The Island

Venue: My room
Release Year: 2005
Length: 136 minutes
Director: Michael Bay
Language: English (plus a Latin word)
Rating: 5/5 (I would watch it again, I would love to discuss it, and I would possibly buy it)

It was a surprisingly good film. After seeing so many excellent international films my opinion of Blockbuster hits was not as high, but obviously Hollywood can still make the occasional awesome film. I found the plot to be very similar to a Robin Cook book I read a couple years ago. They found this species of monkey that was so similar to humans that they could transplant the organs. Unfortunately, humans are smart and so are their apish counterparts so the monkeys started killing the workers and eventually took over their island. But back to the film, it has a very good storyline, well thought out and planned. It was cool to see Mr. Laurent turn good. The cast was excellent; I like Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Sean Bean. The cinematography and special effects were also amazing. Overall it did a good job of being a typical Hollywood Blockbuster, a thought provoking film, and it left me with the desire to live my life in a better way. I think the film displayed the innate human ability to think creatively and learn quickly. I can definitely see how it was meant as a politically charged film, extremely anti-cloning. Morally, I’m not exactly sure where I stand on the issue of cloning. I can see how it will have a great impact on medicine in the 21st century however I can also see that it will be misused. The way I see it, murder and adultery are the two worst sins because they play with God’s power of taking and giving life. However, in God’s eyes medicine is probably one of the best professions. Christ’s mortal ministry was full of healing the sick and that is a very good, Godly thing to do. Unfortunately I am not quite sure where the line is. I do not think we are able (or God will let us) cross the line to attempting to recreate His power. If we do cross that line I’m sure it will result in a similar situation to the tower of Babel. That is a scary thought that I haven’t heard anyone mention before. I wonder if it is original. I believe cloning to a limited extent is good, all the way up to actually cloning human organs. I also believe that actually cloning a whole human being is wrong. I cannot see any valid situations where it would be desirable, necessary, and moral. While cloning is a good idea, it should be kept in the hands of those who will use it responsibly otherwise something terrible will happen.

Bush Bashers

There is an article in the BYU Political Review which points out many of the main problems facing the Bush administration. This is my response:

While the Bush administration promised $7.1 billion to battle the avian bird flu and has only delivered $3.3 billion to date, we shouldn’t be focusing on that. Last year, 41 people died from the avian influenza while over 3 million people died from AIDS. I think we should focus our anti-Bush sentiment on educating people in proper hygiene to decrease the number of people infected with HIV. Oh wait, AIDS was around before President Bush and we should have made a bigger deal when President Clinton was in office too. I guess since the bird flu is a relatively new issue that only President Bush has had to deal with, we find no problem with using it as an angle of attack because there is not a history of Democrats ‘botching the job’ as well.

The well-known Katrina fiasco is another great example. Not only did President Bush appoint people to lead FEMA who were not necessarily qualified, but the local governments, state governments, other federal agencies, and plenty of NGOs are just as much art fault as the people President Bush personally appointed to lead FEMA. If you notice, FEMA has been under attack since 1997 (four years before Bush became President). I do not see President Bush at fault for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. However, because Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and placed FEMA within it against the wishes and recommendations of Director Brown, he does carry a portion of the blame.

Our leaders are too busy covering up their mistakes, just as they always have been. During the Monica Lewinsky fiasco, the White House was focusing far too much attention on the President’s personal mistakes rather than on international and domestic affairs. It seems that whether a Republican or a Democrat sits in the White House, there will always be mistakes and fiascos.

I am not an avid conservative and Republican. I do not fall into any of the main American political parties. One thing that bugs me is when people who are distinctly Republican or Democrat bashes the opposing party irresponsibly. Yes, there are issues and problems with the current administration, but no matter what party controls the government, it will always be that way.

I agree with your conclusion that we should fight for the freedom and liberty of Americans and all human beings. I agree that the average American should stay on top of the news. I agree we should do what we can to make a difference in this nations politics. However, I do NOT agree that all the problems our country is dealing with are due to the ‘foul-smelling grunge blanketing much of our Capitol,’ which just happens to be led by Republicans at the moment.

I don’t like opinions from people who are hardcore Republican or Democrat. I think everyone should be somewhere in between and more parties should exist that stand on the moderate side of the spectrum. There is so much going on in politics that affects so many people, we can find evidence of both parties doing things that are really bad and other things that are really good. Each side talks up their good points and the other side’s bad points. We should not be so divided, especially based upon party lines few people fall in to. We need more solidarity in the American population.

