The Children of Huang Shi
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
I took a bit of time thinking this movie over before I was to post a blog entry on it. Most people will probably consider me weird for not liking this movie as much as they did (I think I'm the only one in the class who didn't like it as much as everyone else...). The Children of Huang Shi just didn't really work for me. I'll go onto explain why this movie didn't work for me and what I thought of it overall. And one thing I can talk a lot about is movies. So this entry may be huge!
This movie is based on the story of a British reporter called George Hogg who goes to Nanjing and ends up saving 60 orphaned boys by helping them travel through the silk road.
I think I expected more from this movie than it could offer. The pace of the movie was relatively slow and I kept waiting for something to happen, only it didn't... however, there were some (although relatively minor) build-ups. The storyline was plain and although one may argue that it's based on a true story and the director/writer wanted to stay true to the story, but the thing is, it's BASED on a true story. This generally means the movie has been altered a little to sort of fit to the prescriptions of cinema and movies. The fact that the build-ups were minor and somewhat absent, and there was no climax in the movie lowered my opinion of this movie in general.
The acting was alright. But Jonathon Rhys Meyers' (who was great in Match Point) George Hogg failed to work on me too. From the movie, I picked up George Hogg was obviously a Christ-like figure except Rhys Meyers' acting or I guess, interpretation of how he should play George Hogg, did not make me really look up to him as one should to Christ-like figures. Although this may be the fact that the movie didn't manage to portray the fact that he saved 60 orphaned boys as a huge issue! The passage through the mountains/on the silk road was pretty dull also, with the exception of a little sandy tornado. The ending, well, it was pretty anticlimatic. And as soon as Hogg had said "It's just a scratch." I had a feeling that his end might be coming (Romeo and Juliet anyone? "Aye, tis nothing but a scratch." I might have paraphrased sorry). Although I was sort of wondering whether he would really die because he was a Christ-like figure (and in most movies/books the Christ-like figure generally sacrifices their life for something they believed in or dies a horribly martyr-like death eg Cool Hand Luke, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Lord of the Flies), but it was based on a real person. This sort of made me anticipate the ending, just to find out whether Hogg would really die, because I was curious as to whether a REAL-LIFE Christ-like figure would suffer an end much like they do in fictional books, movies etc.
As for the theme of the amount of change an individual can make, I was glad that the theme was there because I managed to pick it up by the end of the movie. This theme is one that I like a lot, having watched many Frank Capra movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life, both of which have the main message of how much change an individual normal man can make to his country or just the people around him. It's through these two movies that I realized how much an individual can do and I am always so touched when I watch these two movies and cry at the end from how wonderful it is that a person is able to do something like that. However, I didn't cry in The Children of Huang Shi because I don't think that the theme was predominant enough for me to feel so touched by the end of the movie that I end up in tears. Some people might criticize me for comparing this movie to the old Capra movies, but I'm just writing down my thoughts and please don't judge me!
On a good note, I learnt some new information from this movie. I didn't know that George Hogg even existed before this movie. I didn't really know of the Europeans who were involved in helping the Chinese out during the occupation of the Japanese before the start of WWII but through this movie, I've found out that there were actually some Europeans who had helped many.
My overall thought from the movie was that I think it could've been done better. It could've made me cry, it could've made me look up to George Hogg and there are more things it could have been done. Although some people in my class will probably beat me for saying this, I wasn't really touched emotionally by this movie (Maybe Cindy will, she sure was emotionally touched, bawling her eyes out next to me through the WHOLE movie). I'm glad that I was able to learn some new information about 1937 in China.
Labels: humanities, movies
Reflection on Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran Talk
This talk that we watched today was so interesting and amazingly cool that I even went and read about it on Wikipedia! Did I also mention my love for Wikipedia? Being my resource to basically everything? Wait, that's not on topic.
Well, the reason I thought this talk was so amazingly cool and interesting was because I'm kind of interested in psychology/philosophy and all that. But I learned a lot from this talk! Dr. Ramachandran covered 3 main mental disorders in this talk. Firstly he talked about the Capgras delusion, then he talked about the phantom limb, and lastly, he covered synesthesia. These disorders are rare but it was cool to hear about them, having not realized that the brain has such a vital role in our lives and if it was to be damaged, the sorts of symptoms that could come about.
The Capgras delusion is a disorder that may happen (in very rare cases) when the brain has suffered trauma, the person will look at their family member/s or loved one/s and think that their family member/loved one has been replaced by an identical imposter. I think I may have read something about this before although I am not entirely sure it's about the same thing.
