Loved this movie.
But a certain someone asked me what it was about and I found myself realizing how complex this story is.
If at first I had to put it in only a couple words I'd say love and forgiveness. But there is a deep complexity to that.
Hidden within everyone is an instinct for anger and rage. It bursts out every now again and it is something very real to life. I remember feeling that way as a child, ready to explode. Whether it was sister rivalry or being at odds with mom or brotherly impatience, you could feel it bubbling to the surface and all you wanted to do was scream, let it out, make someone listen. As you learn and grow older, gaining a certain level self-awareness, you can begin to step back from the situation, but that feeling is still there, ready to fly out. When it does, being human it will, you have to be ready to forgive because love is the greatest part of humanity. How do we show that even when we're scared or angry or hurt... when we're lost, or lonely or confused we still love each other? To accept that feeling, let go and forgive. It's that kind of love that connects us. Life is a wild thing.

So for me, Where the Wild Things Are is about what it means to be human.

Curiously enough people do find another's blog interesting...
What an adventure... I'm in the strangest place in my life right now. Things are falling away and while I still have the tendency to act like a child sometimes, I am back in my home town finding out how people tick... how life is endlessly changing. I'm evolving and trying to adapt. It's unnerving.

So far this summer... going with the theme of this blog... I have an internship at a local production company and I just participated in the 48 Hr film festival:

1) The Internship. I've learned some and yet have been kind of disappointed. Transcriptions, research, casting assisting, production assisting, extra, QC, etc. It's good, but I just want to be needed for more than just a little job here and there. Shadowing associate producers I guess is the best I can do.

2) Almost a complete fail... We didn't make the deadline but we did complete a film. There's a little success. I got to understand production dynamics a bit better with what is really necessary not to overlook. I also got to see how a team can really not mesh.
I'll link the film if it's ever put online :)

Leaving for the mountains in a few days... it's so damn hot here.
That's all I got.

From June 1st 2008:

Okay I have a lot of things just stirring around in my head so I'm just going to start writing...

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. She's 43 now. We went and saw Maid of Honor at the theater, super awesome chick flick. Kadeem Hardison (lead guy in Cassidy Kids, the movie my brother is in) was in it and I couldn't place him until the credits. Patrick Dempsy is still looking fine for being old :) lol The movie made me really want to marry a guy who has become my best friend... and I don't think that's a false idea. They preach to you that these chick flicks give women a false reality about love (and albeit some do) but others have great themes. I recommend Maid of Honor to any girl looking for a decent chick flick :)

Last night I was contemplating a statement my friend made on the second to last day of school.
After reading my sentence I was using for my project he goes,
"That's cool. I don't believe in absolute truth. I wish I did but I just don't."
"Oh okay."

So whenever someone says they don't believe in something I believe in, I like to reexamine my belief... so as I lay in bed thinking out how I logically see absolute truth this is kind of what came to mind...
I believe that there is an absolute truth that we must find for ourselves... and there are many paths to getting there. Now I thought well what do people believe in the most generic of terms possible: either there is an afterlife (some sort of heaven) or we just die. To me, the earth being the end-all-be-all to the meaning of our existence (Atheism) seems just so limited when you really look at how amazing life itself is and how in the grand scheme of this galaxy/universe we live in, if things had been just perfect we wouldn't all be here... there's a design. That is my opinion but just like my friend I just don't see how there cannot be a creator... Random luck? Naw, I've seen karma at play too many times to believe in pure random luck.

Now if there is some higher power, then there is probably some sort of heaven or afterlife (though Agnostics might just think there is a high power but we still die and the end). As for all the other religions, I believe they are just different paths to same end: absolute truth...
The universal truth that we will all come to find when we die. There is one but it's a constant journey toward it through some sort of means of truth you believe is right. For me I'm Christian (Catholic to be specific) because for me that is the absolute truth I have found.