Solidarity and Freedom of Speech

This weeks In These Times has an article titled In Search of Solidarity. Usually I don’t read In These Times because I’m not a fan of socialism. It defines solidarity as “the fact or quality, on the part of communities…of being perfectly united or at one in some respect, especially in interests, sympathies, or aspirations.” I thought to myself that solidarity sounds like a good thing. We need a little more of it in most aspects of the society (especially in Muslim/Western relations). People want solidarity, it is just the way the human works. A lot of lonely people find solidarity in online communities, through churches, and unfortunately in terrorist organizations. It would be nice if we could find solidarity in our families (it’s happening less and less), in our communities (imagine the ‘typical’ suburbia, like Truman’s neighborhood), or in our world (we’re all homo sapiens). Unfortunately, we seek alternative places to find solidarity and those alternative places and the desire for solidarity can be twisted. Twisted enough to cause things like 9/11. After 9/11 the American people and the western world came together and found a great deal of solidarity. Instead of playing that up, President Bush decided to tell everyone to go shopping. After Hurricane Katrina a similar thing happened, but everyone decided they would donate some money and forget about it. Maybe one of the reasons we no longer have solidarity is because we believe money will solve everything. Terrorists destroyed the WTC? I’ll donate money. A Hurricane destroyed New Orleans? I’ll donate money. As Christopher Hayes says in his article, “donating money is an act of charity, not solidarity. Once we’ve paid off our conscience we’re free to go back to our lives.” I find that attitude very representative of the American population. I also find it very disgusting and hope it will change but know it will not, unless something crazier than a huge hurricane and terrorist attack occurs. It’s interesting how Hayes ties it into socialism: “if we lose unions, we lose the concept of solidarity itself.” In my opinion, not so much, but he is entitled to his opinion. It was also interesting to see how he said the term ’solidarity’ is never used in the American press. Just today the New York Times printed an article on the Mohammed cartoons and similar pieces of art in the past. It says, “That in turn led European papers to republish the cartoons in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten and in defense of free speech.” Obviously, we find solidarity in supporting our inalienable rights, including free speech. One could argue that without unions we would no longer have free speech, but I don’t think most would agree with that. While some valid points are shown about the state of our society, I don’t think solidarity hinges on the future of unions.

Speaking of free speech, the Piss Christ picture created a similar discussion to the Mohammed Cartoons that were printed in the Jyllands-Posten paper. I heard that the man who drew the Mohammed cartoons was trying to write a children’s book about Mohammed, but because he is the prophet and no graven image can be created of him, no illustrators would take the job. As a sort of test to see how the Islamic population would respont, he created the political cartoons. Although Jyllands-Posten had refused to publish controversial pictures of Christ, many cartoons that blaspheme Christ have been published all over the world. I have no recollection of Christian groups making a big enough deal to get the front page, especially more than one day. I’m curious to see where this goes. Personally, I find it revolting that those cartoons were drawn, let alone published. I also find it revolting that the Islamic people are not standing by their peaceful religion and digressing to violence to make their voices heard.

A State of Mind

Venue: BYU International Cinema

Release Year: 2004
Director: Daniel Gordon
Languages: English and Korean
Length: 93 Minutes
I think I saw this movie two years ago. The only parts I remembered were when the power goes out and they say ‘bloody Americans. It’s all their fault.” And when the filmmakers say that North Korea has never given this level of access to anyone from the west before.

It followed a year in the life of a 11 year old girl who participated in the Mass Games to celebrate communism and North Korea. It was really interesting to see how much the North Korean system follows the Christian system. Kim, Jong Il is the General or the Father, just as Christian’s believe in God the Father. The family is the most important unit of society, behind one’s love for the General. He inspires goodness, truth, and the best in everyone. He is leading them onward and without him they would be nothing. Intelligence, fluency in foreign languages, and physical strength are developed in everyone. They will receive eternal happiness though their great leader. They want to be self-reliant and independent from the world. There are also plenty of similarities to 1984, with a state installed radio that cannot be turned off in every kitchen. The work and diligence of the citizens of North Korea defeats any competition we could attempt to muster in the western world, especially among children.

Going back to the power outages. When they blamed it on the Americans, the audience laughed as if saying. Haha, we don’t cause power outages, that is just your stupidity and simple-mindness in communism. In reality there is a lot of truth to their belief. We isolated them from the rest of the world, driving them into famine and still causing them problems even in getting enough food. It’s the stupid Americans who are to closed-minded, to egotistical, to superficial to realize that they have a valid point. If Kim, Jong Il died and North Korea was invaded by South Korea and the Americans, the North Koreans would be much less happy, not overjoyous to see us. I don’t think most Americans realize that. They’re too busy Americanizing the world using Chinese products. In 1993 the Pentagon released a statistic saying that if war broke out between North Korea and South Korea (with 37,000 American troops), there would be over 1 million casualties in the first 24 hours. That is a lot of dead people due to one misunderstanding. If people would sit down and try to figure things out and understand each other, the world would be a much safer, happier place.

