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1 Youtube Source

What "La La Land" Gets Right (and Wrong) About Jazz

Jazz Night in America Published on Feb 23, 2017
https://youtu.be/Pm4D1rzq0sA

2 www.vulture.com

La La Land Is Clueless About What’s Actually Happening in Jazz By Seve Chambers January 13, 2017 11:52 am

http://www.vulture.com/2017/01/what-la-la-land-gets-wrong-about-todays-jazz.html?mid=twitter_vulture

3 Youtube Source

La La Land - Sebastian and Mia at The Jazz Club
robperry7 Published on Apr 7, 2017

https://youtu.be/Tfx9B7hGk5o

4 Youtube Source
La La Land (2016 Movie) Official Clip – “City Of Stars”
Lionsgate Movies Published on Dec 7, 2016
https://youtu.be/cZAw8qxn0ZE

5 Youtube Source

LA LA LAND ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

Natsume Sora Published on Jan 14, 2017

https://youtu.be/Tk_h-6cCQy0
- Madeliene Edwards

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Star Wars since its infancy has been about a Space Opera tale that looks into the battle between good and evil, corruption and redemption, alien worlds, starships, hi-tech super-weapons and lightsaber duels. It raised the bar for special effects in cinema and became a Cash Cow Franchise that made its creator George Lucas one of the most powerful men in the film and entertainment industries in history. It has been a bumpy road, from Ep 4-6, to 1-3, and this symmetrical act of coming full circle is exactly what will be covered in this. Every Star Wars film made by Lucas did something (not so in new canon), be it A New Hope, which was a cultural landmark and forever changed the face of cinema; or The Empire Strikes Back, which was a visual masterpiece and the best of the series, and the final climax of the OT, the Return of the Jedi which brought the first trilogy to a satisfying close. Then the Prequels came.Phantom Menace, despite how reviled it was, was an intensely fun film that revitalised the franchise for this generation, old and new. It was what Lucas was always trying to do: write a story for the young that can be enjoyed forever.  Attack of the Clones was an incredibly imperfect movie, but it had many good moments for the time and every prequel film had a great amount of effort put into it (more miniaturized sets and practical effects then the OT! With only AoTC lacking in that area, it having most CGI). But now we are at the big one, the final of the prequels, the movie that makes or break the franchise: Revenge of the Sith. Was it a failure like everyone thought it was? Despite being released more then a year early and terribly unready for screening? It proved everyone wrong - it was a truly great Star  Wars movie.  Revenge of the Sith is a magical, moving cinematic experience that breaks free from the even the whole series, gifting us with possible outlooks into a whole new style of Star Wars whilst barreling headlong into the Star Wars we all remember.

That Revenge of the Sith is better than either of its predecessor prequel films, but it can also stand the test of time alongside the OT films, while possibly being even better than A New Hope, and half the reason for this statement is the style that makes ROTS the movie it is: the greatest thing about Revenge of the Sith is its tone. Whereas Episode I & II felt too cheery and childish, Episode III is by far the darkest Star Wars film ever made. This, of course, was bound to happen. Fans know the events which need to transpire between Episodes II and IV would be dark. Tthe Jedi must be destroyed, the Empire must rise, and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) must become Darth Vader. The story is depressing by nature, but the way Lucas handles it is incredible and akin the the Greek tragedy writers of old. Revenge of the Sith is a constant emotional crescendo; as Anakin spirals from good intentions into the shadow of the Dark Side, the movie spirals with him. There are scenes in Revenge of the Sith that tug at your heart in a way that few movies of its kind ever do. Some of them even rival "Luke, I am your father," in terms of emotional impact. One sequence, where Anakin returns to the Jedi Council room after pledging his allegiance to Darth Sidious, is more saddening than anything Star Wars has ever seen. When Anakin pulls out his light saber, and you see who his opponents are, you will gasp at just how far Lucas has gone with his sinister third act. The quiet moments Anakin spent a short while before crying being a precursor and a revelation of such skill it was surprising to see in a Lucas film, let alone a Star Wars  movie.