That doesn't mean I can judge whether or not you will go to "Heaven", nor does it mean either of our paths to truth are "wrong" (esp. to the point of needing to threaten me). It is what I believe is right and I will tell you about my beliefs, but you have the freewill to take it or leave it.

While it all is a mystery, there is a logic to it that gives my life stability. With relativity (ie. you're right and I'm right and he's right...etc) there is nothing stable to believe in... because if everyone is right we are just contradicting our own belief. That is why I believe in absolute truth.

One thing though... if you ever take a good hard look at each religion... there are underlying themes that bring peace to people's lives that are all the same. I think there is a connection to these philosophical principles that would keep us from being so divided. Another friend in the same class... his belief was that Religion divides and racism will always exist... I don't think its religion that divides i think it is ignorance (because if we were truly following a christian, hindu, muslim, or jewish... etc life then we would understand the principle of do unto others, sacrificing love... we are to judge for ourselves not for others... etc. Disrespect, hatred, causing physical harm to those who don't think or look like us... are all preached against in every faith and yet it never occurs to anyone that they are contradicting their own beliefs).

Just somethings I've been thinking about... I wouldn't mind someone playing devils advocate and giving me a good argument as to why there is no absolute truth. I'm up for philosophical, or musical, or cinematic-al or just plain random discussion any day... Ramble away (or rather Ramble on...)

EDIT: (6 Months Later)

Alright I've been reading a book called Consilience by E.O. Wilson... this is some more thoughts that pertains to this idea:
After finishing the last three chapters of Consilience, I wonder if consilience is something else. As he states toward the end, his book is focused on the “gap analysis” of his goal of unity, growing increasingly complex with each chapter on another area of integration. The gaps are huge, almost dauntingly so. But what is consilience really? Filling in the holes in science? Filling in the personal holes?
I’m going to define consilience as something personal. Personal consilience is at its core synthesis. We gather all this knowledge from all different realms to what end? We don’t need to flippantly disregard any knowledge gained by non-scientific means. Sure people might give hierarchy to the knowledge base they indentify and understand the most (in regard to our modes of inquiry for the world: practical, scientific, spiritual/ethical, and aesthetic), but consilience can still succeed in our lives even if I am an aesthetic and spiritual viewer. When Wilson gave his interpretation of a transcendentalist’s account, I found myself agreeing. When Wilson gave his own Empiricist view I found myself questioning. His broad rationalizations left me wanting. I am not a zombie; emotional relationships with the world and within the world are defining.
In a three-hour conversation with my friend, feeling depressed, we discussed religion and life, coming to the idea that if you listen long enough you realize everyone is arguing the same thing. War, which Wilson makes as his first point for dispelling religion, is an irrational construct of man, not of religion. Since if people rationally synthesized all the views they are presented, we would see encompassing similarities. With religion and race, I don’t know if it’s natural or artificial, but man seeks out (and often focuses negatively) differences rather than fully embracing similarities. Christianity, although painfully divided in denominations, has a set of pretty much the same beliefs, Judaism very close, and so on. Even in Eastern traditions I see overarching beliefs that are all leading to personal fulfillment and understanding. Returning to consilience, even if religion and spirituality have some biological basis, we can use both elements to better understand the faith, fulfillment and morality found there.
The other thing that bothers me about religion becoming purely biological firings in our brains as Wilson states is that we become godlike in status, a power not meant for fragile humanity. This idea follows Heidegger; man is god. That understanding may or may not fundamentally alter how we see, interact, and support each other. Unfortunately I feel it will affect us negatively. If there is one thing religion does (in hopes of gaining science’s support) is humbling man into a gratitude and altruism for this world. Global climate change can be helped through man’s efforts, but if man thinks he’s godlike and has this power to overcome anything thrown at him, he will wait until it is most convenient for him to do so. And where does that leave man if he finds out he waited in vain? In a sort of hell, hoping that we survive it.
To sum this up, in a personal sense, consilience is attainable within my transcendentalist view of the world. It’s how I synthesize the knowledge I gain from all facets of my life that brings those views together into a unified wisdom of my being. Humanity is not merely the sum of its infinite parts, but the whole as found through consilience.

