Week 14: Long Form Television

I've been told that as a kid, I was glued to TVs. I would watch shows for hours and would throw the biggest fit when I was told to stop. It usually didn't matter what I was watching I was just entranced by it.

To be honest it hasn't changed much. I adore TV shows still to this day. But like many people in this day and age its hard for me to watch as regularly as I use too. As a kid I didn't have an obligations with due dates or many other issue. It just wasn't something I had to deal with.

Because of this, I use Netflix. A lot. Its just a lot easier for me in the long run. I guess the only disappointing thing about that is that for the most part Netflix still has a very limited amount of series compared to what is out that. NCIS has been constantly rated one of the best television series on TV right now but still isn't available which is aggravating to me because I want to watch it but can't.

The great thing about Netflix is binge watching some of the series. I readily agree I would much rather watch an entire season of a show all in one go than wait for each episode to come out once a week. Its slow and I'm incredibly impatient. I suppose the only flaw there is that once you run out of episode you have to wait for the next season to come out possibly waiting another year to get on Netflix.

To help people continue watching other series Netflix is nice enough to recommend other series to keep people satisfied not to mention changing their selections on occasion. I've been recommended both Doctor Who and Star Trek several times now and haven't attempted to watch those simply because of just how many episodes there are.

Television still is something I enjoy watching when I do have the chance but I recognize that times are changing. Episodes are often released online within a few days of it showing on cable. In the case of some cartoons, hackers often leak episodes hours early. In this age, I think it would be better if the episodes were more simultaneously hared with viewers.

Week 4: Pulp Fiction

Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie
Read by Kim Newman & Sam Baldwin

Click link for recording:

http://kimartblog.tumblr.com/private/67638223248/tumblr_mwlnigcFOW1rjzhdy

Week 8: Screenplay

Week 13: Remix: Old to New

Remix is a constant part of our culture these days, with examples like the sampling of music into rap or techno or simply rebooting a series. It’s become commonplace that for the most part we thing nothing about it.

It’s become increasing common in the movie and television industry. In the last few years we have 3 separate remixes of Sherlock Holmes; one movie franchise with two movies, one television reboot from BBC, and then another one from CBS an American studio. How is that all of these can be successful but still draw from the same inspiration. That’s just how reboots work often-twisting things to work better in a modern day setting or for a wider audience range. 

Sherlock, the BBC show is a modern adaptation with little changes to the otherwise. All of the characters have similar motives as they did in the original series puss or minus a few changes to have them be more acceptable to the audience. The most that changes about this adaptation is the melding to modern technology and this century’s society.

Elementary on the other hand takes a lot more risks with its remix of the old and melding it also with modern day society. Sherlock remains similar to his past if not just a bit more rude but John Watson is no longer a man and is not a woman named Joan. Other changes have been made in contrast to the other reboot. The setting takes place in a modern day New York City. Other changes include Mrs. Hudson no longer being this old lady but know a much young transgender woman. One of the biggest plot twists on the show involves Sherlock Holmes long time archenemy Moriarty and his love interest Irene Adler. Needless to say if it hasn’t become quite obvious, I much prefer Elementary to its British counterpart.

Their remix don’t just go the simple rout of just modernizing it they, in the great words of Miss Fizzle “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” And that’s the simple truth.

Week 9: The Common Themes of Directors

Wes Anderson is a man of many talents. He has been a director, producer, writer and even an actor to several films. This may not seem very impressible but considering he has done some of these together for some of his films I think that add to the level of his skill.

The 3 films I selected to watch of his were The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom. After watching the first part of Moonrise Kingdom, I became interested enough to finish the movie on my own. Being able to watch some of his other movies seemed like a good idea.

And it really was. I had heard about the movie the Fantastic Mr. Fox but hadn't had the motivation to actually see it even after hearing it was good from several friends. It was the same for Moonrise Kingdom thou I never had the motivation to watch that one ether. The only one I hadn't heard of before was The Royal Tenenbaums but considering that came out when I was only 9 years old I feel that’s explanatory.

Having watched all of these films now it seems he really likes to focus on a slice of life feeling. He focused on dramas involve the growing up of characters as they face roadblocks in their life. He also likes having a family connection as all of the films have a close family with very little focus on people outside of this inner circle.

