FINA450 - The Birds

LOL, this weekend's movie for Monday's class is a breeze--Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie The Birds. I watched it as a child but don't remember much. I may have gotten bored and switched the channel too. It is very loosely based on Daphne du Maurier's book which is more about the Cold War compared to the movie. The movie still makes a great case for the supernatural and eeriness created by something that isn't there. It's never overtly said (except by one panicked citizen) why the birds are there, but one can surmise it has to do with Melanie Daniels' arrival to Bodega Bay. Dun-dun-dun!

The movie is very slow paced and silent, which would have created a lot of tension. I wasn't feeling that tension, but I bet in a dark theatre full of people it would have. A modern version would have a blizzards of birds and brooding power meows. I'm surprised it hasn't been remade.

My birds were piqued by the opening scene, but unruffled otherwise btw.

FINA450 - Under the Skin

Watching movies for homework is usually fun, except when it’s not fun!

Our weekly reading selection came from The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher and focused on a book, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, and a movie, Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer.

I downloaded Surfacing as an audiobook and haven’t finished listening to it yet, but I thought a movie would be a nice way to wrap up my weekend. Hehehe...well, not this movie! Under the Skin stars Scarlett Johannsson as an alien who roams Scotland, preying on men. There are a lot of interesting binaries in the movie such as pleasure/pain, known/unknown, civilization/wilderness, alien/human, physical/mental etc., in addition to the gender reverse of predator/prey. This would be a very different movie if it starred a male alien killer.

Visually, the film is very dark, mostly taking place at night. Audibly, there is very little dialogue and the Scottish accents are hard to decipher. There’s also a droning background track. The whole movie is designed to be unsettling and I get that. I’m usually okay with horror movies (and this one is rated R) and what not, but I didn’t like feeling unsettled and noped out of the movie after 39 minutes. It took me a few hours to feel right again afterwards!

Back to School!

I'm back at ACAD (now that Alberta University of the Arts) for another textiles class. It's called Salvage/Selvedge and we're looking at the practical aspects of textile production and design. To start things off, we watched a couple of documentaries. Learn along with me and stay tuned to the blog :-)

The True Cost is an hour and a half long scathing looking at the often invisible human and environmental impact of fast fashion. The textile industry has always had a huge environmental footprint, but, it is only within the past ten years that the footprint has increased dramatically. From fibre production to processing to purchasing, the fast fashion industry is incredibly unsustainable and one of the largest polluters on the planet. It is amazing the producers were able to fit in such a wide survey of the textile industry into one documentary. They talk to workers, growers, factory owners, environmentalists, fashion designers and more to demonstrate the clothing continuum--and conundrum.



However, it's not all doom and gloom with the textile industry. There are lots of creative people out there working to reduce the impact or invent new processes. The Next Black is a forty five minute documentary with a very optimistic view of the future. Biocoture! 3D printing! Waterless dying! The film was made about five years ago, so it will be interesting to see where the next five years takes us.

Up, Up and Out of There!

I'm still waiting for my energy to come back after the end of the semester. So much happened in April that's it's carrying over into May. I could use a vacation. Right after class ended on April 15, I went into production mode for the comic expo, which I'll tell you all about next.

The final project in SOSC 301 was to write an essay about all the material culture in Pixar's Up. This class was so fascinating - you start seeing material culture at work everywhere. It had been a few years since I watched the movie, so I tried to remember what it was about. Then I watched it, madly scribbling notes. Then I watched it again, pausing frequently to inspect the details and backgrounds. I had pages of little notes - now the problem was how to put them all together in an essay 2000-3000 words long. There was way too much information. Curse you, Pixar, and your penchant for deliberate details.

I finally decided on comparing and constrasting the appearance of the characters. One of the concepts that was emphasized in class was that appearance was performative and could also be seen as a sort of "lie", or stand in for some else. Once I started focusing on that, it was easier to get started. I ended up getting 100% on the essay, which you can read here. And below is just a small sampling of my notes.

• Dug's name backwards is "good"
• Dug can tell that Kevin is female, Alpha refers to Kevin as "it"
• Carl makes and breaks a cross your heart promise to Russell; he and Ellie made a similar promise
• Both Ellie and Russell are a friend to nature, especially birds
• ChARLes and RussELL - Russell is like Ellie and Carl has the potential to be like Charles (sacrificing relationships for objects)
• Ellie and Russell wear similar uniforms; when Russell discards his sash, it ends up on Ellie's chair
• Charles Muntz is a jerk instead of a hero
• Kevin is a girl bird, not a boy
• Ellie is a girl, but looks like a boy when she first appears
• The house comes to represent the body of Ellie, while Russell is her kindred spirit (even right down to the poofy hair under their hats)
• Dug is constantly told he is a bad dog, but he is a good dog
• Similarly, Carl is declared a public menace and the policewoman tells him that he doesn't look like one
• Despite being a Wilderness Explorer, Russell isn't good at being out in the wild
• The cloud game Carl and Ellie play, which becomes the rock game
• The majestic Alpha has a squeaky voice
• Dug is mistaken to be a man which turns out to be two rock formations

The Dominic Toretto Style of Managment (Really!)

