When I was still a film critic for The Michigan Daily, I went to a film festival at The Michigan Theater showing classic 1980’s films starring the Brat Pack as part of its “Kids in America: 80’s Teen Classics”. The theater didn’t publish why these films were being shown in the midst of Halloween (even after I sent them an email, the assholes), but their pervasive influence in pop culture from enduring quotes to merchandise is proof their legacy lives on.
Of course, a showcase of these movies would be incomplete without discussing the work of director-screenwriter and Michigan native John Hughes. He is said to be the pioneer of the teen film genre for good reason. His careful attention to organic dialogue is consistent throughout his repertoire. But what sets Hughes’ films apart is that he gives his teenage protagonists the respect they deserve. There is never a hint of condescending even in the midst of teenage problems one quickly outgrows after graduation.
Something I appreciate of his work is that he used vastly different protagonists to tap into different facets of American ideals in adolescence. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. I have heard friends and celebrities alike call the film their favorite of all time due to the quintessentially American joie de vivre it conveys. If a baseball game, an art museum and fine dining is supposed to be the epitome of the good life in America, then I am underwhelmed. Lots of people have attained these ideals, as fortunate as they may be. But the way Ferris sticks it to The Man by refusing to take an exam on a subject he plans on never using is what keeps the film timeless. It kept the movie for me from being a purely hedonistic romp through Chicago to an escapist trip the “everyteen” protagonist deserves as they make their way through the awkward stage of not being a child yet not quite being an autonomous adult.
The grandeur of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”’s plot distracts from one of Hughes’s strengths that keep his legacy alive: having a keen eye for high school social hierarchy. “Sixteen Candles” and “Pretty in Pink”, both starring Molly Ringwald, feel a lot like the same film on the surface. The well-trodden tale of a girl pining for a boy who is unattainable due to age or socioeconomic status could have easily fallen flat as a cliche romance starring teenagers. But the world in these films are so lushly populated by opinionated friends and family that the societal pressures driving the heroines’ decisions recreates those faced by teenagers in real life.
In the same vein, the director-screenwriter had a keen appreciation for the stock characters that populate American narratives of high school. This is showcased best in his classic “The Breakfast Club”. Having essentially caricatures of the five kinds of people you meet in high school forced into interacting with one another might sound lacking in depth. But the honest backstories and sincere performances elevate it to a gripping look at detention as a microcosm of high school social ills that ring true today. Though a friend of mine recalls laughing hysterically at the scene where the club divulges why they were in detention in the first place (after smoking weed no less), I was moved deeply. Here was a screenplay that understood how teenagers present themselves. Moreover, here was a movie that knew that teenagers’ problems are as real as those of any adult drama.
YA author John Green seems to have carried on Hughes’s torch in contemporary times, not only in content but in commercial success as well. Green’s novels and indeed the YA genre in general transcend their target audience to assimilate into America’s mass culture, much like Hughes’s films did thirty years ago. So while there is no obvious reason why to screen teen films from the 1980’s in October, there is never a wrong time to do so. Adolescence is an exciting time. Capturing the period you have your whole life ahead of as you begin to gain independence lends irresistible optimism and romanticism to any story, regardless of who experiences it.
The Winter Olympics are getting closer and people are beginning to pay more attention to the sports that will be featured in them. Most of these winter sports are only highly publicized every four years during the Olympics. An example of this is the sport of bobsledding. Bobsledding is a sport that most people have heard of and know the general concept of what it is without knowing many details about the athletes or logistics and scoring of the sport. The sport gets minimal media attention, even throughout the Olympics because it is overshadowed by figure skating and snowboarding.
There has only been one movie made about bobsledding, “Cool Runnings”. It is about the first Jamaican bobsled team and how they were formed, practiced, and eventually made it to the Olympics. The movie shows the basics equipment, requirements, and skills needed to compete in the sport. It also states the basic rules and possible qualifying times to make it into the Olympics around 1993. It is more of a fun team building and friendship movie than an informative bobsled movie but it did help to expose more people to the sport.
In all bobsleigh events there is one driver and at least one other person in the sled to help with the momentum of the sled as it travels through the course. The driver has to turn the corners and lean the sled at the perfect angle for the sled to not lose momentum during the race, and the other members in the sled have to lean along with it to make the sled steady. The driver of the team has to memorize each course and the angles of every turn to be prepared before he/she even gets to the event.
