A fantastic ‘new’ volcano movie.

I am a huge fan of disaster movies. I like flashy Hollywood films. I LOVE these well written, well acted, and well researched gems like this one. I even like some really bad ones if they can hold my attention and entertain me. I liked how several different stories are woven together here. I especially like how well the evacuation plan seemed to work. It is like someone really thought about how one could do it effectively. Not like most Hollywood movies in which either people refuse to leave or leave in an absolute panic. I grew up a few hundred miles from Mt. St. Helens and I remember when it erupted. There were people just like that old woman who refused to leave their home because it was where they wanted to be. I found this to be, in most ways, one of the most realistic volcano movies out there.

The volcano appears to be like Paricutin.  The type of volcano that developed in a cornfield in Mexico if anyone remembers it from their high school days.  Or if you are old enough to actually remember it in the news.  Or the one from the Hollywood blockbuster Volcano, in which one develops in L.A.  Only in this film it forms out in the harbor near the city of Auckland.  This is why I call it a ‘new’ volcano film.  It is about one that develops in a few days time in an unexpected location.

Clive is a volcanologist, obsessed with his work.  Molly his daughter trying to fix everything for everyone else.  And Mere, his second wife, an alcoholic obsessed with her own job while resenting Clive’s work and Molly’s presence in their lives.

A woman who must go in for a surgery and only supposed to be at hospital for one day.  So she doesn’t tell her children so they don’t worry.  Only they are behind at the hospital so she doesn’t go for surgery until the next day and is in recovery when the evacuation happens.  But no one listens to her as she keeps trying to tell them that her sons are on their own.  Typical kids, instead of leaving the area, they go towards to volcano to see it.

A young Chinese woman and her jerk of a boyfriend and his elderly landlady.  Both of them also Chinese.  The elderly woman won’t leave, the boyfriend deserts her, but she is found by police who are helping with the evacuation and eventually ends up back home in Shanghai.  Telling her family that her husband died in the eruption.

Okay, that was a bit of a spoiler.  But this movie really is worth the watch and it free if you have Amazon Prime.

What made the ending of Newhart work?

Something to think about. The first year of ‘Newhart’, the supporting cast was a rich, Olympic skier who was working as a hotel maid to find out what life was like for most ‘real’ people and a restaurant owner next door who was an habitual liar. Written like that, the characters do not sound very realistic. But the actors performed the characters like real people you might meet.

It wasn’t until season two that the characters we remember were added to the show and the more realistic characters leave. The characters that were successful were the over-the-top, almost cartoonish, characters that are caricatures of stereotypes.

So think about it. Characters that portrayed realism failed and caricatures of ‘type’ of people were successful.

This is the reason that the ‘it was a dream that Dr. Bob Newhart had one night’ series finale was so successful. It was the only way those characters actually made any sense.

The shrink was dreaming about ‘archetypes’ of people who needed some serious help.

GOP/Religious Right

This is a thought process that is oversimplified.  But I wanted to keep it very simple and straightforward.

1. GOP/RR doesn’t want people to be taught about birth control or have good access to it.

2. GOP/RR doesn’t want women to have abortions.

3. GOP/RR doesn’t want single moms on government assistance,

4. GOP/RR wants to solve this problem by women not having sex at all.

5. BUT GOP/RR wants men having sex, getting their needs met, because boys will be boys and it is somehow a right for men. BUT

6. GOP/RR also doesn’t like homosexuals and doesn’t want there to be same sex marriages either.

 

There seems to be a fatal flaw in their thinking that leads to a vicious circle that goes nowhere.

Anastasia Is NOT a Princess!

For all the people saying that she should be a princess since Disney bought Fox. 

Nope.

Not in my book.

She was never a princess.

Although cremated, there were medical samples of her that her doctor kept. After the bodies of the Romanov family were found, her DNA didn’t match.

But the family of a missing woman, who thought she might have been their relative, offered samples from a living relative and her DNA did match their family.

Anna Anderson was just an imposter who managed to live a lie well enough to convince a lot of people so that she was able to, basically, live off the con until she died.

And yes, I will split my infinitive.

