I personally have seen The Matrix quite a few times over the past couple of years. I did not think that watching it one more time would be any more exciting or even unique. I, however, was wrong! Watching The Matrix along with Centenary’s interactive presentation was a unique experience. There were so many aspects to critique from the choreography to the acting to the audience participation. In my opinion, some of the choreography was executed with excellent precision. The lady who portrayed the part of Trinity did an outstanding job. She executed flips and cartwheels perfectly and in time with the Trinity of the movie. Other Centenary actors left little to be desired. They were simply not flexible enough to execute the gymnastic-style stunts. It provided more of a comic relief rather than helping anyone seriously understand the movie.Some of the acting left a little to be desired. In certain scenes it was very obvious that the actors did not watch the movie enough to when a character picked up a phone or simply extended his hand in greeting another character. In my opinion, the acting is the same as the choreography. A few extraordinary scenes, but in the end it seems to be more of a comic relief to a serious film.The audience seemed to enjoy the humorous and sometimes seriousness of Centenary’s interactive presentation. After a long day of orientation, the audience did not seem to mind cheering for the humorous acts of the actors. Because of this long day of orientation, it is my opinion that this is the reason that the audience did not mind that the interactive presentation was more humorous than serious. Most of the audience did not mind getting sprayed by water guns even though it did interfere with one of the best parts of the movie. In conclusion, Centenary’s interactive presentation of The Matrix was unique. It provided good entertainment for the audience after a long day of orientation. However, Centenary’s interactive presentation might because of its humor have caused someone to miss something in the movie that they needed for class.
I believe that the kind mistress for Neo is Cipher. In Douglass' Narrative, the kind mistress helps Douglas adapt to something that is new. She teaches him how to read. Cipher also helps Neo learn something that he doesn't know. Once Neo is free Cipher helps Neo learn how to adapt to the matrix. He uploads programs for Neo and tells Neo of his own personal accounts of the matrix. He teaches Neo about the matrix as the kind mistress teaches Douglas how to read.
In Douglass' Narrative, the kind mistress turns and becomes a hater of what Douglas considers freedom and of people who seek it. In this way Cipher resembles the kind mistress. At first he wants to help Neo learn about the matrix and how to use it. Eventually he is torn between happiness and unhappiness as the kind mistress was. The kind mistress is torn between being happy teaching Douglas to read or being unhappy because her husband is angry because she is teaching a slave to read. Cipher is torn between being happy going back into the matrix and being unhappy but free.
The end result for the kind mistress as well as for Cipher is what we the readers and viewers would call the wrong choice. In my opinion, both betray the cause of good. The kind mistress chooses to accept her husband's wishes and Cipher betrays his friends to help the bad guys. In either case, both betray the cause of freedom and help those who would enslave men.
In conclusion, Cipher is the "kind mistress" to Neo. Cypher and the kind mistress' attitudes and actions parallel throughout their prospective stories. They help someone, and then they betray them for the cause of evil.
I had a hard time understanding what the guy said at the concert. For the most part I established the fact that the really fast paced pieces where the dyonysian pieces and the slow pieces were the appollonian pieces.
Dionysians, “Having a bar on Centenary’s campus would be good for the school. It would show the world that we are not a private college full of stiffs. We would probably attract more prospective students because they would see that we could have a good time. Look at LSU! They have 33,000 students, I would probably say, because they know how to have a good time. Let’s face it, college kids are stressed out and they are looking for a place to cut loose. Why not give them what they want on campus so they can be looked after by the school unlike if they went off campus to party. Also, the parents would probably appreciate the bar on campus because they think that their kid will be a little safer partying on campus than off campus. By putting a bar on the campus, the students themselves would probably respect the administration more because they believe that the administration cares for them in ways other than their academic achievement. So, that’s my answer. Putting a bar on this bloody campus can only help it.”
The one and only soap I ever really watched was Dallas. I know so much about this show so this is the one that I will compare to Electra. In the play you have sibblings squabbling about how to act around their parents. In Dallas, J.R. and Bobby are always at odds about what to do that will best please their daddy, Jock. The very obvious comparison between the play and Dallas is the love affairs. Electra's mother had an affair and I guarrantee you that J.R. had an affair with a different girl every other episode. In the play Electra hates her step-father. Well, in Dallas, when J.R.'s mother gets remarried because her former husband was killed, J.R. tries everything to discredit his mothers new lover. Before and after the wedding he tries to get him out of his Father's house.
J.R. is like Electra in that he does not tolerate anyone trying to horn in on his Daddy's territory. Whether it is his business, Ewing Oil, or his mother (as in her getting remarried) or his own wife and child. Electra in the same manner did everything she could to rebel against the murders taking over her father's house. This devotion to ones family more specificaly to ones father is seen all throughout the play and Dallas
I thought Professor Shoham's lecture was quite interesting. I have studied World War II some but I never knew that the was a kind of mythology behind it.