IMdB, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia

Racism, Free Speech, and Christianity

Racism is not dead. Not by a long shot. I recently attended a lecture by one Professor Chris Crowe of the BYU English department. He is the author of Mississippi Trial, 1955 and Getting Away with Murder, two books on the murder of Emmett Till. The thing that struck me the most about his lecture was during the Q&A. One student asked what the state or racism was in Mississippi. His answer (which will make sense to all you Mormons out there) was he ran into the missionaries and they told him they were teaching an investigator who wanted to be baptized. They told the Bishop, and he would not allow it because she was Black. This sent me for a loop. I expected people to be long over the racism issue, especially Mormons. Blacks have always been allowed to be Mormon and have been allowed to recieve the Priesthood since 1971, so what this Bishop did is 100% wrong. But on to more important matters.

There is a post on the Agitator that tells the story of Cory Maye. One day in southern Mississippi, the SWAT team got a warrant to break into a house without knocking and arrest a man known to deal drugs. When the SWAT team arrived at the house, they saw that it was a duplex. They picked one door (the wrong one) and broke in. The man who lived there did not realize it was the SWAT team, so he did what ever good father would do, he protected his family. If a bunch of guys run into your house at 3am shooting, wouldn’t you shoot back? Well he did and he got a lucky shot off that killed one of the officers. Unfortunately, he was Black. He was arrested and sentenced by an all white juroy. His sentance: death by lethal injection. Why such a harsh sentence? First, he was Black and there are obviously still plenty of racist people in Mississippi. Second, the officer he killed was the son of the police cheif. And third, Mississippi has some very racist residents. Right now, Cory Maye is sitting on death row because he was trying to defend his family from intruders, who just happened to be police officers breaking into the wrong house.

I am utterly disgusted by racism of all kinds. Growing up in metro Detroit opened my eyes to Blacks, Whites, Arabs, Indians, American Indians, Europeans, South Americans, and basically all types of people. I was lucky enough to be raised in an environment where everyone is equal no matter what their accent is, how broken their english is, where they are from, how much money they have, and what they drive and wear. I then moved to Orange County, CA where I picked up a slight resentment to the ultrarich, not because I am not rich (I have no doubt I could be if I wanted to) but because of their attitudes and the way they treat other people. Now about the Cory Maye case, I think he should be let free and whichever officer made the call to storm into his house should be reprimanded. We should leave it at that. I think those racist Mississippians (and racists everywhere) should grow up and learn to deal with their problems in ways that do not hurt others.

Now on to free speech. Recently a Danish newspaper published 12 political cartoons which are very disrepsectful to the Islamic Prophet and Founder Mohammed. Traditionally, Mohammed should not be depicted at all, especially doing things that are against the Islamic religion. One hopes that in this world of ours people would have enough deceny to understand and accept the beliefs of others. Unfortunately that is not true. Yes, we believe in free speech, but we also believe that people should be responsible and print things that will benefit at least someone. In response to these cartoons, Danish products have been boycottted all over the Middle East and Africa, many Europeans and European businesses have lost a lot of business, face, and trust in Islamic areas, and multiple Danish embassies have been burned down. How’s that for free speech? I believe these reactions are uncalled for, but I believe the cartoons were also uncalled for.

Now on to Christianity (remember, I am Christian myself). This concept also applies to other things, like being a white male in America. Because Christianity is so common place and a majority in the western world, it accepts a great deal of stupidity similar to the aforemetioned cartoons. Cartoons making fun of Jesus and Christians are quite common and exected, especially in Europe (compared to America). But because Christians are the majority and those types of cartoons are common, nobody cares about them. This shows the state of Christianity in the world today. I am glad Christians do not burn things down because of the derogatory use of free speech. Unfortunately it is because they don’t care rather than they are striving to live a Christlike life. It is like affermative action. Affermative Action gives minorities more chances, but that could also be seen as it gives majorities fewer chances. If we truly thought we are all equal, there would be no need to differentiate between minorities and majorities. The world shouldn’t be colorblind, it should just accept the rainbow how it is and move on to things in life that are actually important and meaningful. It is amazing how much time is wasted over completely ridiculous things that do not matter at all.

