November 24, 2014

It’s Been A While

With the new Hunger Games movie coming out, and the holidays around the corner, I wanted to start posting again. About what? Well, I’m not sure. But I am sure I can think of something. I do want to do a movie review, and I might do one of a past movie.

I am also going to start another series on my other channel: http://ponderthoughts.wordpress.com/

I have considered making these blogs on my other channel into prerecorded v-logs on YouTube, but I will get some more opinions on the matter first. I look forward to writing more here.

March 18, 2014

Back to College..

I am back at college from spring break. Spring break is what gave me the time to think about blogging, and when given the time, decided that it is something that I wanted to start again casually. Now that I am back at college, I realize that it is something that I still want to do, but also understand that I may not be able to post as often as I have, which is two blogs a day.

I enjoy talking about whatever I feeling like releasing to the public. I feel as if I am in control of what I want of my thoughts heard. I also am happy for the feeling that my thoughts that I consider important will not go unrecognized. But alas, my week of relaxation is over, and I am back to the regular way of life, at least as I know it now.

Though I have touched on some of my thoughts so far on this channel, I have not talked about to much my personal life, which is somewhat intentional, as I do not consider the mundane too important. However, since I have brought topic of college up, I may as well summarize why I am there in the first place.

I attend Western Carolina University in North Carolina, USA. I am studying in the field on Computer Information Systems, and hope to obtain a career in the information technology area of technical assistance. In short: I want to be the IT guy that helps fix computer software problems. I am in my junior year of college, and in my free time, enjoy academic activities such as studying and writing about philosophy and religion.

I am not sure that the two interests I have are considered to be normal among people such as myself. The interests seem to be very far apart, and because of that, I decided not to study philosophy in college. I consider it to be my hobby, and would not wish to make a career out of the practice. That, as well as I do not have a vast knowledge of the subject, but rather my own, particularly bias view of the subject that I enjoy exploring and expressing.

So that is a short synopsis of my being in college. My posts will (hopefully) continue to be regular, as well as thought provoking. That is my true intention. I want to post my thoughts with the intention of them meaning something more than “what one guy thinks”. And so, I sincerely hope you enjoy reading them, and I look forward to exploring whatever subject I come across next.

Thank you

March 13, 2014

My “Television”

At one time, I watched a lot of television. I had television shows to watch for nearly every day of the week. I remember that my schedule would be mended so that I could watch those episodes. My schedule was based around that, and not the other way around. I should preface this with saying that I was in grade school. I did not have many responsibilities. I always made A’s and B’s and did not have to put fourth much effort in the way of obtaining that. When I had homework, I quickly scratched through it (or what I would consider quickly) and did not give it much thought. Yet, I always made decent grades on the homework. Either I was very lucky in that my teachers only graded on attempt, or I knew a lot more than I thought I did.

Since then, my medium of entertainment has changed. I still have a “television” (that I do not watch nearly as much), but it is on the internet. My television in YouTube TM. Once I started going to college, and did not have much time to be able to sit down and watch a full episode, I turned to the internet for a shortened version of a show. I quickly became immersed in the kinds of videos that YouTube TM offered. I enjoyed watching the kinds of videos that I could make myself given the time. I became apparent to me that I liked watching the videos because it appealed to me at a more personal level.

YouTube_logo_standard_white

The YouTube Logo

I still watch YouTube TM and have even made my own videos at some points, although, with not much success. I have a decent variety of types of videos that I watch, although I tend to lean towards the people that play video games. I’m not entirely sure why I like watching those people so much, but I have always enjoyed watching people play video games, sometimes more than I liked playing them myself.

The question I sometimes wonder is why. Why did I switch from television to the internet? Was it simply adapting to the coming of age, or something else? I feel like it is something else, something that anyone could identify with, even if they have never been on the site.

YouTube TM is a community of people that essentially share videos with each other. There is a more personal connection watching a video that came directly from someone than watching a show on television whose motivation was business based more than audience based. For this reason, I will continue to watch the videos, and that amount will almost always outweigh the amount of television that I watch.

 

March 12, 2014

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review (Part 2)

There were many views given to the movie in a political nature, which can be well seen. The first movie The Hunger Games initiated the idea of a futuristic political realm, but the sequel explored it to the maximum.

The beginning of this movie makes it clear that Panem (the Capitol) is run by a type of “pseudo-dictatorship”. The masses that are the twelve districts are governed by those that live in the capitol, which are governed by one ruling leader. I consider the residents of the capitol to have a stake in the political instruction due to the fact that the hunger games rely on the capitol’s residents to be entertained by them. Without the entertainment aspect of the games, I do not think the games would fail completely, but it definitely would not have the same impact that it does.

The peacekeepers were present in the first movie, but not to the extent that they were in the second, and certainly not as menacing.

peacekeeper change

The change of the peacekeeper look from the first movie to the next.

The peacekeepers are not so much peacekeepers, as they are “law enforcers”. They make their presence known, and publicly punish anyone who rebels against the law within the districts. Some also illegally interact with the residents of the districts by bartering in the black market and engaging the female resident into prostitution (as indicated by the books, not the movie). This reflects events that have happened in the past, especially with the holocaust. This is a future representation of exercising power over the masses with brutality and immorality.