Lazy Saturday

Today is a day where nothing gets done.  I slept in.  After getting up at 5 am originally.  Far to early.  I get up at 6:30 on a weekday.  Instead of going to get a few more Halloween things for work, I got lunch and went grocery shopping.  I suppose that counts as getting something done.  I read half a book (Undead or Alive) and another that turned out to be a novella.  The novella was an ARC.  It turned out pretty good.  Short, fast, tightly written paranormal mystery by the name of Hibernian Charm.  Worth reading.  Then I finally got around to doing one of my projects (canvas work, A Winter’s Night by Nancy’s Needle) and watching a movie while working on it.  Spy Time.  A spoof of spy movies from Spain.  Aging spy in an era where old school spies are neither needed or wanted.  Budget cuts mean they don’t really have the funding to do their thing.  Only now one of the villains they put away has escaped and is after his son.  He has to protect his son, the son’s bumbling best friend, and the son’s girlfriend who dumped him because he was too boring.  Amusing movie if you don’t mind subtitles.  I wanted to listen to the Spanish as I was watching it as I’m trying to relearn it.  I took a semester in college and remember nearly nothing.  I’ve been practicing on Duolingo.  Basically, I only recognized a handful of words as the film went on.

What happened?

I remember  when I could find at least 3 topics I could write about every day.  Now days, weeks and months go by when I can’t think of anything interesting.  What happened?

A bit of depression?  Work picked up and in fact swung so far in the other direction everyone was stressed out about it all the time.  Bad news from the doctor on several occasions.  A roommate that was seemingly supportive but actions were rather the opposite.  Slowly stopped journal writing.  Slowly stopped everything.

Now I live alone, very isolated, no real friends anymore, and trying to figure out where I went.  How does one find oneself again?

2017 Wonder Woman film is a Bible Story

The Christianization of Greek Mythology in Wonder Woman

I had heard wonderful things about the new Wonder Woman movie.  This is after years and year of the movie and T.V. industry telling us that they just couldn’t market Wonder Woman and that not enough people would want to watch a show centered around a female super hero.  It has proven so popular that I wasn’t able to see it until the third weekend it was out due to sold-out shows at the times that work best for me.  Sold-out morning showing used to never happen.  It is getting more common now.

But I spent a large part of the beginning of the show pissed off at the Christianization of the Greek Mythology in the movie.  It was very pronounced in the start and even more obvious when Ares tells his own side of it.  I really do hate it when movies butcher well-known mythology, and Greek Mythology is perhaps the most well-known in the western world.

Prometheus carving man from clay.

In Greek Mythology, Zeus doesn’t create mankind.  Prometheus shapes man out of earth and Athena breathes life into him.  Since most of the other good things were given to other creatures, he makes man to walk upright and gives man fire.  Zeus is the one who actually didn’t like mankind.   This is why Zeus created Pandora, the first woman.  Giving her a box filled with misfortune and diseases because he knows that she will eventually become curious enough to open the box and release them on mankind.  To top everything else off, in Greek Mythology, Zeus doesn’t create Amazons.  They are actually the daughters of Ares and a nymph.

But in Wonder Woman, Zeus is clearly an allegory of the Judeo-Christian God and Ares is an allegory of Lucifer/Satan.

The world is a beautiful paradise and the gods rule it from on high, at the top of Mt.

Amazons

Olympus.  Then Zeus creates mankind for the gods to rule over and everything is fine.  Only Ares isn’t happy with man and corrupts them.  So Zeus makes the Amazon’s to teach mankind love.  And everything is good for a while, but then mankind goes back to his former ways.

Then follows a great war in the heavens in which almost all the gods are killed and a much weakened Ares ends up wandering the earth, whispering in the ears of mankind.  He is trying to prove that man is not such a wonderful creation and that humans are not good at heart.  That he has never had to corrupt anyone.  He just points things out and people are free to do as they chose.

If it isn’t obvious, I will break it down.

Zeus, like the Christian God, makes man in his own image.

Zeus makes women latter.  This is actually the same but in the movie it is more in line with the biblical creation of women as companions whereas in Greek Mythology, woman is made as a trick to destroy man.

Ares doesn’t like mankind and thinks they are not that great.  Much like Lucifer, as an angel, is not pleased with the creation of man and attempts to prove to God that man is not as good as he thinks.

Adam and Eve and Serpent

There is a great war in the heavens in which Ares finds himself reduced and stuck wandering the earth and whispering in people’s ears, much like a fallen angel and Satan at the serpent.

