Well, I saw the
movie Brave today with my family and I really liked it. So here's
pretty much how the movie goes: It's one of the those war flicks(I
think the title Brave must come from the “bravery of the soldiers”)
The thing I immediately noticed about the film is the way it decided
to do itself. It was not CGI or live action. It was all clay
animation. Quite edgy I must say in this day and age when everybody
is using computers. It opened immediately with a battle scene so I
didn't really know what was going on, especially since I hadn't
looked up the plot before I went to the movies, or read any reviews.
It was also a bit difficult to follow because of the directors love
of shaky-cam(How he/she edited that in with claymation is beyond me,
maybe cropped out smaller pics out of big ones I dunno...) What made
it even more confusing was I couldn't who the various sides were.
Were they Americans vs Terrorists? Russians vs Chinese? All the
uniforms the soldiers were wearing were fictional and every single type
of nationality was there in each uniform group(there were two
different uniform types, one generally blue and one generally red) I
guessed that it was two divided national alliances fighting against
each other. The claymation battle sequences were intense enough at
that point that was I was forgiving my confusion.
After probably
a good fifteen minutes of fighting I finally got some exposition from
one random soldier who decided to complain about the situation.
Apparently the soldiers in red are the villains. They are all evil
clones of humans controlled by aliens. And the blue are soldiers from
every nation fighting against them. I would have preferred to have
known that earlier during the movie so I could be rooting for the
good guys instead of the movie people making it a “plot twist”
but whatever, it's not too big of a complaint for me.
Upon this plot
twist the aliens bring in their mother ships to drop in more evil
clones. Suddenly it pans over to a meeting room of some UN officials.
These officials have a literal fifteen minute debate about using
their secret weapon. (This really slows the movie down) They decide
to use it and it turns out it is called a
mini-nuke-shower-death.(Apparently the writers are not good at coming
up with secret weapon names) I got bored during the debate but when
the aliens were being showered by thousands of claymation nukes I was
quite impressed with the spectacle(clay animation nuclear explosions
are weird but very
impressive) and that actually turns out to be the formula for
the movie. They fight the aliens with their normal soldiers, the
aliens bring out more ships or clones or something and then the
humans debate about using super weapon then they use it and they keep
doing that until the aliens are defeated. It is impressive how many
different weapons they come up with. First time I ever saw a clay
animated laser cannon.
Nah, just
kidding! Brave is actually an awesome CGI film made by Pixar people
who made Up and other CGI wonders like Toy Story. I really recommend
it! A friend's coming over today so I decided to use an old story
from my story-a-day I did back in 2009 way before I did this blog. I
decided I'd rather post a story I knew was good instead of just
pulling out something bad at the last minute. Anyway I
hope you enjoy! It's one of my personal favorites from back then.
It's also one of my weirdest. This has not been altered at all from
its 2009 form at all, I haven't even edited it, so you can see how
I've changed. Any oddities in format is because its taken from an older document so sorry.
Hunting
Yourself
You were
your most difficult prey. You couldn’t use guns, nets, boomerangs
or arrows to catch yourself. None of those mundane tools would work;
you had to catch yourself with your bare hands. You were close, very
close, but when you saw yourself approach the edge of the woods you
feared the chase was over forever.
You saw the forest
as your last route of escape. Looking in the distance behind you, you
saw yourself barreling towards you. The hungry eyes of yourself
struck fear into you. The idea of that predator catching up to you
scared you, and that was all you could think about.
Your belly rumbled
as you wanted for yourself, only you could end your own hunger. As a
person dying of starvation, your gut twisted when you ran into the
forest; luckily you had the energy to follow.
The forest became
obviously the last place you wanted to escape into. Because, in fact,
the woods were yourself too. The stream was your doubts, flowing
through you, the rocks your morals and values standing strong. The
blades of grass were your loves, gently tickling your feet. As you
saw the trees, your growing desires, blanketing yourself in shadows,
you realized that perhaps inside yourself was the best place to hide
from yourself.
The chase could not
stop; you needed to be fed, to have yourself be yours. When you
started to hide inside yourself though, the pursuit became far more
difficult. Whenever you got ahead, you doubled your pace to keep up.
Yourself seemed to know the way around yourself better than you did.
The running had started to wear away at you. Your legs began to feel
like they were stabbing themselves after every step.
You were filled
with hope when you began to falter and stumble behind you. However it
wasn’t long before you began to feel tired as well, you fell into a
stumble just like yourself did moments ago. Eventually you had to
stop, luckily, you had to as well. You and yourself both collapsed in
the Meadow.
The Meadow was the
center of yourself, the river, the trees, the rocks the grass, they
all met here becoming your heart. Now you and yourself were trapped
inside you.
You looked at
yourself and you looked back. Both the predator and prey gazed at
themselves in confusion. You knew you would get back up eventually,
and yourself as well. A truce existed only as an impossibility, you
could never trust yourself.
It was then when
you entered. You looked upon yourself and yourself and around at
yourself, feeling only pity for yourself. You stood clothed, while
yourself and yourself both lay on the ground cold and naked. You
didn’t realize your nudeness until you looked at yourself wearing
some clothes of your own. This only situation made you feel very
embarrassed and very alone, with no one but yourself to keep you
company.
You cupped some
water from the river from yourself and brought it to yourself and
yourself. You drank it hastily and thanked yourself. It was then that
you left yourself to think about yourself, in all that loneliness.
You didn’t even have yourself to keep you company anymore, only you
was there. You could think only of yourself and how far away you
were. This eternal chase scared you; this impossible run strained you
too much. You cried.
Then you saved yourself. But you could not by ending the chase that
could not happen. You saved yourself by realizing there was no chase.
You stopped looking at you in the distance, or you all around you.
You just looked at you. You realized that the only way to find
yourself was to stop looking.
This work is
copyright Langdon Kennedy you may share this(email it, print it, post
it on your own website, broadcast it etc.) work unaltered as long as
you credit me as the author and share a link to this blog with it and
it is not for profit. If you have any questions and/or are unclear of
these conditions email me at llkenne1@asu.edu
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