Hour 21: A Film and Interactive Media Blog

Interval  Unleashed  “You must learn to hate what he loved.” Darth Vader orders as he hands over a pair light-sabers to his apprentice. I am broken. It is raining as master and apprentice face-off sabers in hand. They fight. And lock blades as Vader proclaims “The woman is meaningless!” “You lie!” The apprentice screams. As he frees himself from Vader’s hulking mass. Once more they lock blades as Vader insists “She loved a dead man she never loved you!” I am broken.       Again they lock blades Vader continues, “If you want to join the woman so be it!” I am broken.   The battle is over. Vader on his knees defeated. He beseeches his apprentice, “What you feel for her is not real.” Enraged his apprentice screams, “It’s real to me!” I am broken. The apprentice sits beside “The Woman” as Vader’s final words to him echo in his mind. “As long as she lives I will always control you.” I am broken!     ...

So here is a thought, if you were to view one of Pablo Picasso’s most famous works of art, you would most likely say that the work is well constructed. Even if you did not fully appreciate it on a base emotional level, the work has object merit. Why is this? Is it because the work breaks the rules of painting? Not likely, is it because it follows them? Not all the time. A piece of art is objectively valuable when it creates new rules that are in harmony with the old. This does not mean that the old rules are thrown away, but instead are redefined by the work in question.   In other words the work is defined by the work; the object is defined by the object.   Artwork therefore, has to be objectively valued; it has no ability to be otherwise. Though you ask what about the artist and what they bring to the work? The artist as an individual does not matter. The artist speaks through the work and the work speaks for the artist. They are one. It follows therefore that artwo...

1 Life and Death         The Princess Bride as a novel and a film is a prime example of a fairy tale romance. Love at first sight. Yet for all of its undying devotion to the adage that love conquers all, The Princess Bride never outwardly represents love as we have so regularly come to expect. In fact, in the case of the film, screenwriter and author William Goldman have the Grandson reject the “Kissing scenes”, having his Grandfather skip them as he reads him the novel. So without these scenes of affection how does The Princess Bride explore the depths of love? Three little words “As You Wish”.   In using “As You Wish” as the catalyst for the relationship between Buttercup and Westley the Princess Bride smartly illustrates how love at first sight can happen. Though it does it in a way you may not expect. The story asks our two protagonists to care about the welling being of the other before their own. As a result “As You Wish” both exemplifies...