Cave Run Storytelling Festival

For the past ten years or so my family has traveled to Cave Run State Park for a storytelling festival that is held every year at the end of September. I am not certain how we first heard about this storytelling festival or what possessed my family to go down and check it out but I am very thankful they did.

It probably started with my Grandmother who is a very creative, whimsical person who finds the beauty in everything. (She is the perfect example of how a artist should be) My Grandmother was probably the one who started us towards our first experience of storytelling.

For this particular storytelling festival the state park loans out the grounds on one side of the lake where the people who run the festival set up tents and venders set up their carts. During this festival different storytellers from different parts of the country come and tell their stories to a receptive crowd who is hungry for their tales.

The storytellers will tell stories from their childhood or will tell fairytales or fables lighting up the stage and taking the audience on a journey through the imagination. Through their animated gestures and hilarious sound effects these storytellers entertain not only little children with their stories but the adults as well.

Whether they are from Africa or they live up in the mountains of Colorado, these storytellers entertain a wide audience from young children to adults who are graying and wrinkled. This experience is one that I will cherish for years and I hope to go again every year until they decide not to do it anymore. This is probably the reason I enjoy stories so much and why I want to be a part of making a story that touches lives through animation.

(my grandparents are actually in this film, guy in front row in a hat and blue shirt) ;)

Presentations

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing each presentation last Thursday in class. All of them were very interesting and I learned something new, or at least made me think about a new concept, that I didn't know or had considered before.

The most interesting to me, though I liked them all, would have to be Olivia's presentation on cult  movies. (I think that is right) I did not realize that some films were purposely trying to make a really cheesy movie or a movie with terrible graphics. This makes me wonder which movies that I watch are cult movies.

Some of the movies I watch, especially ones on Netflix, are poorly made, with terrible acting or poorly made animation. It is hard to tell, however, if the directors are purposely trying to make the film bad or that is just how it turned out due to a low budget. Or is that the very definition of a cult film.


I don't know if this is considered a cult film but the acting is a little cheesy, but that is due  to the fact that this is their first film. I'm certain that since this is their first film that they would have a smaller budget and were probably still figuring out the equipment, and that is why it is a little cheesy. (still a good movie however).

Good Bye

HI GUYS!
BYE GUYS!
This is my twentieth and last blog post. So I am going to try to come up with two hundred and fifty words about this class as a whole.
As a whole, I loved this class! This has been very important to and I have learned a whole lot more than I thought I would! I learned three things in particular that really surprised me.

1) I love documentary work. I thought I hated it because I thought all documentaries were like the History channel or Unwrapped from Food Network. Or idiots on the Animal Planet who risk their lives for some footage of a tiger eating a gazelle. What I've learned is that documentary work is just telling really, natural, raw stories. I love it.

2) I love music videos. I do not know if i would ever want to work with music videos or not but I have found that they are extremely fascinating and I love watching the correlation between the music and the video.

3) This one is the most important to me. I've grown Spiritually through this class. When my mother and I were ordering books for this semester and we started looking up Professor Leeper's books, my mother was not happy with "The Gospel as comedy, tragedy, and fairy tale." I remember my mother saying something like 'That's blasphemous. The Gospel is not comedic and it is most definitely not a fairy tale!' She then proceeded to lecture me for probably an hour about how I have to be discerning and i can't believe everything that every professor teaches. And I believe I have been discerning this semester, and what I've found is that Professor Leeper is right. The Gospel is more than i had ever realized before, and my church is not right about everything, and i doubt that any church on earth is or ever will be.

Thank you to those of you who have suffered through any of my blogs!
Bye guys!

Muscials

Yeah, I know that many say that guys are not suppose to like musicals. But, they must have been born the 1990s. The 90s babies as I call them, have grew up in a world where each television show has had a musical number in almost every episode. Like we had Phineas and Ferb, even tho it is a 2009 show it still has a number of musicals in one episode but thats what makes that show so great. beside who does not love watching shows where boys have the power to do anything especially at such a young age. Then we got all 3 of the high school musicals. I can not even lie in 6th grade when high school musical firs came out I use to watch it all the time. No lie, the musical numbers and the choreography made this a great movie. Because look at it their were no actually good actors well they were also acting like high schoolers. So someone that was not in high school would most likely be confused. But anything that has a musical in it is probably the best thing in life all together.

The Post on "bullshit"

Thanks to Joe this all I can think about. What around me in perhaps "bullshit". The fact that the Hub only gives you three chicken tenders is perhaps "bullshit". Or maybe the fact that vacationing in a foreign land "bullshit" because you are at risk of being attacked by something or someone. How bout the fact that Chicago police killed an innocent man but no one says anything for a year to two years. That is some grade A "Bullshit" if you ask me personally. I do not care if you are Obama, you took an innocent life but not with 1 shot but with 17 different shots to an already down victim. I honestly think this world is based off of "Bullshit". Because you can look in the news or anywhere and the first thing you will see is some "bullshit" story about anything. In my own opinion, this world is based whole heartedly on "

bullshit"

Bojack Horseman

In the last few years Netflix has become an original programming heavy. With shows like House of Cards, Daredevil, and Orange is the New Black, it has been present at awards shows in recent years, a first for an online programmer. I would like to talk about one of these that to me, seems often over looked: Bojack Horseman. Bojack Horseman is the story of a washed-up 1980s-1990s sitcom actor who grapples with his own narcissism and how it affects his relationships with those who love him.

This show is one of the best Hollywood satires currently, or in recent time for that matter. Bojack is a meditation on celebrity culture and the way we treat those on TV, as though they were above and below us simultaneously. Bojack lands on some other issues: the cheapening of the word hero, the supremacy of the all mighty TV, etc. But the best material comes from the meditation of celebrity worship and those who use their own narcissism to make themselves suffer.

Would Bojack stand as a film? Possibly. The film would explore Hollywood in a way other showbiz satires couldn't. It would look on the inside without having any star-cameos to look out for except for caricatures done by the artists. Hollywood satires have fallen flat as of late, the worst being Entourage, or as I like to call it Where's Waldo? Celebrity Edition. No real substance is given nor any condemnation, Bojack has teeth that could bite a hole in somebody if given the chance.

Jessica Jones

Another Netflix installation is that of the comic book adaptation Jessica Jones. On the surface the show is merely about a PI who has it out for a man with a knack for mind control. This sounds all well and good of course, in terms of PI stories. Of course the difference is that this show speaks on all sorts of disorders

From depression, to survivor's guilt, to you name it, Jessica Jones has it all. The great thing about the show is it handles these things not with a heavy hand or with a loud "aw" echoing through each script but with an equal eye. The writers treat Jessica as though we know her personally and we should mourn each disorder with her, not above her. This is where the show succeeds.

Another strength of the show is taking what could have been very, very neon colored (a purple-skinned man) and turning it into the pastels that paint landscapes (a man with an affinity for the color, it is not always present that is). The character of Luke Cage doesn't resemble Mr. T with a bigger chain and a tiara, instead he manages a bar and wears solid shirts that fit his abrasive personality.

The show, taking place in the same world as the Avengers and whatnot, shows the viewer that not every bow is tied neatly there and that humans don't only belong in neo-realism.