His use of camera angle and point of view is some of the best I’ve seen in years. One example I can give is when Mr. Fox is robing the cold storage for one of farmers and we see the entire scene from the screens of security cameras. I find these odd placements of cameras prominent in many of his movies as well as almost a side scrolling view like in video games. It’s not the normal views we get currently in the movies.

Another thing found in all of his movies is the idea that he separates each part into chapters, parts that are labeled often visually on the screen. I read somewhere it feels like very much like a novel. His movies translate very much more to a visual adaptation of an actual book then a translation of a screenplay.

Wes develops characters at his own pace giving us just enough information at the beginning to give us an idea but then slowly giving more away s the movie goes on. Hints are given on what’s going on but nothing is finally revealed until the climax. He gives each of the characters their own quarks in nature that may seem strange to us. It is perfectly natural to the world they live in for the most part but they are still strange to everyone else.

So in all, I like his movies thou nothing I would watch normally.

Week 11: "You" and Me in the Wonderful World of Gameing

You, a novel by the game designer Austin Grossman, tells the story of Russell as he gets a job at Black Arts games not only for a paycheck but also to find about the death of a friend of his. It revolves around the gaming industry as told from someone who worked on multiple games himself and knows what he's talking about unlike others who have written the same thing. 

Was he more successful than others?

I don't particularly think so. As someone who has read others exploring video games as a setting for a story, I can't say this one stands out to me particularly well. It's probably a combination of things. I didn't particularly like Russell as a character. He seems like a jerk who thought himself to be high and mighty to many of the people he meets despite the fact he grows to like them. Even then he doesn't stand out much from the standard main character just coming off as annoying.

I think the biggest problem I have with books trying to use games as a setting is that video games are a visual medium. They are shown to us not with just words but moving pictures that we can control and progress at our own pace. We control how fast we get to one point or another. We control the main character. Its all something we can watch and not read admiring the creativity of others instead of coming up with the little details from our own imaginations.

In this case, I'm not sure I'll find any story about video games very interesting when I can just go play a game myself.

There is one video game story I do admit has been very successful and I enjoyed what little I've seen and read of the series is .hack//Sign. The series has had many incarnations of manga, anime, and games. It understands the idea of being inside a game and the world outside of it from the view of players.

I think I good reason I find this series better is not only because i found the story more compelling but the fact I enjoyed having to watch something instead of reading it. I had pictures to look at in the manga, animations to watch in the anime, and I got to play the game itself. Its this that I feel makes it have a step up over other novels trying to accomplish the same thing. Even with a few visuals could have all the difference.

Week 10: Stories of Our Time

( I only realized after writing this we were not required to write an entry for this week.)

Unlike some past weeks, I think this one particularly stood out to me.

I was much to young to remember the Columbine High School massacre. I was only in the 1st grade when it happened and I don't even remember hearing about it at the time. I couldn't even tell you if there were ever any security measures taken place at my school afterwards.

What I do remember is September 11th just two and a half years later. It had only been that short amount of time and I had gone into the 4th grade. But still I can remember it quite well like I'm sure many others can as well. This is the major event of our childhood like Columbine was for many others and I'm sure what Sandy Hook is to many kids now.

These events define much of who we are today. They have affected us all in a variety of ways, some of it hitting closer to home than others.

Just like September 11th, I remember Sandy Hook as well.

These short stories show us a different perspective to events one that doesn't come from the bias of television. In Newsworld, the teens try to find out where things have gone wrong, looking to the local amusement park for answers. They don't know what they will find breaking in but at the same time all they know is the mews media and how things seem. They hope that they will gave some incite from the park's sets of other past news.

After all, history tends to repeat itself. In the past 20 years, there have been a shocking amount of shootings at schools that is several times too many. There have been too many terrors from people who hate anyone who doesn't agree with their views. Its a terrifying time we live in in some ways.

Week 6: Voice of our Generation

Our generation has seen changes that can't even be imagined by our parents or grandparents. The developments in technology have advanced so rapidly even our generation has trouble keeping up with the change with new products seemingly coming out weekly.

We are the generation that shifted into this new age where computers have replaced books and newspapers, where communication between countries can travel instantly, where its no longer hard to find out what's going on in other parts of the world. We are a generation focused on technology and social media. The Internet provides us with endless amounts of entertainment and information. With this, we grow up multitasking and also growing bored easily. Another curse of our generation is we have been desensitized from all the things we see in society or even on television. Growing up watching reruns of law and order or CSI can do that to a child’s mind. And also cause nightmares.

