Free Post: Movie Review #1

Yesterday, I saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in the movie theater.

I'm sure you're all expecting me to bash the movie, so I'll start off from a candid viewpoint. Objectively, it was a good movie, if not better than simply "good." It is Peter Jackson, after all, and he doesn't disappoint often. Personally, I liked this movie better than the first. There was much more character development here, turning the superficial individuals of the first film into characters with depth, being swayed by a variety of factors and having legitimate arguments. As someone who breathes the books, I wasn't too upset; there was a great deal of foreshadowing I picked up that someone who hasn't read the books would overlook. Thorin Oakenshield's obsession with wealth, specifically a gem known as the Arkenstone, is portrayed as a sickness akin to Bilbo's fascination with the peculiar ring he's found, both of which are acted beautifully. Both of these are hinted at by Tolkien, but as The Hobbit is told from a third-person Bilbo, the author doesn't really go into detail, as the characters themselves don't truly realize what's happening. Perhaps best of all, the effects were spot-on. What had disappointed me about the first film regarding the orcs was the fact that they were mostly C.G.I. In The Desolation of Smaug, there was clearly a great deal more makeup done on the orcs. And Smaug was simply fantastic. The dragon looked like a living, breathing animal, not something done on a computer. The tie-ins to Jackson's take on The Lord of the Rings, in spite of their seeming prominence (Legolas, a character whose appearance in the novel is hinted by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings), are subtle and well-placed. The Gandalf-Sauron plot line, while not featured in the book, is hinted in the literary Fellowship of the Ring, although Tolkien doesn't go into detail. Jackson ties this into a reference to the Ringwraiths, which does nothing to hinder the plot and actually engaged the audience (including myself) in the Sauron plot line when it came up, even those of us who knew and loved the books. And I'll deny it, but I got a laugh when Legolas finds a locket on the dwarf Gloin containing a sketch of his son Gimli, who became the former's best friend in The Lord of the Rings. The fact that Legolas called his future friend a goblin mutant didn't hurt the effect. So why don't I think the film was excellent? Well, something about some of the scenes struck me as being overdone, whereas every scene in Jackson's first trilogy was perfect. It didn't help that most of these scenes, including one where the dwarves trap Smaug in molten gold, aren't in the books. So while from an objective viewpoint the movie was better than fine, The Hobbit is still straining to reach Jackson's first films, and neither trilogy can even hope to touch Tolkien's masterpieces.

Big Think: Animal Intelligence.

Today on Big Think, I found this article on the differences between animal and human intelligences:

http://bigthink.com/think-tank/we-profoundly-underestimate-animal-intelligence

This article seems reminiscent of the Einstein quote: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Only in this case, the metaphorical fish is a real fish (and any other animal species), with the tree-climbing ability representing  the ability to function in human society. Because animals can't. Heck, plenty of people can't. Frankly, to animals, we must seem like idiots. An orca whale would laugh at us because we can't kill walruses. So what if we can calculus? How would that help us in a chimpanzee's world, where the only thing that really matters is the ability to tell plants you can eat from those that can kill you? And there's the fact that we kill each other in droves for what would seem like stupid reasons to animals. Most species are too interested in their own survival to even consider killing each other off. Our cousins the chimps are the only real exception, as clans sometimes go to veritable war with their neighbors. But in any other species, such conflicts rarely end violently. Sure, wolves will fight over territory, or the right to lead the pack. But these fights generally end with the weaker side fleeing with the victors nipping at their heels to reinforce the message. Even among lions, tigers and bears (oh my!), territorial battles, among the most brutal in the animal kingdom, rarely end with anything more serious than a few scratches and bruises. To animals, we must seem like pathetic weaklings with a penchant for self-destruction, who just happen to know the chemical formula of glucose. And they couldn't care less about that.