When my husband took me to see The Fast and the Furious thirteen years ago, I thought it was going to be some dumb action movie with cars and explosions. It turned out to have a lot more than that! I love the film franchise and we saw Fast and Furious 6 on opening weekend. After watching the movie, I realized just how much depth this one has. Spoilers after the picture, so be warned!


Copyright 2013 Universal Pictures

What impresses me most about this movie is what an excellent team leader Dominic Toretto is, even if, uh, he's in the business of heists. A few years ago I read a lot of business and team type books and a lot seemed familiar there on the big screen. Let's see...

Dom doesn't throw his people under a bus. Ah, just had to get that one out of the way first! Owen Shaw, who leads the rival crew, doesn't hesitate to sacrifice his team members to get ahead. He even says that people are expendable and only ever get one mistake. People are just parts to Shaw, to be used and replaced. Instead, Dom unites his team under the idea of family (his mission statement, oft repeated), and family is often complicated as we see in...

One of the plot lines involves the reappearance of his old girlfriend. Letty wasn't killed as everyone thought she was in the fourth movie. It turns out she has amnesia and is working with the baddies. She is eventually welcomed back on Dom's crew after he catches her. Even if Letty did shoot him in the shoulder earlier in the movie, Dom understands the power of forgiveness. Sure, he could hold a huge grudge against her just for that, but soon after he approaches Letty with a positive assumption, even when he totally doesn't know what happened. And he gets the desired results - Letty chooses to stick with Dom, even if she doesn't totally remember their relationship.

As the fifth movie clearly showed, Dom knows there is no I in team. Most action movies feature one central character that can do it all, and it's usually one man against the world. Dom is a pretty strong dude, but he can't pull off heists by himself. He gets the help he needs from experts (regardless of their gender) and gives them all his trust and what they need to do their job. And because of that...

Dom attracts and keeps A-players. If you read any sort of business literature, you may have heard this term before - A-players are the people that close the deals and tend to be outstanding. Everyone wants top talent, and Dom's people are all very good at what they do, from improvising on the fly, hacking computers or racing cars.

So there you have it! Fast and Furious has brains as well as brawn :)

Oh, Twilight!

I saw the first part of Breaking Dawn last night with some friends and I must say, I have never laughed so hard in a movie before. I absolutely couldn't help myself. You know that one person that spoils a movie for serious fans with all their laughter? Unfortunately that person was me!

I am not a huge Twilight fan. I read the books because my friends had done so, and even those I found hilariously bad. It's kind of sad, because there were lots of good ideas there, and even a great story, but it was consistently buried by long romantic stares and constant whinging between Edward and Jacob. In the books I loved Edward, but in the movies I'm squarely in the Jacob camp. Taylor Lautner brings a real sensitivity to the character, whereas I don't think Robert Pattison does much for Edward at all.

Sure, there were intentionally funny parts, such as the wedding speeches, but others that were so unintentionally funny I'm amazed that the actors could play them with a straight face. The birth scene was not as bad as I expected and I'm glad a lot of the book filler was left right out. Can't wait for part 2!

Making Lemonade!

As the month winds down, so does my job. Almost another month to go. My previous workplace had waves of layoffs, but I never managed to be laid off. I was almost laid off once though. When I think about how stressful that time was, 2003 seems so far away. My husband was making $7 an hour at AVIS, my teeth were breaking, and we had just bought our house. Annnd hook-ups, bills and repairs were eating away at our savings. We barely qualified for our mortgage and in hindsight didn’t realize how much extra money one really needs when buying a home. It seemed like things would never get better, but then the day came when I realized that things were pretty good.

My husband was actually laid off in 2002. He grieved for his job for years. I felt so bad that there was nothing I could do to help him. Eventually he found another job he could love just as much. I suppose that's the point of this post - there's always something better out there!

When I was younger and woefully inexperienced at the working game, I had a manager who always yelled at me. I didn't realize that I could have filed a hostile workplace complaint. "Christine, this coffee isn't fresh!" "Christine, open the blinds!" Every time I heard my name hollered, I cringed, because I was usually doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Towards the end I was starting my morning in tears as I was the first one to arrive. Now, whenever I read on forums or blogs about people who have a hollering boss, I never hesitate to say "GO! Trust me, a better job is waiting for you!"

This optimism that something better is waiting is what brought my great-great-grandparents from Poland and my father from Greece. It's scary making that leap, but years later, those gut feelings are usually right. I'm trying really hard to stay on the path to being an artist.

My fellow soon to be unemployed co-worker and fellow Etsian BubblegumSass found this great movie called Lemonade. The tagline is "It's not a pink slip. It's a blank page." It is really good and I wish it had been around when my husband was laid off. It's very motivational and diverse in how the people profiled found new self-worth and meaning. If the trailer gives you goosebumps, you know you need to see it!