There are three different bobsleigh events: four man, two man, and two women. The four men race can be man and/or women. The four man bobsleigh event has been a part of the Winter Olympics since the first one took place in 1924. The two man bobsleigh was added in 1932 at the third Winter Olympics, and the two women bobsleigh was added in 2002 at the nineteenth Winter Olympic Games.
For the 2018 Games the center that the race takes place is also the venue of the luge and skeleton races. All three sports use the same track with the course length being adjusted per sport. All of the bobsleigh events use a course length of 1,376.38m, or 0.86 miles. The average slope of the track is 9.48%.
Bobsledding is only one of the many sports that are only in the spotlight during the Winter Olympics. Even during the Olympics they are still overlooked and out shined by other sports like snowboarding. But throughout the years the viewership has risen thanks to the movie “Cool Runnings”, and with time it will hopefully become more popular.
YouTuber Logan Paul has stirred controversy at the start of the new year after filming a vlog in Aokigahara, a forest in Japan that is a popular location for suicide attempts. Paul, who is 22, caught on camera the dead body of a man who hanged himself in the forest and made this the thumbnail of the since-deleted video. The intense criticism he received led him to write and film an apology that focused on the intent of his actions rather than their impact. This not only put into question the boundaries of the new Internet celebrity in the digital age, but it also made me ask more broadly how Americans engage with Japanese culture.
As someone who is diagnosed with major depression disorder and has been hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation, I do not take lightly to the claims that Paul laughed and smiled when he found a dead body in the Suicide Forest. Against my better judgement, I took the risk to my mental health and watched the video myself. What I found was less offensive and yet more dangerous than what I heard claimed. It is difficult to summarize a 14-minute(!) video, so I will consolidate my reactions instead.
Source: YouTube
Logan Paul is an idiot. He tries to set a respectful tone in the video by doing things like have trigger warnings and giving affirmations for those who are struggling with mental illness to seek help. And he clarifies that his laughter and smiles after finding the corpse come from his use of humor as a defense mechanism, which I believe. But his lack of consideration for people who are mentally ill in real life is evident by the fact he would videotape A LOCATION FAMOUS FOR SUICIDE ATTEMPTS in the first place. You do not visit a place of death for pleasure; that’s morbid. You do not maintain your lucrative brand by showing off a place of death (regardless of the fact the video was not monetized); that’s unethical.
The fact Paul says he visited Aokigahara because he wanted to end the year on an introspective and quiet note is offensive. The mentally ill and disabled are not here to make you, the neurotypical and able-bodied, feel better by showering us with pity without listening to our needs to make our lives easier. That would be enough to see that Paul was not respectful of the suicidal in the forest since the conception of his plan.
Source: YouTube
But then he crosses a line as a YouTuber (having foregone basic humanity long before this point) when he demonstrates that his interest in visiting was, in part, to maintain the attention and expectations of his fan base. Though his followers have argued that he should not be blamed for randomly capturing a corpse on film because he vlogs his life everyday, Paul’s self-serving interest is evident when he ignores one of his friend’s request to turn off the camera and leave. Instead, Paul walks to the dead body, bringing the camera along with him for the ride, only saving the viewer from having to see the corpse with a text screen explaining that doing so would violate YouTube’s guidelines. I was at a loss as to why he would do this when he looked so visibly distressed throughout the entire ordeal until the end of the video, when Paul reminds the audience he had made a commitment in one of his first vlogs to entertain his audience everyday. This somehow seems to be his excuse as to why he found himself in such a terrible predicament: he insists on sharing the “positive” and “negative” times of his life because he and his fans are family (the Logang) and this is “part of it”.
I am disgusted at the thought of impressionable young people learning about suicide and mental illness from this man-child. Scarier still is seeing members of the Logang defending him because he was doing his best to please as an entertainer when he stumbled across the body. I could write for a long time as to how fucked up this near-sighted vision of celebrity is, but I believe it has been better said by people before me. I would like to use this space as a blog dedicated to the arts to focus on how our media informed Paul’s decision to go to Aokigahara in the first place, which he said was based on what he had seen in books and movies.