Free Post: The Humor of Idiocy

Today, we filmed an all-guys commercial involving an inept secret agent. Although it was completely idiotic, it was unbelievably fun to make and watch. Sometimes, it's the stupidity of something that makes it so enjoyable. This holds true for my favorite video on YouTube, a two and a half hour long animated version of The Lord of the Rings that's been "dubbed." I don't know of any better way to describe the process, so I'll just say dubbed. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1x3XkHs-BE
Now, I don't expect any of you to actually have the time to watch this in its entirety, but there's a great deal of stuff we can steal from this. Luke suggested continuing the storyline of the spy commercial, and I think that we could really get somewhere with it. Here's a list, with times in the video when these ideas come up.

General Ideas:
-Incorporation of elements from other renowned comedic sources (1:12-1:20)
-Going back to old commercials, with the guys involved in said commercials making amusingly unnecessary comments in the background (1:09:57-1:15:25 and 2:18:23-End)
-Breaking the fourth wall (Throughout, especially 1:04:40-1:04:50 and 1:59:39-1:59:55)
-Utter Randomness (The entirety of the film, but especially 1:59:56-2:01:21)
More Specific:

-An attack by Jehovah's Witnesses (1:02:55-1:03:04)

-Random sponsor messages (34:26-34:48)

-An annoying narrator who gets beaten up (20:15-20:33)

-A character who sings all their lines (48:59-51:23)

-Limited racism, preferably done by those of the ethnicity we're being racist against. I could do an Irish stereotype, or Johnson could do a Chinese stereotype, and so on (1:54:16-1:56:33)

-An excessively stupid sidekick (16:08-16:15)

I already have an idea for another commercial just from listing these ideas. We could have a villain (preferably Johnson) awaiting the arrival of the superspy. There would be multiple knocks on his door, but rather than facing the spy, he would be greeted by Singing Ghostbusters, Jehovah's Witnesses, and an unseen jerk of a narrator whom he would proceed to exit the shot and beat up off-camera. It sounds somewhat less idiotic in print than it does in my head, but I think we could go somewhere with this and other ideas we may have.

Free Post: War Scenes

It's a fact; people love war movies. They sell, they soar, they make the big bucks. And no war movie is complete without its battle scene. And as we all can attest, some battle scenes are simply better than others. But to be frank, it's not really so simple. So what really makes a theatrical battle scene stand out? The soundtrack, for starters, or in some cases, the lack thereof. I love movie soundtracks, and they can either make or break a war scene. If the soundtrack is inappropriate, it will destroy the scene's viability and power. If it isn't appropriate, it doesn't belong in the battle scene. For this reason, exceptionally brutal historical battle scenes, especially those pertaining to the two world wars, tend to avoid being scored. Elaborating on that, I feel that historical context can be just as important in making a war scene powerful. Don't get me wrong, I love the colossal space battles in Star Wars and the massive war scenes in The Lord of the Rings, but the fact that nothing like these battles ever happened takes away from the meaning of the scenes themselves. Perhaps there was no intended meaning, something rarely present in historical battle scenes. It doesn't necessarily have to have happened in real life; of the list of my favorite scenes I compiled, one is fictitious and two involve fictional characters. That doesn't change the fact that the fictitious battle mirrors wars that did occur, and the two involving fictional characters did occur. It doesn't require much imagination to picture any historically set, period-accurate battle scene, and all the horrors it contained, to have actually occurred. Perhaps most importantly of all, a powerful war scene can't glorify war.

I've compiled a list of several of my favorite historical battle scenes. For the record, most of these scenes are EXTREMELY graphic. I've placed in them in descending order of brutality and violence.

D-Day Landings (Saving Private Ryan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UteT8zrIRiQ
The main characters are the only fictitious element in this scene, by far the most graphic of the four. In all honesty, I wouldn't recommend watching this if you've eaten recently. An incredibly powerful scene that paints the picture of the invasion of Normandy with sickening accuracy.

Okinawa (The Pacific)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xwvLe3SlEk
The only truly historical battle here, the series The Pacific was based directly on the notes and books of three marines serving in the pacific theater of the Second World War, in addition to testimony of their comrades. This scene illustrates the atrocities committed against civilians by both sides of the conflict.

