Welcome To Crazy Town

Sorry for the lack of posts during the holiday season. But well it is the holidays, so really not much I can apologize for. I moved back in with my parents for the time being and I have never been so bored. Ok well not 100% true, I did manage to get my hands on Rock Band 1 and 2 for the Wii. So I’ve been twiddling away with those this past week and a half. Things are actually pretty good. I’m still waiting for my school grades to come in and it’s driving me a bit crazy. Speaking of crazy, yours truely is going to be on the the game show “Trivial Pursuit: America Plays”. I won’t be one of the contestants, but rather one of the people who asks questions. I also made around $600 from it! So I’m excited and trying to figure out what to get with it.

On a more serious and personal note, my ex-girlfriend Emily came back into town before I left San Francisco. She told me she loved me and wanted to be with me. After the messy breakup, I couldn’t accept. However we did stay friends and we are hoping to get to know each other a lot better seeing as neither  of us were really open with each other. So who knows what will stem from there. But as for romance, I doubt it as I am interested in someone new, although she probably knows I’m interested by now (as does pretty much everyone else). So that’s it really.

Nothing too dramatic, hopefully after all these holidays I will go out for a run with my high school track team and write a review or two. Eh maybe I still have seasons 5 and 6 of Scrubs to finish before I go back on the 25th!

Until then later days and happy new year!

After much debate, I realized I don’t really want anything for Christmas. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever have. I’ve been basically jotting down the first random thing that comes to my mind and putting it on my wish list for the year. It’s not like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth here, I do enjoy whatever I get and don’t complain. It is almost as if you have to ask for something or else people look at you funny. Last year when people asked what I wanted I replied almost immediately, Guitar Hero. In truth I was actually ok without Guitar Hero and would have been content with a Twix bar or some Recess Peanut Butter Cups. Had I said that however, people would have thought me joking or looked at me funny. In a similar fashion this year, I asked for an Xbox 360, knowing full well that if I got one it would remain at home and I would not be able to use it 99% of the time. In reality I want my own chocolate pudding pie with an Oreo crust. Even though that would have been the cheaper object, the 360 would still be recieved because for some reason people feel compelled to splurge on material items when it comes to this time of year specifically. Even for birthdays or aniversaries you don’t see this kind gift giving. So here is what I really want for Christmas, I want this holiday to stop being an excuse to max out credit cards.

Although that’s one present I don’t really ever expect to get.

No the post isn’t about zombies, sorry if I misled you with the title. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here but since I have a bit of free time I thought I’d post a small update as to how things are going school wise. I couldn’t get into the class I needed because I was not currently a sophomore (even if I was going to be one next semester), so now I have a pretty big gap in my schedule. This is bad because in order to remain a full time student and be able to pay for all my stuff I need to be registered for at least 4 classes or 12 units minimum. So at this point I have a few alternatives set up but I’ll have to wait until later to see what I end up with. I finished up my Cinema class last Tuesday and we ended up watching the movie Persepolis, which I thought looked good but felt whiny to me overall. But then again I wasn’t too into the movie and was more excited to just be out of there. I still have a legal brief to write for my ethnic studies class that I want to finish by Friday afternoon. Also Friday is my psychology final, which I am severely dreading as it is a cumulative exam. Tonight I have my Astronomy final at about 7pm, but I haven’t studied and don’t feel too prepared for it overall. With all this stress, my sleep schedule is completely destroyed. I can’t sleep at night and just am a zombie throughout the day until I pass out and start the cycle over again the next day. I’m not the only one suffering like this, my roommate Albert has been going to sleep later than normal too. I bet our bodies’ equilibrium is being devastated as I type this. On a random note, my neighbor Travis got his first check from Today.com, so I guess it does work after all (I was a bit skeptical). I guess I better get posting to make it to the $50 mark by next month. For now, I have finals to work on.

I have to apologize for the recent randomness in my blog posts. With finals coming up soon I’ve had very little time to properly write anything. I hope all my readers (all ten of you haha), will be understanding in the matter. After finals pass I shall start posting a lot more interesting things than plain old text blogs.

Sorry again and help spread the word please!