“The Forest”. Source: The Mary Sue
When he said this I immediately thought of the 2016 film “The Forest”. The film loses itself in its attempts to scare with traditional-looking ghosts appearing from thin air while it illustrates the landmark’s role in Japanese folklore and contemporary society. This matches Paul’s description of wanting to visit Aokigahara because he heard it was haunted by the tormented souls of the dead suicidal who try to tempt visitors off the trail, presumably to meet the same fate.
The movie stars an American protagonist named Sara (Natalie Dormer, “Elementary”) who receives a call from police informing her that her twin, Jess (also played by Dormer), is assumed to be dead after having last been seen in the Suicide Forest. She goes to Japan to find her, driven to explore the forest in spite of countless of warnings to not go off her path at the risk of making herself vulnerable to being terrorized by the angry spirits that live there. At the hotel she is staying at, she meets travel journalist Aiden (Tyler Kinney, “Rock the Kasbah”) who knows a guide who can assist them navigate the forest. Once she begins exploring the forest with Aiden and tour guide Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), traditional Japanese ghosts and American demons begin to haunt her. Once one of the angry spirits of the forest warn her to not trust Aiden, she loses her peace of mind and becomes increasingly paranoid.
The superficial jump scares used are pointless and only serve to conform to the horror genre, echoing Paul’s interest in exploring the “haunted” aspect of the forest’s reputation without being prepared to face the real life tragedy that inspires it. The sudden apparitions of traditional Japanese ghosts and modern American demons in “The Forest” invoke short-lived fear in an otherwise dull film, showing the same lack of respect on the part of the director that Paul displayed in thinking that co-opting and exploiting icons of a foreign country’s social issues is somehow an appropriate subject for cheap and otherwise unoriginal entertainment.
The fearful tone of “The Forest” is poorly conveyed through closeups of branches and insects, and ghostly wails in the wind, which are not scary in the least. Additionally, several aspects of the real forest are distorted, making the purpose of exploring the tragic location unclear. Not surprisingly, the normal forest (even with an unfortunate association) is not scary by itself. The film decides to take creative license in an effort to bolster screen time by having Sara see that various corpses of people who committed suicide in the forest are held at the Aokigahara Visitor Center, which blatantly contradicts the fact that in real life the Japanese government and police work hard to conceal the dead bodies in order to not only avoid attracting more people contemplating suicide, but also to deter potential tourists like Sara due to the notoriety of its basin. Logan Paul is more than willing to play fast and loose with the meaning of the Suicide Forest as well, failing to make the connection of the sad suicides he’s heard of and the ghosts that are said to haunt Aokigahara as a result.
Something that I fear is that people struggling with mental illness will only ever be seen as weak and objects of sympathy, which is a key issue I take with Paul’s brand of raising awareness and “The Forest”’s plot development. The gruesome death of Sara and Jess’s parents in the movie is referred to throughout the film for no apparent reason. It’s confusing purpose finally appears right at the nihilistic end. Sara is warned by locals that she possesses “inner sadness” and that she should think twice about embarking on her journey. It is implied she begins to be haunted by the angry spirits of those who committed suicide once she enters the forest due to her being incapable of coping with her loss. To the movie’s credit, this defies my expectation that the loss was that of her sister due to the sheer amount of time spent on establishing the close relationship she has with Jess. But once the significance of her parents’ death is revealed, it makes her suffering at Aokigahara seem justified for being innately weak, devaluing her noble mission and painting every victim of suicide as the product of avoidable emotional damage. This is a grave misconception considering that most people with depression cannot trace their mental illness to a direct cause, which is irrelevant because even if there was a cause feeling depressed for long period of times is not healthy and deserves attention and care regardless of circumstances.
The movie overall is anti-climactic in the extreme despite its rich source material, much like Paul’s vlog. Not once does the YouTuber bring up the high suicide rates in Japan that allowed the creation of such a place like Aokigahara to exist in the first place. The lack of depth is a direct result of the stigma of mental illness that both works perpetuate. Paul in his video did not even stay in the forest to camp as he had intended, failing to realize his goal of ghost-hunting due to him going unprepared to face reality. “The Forest” ends with (spoiler) Sara annoyingly having no impact in the disappearance of her sister while still having invited the spirits of the forest to plague her anyway, equating the devastating deaths by suicide of the ghosts in Aokigahara with her untimely demise that she chose while in a perfectly healthy state of mind. Moral of the story: the media can take its lazy sensationaliztion of deadly illnesses and shove it up their ass.