It doesn’t take much to pull off the veil and reveal that the movie of Wonder Woman took the Biblical creation story and the battle between God and Satan and just switched the names out.   It also ignored a dichotomy it created.  It the world was a beautiful and peaceful place, why would the gods have a god of war?  Even after the creation of man and the gods divided duties, why would they create a god of war over people who were, at least at that time, peaceful?

Did no one else watching the movie see these problems?  I can’t be the only one for whom they just leapt up off the screen .

When you follow out this logic, Diana becomes a sort of messianic figure, an allegory for

Birth of Diana

Christ.  She was shaped from clay by the queen of the Amazons.  Then Zeus breathes life into her.  Now this is one of the creation stories for her in the comics.  But prior to that, she was shaped from clay by the queen but then each of the different Greek deities then gifts her with something different, like the fairies that attend the christening of Sleeping Beauty, thus making her a child of all the gods and not just the child of Zeus.    Her function is to extend the love the Amazon’s are supposed to represent and to fight for peace and to protect the world from evil influences where she finds them.

Clearly, the writers are trying to tell the story of God’s creation, of the fall of the Angels, of the actions of Satan, and of the birth of Christ.  All hidden under the guise of Wonder Woman.  I am going to guess that this could even be a subconscious reason for the movies popularity among certain groups of people.

A lesson on women’s choices from the tales of King Arthur and his knights.

There is a story about one of Arthur’s knights who is on a mission and he meets a witch who will help him if only he will marry her. He agrees. She resolves his mission and now he must keep his promise.  Other versions are where the knight becomes obligated to someone of a higher status who forces him to marry an ugly woman under this other man’s authority.

He is depressed because she is very ugly. She lets him in on a secret. He has to make a choice. She can be beautiful but he must decide when. Does he want her to be beautiful at night, when they are alone together? Then everyone with think he has an ugly wife and feel sorry for him. Or she can be beautiful during the day and everyone will think he is lucky to have such a beautiful wife but she will be ugly at night.

Feeling rather sorry for himself, he decided that it doesn’t really matter to him and tells her to choose which way will make her happier. Her response is, “Oh well, in that case, I would rather be beautiful all the time.” And so she was.

The moral is that men shouldn’t make decisions for women. When you let women make their own decisions, you may end come coming out of it better than if you tried to force her to follow your choices.

The other moral, as it is sometimes done, is based on a riddle the knight failed to answer.  What is it that women really want?  After failing to answer correctly and having to wed the ugly woman, by letting her choose, he learns the real answer.  What women really want is self-determination.  The right to make their own choices about their own lives and their own bodies.

Both variations of the moral are nearly identical.  The one that says women want and deserve self-determination focuses more on women and letting them make their own decisions.  The other saying that men shouldn’t make decisions for women focuses on men and what they shouldn’t do.  Either way, I think the story is really appropriate for today’s political climate.

The Flavor of Ham.

I once saw a program on how Ham is made. The flavor of ham is added to the cut of meat. Without it, ham just tastes like a pork pot roast.

This makes me wonder if people used to have recipes for whatever they would treat ham with before cooking it. You know, back in the days before it was commercially produced on a large-scale.

Did farm wives make their own, did people in town buy it with flavor added or did they make their own? Was it basted on or marinated? Now days it is injected.  Did they actually do that back in the day?

Now comes the ultimate question. Who decided which flavor to use when large-scale production started? Who decided what the ham flavor, that we now all know now, should taste like?

Edited.

Someone did contact me to say that historically it would be soaked in a brine and smoked.  Which is how my dad makes jerky.  My dad’s jerky is thick cut so it is meaty once dried and not like a piece of leather.  My dad makes the best jerky.

Carrie Fisher

Reblogging. I still feel in shock that is only compounded by the fact that her mother passed the very next day.

Cinema Parrot Disco

I can’t believe I’m having to do yet another tribute post in 2016 to one of my biggest idols. We all know that this year has been extremely cruel & unfair when it comes to the amount of hugely talented artists it has taken from us. And like many people, I’m not only sad – I’m angry.

I struggle with these tribute posts, especially when it comes to those artists who mean so much to me. I always feel a bit weird doing them as, obviously, it’s not the same as losing a family member or people you know in real life. It’s a terrible, hate-filled world full of so much tragic death on a daily basis that it feels almost wrong to mourn a “celebrity”. But it’s also understandable as, to their fans, these talented celebrities help provide a form of escapism from our real-life troubles and the…

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