Movies and Books

[Anonymous]

The Weeping Camel

This movie is a great movie for special education students or ESL student. It is a great movie about Mongolian Camel Herders and their attempt to save a rare white baby camel, whoes mother will not let her nurse. This movie shows how the Mongolians live in their yerts and how the children are raised. The family sends 2 of their sons to retrieve a mucician to come and perform a ceremony to unite the mother and child. The 2 boys that they send out into the Gobi Dessert are very young, one being about five. This is a very interesting look into the lives and culture of these ageless Mongolians. The movie is subtitled, but students really don't have to read to enjoy and learn from this movie, I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

[Anonymous]

Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" appear to have set director Spike Lee off. This months issue of Time magazine reports that the lack of any African American in either movie fails to honor the sacrifices made by the 1 million black service men during WW2. Eastwood feels that the service men played no key rolei n the events depicted although did serve bravely. Also that the public would have rejected the roles since history does not recognize efforts made by African Americans at Iwo Jima. The controversy between the two has made me select these movies for my movie review as I would like to see what has Spike Lee so upset.

[Anonymous]

The weather has been so hot that I have been flipping through the channels most of the weekend. On Friday I saw Babel, which tells a story from four parts of the globe but has a plot that connects the parts through a single event. The part that deals with Asia in the Classroom takes place in Tokyo but after viewing, it is something I would not consider for my classroom. Babel tells the story of a young Japanese girl who lost her mother to suicide. This young girl is also deaf and is having difficulty finding boys interested in her. Towards the end the girl feels so different from the rest of the world that she contemplates suicide as well. The points that may have relevance to teaching in the class are the cultural similarities among teens in Asia and in the US. That is the use of drugs to forget or hide, sex used to feel accepted or part of, and the inability to communicate with adults to cope. I did enjoy the movie but I would not recommend it to a younger audience.

[Anonymous]

Letters From Iwo Jima is not in English. I thought it would be like The Last Samurai. The main actor is the same as the one from The last Samurai but they use Japanese. This will have an effect on how I use the movie in the classroom and will go into detail when I post the movie review.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the heads up. I will be visiting the Bowers museum this Wednesday and will definetly check out your suggested reading material.

[Anonymous]

The Vampire Hunter D series began as a novel, turned into a cult sensation anime movie, and continued as a series of novels (as well as manga I'm sure). The books also have within them a number of pen and ink illustrations. Overall a great resource for high school, given the interesting, romantic and action filled topic, and a lack of spicy sex scenes. I was thinking that this could actually be a cool lesson, having the students do a storyboard for a "new" Vampire Hunter D anime film based off one of 2nd through 5th books.

Anyhow on to the review. The books have fairly predictable plotline, much like the Guin Saga I reviewed earlier, but are saved by far superior writing skills and/or translation skills (I started to wonder if the guin saga suffered greatly from poor translation). The writing is lyrical, free flowing, and graceful in style. It romanticizes its characters and does a good job of keeping you interested till the last drop.

The story is that humankind has been blasted back into the middle ages by our own technological follies, and raised tenuously back up by vampires that had hoarded technology in preparation for the fall. A Dhampir (son of a vampire and a human woman) named "D" rides the earth bringing down vampires and the monsters they have created. In every book there is a romantic prospect that goes unfulfilled, and exposes "D" as having even greater powers than anyone should have as a Dhampir. Could it be that he is the son of D....????

hehe its pretty obvious from book one that they are trying to suggest he is the son of Dracula!

Ahh and therein lies one of the most interesting parts about this series…the effect of the west on Japan, the Japanese utilization of western ideas to create a singularly unique Japanese product, and the effects of that product on western culture in turn.

See, we bombed Japan with nuclear weapons as every one knows. As a result of that outside impact, the Japanese developed into a society completely unique from any other…a post apocalyptic society. Just think about the opening plotline for the story, a downfall by high technology. Then think about the origins of anime. They were inspired by western cartoons, then created completely new techniques to produce a similar effect, but with a totally unique feel. They then went on to create completely unique feeling creations, that at the same time utilized many western conventions and storylines ( Such as “Dracula” in a Japanese film).

Just as fascinating is how much of an impact the Japanese Anime, and more recently Manga genres have impacted the United States. Whole lines of Japanese shows have been imported, translated, and in many cases re-worked for American television. Huge numbers of toys and games (video, card, and otherwise) in Anime styles brought in, and most recently the craze has become manga books.