The last aspect of the movie I would like to relate to the movie is the hunger games itself. The games are ones in which children are sent to fight to the death until one comes out the winner. The prize for winning is a steady supply of food for you and your family, and eternal immunity from having to play the games again. The only motivation that drives the children to fight in the games is hope itself. Thankfully, to my knowledge, there has never been something exactly the same on such a large scale. However, religion did play a part for something similar that happened in the 13th century.

I am referring to the children’s crusades, whereby children were convinced to march over 5,000 kilometers from Germany to Jerusalem (The “holy” land), where inevitably, most of them died with the hope that they would be protected by their god.

Interestingly, even the most radical of political parties today have found a way to weave the political nature of The Hunger Games into their political beliefs. For example, according to “The Hollywood Reporter” (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hunger-games-catching-fire-sparks-659547 ), the Tea Party created a trailer called “A movement on Fire” where the party explains that in order for there to be liberty, there must be a government that is limited by constitution.

They use the Hunger Games as a theme for this because they believe the movie represents government abuse due to it giving “handouts and regulations”.

Liberals, on the other hand, believe that the movie presents a message of the capitol, being the modern day equivalent to the “one-percent” is allowed to exercise control over the districts (The 99 percent) due to the capitol’s wealth. Conservatives see the movie as an extreme example of what can happen if liberal ideology is exercised. Conservatives use the examples of gun control, food stamp control, and poor equality as an example of fallacies in the liberal ideology as seen in the movie.

So there is no shortage of political beliefs seen in the movie. I think this is a great thing that the movie encapsulates so many modern day dogmas presented in politics that have gotten the young generation talking and thinking about it. Hopefully, entertainment can explore deeper into this field for the betterment of the political world.

March 11, 2014

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review (Part 1)

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) Poster, IMDB

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) Poster, IMDB

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire recently came out on DVD. I saw this movie in theaters not long after it was released. It was one of the best movies I have ever seen. It was, without a doubt, the best movie I have ever seen in a theater. It made me change my all-time favorite movie. However, one thing I did see was the more camouflaged themes to it. This is something that I have seen discussed in some forums, but not in as much detail as I would like to discuss.

I would like to try a theme for a movie review, wherein I give my own review for a movie in one part, and then discuss, in more detail, the reasons why I like it and the hidden meanings and themes that I discovered whilst watching. There are not many movies that do not have hidden themes to them, and I do not think movies would be as good if there were no alternative meanings. So movie reviews is but one idea I would like to explore in this informal type blog.

For part one of the blog, I would like to give a simple review of the movie using a rubric that I believe encompasses the main aspects of what makes a movie great, as well as adequate weight put in the correct areas. The rubric consists of four parts: Storyline, Acting, Graphics, and Other (being any other aspects that go into rating). The weights of each area follow respectively: 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10%. The breakdown of the rubric will be available in this post.  Movie Review Rubric

In my rating of this movie, there were not many points that were lost, and no points were lost in the graphics area, as I believe this area was executed perfectly in the movie. While watching the movie, you knew that the animals were not real, but it was nearly impossible to detect the CGI aspect of them, which is a milestone compared to the CGI in even some modern movies. The movie was extremely polished, and the camera work was perfect for the setting and nature of the movie

The most points were deducted from the acting category, which is only .3/10 points. Some of the lines delivered in the movie did not seem genuine, and solely acted out without any context. This is a very minor complaint and only happens a few times throughout the movie. The other .2/10 point that was deducted from the movie is for the story itself. The character development of the movie did not seem at par with the story the movie was trying to convey. For example, the love story progression between Peeta and Katniss did not seem genuine although it was obvious that it was intended. Because that was a minor detail to the plot, only .2/10 points were deducted, leaving the final rating to be 9.5/10.

In the next part, I want to discuss some of the political themes of the movie.

March 10, 2014

Thoughts on Work..

I am sitting here, a couple of hours before work for the first time since January. I am a college student on a Leave of Absence, and am currently home on spring break. I felt like I should probably explain that so as to say that I was not fired or do not simply take extremely long breaks for no apparent reason. In any case, it has been a while since I have been to work at home.

It is not necessarily a new thought, but sometimes I am perplexed at the idea of “work” and how seemingly unfitting it is in our world, and yet without it, I could not be writing in a manner that you could be reading now. Work does not seem to fit the naturalization of life. This is not to say that we are the only ones who work (by “we”, I mean we as humans). It is well obvious the animals in the animal kingdom work just as hard, if not, harder than we do. It just seems a bit out of the ordinary in the manner in which we work.

Still, I wonder if I like this manner, and I always find myself not too sure. I suppose it does not really matter. There seem to be a lot of things that are the way they are, and do not really matter if they are desirable. I wonder if that is the way it is in the animal kingdom. I should think so if they spend their lives afraid of something eating them at any moment, and having to constantly be on their toes. Of course, that is assuming that a constant state of worry is the life of an animal, or just the way we see it as observers looking in.

March 10, 2014

Two Years Ago..

Two years ago, I decided to start a WordPress account. For a week, maybe, I actually posted my thoughts here. I took too much time to think about what I had to say, because I wanted to make sure that everything I had to say had meaning. I wanted to compose my thoughts into a draft and revise it before I actually posted it. I think that is what deterred me from writing in the first place. I want to write, but I do not want to to feel as if it is a chore, because, in fact, it is only my thoughts and, I do not need to make it into an essay. So I want to start over in this idea of blogging, but with a less formal approach to it. So I hope you all enjoy what I have to say.

You can contact me by:

Email: cchoose01@yahoo.com

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/CChoose1 @Cchoose