Paper I wrote for class:
While most people enjoy being told a story, art, even film, does not always seek to tell us one. Sometimes every image is simply placed together to form an idea or theme, or the series of events is merely a portrait of a person, situation, or historical event. In the case of Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett paints the picture of the slum life for African Americans in the late seventies. To do this, Burnett creates a unique, unstructured narrative, and combines it with untrained actors, raw cinematography, and a real setting to convey and comment on the dreary social situation for poor African Americans during this period of history in the United States.
Killer of Sheep is an examination of Watts, a Los Angeles ghetto where the protagonist Stan lives with his wife and kids. The film follows various events that happen in his life and his family’s lives with very little plot structure and a sense of detachment from the rest of the world. The general audience also becomes somewhat alienated since the situation is not one they can directly relate to, nor is there a storyline to pull them in. By making the audience feel this way, Burnett uses the film as a whole to convey that growing alienation within Stan’s character, which is a distinguishing feeling amongst black men of this slum society who could hardly hope for anything better for their families.
During the seventies, African Americans still had to fight for equality in society as the Civil Rights act had passed only in the last decade. To put the setting of the film in a historical context, twelve years had passed since the huge riots in Watts had destroyed much of the area. Economically incapable of rebuilding the area, the film shows the audience still bombed out buildings, piles upon piles of rubble, and ever-deteriorating homes, which no one seemed to have the capacity to overcome or reclaim. Yet, the outside world had moved on and had no interest in these people. They had no ability to escape the past that was present all around them. As shown in many scenes in the film, the majority of the people in impoverished Watts were African American, and were either unemployed, or had a dead-end job with no prospects of getting more money or a better position. This defeating social climate left this rather unnoticed population living day-to-day with hardly a dream of escaping or rising above. The lifestyle presented in Killer of Sheep does gain sympathy from viewers, but there is little to no hope to which the characters can cling or the audience can feel.
The oppressive nature of living in the unchanging society of Watts captured in the film could not have been as effective without Burnett’s choice in doing away with a distinct story. Without a story, the film is static, the characters are stuck, and the audience is forced to analyze what is going on in this time, in this society. They are forced to look at how these people live and what they go through. Even in the alienation of being stuck in a world the audience has probably never experienced without any kind of plot structure, Burnett makes it evident that he wants viewers to watch life in Watts as plainly and truthfully as he can. He offers no solutions to the problems the characters face, but his film does foster discussion of whether there is any hope of a solution for the social situation to which these people are confined.
Along with this lack of a plot, the way Burnett chose to make the movie adds to our experience of the characters’ situations. Within the cinematography aspect of the film, Burnett shot on black and white 16mm film stock, which gives it an older, grittier, feel (not to mention, it was cheaper for him as a student). Black and white, in particular, gave things a stronger contrast and yet a duller view of the world. The film stock Burnett chooses, in a sense, is the pair of glasses the audience is forced to view the world he presents to them. Thus the high contrast black and white image makes one feel that this dreary world is all there is, and this is how it always will be.
In addition to the stock, many of the shots Burnett uses are unique from the mainstream shot-reverse-shot pattern. There are usually very long continuous takes of the children fighting or playing or trying to escape the cruelties in their world. One scene that stood out in this way was the scene of Stan’s daughter in the dog mask. It illustrated the continuous imaginative escapism that the children of the slums were using to cope with the fear and hopelessness of their situations.
While some of his shots were characteristic of being an amateur, Burnett’s mainstream-quality compositional skills enhance this torn-apart world in a way that accentuates the details. In one of the opening scenes where the boys are playing and fighting, the viewer sees the endless rubble in an old train yard that is their playground. Again, while using the world imaginatively, the reality of the situation these kids are in is emphasized by these wide shots. Additionally, shots in the house accentuate the bareness of the walls and rooms, as well as the overall worn-out feel to every part of their home. What little these people had was mostly falling apart to the point of being un-repairable, adding to the overall feeling of oppressive hopelessness.