From Black Friday to January first, Holiday music and movies are playing nonstop in stores and on TV. Most of the classic holiday movies also have very popular songs to accompany them. Here is list of classic holiday songs and the movies that accompany them:
Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer
The popular song, “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer” actually came from a book written in 1939 by Robert May. The song was created in 1949 by Johnny Marks. The first claymation movie adaptation was created in 1964.
Santa clause is coming to town
The song “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” was written in 1934 by John Frederick Coots. The claymation movie was made in 1970 starring Kris Kringle, A.K.A. Santa Claus, and his journey of becoming Santa. A book was written in 2008 to accompany the song and movie.
Frosty the snowman
The song “Frosty The Snowman” was written in 1950 by Walter E Rollins. The first movie adaptation was a 2D animation created in 1969. Many more movies have been created after this showing Frosty’s life and featuring the song. There have also been countless books that depict his life as it is laid out in the song.
Little drummer boy
The song “Little Drummer Boy” was written in 1941 by Harry Simeone, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Henry Onorati. The claymation movie were released in 1968. Ezra Jack Keats wrote the book adaptation in the same year,1968.
The Year Without a Santa Claus
The classic songs “Heat Miser” and “Snow Miser” were in the claymation movie “The Year Without A Santa Claus”. The movie was created in 1974. Unlike the other classic Holiday songs on this list, the songs were written for the movie and become classics and popular through the movie.
Grandma Got run over by a reindeer
The song “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” was written in 1979 by Randy Brooks. The animated movie adaptation was created in 2000. This newer movie has quickly become a classic for people under 30, with the movie appearing on Cartoon Network frequently over the Holiday season.
Jingle Bells
The song “Jingle Bells” was written in 1857 by James Pierpont(not the man Pierpont Commons in named after). The song was originally called “One Horse Open Sleigh”. There have been many movie adaptations of this song, and many other movies have used the song to add a Holiday feeling to them. “Jingle Bells” was the first song to be broadcast from outer space. The two astronauts sang the song to mission control with bells and a harmonica after pulling a prank on them!
What I think makes midnight movies so special is that they remind me that art is a communal experience. Hearing people interact with the movie heads-on reminds you that you, the audience, have a say in supporting work you like and rejecting work you don’t. The last time I felt glad I was watching a movie in a movie theater was when I saw “Get Out” (spoilers ahead). When the police car pulled up at the end of the film with Chris over the body of his now-dead girlfriend, the entire audience audibly gasped. I was scared myself, worried our hero would get framed and his evil girlfriend’s family would win after all. But when Chris’s friend Rod the TSA officer emerged instead the entire theater was filled with moved, genuine applause. It was a magical moment that spoke to how the film touched a nerve in today’s political climate that I would not have been able to experience for myself had I seen it alone. I can only assume this must have made the midnight circuit very empowering for film-goers in an era before social media could affirm my experience or prove once again I am surrounded by idiots. But what I find fascinating with my exposure to two such cult classics is how darn mean people get when watching something they paid to see.
The two midnight movies I have seen are “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Room”, which both required an audience to make the experience memorable because of how bad they are.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Source: Intergalacticrobot
My main problem with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is that it is completely composed of B-film horror and sci-fi tropes. This is completely understandable because it is a satire of B-films in the horror and sci-fi genres. And yet, it just wasn’t that fun for me to watch after already being very familiar with the films it was parodying. Plus, I felt that the song numbers from the original musical translated very poorly to the movie’s cramped mansion of Dr. Frank-n-Furter. But seeing it shadow-acted live was truly a spectacle. It was great fun to see people mock every memorably cheesy line and throw the same stuff at the screen that was being thrown in the movie. At first, I thought it was a little harsh to hear people constantly berating the film in unison. If it was that bad, why did so many people come to see it? But I quickly learned that the movie was just plain fun to bash. I, of course, would be remiss if I didn’t mention how fun it was as a queer person to see so many fabulous LGBT people dress like the characters of “Rocky Horror” to see the fabulously campy movie. But I think that the over-the-top plot was what made it the original midnight movie in the first place.