xxx#ii

the state of the union address is ridiculous (applause). the president gets up and explains the good things that he is done and the good things that he will do (applause). sometimes presidents, like george bush, get up and stumble and everyone makes fun of them (applause). othertimes they don’t, so you don’t hear about the state of the union address ever again (applause). if the president actually said something new or took a hard stance on a difficult topic then the address might be worth listening to (applause). but since he simply restates everything he has said through the past year i find it quite repetitive and repetitous (applause). now sitting through a stupid speech from a political figure is not uncommon, what makes the state of the union address so ridiculous is all the applause (applause). it constantly interrupts any train of thought and lasts for such a long time (applause). i bet someone could get through president bush’s speech in twenty minutes if there weren’t so many constant interruptions (applause). that is why i prefer to read the state of the union address (applause). instead of listening to twenty seconds of speech alternating with twenty seconds of applause i skip over the eight letters and they conveniently put it in parenthesis for me (applause).

neo-eschatologie

all praise alan greenspan. he directed the united states economy (and therefore the world economy) for nearly twenty years. he kept inflation down and the economy up. he kept our recessions down and our booms up. hip hip hooray for him.
yeah, right. sure he did all that good stuff, but what about the state he left us in. sure he embraced technology and helped advance our nation and the world and the bay area, but what about the bust afterwards? i think there are two huge problems with the world greenspan has left us with.

• first, we are in a real estate boom. greenspan has effectively made plenty of middleclass white color homeowners into millionaires, but how long will it last? the prices of houses and land have been skyrocketing all around the country. from the district of columbia to seattle, from metro-detroit to orange county, from the desert surrounding vegas to the salt lake city-orem stretch of i-fifteen. while prices in the city have continued to go up as usual, the cost to buy a house in suburbia has increased significantly. what happens when people start retiring? they will move to florida or arizona or an assisted living center. sometime soon, lots of people will be selling houses in suburbia. because prices are so high right now many young couples are opting for apartments or deciding not to live in suburbia at all. many older couples are staying in their starter homes, unable to afford the down payment on a decent sized house in suburbia. one of these days, everything is going to hit at the same time and the value of land will drop drastically. millions of people are going to lose lots of money on their homes and realize they won’t be able to retire. if you moved into orange county ten years ago you could buy a very nice house for three hundred thousand dollars, now it is worth one point three million dollars. the owners see their houses as an investment and are excited that when they retire they can move somewhere cheap and have a million bucks to live on. now with the prices of medicaid and medicare skyrocketing, very soon people are going to be very much out of luck.
• that is the first problem. the second deals with the international system. the united states is trillions of dollars in debt to countries around the world and that debt is increasing billions of dollars every day. out of all the money the united states borrows, most of it comes from china. sure it is awesome we are helping them develop their economy, but not when their economy is slowly beginning to take over ours. already they have taken most of our manufacturing jobs, leaving few jobs for the american low class to break the poverty line, let alone work their way up and live the american dream. america was built on immigration, but it can no longer support immigrants unless they come here with a university education and a decent knowledge of the english language. but back to the problem at hand, with the united states going further and further in to debt every day, the dollar loses more and more of its value. because american power is based largely on its economy, as the value of the dollar degrades, so does american power and influence. all that power has to go somewhere and right now it is going straight into the hands of the chinese. i can think of plenty of other places i would rather have the power go, a communist country who disagrees with international opinions of civil rights and nuclear proliferation is not one of them. once the chinese figure out how to feed their people and advance their military, the rest of the world is in for a ride. gone is friedman’s mcdonalds theory and nice lexus. gone is westernized, modernized, globalized, democratic power. simply put, the world is sliding; sometimes fast and sometimes slow, but always down. watch ben bernanke closely, but watch trends in america even more closely. be smart.

super extra large bowl

super bowl

• yes, it is in detroit. that is neat.
• football is a professional “sport” where the players get paid handsomely to don a highly specialized cluster of pads, toss a ball, take a five minute break, drink some gatorade, breath some oxygen, and go play for another thirty seconds.
• the word professional aptly describes those who play football in the nfl seeing as in the late nineteenth century it was a euphemism for prostitution, often used to describe the job of a japanese geisha (those who sing and dance to entertain men).
• the word sport means a game involving physical activity. the sport of kings is war. football contains less physical activity, not more. the fans get more of a workout jumping and cheering during a game than most of the players. when the farthest you can run is one twentieth of a mile and there are more pauses in the game than plays, it can hardly be considered physical activity. football is also nothing like war. war is not fun. war kills people. ever since the civil war, people don’t go out and watch wars as spectators. war is an armed conflict to deal with an undesirable situation.
• while football is not a sport, it is made up of plenty of professionals. that says a lot about the rest of the professionals in the world.