Yes, the film is moody, but somehow it brings us back to the swashbuckling roots of Star Wars, and that's exciting. Because the material is so passionate this time around, with so many conflicting emotions and climactic confrontations, Lucas' storytelling has vastly improved. Anakin's tragic fall almost feels like a legend, like it belongs in some lost mythology. The archetypes in this movie, borrowed heavily from Greek tragedy, achieve a resonance that makes Revenge of the Sith seem larger and even more ancient than it really is. It's impossible to say how Lucas does it; people didn't know in 1977, and still don't know today and he has proven himself time and time again as the intelligent, amazing storyteller he always has been. But, like all the other great Star Wars movies, Revenge of the Sith does not connect with us as a story. It clicks somewhere deeper in our minds, where the fundamental concepts of good and evil are locked away and we see the raging eclipse that is Anakin Skywalker, Jedi and Sith, warring with his inner heart. The man forced to hide his emotions when he was always nothing but an angry, emotional young boy - or the great general who people whisper is the Hero With No Fear, but in reality, no one has more fear than Anakin Skywalker, The Hero With No Fear. This quote from the book is perhaps the most heartfelt piece of SW literature I’ve ever seen in my life and it absolutely tore my heart apart - when you read the book and watch the film Anakin’s tragic character simply falls into place as if there is a a puzzle just waiting to be put together. Everything, in its whole entirety, begins to make sense.

“This is Anakin Skywalker:
The most powerful Jedi of his generation. Perhaps of any generation. The fastest. The strongest.
He is the best there is. The best there has ever been.
HoloNet features call him the Hero With No Fear. And why not? What should he be afraid of?
Except—
Fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away the firewalls around his heart.
Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that eats at his heart as a dragon and remembers the past. Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun - dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from starships to Podracers.
But Anakin’s fear is another kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind.
But not nearly dead enough.
Not long after he became Obi-Wan’s Padawan, all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system: one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned to a
frigid dwarf of hypercompacted trace metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Anakin couldn’t even remember what the mission might have been, but he’d never forgotten that dead star.
“It is the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force,” Obi-Wan had told him. “Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments: all things pass. To hold on to something— or someone—beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the Force. That is a path of misery, Anakin; the Jedi do not walk it.”
And that is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whispers to him in the dark that all things die…
In bright day he can’t hear it; battle, a mission, even a report before the Jedi Council, can make him forget it’s even there. But at night—
At night, the walls he has built sometimes start to frost over. Sometimes they start to crack.
At night, the dead-star dragon sometimes sneaks through the cracks and crawls up into his brain and chews at the inside of his skull. The dragon whispers of what Anakin has lost. And what he will lose.
The dragon reminds him, every night, of how he held his dying mother in his arms, of how she had spent her last strength to say I knew you would come for me, Anakin…
The dragon reminds him, every night, that someday he will lose Obi-Wan. He will lose Padme. Or they will lose him.
All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out…
And the only answers he ever has for these dead cold whispers are his memories of Obi-Wan’s voice, or Yoda’s.
But sometimes he can’t quite remember them.”

This quote is exactly what makes ROTS work, and what makes it a truly amazing, phenomenal film that was a true answer to the franchises needs and still stands the test of time to this day. Complaining about dialogue is a silly issue, dialogue was never Star Wars strongest side - it was always its characters, storytelling and how they interacted with one another. In this respect, the tragedy that is ROTS truly holds the mantle of stories from Shakespeare, Greece, and Frankenstein.

