May 23, 2014 by

Entertainment: Evil?

Hello Internet!

Yesterday I was just browsing the internet and I came across this comment someone made: “Entertainment is the devil’s substitute for joy”. Well, I could just dismiss it as overly fanatical, but I think I’ll try to analyze the argument instead. After all, there are times when we can be so focused on being entertained that we lose sight of what is important, and thus lose our sense of joy. Plus, it sounds very biblical, so a closer look at what the Bible says about entertainment to see if it backs up this message would be beneficial.

One example of entertainment is song. During the latter days of King Saul’s reign, he would be troubled by a “distressing spirit” and could only be refreshed by David playing his harp (1 Samuel 16). Given that David was chosen by God to be the next king of Israel, I find it unlikely that God disapproved of him using music to entertain Saul.

What about stories? We all know about the parables of Yeshua (Jesus), and how He used them to teach important lessons about God and Himself. However, most of His audience didn’t understand the meanings of these stories. Even His disciples only understood them after He explicitly explained them. To everyone else, they were just entertaining stories. While He sometimes expressed disappointment that they didn’t understand, that didn’t stop Him from continuing to tell them. So even if He would have preferred that they learned from the experience, just being entertained didn’t harm them.

That seems pretty conclusive to me, but if anyone can point out evidence in the Bible that I missed, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Till next time,

Goodbye Internet!

Filed Under: Commentary
July 15, 2013 by

Pixar Theory: Plausible or Nonsense?

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The other day I read this article by Jon Negroni which made the hypothesis that all the Pixar movies are in the same universe. No really, Monsters Inc., Brave, Incredibles, Cars, etc. All one world and interconnected. It is very thorough, going into how Brave’s magic creates the intelligent animals and sentient machines, both Cars movies take place after all humans not on the Axiom died off but before they returned, and the monsters of Monsters Inc. are actually the descendants of either those humans or the animals. It is also strangely compelling, turning all the movies into one sweeping arc about the conflict between humans exploiting animals and things while at the same time being the source of the energy allowing them to think in the first place. That said, there are a couple holes in the theory. If you haven’t read it yet you may want to first.

There is life in Cars, in the form of plants. If the plants are still there then the Earth clearly hasn’t been made so toxic that humans couldn’t breathe, and no, not all the humans outside the cleanup crew were put on the Axiom. Furthermore, the Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator probes had been sent to Earth on an annual basis pretty much since the ship left, and the captains says quite clearly that EVE was the first one to come back positive, even as a “false alarm”.

Also in WALL-E, if the cockroach is an example of bugs rebounding faster from the disaster, followed by them acting as intelligent as humans in Bug’s Life, then I would expect him to show a little more intelligence. At most he seems to show the intelligence of a dog, good for a cockroach, but a far cry from human life.

Nonetheless, these are not insurmountable problems, a few tweaks in the theory could very well fix them. So on the whole, while I personally doubt this is the “truth” in the movies, it is certainly good enough for an epic fan fiction ( totally not an insult, I love fan fiction and have even written some myself). I’ll have to watch the movies with this idea in mind and see if it makes a difference. Should be fun.

In other news, I got part one of Samson the Nazirite in the mail today, I’ll have a look at it in a little bit. Looks interesting from what I saw on the website, but it may be a bit too much for children. Oh, by the way, when I ordered it there were only seven hard copies left, and now there are only three, so if you want to get a non-digital one you better hurry.

Till next time,

Goodbye Internet!

Filed Under: Commentary, General
June 28, 2013 by

Monster U and Comics

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I saw Monster University earlier this week, and it is great! One thing I particularly found interesting was how they managed to make a great antagonist who isn’t a villain. I’ve seen this in some other movies to a certain extent, such as the Penny’s agent in Bolt or . . . well . . . I can’t think of anyone else, and even he is nothing like Dean Hardscrabble. She isn’t malicious, her actions would be justified in most circumstances and with the possible exceptions of one or two are the correct actions. What makes her the antagonist is her belief that Mike and Sully could never make good students in the scare program, and when she is proven wrong she accepts it graciously. Simply put, she is a likable antagonist.

In case you haven’t already guessed, my faith in Pixar has pretty much been restored. If next year’s “The Good Dinosaur” is as good, I think it will have recovered completely. The only doubts I have left are because Monster U isn’t entirely original, it is a prequel, and I frankly thought the short at the beginning, while good looking, didn’t have nearly as good of a story as, say, “Paperman”.

In other news, it turns out my dad has a bunch of comics in storage, so I will be able to use those for my research.

Till next time,

Goodbye Internet!

Filed Under: Commentary, General, Movie Review, Review
June 6, 2013 by

Tough to Please

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I’ve been thinking a bit about a tough part about making a story that I’ve discovered as a reader. You want to have characters that the readers care about, but you also sometimes have to have bad things happen to the characters which will upset your readers if the care about them.

For instance, we (the readers) start getting to know the protagonist or protagonists. If the author does his or her job right, we want good things to happen to them, unless they are complete anti-heroes, then we want good things to happen to the antagonist. We want people to like them. We want them to save everyone and themselves. We want them to get the girl (or the guy). However, if they accomplish all these things without any problems, we don’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. If there are some setbacks, it keeps us a bit more entertained but if the ultimate goal is still achieved we have the same problem. After several stories like this we start thinking “These are totally predictable. Can’t I read a story that doesn’t have a completely happy ending?”

Then, lo and behold, we find a story that ends like this and we have mixed feelings. All the other characters hate the protagonist. The evil dictator still rules the world with no possibility for a sequel. The lover dies or marries someone else. So while a part of us likes the fact that we got a more realistic ending, another part of us thinks “Did it have to happen to a character I liked?” The trouble is, if we didn’t like or at least didn’t care about the characters we never would have read to the end in the first place.

I’m honestly not sure what the balancing point is, except to say that something good must happen in the ending of the story, something that says “Even though the protagonists didn’t get a single thing they wanted, it is all okay, because although they wouldn’t have thought so at the beginning of this story things are on the whole better, even if they can’t see exactly how.” In other words, we have to have faith or see the characters have faith that things will work out in the long run.

Till next time,

Goodbye Internet!

Filed Under: Commentary
June 4, 2013 by

Pixar: Going Down?

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This wasn’t what I originally had been intending to write about, but today’s events have brought this to the forefront of my mind. Today I saw the movie Brave for the first time, and for a variety of reasons, I didn’t like it nearly as much as many of the other works by Pixar. This concerns me a bit, since I had a similar reaction to Cars 2. That is two films in a row that Pixar has made that I personally find below average. Is this a sign of decline from the king of computer animation? Possibly, but it also could be just a lull. After all, Pixar has done so well historically that it could be hard to tell the difference between simple mistakes and actual signs of a long term drop in quality. Also, Disney Animation Studios, which of course is also owned by Disney, have been doing well lately, so if Pixar does start faltering they can bring some people in from there. I’ll have to see Monster University to be sure, and even then, I may still have to see their next original (in other words, not a sequel or prequel) film as well, which for the record is titled “The Good Dinosaur”.

Still, given how awesome Dreamworks has been doing lately, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Till tomorrow,

Goodbye Internet!

Filed Under: Commentary