Professor Shoham commented on the fact that in all the research of Nazi Germany, not many scholars acknowledge the idea that Germanic mythology played a part in Hitler's motives in World War II. Shoham defined mythology as the link between nature and culture. He said that Hitler used Germanic mythology as a guide in some wartime decisions. I found this to be very interesting, because who would have ever thought to make a connection between Hitler's actions in World War II and ancient mythology.
The cool air raced along the wide opened course,
Its green grass trembled as it blew throught.
The runners rush for the starting line,
War on their mind and in their hearts.
And as the runners prepare for war,
The green grass shutters.
It knows that though no runner dies today,
It will surely parish by the spikes of these combatants.
As the runners take off, their spikes digging into the shinny grass
Like a hot knife through butter, the grass dies.
In a war between runners,
The casualty was a field of grass.
During my fall break I had to go to a cross country meet in Arkansas. It was probably the biggest meet in the country. Any college team that took this crazy sport seriously showed up to run against the best runner in the state.
In a sense, I felt a little like Henry preparing for battle. He appeared to be very overconfident, which I was. He was going up against a better army. I was going up against better teams and better runners. Henry and I share a sense of cockiness. We knew we were in for some serious competition, but we would not back down from the fight.
Granted I was not fighting for land or for power as Henry was doing, but I was fighting for honor. This is something that even Henry was fighting for. To me that meet was a battle.
I thought that the performance of SSE Friday night was magnificant. They did a very good job of helping me understand the play. They provided personality and faces to characters I thought were completely different from how they were portraying them. When I read the play I never imagined any of these characters having any sense of humor. In the play SSE gave them humor and sarcasm which I think not only helped the play move along smoothly, buy it also made it more appealling to the audience.
By seeing the play live helped so much in my understanding the play. By seeing the actions and also hearing the dialog in Shakespeare, it helped me understand Shakespeare's style and use of words more clearly. In the play SSE gave them humor and sarcasm which I think not only helped the play move along smoothly, buy it also made it more appealling to the audience. When Henry refered to Montjoy's, I believe, soft white head it was particularly funny to me. Simply because Montjoy, in the play, was black. To top it off, the guy playing Montjoy looked at the crowd and shrugged at the comment. I thought the play was very educational. To me it was not your typical Shakespeare.
Last Thursday I indeed went and saw C.K. Williams receive the Corrington Award. He was a strange looking man, not at all like I expected him to look. Anyway, one of the poems he read was entitled "Gas". He didn't really give an introduction to this poem but the work itself was pretty self explanatory. I enjoyed this poem simply because it eased the tension between the students and Williams. Come to think of it, that is the closest thing to an introduction that he did to this particular poem.
I never imagined that poets would write about gas. It seems to distastful of a subject for an art that I always thought was very elegant. The poem, however, did its job. It eased tensions and lightend the mood, or at least it did for me.
The mental image you got from listening to this poem was crazy. You had a horse jumping straight into the air farting, which by the way the words that Williams used to represent it were very well chosen. I could actually see what happened at the begining of the poem when it talked about a women farting and the guy saying that he had barely been able to smell it happening to me or a friend. Although it was a funny poem, it is also something that I think most guys could relate to. In a sick sort of way of course.
The two movies I decided to see during the film fest were The Bride of Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein. These two films differed very much from the original Mary Shelly book. In The Bride of Frankenstein, the monster was supposed to have been killed by fire, but in the book he escaped down the ocean on an ice raft presumalbly to die. Also, The movie is a sequal to the original story, in which Frankenstein creates a bride for the original monster. This cannot be because Frankenstein is killed in Mary Shelly's novel. Not to mention that in the novel Frankenstein already wrestled with whether or not he should make a mate for the monster, and he decided against it. The whole movie is based on the novel but that's as far as it goes in relating to the book.
The movie Young Frankenstein is based also on Mary Shelly's novel. It takes place after the original Frankenstein. The doctor is the grandson of Victor Frankenstein. This also can not be because Victor had no children because he died in the novel before reproducing. The movie also introduces characters such as Igore who supposedly helped the original Frankenstein. This once again cannot be because Victor did all of the work alone.
The movies were very enjoyable to watch, however, they were clearly not related to the novel very well. The both played on the idea that Mary Shelly's novel should have had a differnt ending. Probably so they would have something to work with when they made their movies.