One of the biggest influences on our generation continues to be a big part of many lives. Harry Potter has crossed generations with its books, films, and other media but it's very close to our generation because we are the first ones who grew up with it. We have been there every step of the way, the books continued to come out as we grew up with the characters. We grew as they did. They are the ones who lead us into adulthood.

To be honest, I grew up with fantasy books focusing in other world rather than our own because I wanted to escape into them. I watched cartoons based on superheroes and magic. The TV shows that were realistic tended to be crime shows where they almost always caught the bad guy. I want to say that reflects a part of our generation that dreams and imagine of impossible things and gains these perspectives through the variety of different mediums at our grasps. But I know everyone doesn’t share this view. As said previously, with all the information at our fingertips its hard to narrow the list down to anything.

Week 5: The experience reading 'Girl in Landscape'

 Whether I liked the book 'Girl in Landscape' by Jonathan Lethem is irrelevant but I will say I did not with the writing being dull to read for the most part.

There, that's all that needed to be said on my opinion.

Getting to my experience on the book is a bit more hit and miss. I couldn't read the book in one sitting as I found myself reading pages over again to see what I might have skimmed over the first time. As a relatively fast reader I'm guilty of reading probably at minimum every other word in a story often skipping sentences in my haste. In this story its impossible to do so because skipping a sentence makes the next feel odd to read. It doesn't flow with the book like it should result in me having to reread it all over again, this time slower. It's an exhausting process and I just couldn't urge myself to finish the book in one go.

It was probably this constant need to repeatedly go to the library to pick up the book again that made the already slow pace drag out longer. The seemingly careless, throwaway dialogue at the beginning doesn't help as it provided the backgrounds of the characters and the world at a tooth pulling pace. To be honest when I read the back cover, knowing full well at the end the mother was going to die, I was expecting it to be much sooner. Instead it takes two chapters. Two very long chapters.

The rest of the book goes about along the same pace. There are parts where I'm generally interested in what’s going on Pella being sensibly girl at only 13. And then there are times where she seems almost freakishly mature. It’s rather off-putting how easily she can handle things becoming another thing I have to read back a few paragraphs just to make sure I read her actions right and that’s what she was really doing.

Nothing really caught my attention besides the idea of accumulation they talk about through out the book. The need to change to adapt to the environment is a very weird then but in the book it feels like something more. It was one of the few things that kept me going thought the book to see how this 13 year old and the people around her react to this new place and people.

Week 3: The Difference Between Words and Pictures

What do pictures add to a text?

What does text lose when there are gone?

There are pros and cons to having stories illustrated into comics. A story composed of just words is no less interesting than one acomanyed by pictures. With just words, the reader has to use their imagination to fill in the gaps the author leaves out, details that normally don't matter so much typically about the characters apperence or small details in the setting. Other details are flushed out such as backgrounds and plot while these more visual descriptions are expected to be flushed out with the readers thoughts and imagination.

Comics almost do the complete opposite. They strip a story down to the barest of words, only for dialogue and brief moments of visual information. The rest is the man words transformeded into pictures replacing sentences with panels of the comic.

Reading Tintin it was interesting to see how easily it could be transformed into a written novel in some ways and in others would fail miserably. The characterization we as readers get as soon as we see TIntin is on you might not realize at first. Tintin is the most normal looking of the many cast members with no real exagerations made to his character. At the same time how would you describe his apperence in words? A young man with strawberry blond hair and beady eyes? Thinking with that description in mind would you have come close to how he actually looks in the comics? Probably not. The stylization of the pictures adds a certin character that would normally be left out of a novel.

The first Tintin graphic novels can be a bit wordy, using an excessive amount of words for some dialogue or inner monologue. This changes as the artist and writer figures out how to visualize these thoughts thrust saving space on the page and giving panels a more open feeling. Over all the later Tintin books tend to be better in the long run as Hergé gets better himself. Still over all, Tintin's visualizations with its characters really make it hard for me to thing that it would have the same effect as a novel as it would as a comic.Sometimes there's just no substitute for images and the same goes for the other way around. I think your preference for a series can come from if you've read the novel first or the comic or in these days seen the movie first. The lovely part about media is that it has these multiple art forms to show you a story and in the end it doesn't really matter how you see or read it.

Week 2: Literary work and The Great Gatsby

Literary work in the simplest terms is the art of written work. Literature actually means, ‘Things made from letters’.