The phantom limb is when an arm or leg is amputated, the patient still continues to feel the presence of that limb although they know that it has been amputated! This, I have never heard of before but it seems really interesting! Dr. Ramachandran came up with an ingenious solution to the problem by using a mirror box which enabled the brain to think that the "paralyzed phantom limb" was actually moving and although it may seem really silly and super cheap compared to digital simulation it worked for many people he tried it on! The patient puts their hand into one hole, and the "phantom" hand into the other hole, and when viewed from one angle, they are able to see two complete hands. By moving their normal unamputated limb into one hole and moving it, are therefore able to trick their brains into believing that their "paralyzed" phantom limb moved and through doing it repeatedly over a few weeks, they will be rid of their phantom limb and the phantom pain that may have come with it! I thought this was so smart and amazing!
As for synesthesia, I have heard about it before. And I thought his explanation to it was really interesting but the part I liked best was when he proved that EVERYONE has synesthesia by using two shapes and having the audience pretend that they were alien alphabet letters and telling us the way you would pronounce the two then asking which letter corresponded to the shape. Most of the people associated the shape with sharp, jagged edges to the word that sounded sharp and jagged. Then with that, he proved that his whole audience has synesthesia! It was all very cool.
I think from this talk, I've learned a lot and I think I would like to read more into the brain and how it works and maybe find out more about psychology. This talk was so amazing that it has made me really want to read about these things to do with the brain now!
Labels: anatomy
Reflection on Landmine Awareness Campaign
This is my first blog entry on Blogger so bear with me a little in varying my page with pictures and everything because I'm a Livejournal user! I'll get the hang of it in a few days!
I haven't been here for most of the landmines topic and turned up just on time for this assignment! Oh well, onto the real stuff. I thought this was a really good experience for me, making this video about landmine awareness. Firstly, because I had never used iMovie before let alone make a movie from scratch. I've watched a lot of movies, but never really made one myself. So learning how to actually use the program was really great for me because I now know sort of how to make movies on it!
In an attempt to catch up, I read through the text book on the things I had missed out before but it proved to be beneficial for me because I haven't really studied about landmines. I had joined the Amnesty International Club in New Zealand for a bit and we were doing a campaign to ban cluster bombs and getting people to sign the petition. I didn't really know much about cluster bombs or landmines and reading the textbook has improved my knowledge in this area a lot.
In order to make the movie, I had to look through and research for some statistics and in looking through the statistics I realized how major this landmine issue actually was. I had no idea that every 15 minutes a person dies from detonating a landmine. The research that I had done basically added to my knowledge further and I thought it was good that I was actually learning something different that I didn't know was affecting the world today.
I thought it was quite a challenge for me to make this awareness movie because as I've already said, I've never used iMovie before! But also in the fact that I was somewhat unsure of the elements and the tone I wanted to give to the movie/video. I wanted to share the awareness I had gained through reading the textbook and internet websites to people who don't know about this so that they can become "enlightened" like I have. I thought if I could show the people affected by landmines and what they are generally doing when they are either harmed or killed by landmines, the audience would understand more about the severity of the issue. So I found footage of people who are actually from countries with landmines going about their daily activities, followed by a silent (deliberate...?) explosion and edited it in time to The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel. Through this, I learned that music is a HUGE factor in media and manipulating with the audience's reactions and emotions. Given the correct music and sound effects (including silence), a video/movie/advertisement etc could draw sympathy from its viewers, anger the audience or/and frighten them. I thought this was really interesting and chose my song especially to fit in with the whole idea/tone of the movie, having watched several...(well more than several) movies and becoming wise in the ways of media/audience manipulation through my constant viewing of old movies such as a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films. Hitchcock was probably one of the best directors who used their sound really wisely and effectively at that, to create suspense (the "missing" soundtrack to The Birds anyone?), tension (The famous shower scene from Psycho) and fear (basically any Hitchcock movie...I can't think of specifics but they scare me sometimes, in a good way!).
I'm not sure if we need to write reflections about what I thought of other people's videos but I might as well because I'm on a roll! After watching the videos made by my classmates, I thought the standard of the videos were really high and very varied. I was really glad that there were so many different styles of video/movie-making which were present in those videos, from satire to in-your-face to tugging at the audiences' (well, mine at least) heartstrings. It was a really exciting experience for me and I think I've learnt a lot from this!
PS. I tend to ramble a lot. If you haven't figured from the length of this blog entry... And you'll definitely find (some pointless?) references here and there to movies I have seen or liked a lot of the time!
Labels: humanities