The scenes in the slaughterhouse with Stan are artistic montages where repetitive shots graphically feature the killing of sheep represent the mundane, yet disturbing and queasy nature of his work. Each shot seemed to add another layer of detachment and resentment to Stan, causing his character to become more and more indifferent to the world. With little money and little dreams for anything better, Stan’s plight is also evident through the shots in the scene where he tries to buy the car motor. Any possible glimmer of hope he had was immediately killed by ignorance and indifference from the people in the society that he is surrounded by, which was emphasized by the final long shot of the motor lying broken in the middle of the street.
Shots of course could not be made without lighting, but Burnett’s use of lighting was minimal to completely natural. If the scene was inside, characters were either lit by the natural light coming through the windows or directly from light sources in the house, such as the overhead light in the nighttime kitchen scene. The use of realistic lighting brings a sense of integrity and simplicity to the characters’ situation. Lighting is not used in the traditional sense of making the characters or setting look good, but rather to objectively paint a world that outside audiences are meant to analyze truthfully.
As far as motifs within these shots and scenes, the killing of sheep over and over again became a metaphor for the reality of the world in which he lives. His dream that there were no sheep there to count illustrates the lack of opportunities to even dream of a better life. In reference to the area of Watts itself, the slaughterhouse effectively represented the violent undertones and oppressive surroundings that seemed to plague their lives. Even if a man did not have a job in a slaughterhouse, this manual factory labor is the only type of job he could truly aspire to have. If a man was unemployed in this environment, then the next best way to make money was to join a gang or resort to some kind of illegal trade, where violence is often necessary. The violence of killing animals for a job parallels the violence of gang killings in Watts. Either way, dead-end blue-collar employment or dead-end unemployment, the film repetitively suggests these people bare the knowledge that life is without hope for positive change.
Another recurring theme intertwined amongst the darkness in Stan’s life is noticing simple moments of beauty. When he holds the coffee cup to his cheek reminding him of the warmth of a woman’s body, or when he dances with his wife slowly in the living room, or while holding his daughter; these tender moments are the only source of escape Stan has from the harsh realities in which he finds himself. The people of the community understand the permanence of their position and must find ways to cope and be content with what live does have to offer them.
Aesthetically, sound design was a somewhat lacking attribute of the film. Audio replaced with ADR from the studio was extremely noticeable as voices felt out of sync with the image. This was not necessarily a huge hindrance since most of the film was without dialogue and much of the dialogue was mostly meaningless. This being true, the lack of meaningful dialogue suggests that what is said between people has no impact; everyone remains rather unchanged by an argument or a dinner conversation. It continues the theme of an oppressed and hopeless society. Other than dialogue, music popular from the time period is what stands out in the film’s sound design. The songs tend to characterize the emotions of whatever is going on in the scene, since the film hinges on these emotions within this particular setting.
Beyond the image and sounds presented, Burnett chose to use mostly inexperienced actors to enhance the realism and honesty of the film. By bringing sincerity to the characters themselves, viewers, while alienated, are sympathetic to them, hoping they might achieve a better life, but then knowing they never will. While this idea might be cynical and depressing to most people, the characters redeem the world they live in with their frank, un-glamorized performances, through the simple action of choosing the higher road (as Stan does in not helping a gang) or seeing the simple beauty of life and imagination in one of the bleakest areas in the country.
To conclude, Killer of Sheep seeks not to entertain us with a story, but to present a realistic view of a marginalized society in which specific characters represent the thoughts, opinions and actions of those who are a part of that society. It presents hard truths of the impoverished lives of people in our country, while showing an underlying theme of pausing for simple pleasures being a way to cope with these truths, as do people in every walk of life. Beyond this, Burnett sought to show another side of the spectrum of African American films, getting away from the Blaxploitation films of the seventies and providing an artistically unique commentary on the social and historical implications of the time. While detached from any kind of story of development, the audience is meant to analyze not only the world on the screen, but also their own world. The film is not there to provide the viewer an escape, but rather to motivate questions. Charles Burnett’s modern approach and deviation from the mainstream white Hollywood cinema may not be much in the way of what people traditionally think of as entertainment, but it historically and socially remarks on the lives of Americans, thus making it an important contribution to the world of cinema. That is why it was one of the first fifty films declared a national treasure and placed in the National Film Registry created by the Library of Congress as part of an effort by the United States to preserve historically important films made in our country.

