Star Wars and Monkey Brains (details below)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an odd movie. It is marketed as an action adventure but ends up playing out as a humorous cheesy adventure film. My question is: was the movie originally intended to be funny or was it supposed to be a serious movie? I think it is a mix; some of the scenes are just too outlandish to be taken seriously. For instance, most normal movie goers would know that people in India don’t eat food that is still living and movie around. Slightly more educated people know that the Hindu religion forbids people from killing, much less eating, monkeys. Thus that whole scene is outlandish and shouldn’t, and hopefully isn’t, taken seriously. Moving to a different train of thought, does the movie use stereotypes? Absolutely, but name me a movie or book that doesn’t. The difference is that in this movie the stereotypes are generally so outlandish that they aren’t taken seriously. There are fictional elements in the movie no doubt about it, but I think most people know when they go to see the movie that it is, in fact, a fictional movie not based on facts.

That about wraps it up… However, some interesting discussion came in towards the end of class about Star Wars and I didn’t get to say anything, so even though hardly anyone will read this I have to write something…
I would be the first to admit that the first three Star Wars (4-6) are classic, but many people say that the last three (1-3) don’t fit in the Star Wars universe. I would have to disagree most vehemently. Sure the Phantom Menace has a annoying creature that should die, and some poor acting, but it added to the Star Wars story and for those who enjoy Star Wars that is a good thing. It may have been disappointing, but look at it this way, many people had decades to hype of the next Star Wars so it is easy to become disappointed when it doesn’t live up to expectations, that doesn’t mean that it is bad though.
The Clone Wars was a bit better, some of the battle scenes were awesome and Obi-Wan is great… It became obvious in this movie that Georgey boy has a tough time with love scenes, but if one can look past that it is a pretty good film.
Last I would like to mention Revenge of the Sith… Other than a awesome name, it was a great movie. Awesome space battles, killer light saber duel and VADER!!! I really think that Lucas ended the series well.

Well that’s all for now folks. Till next time.

Sheepish

In class we were discussing the possible meanings behind various ideas and themes in the book. I found it very interesting to hear other people’s ideas on sheep and how we are all kind of like sheep, brainlessly following. The time was another interesting one for me since I have traveled to several areas in the world including Peru (South America was mentioned in class). Time goes by at the same rate there, there is still 60 seconds to the minute and 60 minutes to the hour, but they all treat time as more fluid than we in America do. To them two o’clock is sometime after two, but to use two means get there ten minutes before two o’clock. It is so interesting to think about the difference between the two.

My group had the cold topic; when we got assigned it I immediately thought of how Boku has acted rather cold throughout the book. My other group members were thinking about how it was becoming physically colder when Boku was traveling North. I’m not sure if I shared my train of thought but I felt like Murakami made Boku seem cold because that is the direction the World seems to be taking. Everyone is getting colder and more desensitized; they don’t value their family or friends like people used to. All they seem to care about is me.

I'm going crazy!!!

Intertextuality is quite evident in A Wild Sheep Chase. The whole book is a mishmash of different ideas and obscure references to other texts. It has components of a hard boiled detective novel, but includes metafiction and has a strong feeling of surrealism to it. However, the text feels random to me; all of the mixing that it does makes it feel incoherent and difficult to understand. But it is also random in how it jumps around in the story and randomly adds these strange characters and throws out just the most random stuff. For instance, what is up with the whale’s penis? Or all of a sudden asking the limo driver how many decimal places he know Pi to, or the randomness of having God’s telephone number… Given all that it still somehow works together to bring an entertaining story that has so far kept me guessing.

Magical Realists

I must admit that when I am assigned a book to read I usually expect to not enjoy the book. The same was true when I picked up Hauron and the Sea of Stories... Boy was I wrong! It is an incredibly interesting book with plenty of pop culture references to give me a good laugh and get me thinking.
After reading the book I kind of felt like it was written in such a way as to make fun of the works it mentioned, but also in a way to honor them. Strange that it can do both at the same time isn’t it? But it can. The book makes references to Star Wars and in doing so honors this popular icon. But the way the book presents it makes one feel that Star Wars is being poked fun at. Its almost like the book is a big rejoinder to all the works it references all while having a interesting tale spun by spinning bits and pieces from other places… Overall a highly enjoyable book that I would recommend.