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Star Wars is a Space Opera tale of good versus evil, corruption and redemption, alien worlds, starships, hi-tech super-weapons and lightsaber duels. It raised the bar for special effects in cinema and became a Cash Cow Franchise that made its creator George Lucas one of the most powerful men in the film and entertainment industries in history. With its famous (and slightly infamous) success, it should be obvious to anyone that it comes with a slew of tropes, stereotypes and archetypes. Simply put, what allowed Lucas to make Star Wars such a phenomenon was his narrative structure and style of storytelling – a beautiful meld of fairy tales, sci fi elements, and the heroes journey that allowed people the greatest format of escapism in modern times. People to this day remember the smoothness of A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back as some of the greatest films put to screen in modern history because of their predominant Three Act Structure type coupled with the references, themes and messages Star Wars always tried to handout to the fans. Ranging from Yoda’s many Iconic lines, like “This is why you fail”, where Yoda is being brutally honest with Luke, who breathlessly says, “I don’t believe it,” after the old Master raises an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp, a definitive statement that comes from Yoda’s years and years of experience as a Jedi and a teacher, and it cuts through both to Luke and the audience. This alongside the lines “Judge me by my size, do you?” which is a perfect contrast to the disbelief in the lifting of the X-wing because of both Yoda’s own size and the size of the X-wing itself, of which Yoda said no boundaries lie within the force (only those we place on ourselves) and what makes it truly great is that it isn’t placed in as a joke, it is a meaningful line that rings completely true in our hearts. The other, next line, which is his best of all is the “Do or do not, there is no try” (a plain, cold and hard truth of the world: trying will never be enough, if we truly want to achieve anything in life then we must fight with our all and two hands and two feet) or “unlearn what you have leaned”. These four lines are some of the most powerful lines in movie cinema that are remembered and iconised to this day; in fact, they have almost become tropes in several new films and sci fi films to this day, as people attempt to recapture the greatness that was Star Wars. The narrative structure is also Lucas’ biggest hooking technique for the audience. From the beginning, the Star Wars that came out forty years ago was a movie bursting with vision and genius from a man who drank deeply from mythology and timeless heroic epics along the same kind as Joseph Campbell or Mircea Eliade. The Three Act style is what has always allowed him to introduce the protagonist, the antagonist and the major conflict/problem/mission of the story while setting the stage, giving world building whilst conveying the mood and themes of the story to come (which can be seen in all Star Wars films) which is normally Act 1, the second being the struggle, and the final Act being the closure of the narrative. The main archetype, which has also been partly the reason behind its success is the strong meld of the “Quest”, the “Task”, the “Magic Weapon”, the “Heroes Journey” the “Death and Rebirth”, the “Good vs Evil” and the “unhealable wound”. Be it from having the quest to restore freedom to the galaxy, or the task of saving Leia and destroying the Death Star, or utilising a grand weapon of immense power, journeying through the universe and going through the struggle that the normal Hero goes through in normal cliché/trope fiction, plus with the good vs evil and the deaths of parental figures coupled with a crippling injury that continues to the end of the Saga, Star Wars archetypes certainly exist, but they are there predominantly to help make the plot what it is, and it wouldn’t be Star Wars without them. Stereotypes have always been common and rife in Star Wars but it is also the usage of these stereotypes that makes Star Wars so good, whilst it doesn’t deconstruct them, it uses them in an absurdly well-done manner which sets it apart from a lot of current day films. The Heroes Journey is both an archetypical story style and a stereotype that is used to almost perfection, akin to the kind you’d expect from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Dune (sci fi classic) and David Eddings Belgariad, perhaps the three best attempts at a Heroes Journey/Chosen One trope in the last century. This trope is used both through Anakin, and through Luke himself, who carries on his father’s destiny and helps bring resolution to the prophecy of the prequel storyline, and it fundamentally is ridged in the idea of the next generation carrying on from the old which is a beautiful roundabout film that slips to the surface in most Star Wars media.

-Madeliene

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CIU110 blog share: Total War: Three Kingdoms

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CIU110 blog share: Total War: Three Kingdoms

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I am so excited for this!

-Madeliene

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Total War: THREE KINGDOMS – Cao Cao In-Engine Trailer

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Such Trolling :D

-Madeliene

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BTS (방탄소년단) 'MIC Drop (Steve Aoki Remix)' Official MV

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CIU110: How is media reflected in Shakespeare’s plays.

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CIU110: How is media reflected in Shakespeare’s plays.