The Battle of Stirling (Braveheart)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5Imb7vWSc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJVsS-vIDdc
A semi-accurate interpretation of the real Battle of Stirling, which ended in a major Scottish victory. Don't click the first link if you have a soft spot for horses. Don't click the second one if you're an Anglophile.

Battle with the Germans (Gladiator)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33Y-3Q-7HE
By far the cleanest scene here, but an excellent one nonetheless. The only purely-fictional scene on my list, it was inspired by battles between the Roman Empire and Germanic tribes that occurred around the same time when the movie is set.

And just to clarify, here's an example of what I would not consider a well-made war scene, contrary to the video's title, from one of the most historically inaccurate movies imaginable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hcv2HiaFYo

Big Think: Politics and Biology

Please note:
This post marks my first attempt at shortening my blog posts and getting right to the point. Hopefully I didn't over or under-do it. But I digress.

I found this post today on Big Think:

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/do-you-hate-politics-blame-biology

Brief though it is, the article is very thorough. The author effectively conveys two things in the three-paragraph article: we are genetically inclined to side with our family and friends, or those who will help us out; this is also common in the rest of the animal kingdom. The connection to the chimpanzees made the author's point clear right off the bat to me, as I've watched my fair share of nature documentaries, and can corroborate the claims that chimps have a very biased way of choosing their allies and making new friends. The author's last paragraph, however, could use a change in wording. ("But we’re still stuck in that biology.  I think all of us recognize that we will behave this way if we’re not forced to, for example, hire somebody with talent rather than our cousin or our brother-in-law.") At first glance, if you aren't reading it carefully, the second sentence seems to contradict the first. The word choice is confusing; the author could do with switching "if we're not forced to" to "unless we're forced to," for the simple purpose of clarifying it for the reader. This article, on the whole, makes a great deal of sense when applied to political parties. Middle/upper class conservatives certainly get a bigger bang for their buck when Republicans hold the Oval Office, whereas Democratic presidents tend to benefit the poorer portion of the population. This doesn't explain the motives for our middle-class liberals, however; there are quite obviously more factors that truly determine an individual's political party than solely our genes.

Big Think: The Evolution of the Human Brain

Today on Big Think, I uncovered an article on the evolution of the human brain, an intriguing subject to me personally:

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/our-brain-didnt-need-to-evolve-so-why-did-it

The author presents their theory on why this happens, establishing their credibility by providing evidence from notable intellectual sources and provides a link to another thorough article on the subject.  However, the articles don't really go into just why the evolution occurred in detail, and I have my own theory on why it did, which is very much different to the basic-at-best reasons the articles gave, but supports the same process. What you have to understand is that I am a proponent of the theory that modern humans evolved in what's now the middle east, in modern-day Arabia, several hundred thousand years ago before migrating to Africa. I could spend hours talking about the basis for this theory and my reasons for supporting it, but I'll try to sum it up; Arabia and the Sahara desert were, at the time we first evolved, fertile swamplands. In addition, fish and shellfish are more rich in the lipids and amino acids and other nutrients required for big brains than red meat. But their range overlapped with that of another species of human; the neanderthal. For the record, the common view of neanderthals as slightly shorter humans with bigger noses and eyebrows is incredibly inaccurate; neanderthal skulls more closely resemble those of chimpanzees than they do our own. Don't take my word for it; check out this comparison between a neanderthal skull and a human skull (http://hugequestions.com/Eric/Neanderthals/Neanderthal-and-Cro-Magnon-skulls.jpg) and this example of a neanderthal skull relative to a chimpanzee head (http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2012/06/mandus_comparison.jpg). If you're still not convinced, check out this photo of a chimpanzee's skull (http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/12/27/Chimp.jpg). Neanderthals had a smaller jaw, less-pronounced brows, and a larger cranial capacity than chimps, but all in all, the features of their skulls are more similar. So it's safe to say that they would have been more apelike than we are. In addition, since they'd evolved in the harshest environment in the world at the time (Ice Age Europe), they were much stronger than we are, and were likely almost exclusively carnivorous, owing to a lack of edible plants. It's a fact that neanderthals cannibalized one another (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061205-cannibals.html), so it isn't much of a stretch to imagine them viewing their scrawny southern cousins as a food source. Back then, modern humans were in the middle of the food chain. Our early, less complex-brained answers could think up ways to fend off the big cats and wild dogs they would have faced regularly, but neanderthals, as another species of human, would have been a bigger challenge. I believe that the early humans would have had to think of creative ways to deal with the neanderthals, who would have been much stronger and just as smart as we are, and that our shellfish-fuelled brains would have expanded to boost our problem solving techniques to give us a leg up on the neanderthals. Of course, this took time, and I believe that the neanderthals eventually forced us into Africa; however, what occurred in the middle east acted as a catalyst for change in the human brains. Over the next few tens or hundreds of millennia, we would have perfected our problem-solving skills in the African savannas, as suggested by the article, so that by the time we went back into the middle east and entered Eurasia, we were ready for round two with the neanderthals. And we came out on top.

