Ernest and Celestine

This is probably one of the cutest animation films I've ever seen. Despite being French, this film makes Disney look bad. Of course it is the tell-tale story of a unlikely friendship, but this the best example of the story.

Ernest is a starving bear looking for spare change by being a street performer. Celestine is a creative mouse who wishes to pursue her career in art. The communities of both characters were taught that bears and mice are never meant to be together; mice fear bears and bears eat mice.

Celestine was working as an intern for the dentist industry when fate brings her and Ernest together and their teamwork turns their societies against them, forcing them to be shut in a cabin in the woods.

They argued for the first few days about their differences of him being a bear and her being a mouse. Celestine even volunteered to sleep in the cellar. But in the days that followed, they realize that they are not so different after all.

The police eventually catches up with them and they are put on trial for their lives in opposite courts. But one incident leads them to saving the people not of their kind, and the people realize everything they were taught was wrong.

Ernest and Celestine live together demonstrating the power of friendship, and showing that friends can be all shapes and sizes.

Art in Motion: The Aesthetics of Animation

Art forces us to look at a different perspective. We have to look past what is right in front of our eyes and see deep inside to find the true meaning. "And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in Magician's Book." This is a quote from CS Lewis's book, The Voyage of the Dawntreader. As the lecture went on, the more and more I realized that art is a way for us to see the beauty in the Earth rather than the evil that is present. Art takes us out of the mind state of forgetting what we forgot already. It is not just something pretty or cool, it is a meaning, lesson ,etc. Why do I watch any type of media and feel all of the emotions that come forth from it? Professor Leeper discussed how virtual reality desensitizes us to what is real and what is not. Watching animation through a screen creates a barrier where we can still feel what it is portraying, but once you literally are inside of it, the barrier is no longer there. Although I find virtual reality to be incredible, I must agree that jumping into a horror movie makes something fake way too real. This lecture, believe it or not, made me remember something that I had forgot. Art is more than just art.

Art in Motion: The Aesthetics of Animation

I attended Leeper’s lecture last night. The point I gathered from his speech is that animation has a deeper meaning in the world today. We have to look past the first view, the face, the cover of it and we have to search for the deeper meaning. In “Tchou, Tchou” by Co Hoedeman, which was one of Leeper’s mentors, the town was made of blocks. The people were made of blocks as well as the trees. There was a girl and a boy that were walking around and suddenly all of the people and animals started hiding. There was a dragon that was running around terrorizing the play land. The land was meant to represent the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and the serpent. There was another video called “Amnesty International 50^th Anniversary” by Carlos Lascono. This video probably touched me the most, it showed different events that have happened in the past 50 years in the most troubled places in the world. It showed things such as the KKK and the Holocaust as well as other events. This video was beautiful. One of the first things that Leeper said was “Beauty is more than pretty things.” He wasn’t kidding, nothing about this video was pretty, but it was beautiful. There is more to animation than what you see on the surface.

Harold and Maude

I have seen this film a long time ago and loved it, and watching it was way better than the Presidential Debate, which was in at the same time.

Harold, a young boy obsessed with death, meets Maude, an old beautiful woman with similar interests, at a funeral. Though the timeline is only a week, Maude teaches Harold the fundamentals and beauty of life.

In one scene, Harold asks about an umbrella Maude hangs on the wall of her house, and she talks about how she rebellious and patriotic, in Europe, in her younger years, but quickly drops the subject when she says, "That was before..." and becomes silent. Later, Harold discovers on her arm a tattooed number. The cutaway was very quick, but it meant she is a survivor of the Holocaust.

Maude, surviving death at the Holocaust, decided to live her life to the fullest, spreading love everywhere, and accepting beauty in everything, like when she models nude for a local artist. To her, being old doesn't mean she isn't beautiful. 

Sadly, Maude took the euthanasia pills on her eightieth birthday, breaking Harold's heart and snapping him back into reality. Maude's death makes him realize the gift of life is nothing to play with, and he should live the life he was given.

Art in Motion: The Aesthetics of Animation

Rather than begin by talking about the lecture, I'm going to talk about one of the questions that someone asked afterwards and then work backwards. Someone asked: "Why does animation speak to us differently than live action?" Dr. Leeper answered that the materials involved in animation create a distance between us and the work that allows us to be touched by it. I'll buy that. I think that live action, by its nature, reflects us too closely. Live action is closer to what our eyes see and animation is closer to what our minds see. That's not to say that live action can't be used to speak to people in the same way as animation, but it might seem like more of a stretch. Donald Hudson said that: "...art helps me understand myself by questioning me rather than merely affirming me." Animation and live action are both used by the mainstream media to affirm us, because affirmation means money, and they both can be used to question us (in films like World of Glory and Father and Daughter). But animation inherently has a kind of narrative distance that live action filmmakers have to work a little harder to create, which can make the questions easier to ask by helping us "see into the eternal, into the invisible" (Makco Fjuimura).

Being a Christian in a Changing World

Back in the 1950s, being a Christian was the norm. The perfect, middle class family with a white picket fence and a perfect conservative neighborhood was the American image. Every Sunday, that family would wake up and go to church together, pray before every meal, and the children would be told to say their prayers before they go to bed. The world was comfortable with the idea of families being Christian and that was the norm. Today, Christians live in a different situation. Being a christian is being a minority. Being a Christian isn't the "cool" thing to do anymore. Things have changed and maybe that has to do with popular culture of today. Maybe, the church isn't the same as it used to be. There are many questions that come up when discussing the slow decline in believers. Are we as Christians not evangelizing enough? Are we not walking the walk but making the talking the talk look easy? Many questions can come to mind but it is our job as believers to be real with people and to express our faith everyday and to not hide in the shadows of our own comfort. Things can change and maybe the Christian norm can too, but it starts with going out of our comfort zone and loving no matter the situation.

The Monster Inside Us

I stumbled upon this terrifying gem a few days ago. And from the title, I knew I wouldn't enjoy the horror experience. But as the story carried on and I got over the darkness of it all, a thought dawned on me. What if this animated short film represented more than just a tale of a monsters chasing a little girl through a "haunted house" as most horror films do.



The abusive relation between her parents was viewed as a monster in the little girls eyes. Therefore making her parents into the monsters from her nightmares or her storybooks. And in the end she sees herself as one of them. Why? Because of their strong influence on her life that she can't overcome.



We all have our monsters, it's up to us to let them go.