Going a bit more in detail, literary work is imaginative or creative writing expressed in letters of the alphabet. That's a rather broad definition for a broad subject.

The UK makes defining literary work a bit easier as they have made it a part of copyright law since at least 1710. This copyright law defines literary work as ‘any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or sung’.

Many things can be classified as literary work even essays and poems as they are in fact ‘things made from letters’. Philosophical, historical, journalistic, and scientific writings are usually thought as literature as well.

With such a broad definition it seems like almost anything can be classified as a literary work of some kind or another. Even some comics could be considered as such as they use words for dialogue in most cases.

Now what does this have to do with he book, "The Great Gatsby"?

The Great Gatsby was a book written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. The book revolves around the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and infatuation with Daisy Buchanan in the made-up town of West Egg on Long Island in the summer of 1922. It focuses on the relationships of the residents including Jay and Daisy told from the mouth of an outsider Nick Carraway. The book also helps provide a look into life during the Roaring Twenties giving glimpses of the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging during prohibition.

Many would call the book a literary classic not to mention one of the greatest works of American literature for these looks into the past. But looking at the book its self does this make it literary work?

Yes, yes it does.

Assumptions about Oz and Hunger Games

To be honest, I know I have more assumptions about Hunger Games than the Wizard of Oz.

Before this class I was familiar with both of these series having researched but not read ether of them. Though I knew that the movie and book for Wizard of Oz were different from one another I thought the book would still have components that would be reflected in the film. In ways I was right at wrong in those assumptions. The movie gives you at most a looking glass view of Oz changing many characters just a bit to fit the slightly different plot. I didn't know of the threats that the Witch sent after Dorothy or some of the other small details left out in the movie.

I still have a bunch assumptions about Hunger Games and I really do not plan on fixing any of them. I assume I will not like the series due to several of its key components during the plot aka its child killing and using this for the amusement of others. I did not like this in the movie Battle Royal and I like it even less now. I'm sure there are some points that I would like but I just do not care. The movie over all is a better way for me to watch the series but that still means I have to watch the killing's instead of just reading about them.

I love reading. I read when ever I get the chance and when I get a good book. The Wizard of Oz is everything I like it a book; Characters that I can grow to love, a fantasy like setting and a villain that makes my skin crawl. Hunger Games on the other hand is mostly what I don't. As I have said here and in the previous journal, I do not like when children killing one another is made in to a sport for speculators to get their kicks and giggles out of. It makes me sick despite the facts I've heard other very good things about the series. For that reason I just can't get into it. The movies I might be willing to give more of a chance as I've heard that they are even better than the books but still that means I have to put the effort into going to see even the movie and I could care less to do even that.

Week One: Hunger Games ≈ Wizard of Oz

Are the two series similar? Hard to believe that the possibility even exists that the two have anything in common. Both have different plots, one focusing on a girl trying to get home to Kansas and the other about a young lady trying not to be killed in a competition.

To be honest, I do not like Hunger Games, the book or the series. While I find the movie actually decent, I couldn’t get through the book. My main issue is the killing of children for the entertainment of others. I don’t like it and can’t really stand to read it.

Despite my aggravation towards the series, I have to admit the hints of similarities between the two exist. It came as a surprise to me to find them at all. Its just not something you would normally compare.

The very first is the sudden thrust into a completely different world that they are unfamiliar with. A world seemingly much better than the one they have known all their life. Both Dorothy and Katniss grew up in areas of poverty, without the comfort of most of the luxuries we have today. It was very dark and bleak visually shown in both movies. Even in the book the Wizard of Oz the color beyond grays is mentioned when Dorothy arrives in Oz. then suddenly they have gain access to the new place filled with color and wonder. And in both cases the wonder hides dark intentions.

As you might have guessed, both girls are trying to survive in this new world they have arrived in. It is unfamiliar to them, strange and mysterious and danger lurks around every corner. They don’t know if a step in the wrong direction will cost or help them. Despite the level of the actual danger differs between both movies, from a single person with an army to a group of individuals, the ladies move through the story surviving against the odds to reach their goal. They have to gain allies and with their help ultimately defeat the enemy. They ability to adapt to the situation ensures their eventual survival.

While these similarities are in the broadest of subjects both play such a key importance that it’s interesting to think of what these two very different characters have in common. If similarities can be found between these two, I wonder what other movies could be compared to one another.