Labels: art of cinema, killer of sheep, lmu homework, los angeles, loyola marymount

Nearly done.
Though I'm not watching all 20 movies on the list. just 15.

Don't Look Back is a documentary on Bob Dylan while he was in England in 1965.
Pretty interesting... pioneered the use of Cinema Verité, the director had created a portable 16mm camera and made portable sound so to get in the moment footage. But as I suspected Bob was putting on an act. People never act like their "true" self on the camera. But anyway, it was a good documentary nonetheless. I liked that even though it didn't have much of a plot the end note of Bob Dylan being an anarchist kind of summed up a little of the insanity and no rules way he went about things in the movie. Enjoyable... and I really like Bob Dylan's music. I want to see I'm Not There (2007)... a drama based on Dylan.

Midnight Cowboy... ehhh bleh. Good acting, nice editing and use of flashback to further the story. BUT I really didn't like the degrading view of humanity...
Okay so I'm being harsh... its true these people are here and they do immoral and stupid things, but I guess overall the story led to at least Joe finally realizing there are easier ways to make a living that are an actual honest JOB. Haha
So while I was screaming at the screen the whole time saying GAHH just get a job stop being so stupid and stealing all the time... at least the guilt led him to realizing he should look elsewhere to make his life less painful.

I just watched "the greatest movie ever made". And for its time, its relevance and technical beauty, it pretty much is the most cutting-edge film of the age. I will not rave that Citizen Kane is my new favorite movie, no it's not, But that does not mean I don't deeply admire it. In fact it's very inspirational as a filmmaker (besides that Wells was incredibly lucky, but luck is when opportunity meets preparation...). One other thing Wells had was such a deep multi-layered understanding of his main character as a hybrid of himself and Hearst, And it played well on the screen. Their shots and angles were fresh and the editing was unique... I adored the crane-ish shot through the club sign into the skylight that cross faded into the scene. :)

Power is self-destructive.

Alright so I have semi-mixed feelings on this book. While I adore its dedication and exploration of the bible, I'm too much in love with faith in God to see how this secular Jewish man can keep such a guard up to believing. Eh... maybe its how we grow up. At least he's open minded and that's where many people fail to understand that in keeping an open mind we can see all the view points and more fully come to know why we believe what we do.

His conclusion is interesting. While I've been told in church not to be a "Cafeteria Catholic" (and I agree with not being such within Catholicism because to embrace your confirmation as such you should believe in the teachings of your faith.), his view is that practically every sect of christianity and judaism has a Cafeteria grasp on the Bible. Which after reading it is basically true... you can't really embrace every minute detail and expect it to work out, in fact the contradictions in the Bible make it near impossible. Old Testament laws weren't "abolished" by Jesus' coming, and yet as a christian we hardly follow most of the old ritual laws... this book helped give me a better understanding of the rituals of Judaism and their meaning. But do these contradictions and very varied interpretations (is everything literal or is most of it figurative?) that make the bible any less sacred? No, at least in my opinion.

This book is thought-provoking, hilarious, and humbly truthful. You'll probably be saying hey I've thought that or Hmm, never thought of it like that before. But whatever your spiritual walk in life is right now agnostic to mormon... this book is a nice refreshing read. :-)

Labels: A.J. Jacobs, book review, lmu homework, The Year of Living Biblically