The Room. Source: The Daily Beast
“The Room”, which came out nearly thirty years later, follows the precedent set by “Rocky Horror” due to how unbelievably bizarre it is. It is one of the most iconic midnight movies I have heard of, and interestingly enough its fame is specifically attributed to how awful it is unintentionally. It is brazenly bad, from the writing to the acting, to the point that the fact it managed to come to a coherent end at all (despite its many non-related story-lines) is impressive. But hearing people mimic Tommy Wiseau’s strange delivery (“Oh hi, Mark!”) and even stranger action, like throwing footballs across the theater every time Wiseau tosses the pigskin with friends on-screen for some inexplicable reason, made me better appreciate and laugh at the strangeness of “The Room”, to the point I felt I was taking part in some film-loving tradition bigger than myself. That’s saying a lot for someone who usually watches indie movies alone.
Of course, not all midnight movies follow the mold I came up with above. Other midnight movies I’ve seen (“Eraserhead”, “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Pink Flamingos” in case you don’t want to sleep easy tonight) are NOT meant to be seen with people you care about, or anyone, really, for very different reasons. These lead me to suspect that perhaps there are different kinds of midnight movies: ones you can laugh at and ones that leave you feeling weird on the inside because of the harsh depictions of sexuality and violence. In these cases, I am happy I saw these movies alone so no one will know (with you being the exception, my dear reader). Regardless, midnight movies are a testament to the power film can have on people’s sense of boundaries when it comes to them and the art they consume, and I look forward to the midnight movies of the future. I just hope they’ll be on the funny side.
Thanksgiving is now over, meaning that it is officially the holiday season. Stores are decorated, the radio is playing festive music, people are now buying gifts for the upcoming festivities, and TV channels are playing their holiday movies and TV episodes. A staple TV holiday movie schedule is ABC Family, now FreeForm, 25 Days of Christmas movie schedule. This is a month long event that people look forward to starting in October. FreeForm posts the movie schedule in November for their viewers to get excited and mark their calendars and DVRs for when their favorite movies are playing.
The 2017 schedule is out and it is starting in 3 days, so it’s time to look at it now and prepare for a month of nonstop holiday movies and entertainment. Starting on December 1st everyday from 7:00am to 1:00am there will be nonstop holiday movies. There are hundreds of holiday movies to choose from for FreeForm to put on the schedule, but they mainly stick to the same 50 or so movi
Buddy the elf showing his holiday spirit
es each year. The classics like Home Alone, Polar Express, and A Christmas Carol are always played several times throughout the month so that everyone can get a chance to watch the show. The most popular holiday movie in recent years is Elf. Elf is playing 20 out of the 25 days, so don’t worry about missing it because there are plenty of opportunities.
With FreeForm being owned by Disney, there are also a lot of Mickey Mouse appearances throughout the month. Disney takes classic stories like A Christmas Carol and replace the characters with the familiar faces of Mickey and his friends. Movies like these will be played several times throughout the month along with non-Disney versions as well so people can watch it both ways or just pick their favorite version and watch that.
The movies throughout FreeForms 25 Days of Christmas range from animated to live action, child to adult movies, and old to new. Claymation movies are sprinkled in throughout the new animation remakes. The classic Rudolph The Rednose Reindeer claymation is generally played at least once during the month. This year The Little Drummer Boy will be played 5 times throughout the month for all those who enjoy classic claymation movies. These claymation movies are generally more for adults who grew up watching them, children now enjoy the animation in the Polar Express and A Christmas Carol more than the claymation animation style.
FreeForms 25 Days of Christmas is a nonstop holiday party for the entire month of December. Whenever people are feeling festive they can put it on and know that it will deliver. It shows movies for every age to enjoy and for families to watch together. Check the schedule now to make sure that you don’t miss your must watch holiday movie.
There has only been one movie made about bobsledding, “Cool Runnings”. It is about the first Jamaican bobsled team and how they were formed, practiced, and eventually made it to the Olympics. The movie shows the basics equipment, requirements, and skills needed to compete in the sport. It also states the basic rules and possible qualifying times to make it into the Olympics around 1993. It is more of a fun team building and friendship movie than an informative bobsled movie but it did help to expose more people to the sport.
