Let me begin by saying, this was a very fun movie. The action was just as good as all of Awakening’s predecessors in the Underworld enterprise, and it certainly did not disappoint. Selene demonstrates a few new moves (one that happens to mirror the Black Widow in Iron Man 2, with identical camerawork as well, for my fellow Marvel fans out there) and for once seems to show a little weakness. We hear her actually feeling pain when she falls and lands on a blunt object sticking out of the ground. Perhaps its in the other Underworld movies and I did not notice it, but I was impressed that it was added this time around. It was a nice touch, considering that she’s supposedly been frozen for twelve years. It tends to cause problems for a person, even a vampire as badass as the lovely Selene.

While the previews show us that there is a human problem going on this time, it was very well explained in the beginning of the movie. For as short as Awakening was (which really disappointed me, I wanted more) they did put a LOT into the time they had. Not only do you see how Selene was captured, how she breaks out, but also how she gets her revenge and what is really happening behing the scenes. We also finally get to meet a new vampire coven. The last coven we saw was Viktor, Markus and Amelia’s little group. This time we met another older vampire and gained a new ally in David. It was refreshing to get a break from Micheal and allow another vampire to shine. In the other movies, you cannot help but be a little angry with the vampires. Selene and Lucian become such strong, sympathetic characters that it is bound to happen. To finally have a young, tough and attractive male vampire finally show a little dignity was a wonderful twist and one of my favorites among the many this new Underworld had to offer.

Surprisingly, this movie was also able to leave the ending wide open for another sequel. This honestly surprised me a little since this is already the fourth movie in the Underworld enterprise, but hey, I cannot wait. Clearly, no matter what happens during the gaps, Underworld promises good action and a very unique plot. Even though some of the visual effects are beginning to look like other movies out there.

**Slight spoilers** For those who have seen the movie, I think you will understand when I say I saw elements that came right out of Iron Man 2 (see above), Resident Evil, The Ring or any other horror film with a creepy little girl, and even The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.

However, when it came to Beauty and the Beast, I was very, very wrong in thinking this way.

I have never before caught so many details in this movie. This is a cartoon that has been around since I was three years old, and I have never seen the little roses that appear in the corners of the screen in some scenes. The deer grazing in the opening shot was new to me, as were most of the details of the forest shown there before panning up to the castle to see the stained glass windows that tell the introduction to the story. I saw new depth to the pictures, finding small details in the color of the glass otherwise lost on me. Considering how many times I have seen this movie in my life, I was shocked to find it felt just like watching Beauty and the Beast for the first time.

Perhaps it was just seeing Beauty and the Beast in theaters for the first time (in my memory, anyway), but the experience was just phenomenal. The echoing of the Beast’s declaration “It’s forbidden” followed by an impatient snarl sent chills through my body, and I have never before been so afraid for Belle when the wolves attack her and Phillipe in the woods. However, some things were the same as always. Every time I see Belle opening that door in the West Wing, I think it’s about to talk to her. I will probably always believe its going to try and laugh manically at her and tell her to run the other way. Yet at the same time, some things just did not work in the 3D filming.

While Belle is in the Beast’s private room, she comes across the torn picture of his former self and touches it. The painting shown is far too realistic for the animation of Belle lifting the torn portion back up to it. Throughout the movie, the background looked fantastic in 3D, adding greatly to the depth of the film. I have never appreciated Disney’s talent with depth markers and layering things in a scene before. It was fantastic. However, a lot of the animated parts where characters were moving seemed to not fit as well. It was somehow less 3D, and almost distracting. But, the detail work surrounding the characters was well worth a little hiccup. Even though some scenes like the “Be Our Guest” dinner were almost dizzying.

In summary, it was wonderful to enjoy an old favorite on the big screen with plenty of new things to offer. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Thoughts on Rammstein and fairy tale references in their music videos here: http://mtpocketts.hubpages.com/hub/Fairy-Tales-as-a-Theme-in-Rammstein-Music-Videos

How to make your own earrings here: http://mtpocketts.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-Your-Own-Dangle-Earrings

Thanks to the new onslaught of Marvel comic book heroes turned into movies, good old Steve Rogers has become one of my favorite characters. But I cannot help but wonder, why Captain America now? When Captain America first appeared in 1941, he was definitely a much needed American icon. At a time when America was faced with worldwide tragedy and horrors, Captain America was something to be proud of. The absolute embodiment of American pride, idealism and honor.

