it seems that there are more and more trailers that follow a theme of revealing too much information to the public. So much so that it almost renders itself pointless to spend the ten dollars to see it in the theater after you just watched a 2 1/2 minute unabridged variation of the film. While I know I am not the only one that feels this way about movie trailers, there is the other side of the fence. Some moviegoers need to have a majority of the key points of the film out on the table so that they can know if it is worth shelling out for them in the first place. So Directors are having to walk on the thin line of deciding just how much they want to show.

I stopped watching a majority of trailers to films I've not seen or heard of before because of this trend. Often looking them up later after I've watched the actual feature.

The trailer for Dream House leaves little to the imagination, while the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was able to leave views on the edge of their seat wondering just what could happen next while sparing very little. You can check them out below, but I do warn you if you've never seen Dream House you should watch with caution since it does give away most of the key plot elements.





My question to you though is: When is showing too much, really just 'too much'? Do you have any trailers that you love because they don't spoil the film? Or are you one of the ones that enjoy knowing everything that happens so you know you won't be wasting your money??

Assigned Entry #3

Whoever is the PR for ASU is really doing a good job by throwing out a few hot keywords to catch a regular person's eye, so they need to be commended for their skill.

SHORTER CLASSES

CHEAPER TUITION

GRADUATE QUICKER

These are some of the words that will practically pop up off the page for someone who is use to the cost of college and the amount of time they have to put into school

Shorter Classes? With ASU trying to lure in people with shorter classes, I'm really trying to see who it is benefiting in the long run. Sure you may be able to get out of the school by a whole year earlier than you had, but are you able to recall something that you learned in the year previous from one of those possibly vital classes that were cut from 15 weeks to only 7 1/2? Most likely not. Now take the number of classes you are doing under the new short course lineup and multiply that with the amount of hours there are in the day and see how much time you have for a feasible chance of getting a good grade through every single class on top of sleeping. Even more so if you are doing back to back during a single Fall semester or Spring semester.

Cheaper Tuition? I don't see anywhere in this where it states how they are going to be cutting down the amount of tuition that goes towards the classes. The only way it seems cheaper to me would be how they are basically forcing the teachers to do double the work for the same amount of hours in a single Fall semester. Take a single English 101 course in the 15 week variety, that teacher is teaching 40 some people and they get a full 15 weeks to explain the steps of their curriculum. Now take that English 101 course and cut it down to a 7 1/2 week version and that teacher is teaching the condensed crash course version of their previous curriculum, but the plus side to this...? 80 students! ASU is going to be the only one that is making money off this shorter classes idea since they are able to bring in more students to a single course per semester per teacher for the same salary.

Graduate Quicker? At what cost? If you did as many of these shorter class courses as possible, you are setting yourself up for maybe remembering a cliffs notes version of all the classes that you took. This will send you out to the workforce sooner, but you might have to spend a lot of your catching up since something that is important might have only been a small highlight in one of the classes you took.

All in all it's a fantastic way to cut some of the time that you spend in college to a bare minimum. If someone is actually considering taking one of these classes they need to be honest with themselves about the amount of time they are able to afford to the class or else they'll be spending double the tuition in retaking the courses.

And the nominees for the Best Picture are...

With the Oscars nearing its date with the Kodak Theater everyone that enjoys the Hollywood realm is turning their eyes to the news and media outlets to get their latest information about the nominees and the films. As for myself with the the weeks having wound down to only one more, I am left having to go through a flurry of film watching with friends and family to make sure I know all the titles that will be appearing in the ceremony this weekend.

The ones that you could say are the 'most important' of the nominations is that of the 'Best Picture'. While I might give a simple rating when it comes to the movies I watch, I thought it might be nice to give a little more meat to that rating for those that might not have had a chance to watch these films.

Argo:

I might not have actually known anything about Iran Hostage Crisis, but this movie was really able to engage me while working through the steps that led up to the breaking point of the crisis. It gave you a very surreal feel about the animosity of the country towards Americans. Once it came out though, many people argued that it is a very 'Americanized' version of the crisis. So take it as you will, I will take the facts of this film with a grain of salt and just consider it a very good work of film as it is, not some historical reenactment.

