Proper updatage....
Ok, two things. I spent four days in Cape Cod without internet or my laptop power brick, and now I'm in a house where internet access is limited and other people are using it all the time for legitimate purposes, such as job-hunting. (I can't hook my laptop up to the house's wireless, for mysterious but apparently complicated reasons...meh, I should just learn how this shit works already. Where does one take Knowing Shit About Computers 102?)
Pretty much all my laptop is good for, without internets, is watching movies. (Astonishing, really, how dependent we all are on it.) Therefore I watched Pan's Labyrinth, because it was on the shelf and because I recall saizai said it was well worth watching.
I really, really wanted to find out more about the fantasy world. It was kind of depressing that so little screen time happened on explicitly fantasy-world-related stuff. Of course, that's probably a good thing -- the movie is really about how ugly the real world is, so it's good that you get a good heavy dose of that.
And also, it could be argued that restricting your glimpses into the fantasy world only adds to its mystique and grandeur. The same argument has been made about the Silmarillion -- that the 'legendary', not-giving-many-details air is a good thing, and would be completely ruined by 'zooming in' and exploring the world in more detail (e.g. in a movie, or even The Children of Hurin). But I think that argument doesn't really apply to Pan's Labyrinth, because you see so damned little of the fantasy world. The Silmarillion at least gives you a good long look, even if it is through a vaseline'd lens.
And good goddamn, I wish I knew Spanish now. I was able to identify a lot of words when they were cognate to something Latinate in English, and I did pretty well on a couple basic Spanish words I remember from that time sophomore year when Jessi started teaching me. Stuff like vamos, poco, pero, man~ana. But it's such a language, with such an interesting phonaesthetic, as spoken in the movie. (I confess I am much less enamored of the phonaesthetic of Spanish as spoken by Latina check-out ladies at Costco. That sounds racist, but it really isn't. For example, eww, extensive nasalization.) It was neat to notice, for example, that the faun has [T D] a lot more heavily and in more environments than the humans. I wonder if that was done on purpose?
I really don't enjoy graphic violence, but I don't know if this is something I should 'work on'. If I go anywhere near the medical field, I'll have to deal with blood and gruesome surgeries and necrotic tissue and all kinds of gore and pain. But I hate, I just hate seeing torture scenes. Ugh ugh ugh ugh. Of course, that's the point of graphic violence, to make you feel revulsion and fear and disgust and empathy. (I mean, when graphic violence has a point beyond itself.)
Also, someone on staff there is really fond of that device where you cut from scene to scene by panning across a tree or some such object that extends from the bottom to the top of the screen. I wonder if this is just more common in Spanish film? Also, why it's never done horizontally instead of vertically?
There's a lot more random stuff I should write up. But I've been writing some of it down so I won't forget it, and I have more internet to catch up on than I will ever be able to, especially if I keep writing. Once I'm moved in to MIT (i.e. Sunday), internets will flow like rivers, and LJ updatage like a mighty stream.
Taa.
Pretty much all my laptop is good for, without internets, is watching movies. (Astonishing, really, how dependent we all are on it.) Therefore I watched Pan's Labyrinth, because it was on the shelf and because I recall saizai said it was well worth watching.
I really, really wanted to find out more about the fantasy world. It was kind of depressing that so little screen time happened on explicitly fantasy-world-related stuff. Of course, that's probably a good thing -- the movie is really about how ugly the real world is, so it's good that you get a good heavy dose of that.
And also, it could be argued that restricting your glimpses into the fantasy world only adds to its mystique and grandeur. The same argument has been made about the Silmarillion -- that the 'legendary', not-giving-many-details air is a good thing, and would be completely ruined by 'zooming in' and exploring the world in more detail (e.g. in a movie, or even The Children of Hurin). But I think that argument doesn't really apply to Pan's Labyrinth, because you see so damned little of the fantasy world. The Silmarillion at least gives you a good long look, even if it is through a vaseline'd lens.
And good goddamn, I wish I knew Spanish now. I was able to identify a lot of words when they were cognate to something Latinate in English, and I did pretty well on a couple basic Spanish words I remember from that time sophomore year when Jessi started teaching me. Stuff like vamos, poco, pero, man~ana. But it's such a language, with such an interesting phonaesthetic, as spoken in the movie. (I confess I am much less enamored of the phonaesthetic of Spanish as spoken by Latina check-out ladies at Costco. That sounds racist, but it really isn't. For example, eww, extensive nasalization.) It was neat to notice, for example, that the faun has [T D] a lot more heavily and in more environments than the humans. I wonder if that was done on purpose?
I really don't enjoy graphic violence, but I don't know if this is something I should 'work on'. If I go anywhere near the medical field, I'll have to deal with blood and gruesome surgeries and necrotic tissue and all kinds of gore and pain. But I hate, I just hate seeing torture scenes. Ugh ugh ugh ugh. Of course, that's the point of graphic violence, to make you feel revulsion and fear and disgust and empathy. (I mean, when graphic violence has a point beyond itself.)
Also, someone on staff there is really fond of that device where you cut from scene to scene by panning across a tree or some such object that extends from the bottom to the top of the screen. I wonder if this is just more common in Spanish film? Also, why it's never done horizontally instead of vertically?
There's a lot more random stuff I should write up. But I've been writing some of it down so I won't forget it, and I have more internet to catch up on than I will ever be able to, especially if I keep writing. Once I'm moved in to MIT (i.e. Sunday), internets will flow like rivers, and LJ updatage like a mighty stream.
Taa.