By the time Captain America was first published, Americans had volunteered to go overseas and help their allies fight against Axis powers even before their country had committed itself to the war effort. The Flying Tigers lent their planes to the Chinese war of resistance against Japan, and other fly boys went to France to help their allies as well. Captain America not only embodies American pride and courage, he symbolizes these brave souls that risked their lives abroad for cause they believed in.

But then why have Captain America now? What makes Steve Rogers an important symbol in 2011?

Captain America opened on July 22, 2011 and made $65,058,524 opening weekend. The total domestic earnings came to $176,654,505, and $367,654,505 worldwide. The First Avenger was produced at a cost of $200,000,000. The DVD was released October 25, 2011.

The logical answer to why Captain America came out now is that the Avengers movie is on the way for May 2012. After all, there have been hints at the end of most Marvel movies to link them all together. Iron Man introduced Nick Fury, Iron Man 2 introduced Thor’s hammer, Thor introduced the cube we later saw in Captain America, and Captain America showed us an Avengers teaser. Marvel was planning one hell of a movie ride for us movie goers. Its hard to have the Avengers without Captain America, since he’s a founding member of the team.

But consider this. Where are Ant-man and the Wasp? Why have Steve Rogers and not them? My theory is that the producers wanted a fan favorite, and an obviously patriotic figure is good for the country. Not to mention, Captain America became an Avenger in the comics by popular demand. Today, it seems that Americans have a hard time agreeing on anything. To name a few that I shouldn’t get distracted by, there’s gay marriage/civil union, healthcare, the situation in the Middle East, the economy, and everything else.

Can Captain America help us out? We’re long overdue for a bit of nationalism when it comes to being in the middle of a war. Maybe we do need a figure that embodies all that we can be proud of in this country. Perhaps Steve Rogers is the brave leader we all need to use as an example for the problems we face today. What would Steve do? Sadly, that’s all I have for now. What would Cap do today? Hopefully in May, Chris Evans and Joss Whedon will be able to show us.

(Re-posted on HubPages 25 February 2012)

The Dragon’s Embrace– from Der Spiegel in July 2010.

AP compares US and Chinese navy

China’s Hu tells navy to prepare

Der heimliche Allianz (The Holy Alliance) in Der Spiegel

More to come as I get back into things!

• Love the smell of coffee, but maybe don’t like drinking it? Rather than getting a coffee scented candle, you can purchase hurricane glass candle holders and fill them with coffee beans. Add an unscented candle, and as it burns down it will warm the beans and fill your home with the scent of coffee.
• Did you save your children’s first locks of hair? Tie them with a pretty little ribbon and put them in a clear, design-it-yourself Christmas ornament. They come in packs at JoAnn Fabric and Craft stores, so this is perfect if you have lots of kids or if there’s a whole generation to be covered.
• Need a scrubber for your pots and pans? (Or the chrome wheels of your car?) Want to learn to crochet? Just pick up some basic, colorful webbed fabric and attack with a small crochet hook. Patterns are probably ready for the taking on Ravelry.com!

In terms of thinking about a movie, I have not spent this much time dwelling on the meaning of a movie in the longest time. That I really enjoyed. I watched Sucker Punch nearly a week ago, and I’m still digesting it. That’s a great story, honestly. However, if you want light-hearted cinema, this is not the movie for you.

Fans expecting 300, Watchmen, or Kill Bill will likely be disappointed. The action scenes are very unrealistic, as one would expect of an imagination like Baby Doll’s. The story is not multi-layered in the way that Watchmen is, nor is it full of glory and epic sacrifice as 300 is. It is closest to Kill Bill, if only for the girl running around with a samurai sword while wearing a school girl outfit, but the action scenes in Kill Bill were much more realistic. In Kill Bill, the Bride gets hurt. She has human limits, though she pushes them to the extreme. In Sucker Punch, the girls can jump a good thirty feet straight up into the air, and manage to perfectly position their swords to stab something in just the right spot on the way down. And why not? Baby Doll controls all the action in her own mind, therefore she would be the biggest badass of them all.

All in all, the special effects and soundtrack make Sucker Punch worth seeing in theaters. The storyline on the other hand gets hard to follow despite the clear attempt at laying it out logically, which was probably the point from the start. By the end of the movie, you leave wondering if Baby Doll’s attempts to escape were even worth it.