 Django Unchained: 

Tarantino films have always had a little bit of starkness to their often hard to swallow form. You would be hard pressed to find someone that is unable to name an additional Tarantino film if they already like one of his movies. Django Unchained follows suit with this. You are transplanted into an era where slavery is rampant among the nation and a recently 'freed' slave is working with a bounty hunter. You get to see a collective collage of excepts from their time together over the winter, but the real meat of the story comes out when Django and Dr. Schultz are trying to get Django's wife from another slave owner. The grit of some of this movie is hard to watch when Tarantino showcased his ability to make gore realistic enough to make even me turn my head away some.

 Les Misérables

With a penchant for musicals, I had my doubts about what this movie rendition could possibly do in comparison to the likes of the stage variation. Even more so was the fact that they were letting the 'actors' sing live. While watching it though, all of that dissolved. It was a beautiful rendition, and the actors were able to call forth a lot of the emotion that is found with their stage comparisons. It made me cry just like the stage version does, so if you are looking for an emotional film, by all means take the time to see Les Misérables.

Life of Pi:

Life of Pi transplants the viewer into the life of Pi Patel. Imagine you are on a ship with your entire family trying to find a new home in Canada from India, now quickly swipe that entire image away due to a shipwreck. Once you do that you are properly in Pi's shoes. You get to see the struggle of making it into a life boat along with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger over the passing hours. Without going too much into the immediate pieces after this I will tell you that it is a beautiful story along with some of the best shots I've seen in a movie for quite some time. If you liked movies like Castaway where most of the dialogue is the single actor on this journey, I'm sure you will enjoy this film.

 Lincoln:

I didn't expect this film to be so....interesting? I guess you could say. I love historical films when it is about history I find interesting, but something about the last couple months of Lincoln's life didn't sound appealing to me. I was quickly absorbed into the story and the family life that seemed tumultuous at times considering his wife wanting to keep their eldest son out of the war due to a previous son's death. It takes you through history that you may or may not know, but all of it is leading up to the changing of the law to abolish slavery once and for all. His final act before his untimely death at the Ford Theater.

 Silver Linings Playbook:

This is very surprising to me that this film is in the Best Picture category, that is not me saying that it is a bad movie though. I've never seen a film that is RomCom material almost as a nominee before so it caught me off guard. That being said it is a very good film since it explores some of the darker mental health side, most of this arising due to the fact that they had to deal with some heavy personal issues from the start so that lets the viewer get more of a feel for two main stars of this film. Jennifer Lawerence and Bradley Cooper played their parts very well and made for some quirky chemistry that I didn't believe would pan out very well at the beginning, in the end I was cheering for them.

 Zero Dark Thirty:

Zero Dark Thirty is another one of those films that got a lot of flack for being the 'Americanized' version of a piece of history since we are namely seeing it from out side of the camera. Beyond that though you get to watch the steps taken by agents to get intel from prisons after the 9/11 attacks. It was an interesting story for the most part since you got to see the lead actress take herself through a number of dangerous situations to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Working off a lead she had acquired over the years before she is able to give the correct location for where he has been hiding out. Ultimately it plays out in an outline of what most American's know as fact due to the news.






There are two films I have yet to see in the Best Picture category so I can't really go into detail about those...aside from maybe the reason why I haven't had a chance to watch them. The people that I like to typically watch films with apparently don't like crying and since both movies have mentioned a little bit of tear shed from audience members those are a no-go with them. Once I am able to catch them later this week I'll be sure to update about them.

Assigned Entry #2

This Week / Last Week

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The simple mention of Fox News is able to conjure up images of their very heavy bias when it comes to the Republican ideology. This bias for all things regarding the Republican party has become almost a joke of sorts among some people, so much so that Jon Stewart himself often has a little cracks to make mention their reporting. In this video he shows direct cuts between the Fox News teams broadcast when it comes to talking about both the RNC and DNC. While it might not seem like a big deal when looking to the fact that they lean heavily in the direction of the Republican party, it is this kind of blatant favoritism that may skew the view of fresh new viewers to politics or voting. Whether someone partakes in the Republican side or the Democratic side, Fox News favoritism could easily bleed over and give an unseemly light to the Democratic party for some new viewers due to the stark difference between how the RNC is praised in comparison to the DNC.

For a channel that promotes their 'Fair and Balanced' motto often you would think they are a very credible source, but when it comes to these things their credibility starts to go to the gray area of 'opinion' vs 'facts'.

Short Films

Have you ever watched a short?