That however is just what has been imported. Many products not from japan are also being given the anime touch in order to attract new consumers, and in some cases are inspiring new western forms of expression (graphic novels).
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[Edit by="mvhudnall on Jun 25, 2:01:46 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

When Broken Glass Floats is the autobiography of Chanrithy Him, known in the novel as “Athy”. The novel takes place during the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which lasted from 1969 to 1989. The novel deals with the complete annihilation of an entire country’s cultural heritage, told from a first person perspective.

The book describes how, with the exception of those active within the Khmer Rouge, almost every Cambodian (or Khmer) suffered in an almost identical fashion to the Jews in Germany under the reign of Hitler. Unlike the reign of Hitler however, attention was not focused on any particular group of people. Instead, an entire country of people, were placed in concentration camp-like situations.

During different points in the book, I was reminded of various other examples of racial internment or cultural genocide, such as the Japanese-American internment camps of WWII and the current and historical anti-Native American policies of the United States.
The greatest strength and the greatest weakness of this book are in the method of telling. When Broken Glass Floats, generally abstains from graphic portrayals of violence, carnage, disease, or the other ills. The novel takes on an alternating pattern of change and destruction; which seems to have been the only constant in the lives of the Cambodian people.

Rarely however does it really linger on any one aspect of the page-by-page descriptions of the horrors. Instead, the story is narrated from a childlike perspective, and has a sort of projected feeling of emotional confusion or even lack. In only a few areas of the book did the author really actually deal with expressing her own emotional state at the time. Instead, much of her narrative focused on the emotions and reactions of the others around her.
In a way, I was actually a bit let down by the “pasteurized” depiction of Chanrithy Him’s history. Each event in the book was touched on so briefly that I was left wondering what was left out of the story. Though the intent might have been tasteful restraint, the result was a lack of focus on how it felt to be there at the time.

In a way, I wonder whether the novel’s apathy and lack of detail was the author’s way of dealing with her past. I often felt as if she were describing the life story of one of the other survivors. A story based on what one person is able to tell another, rather than an inner monologue. Perhaps then, Chanrithy Him has found her own way of dealing with her past, by translating her own story in the same fashion as she would another person.

In terms of cultural insights, When Broken Glass Floats was not always helpful. The author grew up during a time in which any cultural artifact, expression, or practice was abandoned, because it would invoke the wrath of the Khmer Rouge. The only times in which the reader is given a glimpse of Cambodian culture is when the author describes its loss or encounters an unexpected glimpse of it.

An example of such cultural loss was the breakdown in the practice of using honorary titles with strangers depending on their age, race, and social standing. The author told of her shock at hearing a soldier address two older upper class people as “comrade”.

Glimpses of religious culture were among the more prominent encounters that the author had with traditional Cambodian culture. Several times in the book a family member would cite a Buddhist or Cambodian proverb that applied to the situation they were in. In other occasions, family members or those around her would pray or make a commitment to following the Buddhist path despite or perhaps because of hardship.

One clear cultural taboo that I learned about was concerning touching another person’s head, particularly a stranger. Doing so infers the inferiority of the head being touched.
In one part of the story, the women are forced to cut their hair short, to avoid having the Khmer Rouge do it. The implied insult would have been double in that case. First was the insult of having another touch your head. Second was the insult of having to cut off the long hair so prized by Cambodian society.

The Khmer Rouge intentionally destroyed any system of education, eliminated educated peoples, destroyed technological infrastructure, eliminated the middle class, abandoned the capability or desire to provide modern medical attention, destroyed family structures, forbid political freedom, so on and so forth.

Overall the book was extremely informative on the subject of the Khmer Rouge, and should be a must read for the same reason that material on the holocaust should be taught. It may help to prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated.
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[Edit by="mvhudnall on Jun 25, 2:00:45 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Having read “When Broken Glass Floats” and seen the Khmer Rouge documentary in class, I already had a fairly firm grasp of the events taking place in “The Killing Fields”. What this film really did for me, was give a visual depiction of what I had previously read.

This movie focuses on the wartime relationship between two reporters, Sydney Schanberg and a Khmer named Dith Pran. Sydney works for the New York Times, and is in Cambodia to cover the conflict. Dith acts as a guide and translator, getting Sydney and his photographer into a city where an entire payload was mistakenly dropped by a US B-52 bomber. Though the US military prohibited reporters, the Khmer army was more open to financial negotiations. However, his Dith Pran arranged for this transaction only under duress.

Arriving at the city, Sydney and his photographer shot pictures and interviewed countless injured Khmer. At one point, Sydney attempts to take pictures of two captured Khmer Rouge are about to be executed in the streets. He, his photographer, Dith, and the driver of their car are all detained. At a base in the city they are held at gunpoint for perhaps a day or so.

Then, suddenly the US press core arrives to do a “clean up” job for the US government. Sydney bluffs the Khmer military into releasing him and his party. When he arrives at the choppers the US military flew the reporter in on, Sydney is initially refused passage.
The film continues to follow the pair’s story, including Dith Pran’s internment in one of the Khmer Rouge’s death camps, and his narrow escapes through the so called “killing fields”…fields full of the rotting corpses of innocent men, women, and children.

What I found the most interesting, was the US/Eurocentric point of view from which the movie was, intentionally, directed. The foreign diplomats and reporters exuded a Victorian style mentality, ordering about those who were “obviously” inferiors (the Khmer people). They drink wine and liquor while relaxing in the pool, while Khmer serve them, or stare longingly from the streets. While injured lie bleeding and in need of medical care, the reporters drink wine and view the carnage from a “professional” emotional distance.

Sydney is portrayed with this sort of indifferent attitude from the beginning. Only after close encounters with death, does he begin to personalize the war. Despite this however, his words and actions still unconsciously suggest that he is “better” than the Khmer people. This comes in to play in Sydney’s interactions with Dith. Rather than treating him as a fellow reporter, and consulting him as such, Dith is expected to join along. Asking seems a mere afterthought.

I think something of great interest, is the background of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, the actor who played the role of Dith Pran. He was was also a survivor of Khmer rouge rule. During that time, he and his pregnant wife were tortured. She and their unborn child died, after a forced abortion.

Though Dr. Ngor had no previous experience as an actor, he was selected for the role due to his own personal experiences. Having seen the film, they could not have made a better choice. The viewer could see the trauma and pain in Dith/Haing’s eyes. An actor could never have played the role as well.

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[Anonymous]

Oh, for an older example of cross cultural, and cross-cross-cultural exchanges, you can also check out the seven samurai (1954), a samurai story inspired in part by Coyboy style western films, versus The Magnificent Seven (1960), cowboy remake of the Seven Samurai.

[Anonymous]

I finally saw "Kung Fu Panda" and if it had any educational value, the movie did express
some credit on how the forbidden areas parallel the thick walls and heightened fortresses to keep the common folk from entering. The philosophies presented on being one with nature and true to yourself did appear to be brushed aside. This movie definitely targets the graphic visual learner/audience.

[Anonymous]

Another book you would find informative is "Stay Alive, My Son" by Pin Yathay. This memoir is about the author's family's travails and ultimately his walk to freedom into Thailand. He was an engineer and was therefore sent out to the jungle to be re-educated. His parents, siblings and their spouses, and the children suffered cruel deaths under the regime. Pin and his wife and another couple escaped and made their way toward the Thai border, but were separated, and the author was the only survivor. His strightforward and factual style compel the reader to continue through the horrific ordeal his family and others suffered under the reign of Pol Pot.

[Anonymous]

"Mongol" is a classically done film epic about the beginings of the Mongol Empire. It was filmed in China, Russia and Mongolia. The English subtitles in no way interfered with my enjoyment.

The scenery is magnificent. Clips from this film could be used to show the expanse of Western China, the mountains, the rivers, the steppes.

The movie also explores marriage and choosing a bride, death and burial, succession rights, establishing aliances between clans and living a nomadic life herding goats, horses and camels.

The battle scenes of the two Mongol armies is mesmerizing when viewed from the arial shots and gory when shown up close.

It is not showing in very many theaters, but I encourage you to look for it at Arclight and Laemle Theaters.

[Anonymous]

I really want to see Mongol; I just started reading To Live; has anyone read it?

[Anonymous]

Vanpire Hunter D is a pretty good series, but I have to say Hellsing is the best! It's about a vampire who hunts other vampires; he actually works for a secret division of Scotland Yard.

[Anonymous]

Also, I would suggest checking out Trigun, another cool anime.[Edit by="jchavez on Jul 3, 11:08:47 PM"][/Edit]

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