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Born in the cups of the beginning of the Renaissance and the end of the Medieval period, Shakespeare looked to the past instead of to his time period. All of his plays were medieval in design, but their stipulations always had a modern feel to them unusual for the time period – this has become so synonymous that many say that just as much Shakespeare is medieval, Shakespeare “makes modern culture, and modern culture makes Shakespeare”, through this strand of thought we can find that throughout his plays long existence to this current day, it has been appreciated by all peoples in each time period and are considered “timeless” epics, and because of this timelessness, it is perceptually and conceptually the same from the viewpoint of any modern observer as it were to a man from a previous time period. Just as many of our Modern films and heroes are based on Shakespeare or Greece, so too was Shakespearean tragedy based on Greek tragedy.

Characters like Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth have dominated the culture of our current Western media as icons in both our culture, our films, media or plays and are instantly recognisable when their names are invoked. However, each cultural stance and take is different, thus the modern versions of the characters are always changing like the sands of a dune. "Romeo" usually takes on the role of some kind of philanderer who is ever persistent in boasting his love, rather than a lover faithful till his last ill breath; further, "Hamlet" is turned into either a madman, a cunning figure, bipolar, or an indecisive over-thinker, and "Lady Macbeth," is turned into an ambitious female with the gusto and will to meet her own ends. These changes show a truth about how modern culture and modern life is formed from the past, and that all humans, no matter the period, are simply humans. There is nothing truly new under the sun, and the thoughts of Shakespeare can be visibly seen in our current world, or in the one before him. Further, it can be seen that of all periods the one that influenced him the most were the times of medieval Europe (middle and late middle ages) and this can be seen in all of his works as he attempted to capture that period with great sincerity and awe. In relation to that, Shakespearean works also show how media worked in the medieval period and was similar to the Renaissance – both didn’t have a form of net or social media, so all forms of “news” media were primarily done through newspapers, orators, and given to the people this way, whereas communicative media was done through messaging networks and letters, or provided by word of mouth; last but not least, their visual media were plays and writing, be it Greek tragedy or Shakespeare, plays have existed for millennia and have become what we now call “films”.

-Madeliene

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Fate Zero

1. Hartley defines intertextuality as the equivalent of cross-referencing and a given sign in other textual contexts. That is, the term stipulates we must understand and see the differences between types of media and how they relate. Media in this context meaning anything from film to books and art, however this deeper sense of relationship can have many other meanings that are much deeper and more personal in the works of art. In the exploration of my own intertextualities that I feel are also in some ways synonymous with the intertextualities of tragedy/pain I’ll explore below, I’ll talk about myself here.

I’m autistic and I have never known the feeling of not being that way, I only know who I am and that I am different than everyone around me, which people always love to mention and parade in my face. Because of my autism, I’ve found that it is very easy for not just myself to misunderstand, or misinterpret something, but others around me who almost readily misunderstand what I’m trying to say or do. This is a fairly common part of my life, and it could be called the tragedy of Autism: to rarely be understood properly. In connecting with literature, it can be easily seen that there exists a longstanding tradition, in which a protagonist, originally limited intellectually or socially by internal or external factors, becomes self-aware and ultimately suffers as a result of having achieved this new level of consciousness. This can be seen in most kinds of tragedies, especially when you consider so many of the great tragedies happen because of vast misunderstandings and misinterpretations, and so many tragic heroes are ultimately anti-social, or have, in some way, become more self aware of the world and become broken because of it.

Now, to tackle the bigger piece of this task..