I thought that the production of Electra was wonderful. The person who portrayed Electra did a great job. When I first read the play, for some reason I thought that Electra was this beautiful girl. It never occured to me that she could look so much like a dirty begger you see on the streets. I think the set was well put together. When I walked into the playhouse I really felt like I was in the time frame that Electra exist in.
The props were pretty interesting. In the begining when Orestes rode into town on the bicycle modified into a handcart, it really caught my eye. I am assuming that it was supposed to be a handcart. After checking my book, I found that it did not specify certain props. Maybe it was easier to modify a bicycle than to either find or buy a handcart. The rain at the end really dazzled me. Never in all of my life have I gone to a play that actually had it rain on stage. In the past the plays that I attended used sound effects for rain. I thought that the rain made it seem that much more real. It was just like being there. Even more so than watching it rain in a movie sceen.
After hearing Rose Van Thyn speak last Thursday, I couldn't believe that people could be so cruel to one another. How can someone believe in a cause so much that they would be willing to kill millions of innocent people to achieve it. After listening to Rose speak I later listened to song by The Beatles entitled "We can Work it Out". The chorus says "life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting. I have always thought that it's a crime so I will ask you once again." The songs meaning was that two people could work out their differences or they would both lose in the long run. Perhaps The Beatles should have been around during Hitlers time.
Rose surely unveiled the dark side of humanity when she talked about the human experiments to make the jewish women pregnant. Fortunately because I am a guy I will never have to worry about that. On the other hand, if I knew that this was happening to my friend Shannon, I think that I would be so angry that I would die trying to resist the Germans.
The thought of being forced to leave my family and everybody that I hold dear is unimaginable. I don't know that I would be able to bear that. I have great respect for those who experienced this first hand and had the stregnth and the courage to go on and strive for survival. Their faith in God and in mankind must have really been put to the test.
I am very furtunate to not have any idea what this could be like. I have never really been deprived of anything. I couldn't imagine losing my most basic comforts such as having hair, or hot showers with soap, or atleast enough food to survive on comfortably. I think it is so important that people like Rose tell their story to help people try to avoid making the same mistakes that would lead to what Rose had to experience.
I think that using art to educate people about horrific stuff is a great idea. Let's be honest, the Hiroshima incident and the holocaust are two of the most terrible tragedies in the history of our planet. Maybe you would wonder why someone would choose to do a comic book on either of these topics. Well, for me in Maus, when I saw the cat germans and the mouse jews, I realized that the germans were, during the war much stronger and more powerfull than the smaller, weaker mouse jews. For those of us who have never lived through the holocaust we will never fully be able to understand what really happened. I think that the idea of telling us the story through art form helps us to better understand.
I chose to see the Centenary Jazz band's concert. I think the performance was outstanding.From what everyone has told me, the jazz band does not normally have as big of a turn out asthis concert had. The rest of the audience also said that this was the best concert the band has given in a long time. The band did a couple of tunes that I knew, but the one that I really like was "Live and Let Die" by my favorite musician of all time, Paul McCartney. Another song that the group did was entitled "In a Sentimental Mood". I did not know the song by title but once they started playing it I realized that I had heard it on the oldies radio stations all the time. In addition to the band there were some choir vocalist to liven up the concert. The sang with the band for a few songs, but my personal favorite was a duet that the two singers did with the band. The song was from the movie Fivel: An American Tale. Yes it was the song, "Somewhere Out There". It was very excellent. Overall I thought that the concert was a huge success.
Well, as I draw a close to this semester, I think what I learned to do that I really think I will apply later in life is how to write a really good argumentative paper. After I graduate, I plan to go to law school. In law school you have to know how to write a good arguement that will address not only your points but the points of your opponent as well. I think I learned how to do this by using the Tulmen model of argumentation. I thought that Paper 2 was a perfect chance to perfect my writting argumentative skills. That is the kind of skill that I believe will help to make me a great trial lawyer.
I also learned how to look more deeply into movies and books for hidden meanings. For example, in Maus I never would have made the connection that the Jewish Mice had no teeth, probably because they weren't doing any fighting, only being beaten on. Teeth, for animals are considered to be weapons used to defend ones self. The Jews were only taking what the Germens threw at them. The German cats on the other hand were drawn very well. They were big and strong looking and had ferocious looking teeth. If I had read this book on my own, I may have missed this point entirely. Learning to look in depth like this is something else that I think I will be able to use to make me a more proffisiont student as well as a great lawyer (someday).
Also, I can't address what I have learned this semester without touching on the HTML. When I came here I knew nothing about HTML. In fact I registered for a computer class so I could learn how to do HTML before I needed it in this class. As it ended up I learned HTML in this class before I need it or was taught it in the other class. When I got to it in the computer class it was so easy because I had been doing it in this class for so long. All in all, I think this has been a pretty productive class this semester.