Life, Death, and Renewal

I really would not consider myself a "fan" of the Disney Fantasia movies. I remember watching the first one when I was a little girl and being bored out of my mind. I was pretty sure I was going to feel the same way about Fantasia 2000 when my husband bought it a few weeks ago. I surprised myself when I actually really enjoyed it! I ESPECIALLY loved the finale "Firebird".
I would rather not say too much about it. You really need to watch it for yourself. I really don't think I have many words that could express what this short film makes me feel.



I did a little research on the music. It was written by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) for a ballet called "Firebird" in 1910. The particular piece that they used in the Disney Fantasia 2000 movie was the 1919 version. Just a piece of trivia: Disney bought the rights to this music in 1940 when they made the first Fantasia. Roy Disney decided it would make the perfect finale piece and asked Gaetan Brizzi & Paul Brizzi (animators that worked on The Hunchback of Notre Dame) if they would like to work on it. You can read more about that here:

http://animated-features.tripod.com/features/fantasia2k/firebird/firebird.htm

After learning this piece was written for a ballet I was very curious what the ballet could have been about. It seemed like it was MADE for that piece of animation. Here is a short plot summary of the ballet. I found it at

http://www.danceit.org/firebird.html

"Young prince Ivan finds himself in the terrible realm of the giant Kashchei, the immortal entity of pure evil, who imprisons women and transforms men into stone. Not realising the danger, Ivan rambles through the bewitched garden of Kashchei where he meets a dazzling Firebird. Struck by the Firebird’s beauty, he steals one of its feathers and runs away.
That evening he encounters 13 maidens, and falls passionately in love with one of them. The next morning, when the maidens, Kashchei’s prisoners, are compelled by magic to return to his castle, Ivan follows them.
Kashchei's monstrous servants capture him, and are about to transform him into stone. He waves the magical feather that summons the Firebird, who tells him the secret of Kashchei’s immortality: his spirit in the form of an egg that he keeps in coffer, must remain intact.
Ivan opens the coffer and breaks the egg; the monster dies, its magic is dissolved, and all those who he had captured are freed. The maiden Ivan loves, princess Tsarevna, and the prince marry."

I hope you enjoyed this film! I know I absolutely loved it!

Rein of Fire

Five things that would have made this movie awesome.
1)A better plot. Or perhaps that is asking too much. If they had just followed through with the one they started with, it may have worked out ok. It's like there were a bunch of bored guys sitting in a room. One says 'dragons are cool'. The other says 'guns are cool'. The third one says 'Perfect! Let's make a movie!' Guy four says (this is the smart one) 'Wait..what do dragons and guns have to do with eachother?" The other three respond "Who cares. No one will even notice it doesn't make sense cause we'll have fire."

2)An actor that isn't a 'pretty boy' as the tough guy. (Matthew Mcconaughey as Van Zan)The reason why Matthew Mcconaughey is in movies is because he is witty and attractive. So whose brilliant idea was it to give him a serious role and make him ugly? Not the best move in my opinion.

3)A new script. I didn't understand what half the dialogue meant. I always felt like I was missing something big. I watched this movie five times trying to figure out what it was. I finally came to the conclusion it was a device to read people's minds- cause there was no hope with from the script alone.

4)Better shots. It seemed like they put their camera in one place and talked about what was going on around them instead of showing it. Maybe if they hadn't spent all their money hiring Mcconaughey they would have had some money to actually shoot a few more shots instead of having to talk about it in their pathetic script.

5)A better directer. I'm pretty sure this would have taken care of the first four. I watched the special features. This man honestly believes he has shot a horror film. I feel bad for him honestly. He talked about how he used to direct for X-Files and he made a point to not direct the episodes that had to do with 'monsters' because he didn't feel he was very good at it. He said he never would have thought years down the road he would be shooting his own monster movie. He should have listened to his instincts.

Ok. I am being a little cynical. I do have to admit that while I did come to the conclusion it was basically not worth my time to watch- I did watch it five or six times before I fully came to that conclusion. Also, I thought that Christian Bale and Gerard Butler did amazing things with the little they were given.

And that is my two cents on that.

Time Machine: Movie vs. Book

After spending about an hour trying to write up a formal paper about what I learned from the book “Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, I decided I was going to throw out formal and just write out my thoughts.

I got sick this week so I have had a lot of time to think. I borrowed the movie “Time Machine” from my friend Brittni. I had seen previews and was expecting it to be an action packed film with a thin plot to hold it together. I knew it was based on a book, but I had never read it.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, by the metaphors and patterns that were consistent throughout the movie. The most obvious metaphor to me was the connections light had to do with the past.

For those of you who have no prior experience with the movie let me give you a brief summary. A scientist is about to propose to a woman when an accident happens and she is killed. He feels responsible for her death and motivated by his obsession to make things right, he builds a time machine to return to the moment and make it right. He learns however, that he cannot change the past. He realizes that science and technology in his time, are not advanced enough to fully understand time travel- so he travels to the future, hoping to find more answers. He is brought to a time 800,000 years in the future and finds two separate species that have evolved from humans. There are the Eloi that live in the light and the Morlock, who have evolved to survive underground.

As the story plays out, we realize that the Eloi are a peaceful people who are easily able to accept the misfortunes of the past and don’t seem to have any hope or even concept of the future. They live their simple lives day after day with no bother of time. They make it a point to never discuss anything that would remind them of fear or pain they may have experienced in the past.
In contrast, the Morlock seem to be driven entirely by the past and what they expect of the future. Because their people were forced into the ground thousands of years before, they have evolved into warped creatures. Their entire existence is based on staying alive by feeding upon the creatures that forced the tragedy of their underground lifestyle.

Alex, the main character, has both Eloi and Morlock in him. He is driven by the past of the woman that haunts him and the future that could be, but learns through the course of the movie the beauty of living life with no regrets or expectations. He has to decide which side of him will conquer, and has to save one from the other.
While this theme was beautifully portrayed, it left me confused. I didn’t understand a lot of the specifics. This made me decide I would try to gain more insight by reading the book.

I was surprised by not only how different the story was, but especially by how different the message was. I think there is one passage in the book that sums up the message of the book beautifully. H.G. Wells writes “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.”
In the novel, it explains that the Eloi were at one point the higher class. They forced the lower class into the ground to do all of the work for them. The more work the Morlock did, the more perfect the life of the Eloi became. The more perfect their life was, the easier it became. They eventually evolved into nothing more than child like adults. Their attention spans were shortened, their capacity to reason was taken away,their language was diminished to only communicate simple ideas, and even their dna became so basic they all looked close to the same.
H.G. Wells suggests that a society or even a single life without train or struggle creates a life of complacency and eventually stagnancy. The Morlock evolved into a much more capable society and were eventually able to turn the tables because of the many difficulties they had to overcome.

The book played out more like an observation. The time traveler found himself emotionally effected by the sad and simple lives of the Eloi, but spent his entire time there trying to retrieve his machine so that he could return home. He felt no need to change what had become, simply to escape it.

I am really glad that I saw the movie before the book. I think this has allowed me to love them both equally. I enjoyed the story of the movie much better, but the message of the book strikes a true chord within me. I have decided if I were ever to become a literature teacher, I would spend a lot of time discussing the meaning and symbolism in this book. I found it an entirely satisfying read- and even more than that. I found it intellectually delicious!