2. Fate/Zero is a series that tackles a multitude of broad psychological and philosophical themes through its characters and their respective conflicts as Gen Urobuchi, its author, utilises the normal style of writing he always has, that of a tragedy to showcase and depict the themes he wants to showcase and explore in his work. It is his belief that all things in the world, if they are just left alone and paid no attention to, are bound to advance in a negative direction, and that no matter what we do, we can't stop the world from getting colder. This is a belief system he readily explores and showcases, clashing it with the inverting of black and white as principles. Simply put, Fate/Zero is a thematically rich, brutally nihilistic series which benefits greatly from strong execution in sight and sound ontop of story. This narrative of nihilism, darkness and tragedy can be seen to be akin to Friedrich Nietzsche meeting with Greek Tragedies, and if that wasn’t enough, all of this is interwoven into a visual epic that is unbelievably stunning, and you could pretty much stop the movie at any moment and use the images as the background of your computer. The vivid popping out colors and the amazing lightning are an absolute joy for the eyes to see. The influences that this art communicates is the depth of the inverting of black and white in its deconstruction of the world at large, showcasing the deeper reality of the world and then contrasting ideologies with one another - ideologies can lead to failure, but it can also lead to greatness and we can better ourselves with them, just as so for morality. We can see this in all the different characters; Kiritsugu contrasts the meeting of ideology with being forced to grow up and becoming a cynical realist;compared to Waver who is a idealist who actually strengthens his ideology and is rewarded for it, in the end the happiest character is Waver, who was confronted with reality and the real world, but was able to affirm his decisions and beliefs despite being punished so much for the past. Kiritsugu, who was forced to see the flaws in his attempt at making a realistic ideology, breaks at the seams. He is our tragic character, the one who only continued living because he finally managed to save just one person. Kirei Kotomine is the psychopathic realist, anti-social, terrible with people, terrible with anything not to do with killing, and together the three are mirrors of each other - on opposite spectrums but coinciding together. Every time, there is a chance for a happy ending, for a moment of redemption for them, but it is broken and smashed to pieces by Gen as he consistently smacks the reader with the harsher side of his world and depicts the darker side of reality to the fullest. Several characters in this work become self aware, and are punished for it. They are ripped out of their bubbles and shown the truth of the world and are hurt and broken because of it, at every point. Waver speaks to me because of his struggles when he is alienated by teachers and students alike - my experience in school was terrible when I was young, people didn’t accept me because I was different, and the teacher’s not only didn’t know how to deal with me, they didn’t really care about teaching me properly.

Reference
https://theanimehubcom.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/fatezero-analysis-part-1-psychopathy-utilitarianism-and-kirei-kotomine/

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CIU110 blog share: One Republic: I Lived 

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CIU110 blog share: One Republic: I Lived 

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One Republic: I Lived brings a powerful and meaningful message to the table that simply evokes so much emotion within my heart as it goes on and on. It covers so many different ideas and messages as it rolls with discussions about regret, how it holds us down and how it is actually unnecessary to happiness, because truly living life to the fullest is to live without any regret. Ryan Tedder’s vocals really gave an unusual level of rawness that simply put me in aw of the emotion and all the little details he packs in, even the drum beat comes of sounding like a heart-beat. This song means a lot to me and is able to help me when I’m feeling down or growing through a tough time, the lyrics alone are enough to empower me to live life to the fullest let alone the beauty of the story it depicts, which is awe-inspiring in its integrity as Bryan Warnecke tells a tale of how he battles with cystic fibrosis yet it will never stop him from embracing the joy of life.

In the end everyone goes through pain, fear, trepidation, heartache and grief, but it is how we overcome it that changes how the world moves around us. It is how we make that jump, the leap of the ages that reveals to us how beautiful deep down this world truly is; and all we need do is give it everything within us.-Madeliene

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OneRepublic - I Lived (Official Music Video)

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The word media is both plural and a collective noun – this is because there are several forms of media in the world! Be it the media from from which data and feelings are expressed to us via journalists, or the collective outlets that are used to store and deliver information. This can be comprised by such utilities as the print media, press, photography, advertisement, the cinema, broadcasting (radio and television), and publishing. Historically, the media has existed since before and after the Printing Press was invented in both Europe and Asia, originally in the form of an information postal system, i.e. information was sent across vast distances to either officials or the average person. Rome did this via forums and orators for the plebs as one such example. -Madeliene

References:
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=printing+press&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=lnt&tbs=sur:fc&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7n92EysHbAhWEv7wKHelxBGIQpwUIHw&biw=1280&bih=599&dpr=1.5#imgrc=m9XmJZR0ySQhoM: