Ambitious Article Anxiety

I've been working on my ambitious article for this class, and my research has been going well. Yesterday, though, I got an idea for another article. I like the idea so much I toyed with changing my ambitious article to this new idea. I quickly shrugged off doing so, but the idea keeps scratching at my conscious mind, so I figured maybe typing it up as a blog would help alleviate this want for change.

I know someone who has worked as a street sweeper for over two decades. I want to document a day in his life and interview him about his job. I want to do this to showcase or spotlight the pride that he takes in doing his job, one most people probably take for granted.... maybe next semester I can do this.

Worst Film Criteria

So, I've been racking my brain to figure out what movie I consider to be the worst piece of crap of all time. I cannot seem to narrow my list of crap down to one film. I think it is because there are so many different elements to a film, that excellence in one area can overshadow a poor production. A great cast can do wonders with a horrible script. Likewise, a great director can pull an academy-award-winning performance out of a terrible actor. Ironically, an all-around terrible movie: terrible plot, acting, directing etc. usually is so terrible that it becomes good, or a cult classic. For every good aspect of a film, it should have two bad aspects. It also should have a reasonable level of excitement/expectations surrounding it prior to its premiere or viewing. That's my criteria for worst flick, a 2:1 ratio, and disappointment.

Get this one...

A friend of mine, well, more of a friend of one of my really good friends, passed away last week. His death was related to drug use. C'est la vie and all that. The meat and potatoes of this story came from a status update on Facebook. See, merely two days after my friend passed away, someone whom the deceased had an altercation with nearly 5 years ago, over some petty nonsense, decided to declare his death as a reason to celebrate the upcoming Easter holiday; he went on to hail the loss of life as a reason to drink and celebrate karma, and then for added insult wished that the deceased's father would shortly follow him to the grave.Well, after that, I put up a status of my own tearing into this jerk, but my good friend commented on the disparaging status update. Eventually, someone close to the jerk convinced him to delete it, or he took it down on his own because of guilt. Here's the kicker, the jerk came to the wake, but stayed outside in his car while his mother came inside to seek out my friend, and make sure it was okay, indirectly make sure, for her son the jerk to come in and pay respects. Pay respects? I cannot lie, if the jerk came inside I would have knocked him out. You want to pay respects? Don't turn the loss of life into a spectacle for your egotistical purposes. Delete the status, apologize, and stay far away from the services of someone you clearly dislike.  What are people becoming?

I've watched one and a half movies this semester.

On top of that, I just went to turn on my television, but realized it has been unplugged now for weeks. I've been ridiculously busy. I've managed however to watch one and a half movies over the span of the semester, due to the power of my Amazon Kindle Fire. Both films had been on my must-see list for quite some time now, so once I found some free time, I decided to give them a go, them being Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche New York." The latter film has yet to be completed, as I so far only managed to watch half of it roughly, in 15-minute increments. I'll hold off discussing that for a later blog. I will talk about The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah's western has become easily one of my top ten favorite films, my top 3 favorite films of the western genre, and probably the definitive film that accurately sums up the human condition in all its confusing, bloody, and meaningless existence. Peckinpah'sThe Wild Bunch is one of those movies that make you wonder how such a violent piece of cinema could possibly be made by the Hollywood system of the 60's, and it also inspires nostalgia because for all that it is, contemporary Hollywood cannot not produce such a film without altering it into a standard death.

The Wild Bunch is a western, filled with western motifs, but it is set just prior to the first World War. These motifs no longer have any place or fit in the modern world, therefore, in the form of outlaws, bank robbers, and mercenary lawmen, they are being pushed farther and farther south, into Latin America, where they continue after that cliche reward, one last robbery, the big one, that they succeed in gaining, yet they do not stop being what they are because they cannot live any other way. The western genre is just the surface of what this film actually is. The Wild Bunch is psychologically keen in its examination of humanity, how people can change from one minute to the next, how women are tempted into tempting men, and how desire urges us towards extinction.