Free Post: Political Parties: Good or Evil?

This morning, my English class was cancelled. I spent the period in the library, engaging a friend of mine in a nonpartisan political conversation. During that conversation, it occurred to me just how willing we were to agree with each other, and how thoroughly we were able to discuss topics, a trait the American government seems to have lost, thanks to the deep-seated divisions of political parties. That got me thinking: would we be better off without political parties, or do these deep-seated divisions actually help the American people?

Let's start with the easier topic; the downsides of political parties. This is, perhaps, best demonstrated through our conservative Republican Party. Everybody has the stereotype of Republicans as rich old straight white men, completely disregarding others and caring for nothing but the money in their pockets. This stereotype is only reinforced by Republican presidential candidates, namely George W. Bush, John McCain and Willard Mitt Romney, all of whom come across as Tea Party stooges no matter how you look at them, proponents of big business and tax cuts for their wealthy friends. However, the vast majority of American Republicans are simple, hardworking members of the middle class, willing to work with the Democrats and compromise for the common good. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Though Republican by party affiliation and ideology, Christie has demonstrated time and time again that he is willing to work alongside Democrats and collaborated with Barack Obama for reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Sandy. Christie's bipartisan efforts have allowed him to be elected, and re-elected, as the governor as a heavily Democratic state. Rumors have circulated about a presidential run for Christie in 2016, reinforced by his own statements and recent re-election. And it's quite possible that, if nominated, he would succeed. Republicans, the majority of whom are represented by Christie, would staunchly support their candidate, and a fair number of Democrats sick and tired of partisan bickering would likely throw him their vote as well. Several of my heavily liberal friends and family members have already voiced their willingness to support Christie if he were to run for the nation's top office in two years time. However, thanks to the Tea Party leaders of the Republican Party, it's highly unlikely that Christie would be nominated. And so, political parties will continue to behave as they always have; fighting each other like mad dogs, driven to battle to the death and yet immortal at the same time. They will halt progress, delay change, and dig our nation an even deeper hole. So how could there be any good?

There is one pro to the whole scheme of political parties; that one benefit is the order they instill. Back in the pre-party days when George Washington was first elected, everything worked out dandy. The nation was united under its new constitution, behind its new not-quite-partisan president. In his famous farewell address, Washington warned that political parties would be our nation's downfall. He may very well have been right. However, political parties do exist for a reason, and that is to provide unity and order for individuals who share most of the same beliefs and ideas. And let's face it; without political parties, every individual who ran for president would basically be their own political party. You could have a congressman who supported the right to assault weapons, gay marriage, and world peace, working alongside presidents who supported nuclear arms and feeding the hungry. As staunchly divided as our people are today, at least we're primarily divided into two camps with relatively similar ideals (ignoring our other, less influential political parties). Of course, this is a double-edged sword, as people who identify as Republican are automatically judged by liberals to be racist, sexist homophobes, whereas Democrats are viewed as drug-addicted Communist sympathizers by conservatives. In the vast majority of cases, this is not at all true, but people who associate with specific parties often have to support the darker sides of their party in exchange for those aspects they value. So in the end, political parties are a double-edged sword, as I mentioned, but the edge against them is much sharper, so to speak, than the edge for them.