A short is a short film about any number of things. This most often depends on what the creator is trying to express in the short amount of time that they are given. There are actually a couple rules to actually be considered short film. Anything that runs shorter than forty minutes with the credits included is viable for being known as a short. Featurettes get a similar treatment but they are usually between twenty to forty-four minutes and tied into movies most often, but because of their length they are not exactly a short and not exactly a feature film entirely. The last of shorts is the smallest variety and are called short-shorts, they are films that are under three minutes in length.

I went on a little shortscapade this weekend with a friend, leaving some of the short-shorts out of the list since they are just too short to be considered worth labeling for myself. With this little journey though I got to see that once you dip outside the realm of the Disney or Pixar inspired works you soon come across a variety that look very different in comparison to the picturesque dreamy realms that are usually painted up by the animated featurettes. Disney and Pixar usually try to give some moral to their stories, like don’t give up and true love can be found, or even you can choose the outcome of your own life if things are trying to say different.

When you visit other kinds of shorts you get to see a grim side to reality at times since they are packing so much into such a small time frame. A good example of this is two of the new recent shorts.

Disney’s Paperman:

Stanley Pickle:

From the very beginning of Paperman you know it is going to be about a pair of individuals that are somehow destined to be together and you are swept up in this whirlwind of chance happenings. On the other hand you have Stanley Pickle, he is a the quintessential form of a Neil Gaiman short practically. Lonely and spending his time with wind up people and animals that he created from living things that once were alive in his house. Not that I am knocking either of the two types, it just goes to show that there is more outside of the cute little animated world of shorts that most movie goers are typically introduced to. Have fun looking at some of the shorts this year when the Oscars air. ♥

Assigned Entry #1

Blogs are wonderful little things that can either be helpful as well as useful or they can be entirely mind numbingly wasteful in eating up our time. It allows for an entire community of people to connect while inviting people that wouldn’t be privy to such chances normally, but it also offers the exact opposite of this by giving users the ability to be entirely anonymous if you really wish to do so. Personally I do spend a great deal of time online and have enjoyed when the Webby Awards come around because it gives me a chance to see a lot of sites that I have never really heard of from the year before. With it comes a collective of new writers or webcomic to follow and grow to love. Some of the 2012 Webby nominees and winners that I in particular enjoyed are:

Hyperbole and a Half:
This site won the first place title for both Most Humorous Weblog and for Best Writing on a Weblog. Part of the reason can be found in the fact that she writes and draws her comics about things that have happened in her life. When I first came across a comic of hers I remembered just laughing throughout it entirely. Upon rereading through it nothing has changed from that level of hilariousness. I actually had to make myself stop from reading her stuff when I was left sitting with tears streaming down my eyes from laughing so much and waking my sibling up as well. If you want to laugh for a while you should look through some of her stories.

I give this blog a rating of: ♥♥♥♥

The Bloggess:
Jennifer Lawson was one of the nominees who were in the Best Writing Weblog category. It’s very easy to see why she is here upon giving it more than just a precursory read through. Additionally this isn’t entirely surprising considering that she is actually not just a blogger and has written a book called ‘Let’s Pretend This Never Happened”. It’s a memoir of sorts that she has written over the last eleven years of her life. She is kind of similar to the writer for Hyperbole and a Half just without the webcomics attached to showcase the story, leaving that to the reader with the way that she paints a situation to make them laugh out loud to themselves all the while. If you want to stroll through her hilarious accounts, give her a little gander and amuse yourself for a while. The good thing is that I’m not the only one to feel likes this though. She has amassed quite a collection of fans, some including other amazing writers like Neil Gaiman, who said:

“The Bloggess writes about stuff that actually is laugh-out-loud, but you know that you shouldn’t be laughing and probably you’ll go to hell for laughing, so maybe you shouldn’t read it. That would be safer and wiser.”

I personally give this blog a rating of: ♥♥♥♥

XKCD:
This is purely a webcomic that makes use of a science background along with math and other satirical situations. It was nominated for the Most Humorous Weblog category which is definitely well placed considering all the comedic value that can be found just going through the day to day doodles put up. Now if you are one of those people that wind up feeling like Penny from Big Bang Theory you might not enjoy this collection of drawings as much as others.

That being said it is definitely worth checking out since it does carry quite a few gems in it about things that are outside of the science field entirely. Dipping into other nerdy behaviors like gaming, computers, and politics, as well as insights for dating among the science community at times. The writer also has a thing for charts and graphs that are both accurate and hilarious once you actually pay attention to how things change over time.

I give this blog a rating of: ♥♥♥ (since I know that it is a niche comic and not all will enjoy)