** A warning to readers: there are spoilers beyond this point, so if you would rather be surprised I actually recommend that you do NOT read this**

Since every girl she worked with save for one dies in the process, it seems like it really was not. And yet, I cannot help but wonder if Baby Doll and the girl who does escape, Sweet Pea, were supposed to be the same person.

Baby Doll’s overall fantasy begins with seeing Sweet Pea on stage at what is supposedly a Moulin Rouge-like gentleman’s club. Sweet Pea happens to be the main character in what Baby Doll is doomed to undergo by the end of the movie: a lobotomy. The scene on stage ends when Sweet Pea flips out, and then BabyDoll is brought in again as though she had not already been introduced to the group. The first time she was entering an asylum and saw Sweet Pea in the “theater”, or a special treatment, while the second time was fantasy made to deal with the fact that she was in the asylum.

Since Sweet Pea is the only girl to escape, it becomes an odd parallel to Baby Doll’s lobotomy at the end. Sweet Pea is out in the world, away from the man in the asylum who abuses his authority over the girls, while Baby Doll receives her lobotomy. The doctor is shocked by the last look she gives him, since “it looked like she wanted me to do it.” Both Sweet Pea and Baby Doll escape in their own way, and though in the reality shown after Baby Doll’s lobotomy it is said that a girl did escape thanks to Baby Doll, it seems that Sweet Pea could very well be a projection of Baby Doll.

In addition to this, Baby Doll is most likely dealing with the loss of her own baby sister–whom she accidentally shot when trying to defend them both from their stepfather. Sweet Pea’s sister, Rocket, is the first to die in the group effort to escape and she dies while saving Sweet Pea’s life. In this sense, it shows another parallel between Sweet Pea and Baby Doll. If Sweet Pea is not some sort of mental projection of Baby Doll, she is most likely someone that Baby Doll can vicariously live through.

Basic information double-checked on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/

Now, the reason for my rant is a handful of encounters with family in the last year or so that make me question the reasons for text messaging. Yes, it is a lot easier to keep in touch by responding to a quick message when you have a free minute. It is much easier and more socially acceptable to write a message and carry on a conversation in person at the same time. Those who talk on the phone while talking to someone in their presence are typically considered rude by both parties.

I am totally supportive of text messaging. As a college student, it is a very easy way to let my parents know that I’m out of laundry money or that I’m coming home next weekend while running between classes, homework and other on campus things–like food and coffee. Text messaging is vital. Over my four years at university I have gone from 250 messages per month to unlimited simply because that is how people communicate. I have had bosses text me important updates, even after I explained that I get charged when they make me go over on my monthly texting. Did it ever stop them? No. They were just more selective about when they sent me texts.

In the case of people who do not have unlimited text messaging, I feel you. I really do. Nothing is more annoying then that one person who assumes you have unlimited and thus sends “Sup” ever single afternoon. I have actually lost a friend because I finally replied saying I do not have enough monthly texts to reply to every monosyllabic message they send me. Apparently I was a little harsh, and frankly, I don’t blame this friend for deciding I was no longer worth their time.

All of this so far has been the on campus culture of text messaging. It’s survivable, once you establish whom you can text constantly and whom you cannot text constantly. There are two or three main people I text when I’m bored, simply because I know they are also on unlimited plans. Others I try to either call, or simply send one probing message rather than doing a long conversation. If the conversation gets long enough, I tend to just dial their number.

Which brings me to my ultimate point: there are some times when you need to pick up the phone and actually CALL the person.

I am utterly baffled by the coldness of text message communication at times. My best example happens to be one day when I walked out of my film class. It was a good day, and I was about to walk downstairs with a group to watch ‘The Ice Storm’ (one of Ang Lee’s American films, if you don’t mind weirdly artsy and sexual experimentation on screen I do recommend it) for class. Our class is in the library, where you check out the movies and reserve a viewing room for awhile to watch it in. On the way I pull out my phone to check my messages, as I always do after class and see that I have a text message awaiting me. Its from my cousin. We text back and forth, as she asked me if I knew one of our obscure aunts (our family has a lot of adopted relatives because we’re an awesome bunch, so we just add aunts and uncles). By this point, I’m going down the stairs as I’m textng back and forth.

When I reach the bottom of the stairs, the group I am with has just checked out the key for a viewing room in the library, I get a message back saying that my aunt passed away that morning.