extra large

• i find it extremely amusing (nearly amusing enough to be categorized under random or simply random) that this year is the fourtieth super bowl. roman numerals are used to designate super bowls and the roman numeral for fourty is fifty minus ten, or xl.
• what comes in extra large sizes these days? shirts for the football players who eat a lot and their increasing number of compatriats who are not getting paid to get fat. also a lot of advertisements. when men get fat, their bodies do not get proportionately large so to make up for being fat and having low self-esteem they search ‘extra large’ on google.

the world would be a better place if:

• people did not waste their time and money watching, playing, or being at all associated with professional football
• people realized what their bodies are and the potential their bodies have and began treating their bodies with respect (and there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic)
• people were simply educated. if children were taught by their parents to take care of their bodies and their minds, they would not have self-esteem problems, financial problems, addiction problems, or a whole host of other problems that are raging in this “modern” times
• parents stepped up to the plate and took responsibility for their children, realizing that raising their children is the most important thing they will ever do
• people weren’t so retardedly stupid

Caspar David Friedrich

Venue: BYU International Cinema

Release Year: 1986

Length: 84 Minutes

Director: Peter Schamoni

Language: German (with English Subtitles)

This is the story of an artist who was not appreciated by the people of his time. The excuses they use is that his pictures are to unorthodox. He paints landscapes. Sometimes with a religious twist, but focuses more on the landscape than the religion so it is unorthodox. People turned to God’s creations, because they surround us, rather than to God, because it was the great apostasy. Now religious paintings focusing on the religion have returned, just as the fulness of the Gospel has. The movie was very slow and boring. I would not recommend it. It did have some interesting lines about how to understand art, but they seemed more like cliched artist junk than anything insightful. I did not really understand this movie very well. Possibly because I am not familiar with the historical setting (Germany under Napoleon), and because the historical setting continually changed from when Friedrich was alive, to immediately after his death, to 50 years after his death and there was not a good way of figuring out which characters belonged to which time period, and if they belonged to multiple time periods, which time period they were in at the moment. Another reason I may not have liked this movie was because I do not really understand art. As much as I want to be an artist, there are lots of famous pictures that I do not have a taste for and many less famous pictures that I think are amazing. I do not know if this shows that I am thinking out of the box because I have not reached the box yet or if it is because I have gone through the box and out the top.

My Mother’s Castle

Venue: BYU International Cinema

Release Year: 1990

Length: 105 Minutes

Director: Yves Robert

Language: French with English Subtitles

Medium: Original Reel
This seemed a lot like a grown up version of My Father’s Glory, which makes sense because it was the sequel. It focused much more on the state of the family than solely on Marcel. It was not as happy, as life usually seems when we get older. I think one thing that was only briefly touched on that should have been explored more deeply was religion. In the first film I felt that religion played a large role and Marcel’s life could have changed after his acceptance of religion or after he discovered for himself (not through his father) that religion is unacceptable. Unfortunately, all we hear about religion in the second film is Marcel walking into a church saying “I knew that God didn’t exist, but I wasn’t completely sure.” I feel that theme could have been greatly expounded on and tied in with the large discussion of ethics. When Marcel’s father decides to give in to his family and use the key to trespass every week, he had a huge internal debate going on. It is interesting to note that the most anti-religious person in their family is also the most morally and ethically conservative. I think it would have been amazing to see Marcel’s discovery of religion affect his opinions of the way the key situation worked out. It seemed as if this film was really two films put together. The first half was the family living in their country home and Marcel discovering the opposite sex and how it is a bad idea if explored too young. That seemed like a huge part of the movie while it was going on, but looking back  it seems like that was a totally different film. The meat of the film comes from the moral dilemma of trespassing, which luckily all works out for the good of the family. Then all of the sudden five years are skipped and we find out that this moral dilemma portion of the film was much more engrossing than the first part of the film or the first film altogether. So five years pass while Marcel is at the better school and his mother dies. Then his brother dies. Then Lili dies. That is all glazed over and Marcel opens a film studio and needs a large house to run it out of. Marcel ends up buying the house that his family trespassed and got caught running through. His mother nearly died each time they ran across and when they were actually caught she fainted. As an apt ending to the film and the title he knocks down the canal door and he owns his mother’s castle. One amusing quote was, “Girls are natures mistakes.”