Needless to say, I had to skip the movie and I ran back to my dorm room so that I could sob in peace. My unfortunate roommate walked in on my tears, and thankfully she helped me calm down enough that I was able to join another girl later on to watch the movie so I did not miss anything. I had heard distantly that our aunt was sick, but no one had told me she was THAT sick. So not only was the news a complete shock to my system, I read it standing up and surrounded by people. A few months later, our uncle (the aunt whom had died was his wife) passed away as well. I heard this news again via text message, and again from the same cousin. It did not hit as hard this time, I guess because either my guard was up or for other reasons that will stay in the family book of secrets, but I still resented the fact that it was in a text message.

The last two straws have been this year, sometime between January and now. My very same cousin, techno-savvy darling that she is, posted on my Facebook wall that our aunt was in the hospital and she thought that I should know. Her mother then commented the post saying that it seemed the aunt was doing fine. First, I was pissed that once again my cousin does not seem to understand that when people are dying or in the hospital it is light enough to not call someone about. Second, this time it was on my Facebook wall. Everyone on my friends list could see it, and everyone also got to read the part where I asked who the hell she was talking about. Yeah, this aunt was actually someone I do not remember. Perhaps that makes me callous, or perhaps that means I have bad memory. However, the fact remains, that there are some things that do not need to be on my Facebook. Such as when she asked for pictures of my tattoo, which was again not on Facebook for personal reasons (nothing too horrifying, I just don’t want potential empoyers and former employers seeing it).

On Facebook, I finally told my cousin that she needed to call me if she was going to tell me these things. Yes, it took me forever, but I finally put it into words. I will not tolerate this anymore, its tiring. I need to hear your voice when you tell me that someone is sick, hurt or dead. My mother managed to video chat with me on Skype when my cat died (this was a very beloved cat, he died at a whopping age of 16 human years old), which honestly made it that much easier to deal with. She was able to be sure that I was sitting down, that she could comfort me because she could literally see how I was taking it, and most of all she was able to put my other cat on camera. Words cannot tell you how much that helped.

Now, by this point you are probably thinking that I am just angry at my cousin for only telling me through electronic means when people die, go to the hospital, etc. Not true. I love her as much as an only child can love a fellow only child that they practically grew up with. Plus, the final and last straw was not my cousin. It was my dad.

Like any young woman, I sometimes have a very bizarre relationship with my father. I think ours is wholly unique in certain respects, especially considering that my cousin and I are the only females in his family that he actually speaks with, but that’s a completely different story. I would like to think that dad and I have a fairly healthy relationship now. We hang out when I’m home, and I adore his fiancee. There’s just one little detail that royally pissed me off.

He tried to call me to share some news, which is fine, but I happened to be sitting in chapel for an Ash Wednesday service and therefore my phone was on silent. So what does he do instead of trying to call me again later to tell me the news?
He texts me that he had given an engagement ring to his girlfriend.

I was stunned for the rest of the day. Finally around dinner time I went to a friend just to try saying the words ‘My dad’s getting married’ out loud. Eventually I called my mom so that I could try and digest this. Its not that I was surprised so much as the text message made it hit that much harder. I couldn’t even really be excited for him, he didn’t get to hear me squeal or anything. I just got to sit there, stunned that he didn’t at least leave a voicemail. On top of that, I had just given up soda and alcohol for Lent. No rum and coke to soften my brain after that one.

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that people simply assume that because I am on the computer so much or studying so much, its completely alright to just talk to me there rather than bother me. No. Its not ok. I want to hear voices, when I am as far away from home as this (approx. 140 miles) I want the chance to talk to my family. Instead they text me everything rather than consider “Huh, maybe I should call for this one.”

Do not let communication die. If its going to make someone horribly sad or terribly excited, PICK UP THE PHONE and DIAL THEM.

Added 24 March 2011:

<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXYY_ep5Nh0&feature=related”>CBS reports on the woman who fell into a fountain while texting.</a> While that would not be a fun thing to be publicly known for, and I am not attempting to make fun of her, I think this just goes to show just how far this instant connection crap is going. Our society is so in need of instant communication that we feel the need to text while walking, driving, etc. If its important you can stop and write the text, or stop and make the phone call.

However, the best example of phones becoming too important to us would be this:

Try to disconnect. Unplug. Distance yourself from your digital hook-up. You will appreciate it later when you took the time to enjoy the world before the computers take over.