If you found this by now, you should know me. If not, then hello my name is Armando. I used to go to Live Oak high school in a place called Morgan Hill (or as Spain called it, Morgan’s Gulch). Nothing ever happened in this town. It was always me or my sister who stirred things up. But whenever we did we were frowned upon by the old timey conservatives that ran the town. Now I know they were trying to make things for the best but look at what they did, through their constant control and their want of a true “small town america”, they have caused the dysfunctional ways of nearly everyone under the age of 30. Meth houses liter the area, children are dealing drugs and joining cults as young as the age of 8, kids who do graduate, never go anywhere. They simply default to Gav, the nearest community college. With so many people just lazing around and so many rules that basically go against them, what would you think would happen? Did you think that honestly things would go smoothly? I know live in San Francisco, attending San Francisco State University. Here in a place where I know no one and am surrounded by strangers I truly feel at home and at peace (or well when I’m not stressing about homework). I am random, like to rant, and the poems in my blog basically detail my thoughts on everything. Nothing is sacred to me, nothing is out of my reach for a joke, comment, or reference. I don’t classify myself as a rebel, I’m just myself. Not trying to be different, not trying to blend in, just trying to live my life day by day. So as the Doctor would say, alons-y!

How can creativity be measured? Can it be developed? Creativity is a mysterious thing, since there is no true way to measure it there are difficulties calculating it. Even tests that measure general intelligence are too narrow to fully measure creativity. In order to truly begin to understand creative intelligence, one must expand their thinking into a theory of “successful” intelligence. Successful intelligence emphasizes the importance of analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.
IQ tests have a range of problems, so conventional ones cannot be used here. The successful intelligence theory states that creative intelligence is best measured by problems assessing how the individual can cope with novelty. Thus, it is important to use tests that novel in nature. Being as creativity is an unconventional thing, unconventional methods must be used.
Eighty individuals were presented with novel reasoning problems that had a single best answer. Their task was to present states with only partial information. Another group of 60 were given more conventional questions. These were things you’d see on standard IQ tests like analogies, series completion, and classifications. However they were told to solve these questions. For example problems were either conventional such as, dancers wear shoes, or novel, dancers eat shoes. The participants had to solve the problems as though the novel facts were true. The time it took people to solve the novel was a good measure of creative intelligence, as it measured how able the participants were at coping with new forms of thought.
In another attempt to measure creative intelligence, several tests were performed at eight four-year colleges and five community colleges. The subject were 793 mostly first year students. The Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test was used for measuring analytical, creative skills, and practical skills using multiple choice questions. There were three creative subtests in the STAT they were creative-verbal, creative-quantitive, and creative-figural. Cartoons were also used. The subjects were given 5 cartoons from the New Yorker with no captions. The subjects then had to choose 3 of the cartoons and give them a caption each. Two trained judges then rated the captions out of 5 points based on cleverness, humor, originality, and task appropriateness. The participants where then asked to write 2 stories, and to spend about 15 minutes on each. They were given the choice from 7 different titles and a team of 6 trained judges rated the stories based on originality, complexity, emotional evocativeness, and descriptiveness. For the purpose of efficiency, 64.7% of the stories were rated by one judge. Oral stories were also used and were rated based on the same scales as the cartoons and stories.
The data showed that women scored beneath men, and latinos scored higher than blacks. However this could be a cultural variance as the participant’s backgrounds were not throughly examined. Students who did well in one field usually performed poorly in another. However data could not track anything significant in the area of the development of creativity.
This article was interesting to me because I like to consider myself creative. Also as a left hander, I was hoping there would be something in the report concreting the link between hemispheres of the brain and creative intelligence. However sadly there was none so needless to say I was disappointed. Creativity is a type of personality trait and the study of personality seems creative in itself. The whole concept of using measurements, mathematical formulas, and numbers on things that cannot truly be measured seems to be a creative form of science. It also seems impractical, however I have read before that humans have a need to measure and categorize everything in their lives. To make sense of everything and give themselves self worth.
As a cinema student creativity is necessary in my major. If there was some way to truly access the levels of creativity in a person, I doubt a lot of people would have majors in creative arts or fine arts. I wish I had participated in this study. The tests looked interesting, and I would have highly enjoyed giving cartoons captions and making up stories based on titles. I wish more tests like these were used for college admittance and in classrooms.
The whole idea of using one standardized test for everything seems impractical as everyone is different in their own thought processes. If we all had to take the same test, then we are all expected to be exactly the same. However I can see why there is one standardized test, it is to reduce confusion and paper waste. We need a better test that can successfully analyze both our intelligence quota and our creative intelligence. By doing so we can broaden admittance to colleges by having two different tests which would be fair to everyone. By helping others we can build a better brighter future, and realize that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Shuffling into the theater Tuesday morning every week is a joy. Not because we are going to see a movie, that could have been easily achieved by just staying home from class. No, it’s because we are all about to view a genuinely good movie. Although every film has a few flaws, its’ other elements boost it beyond anything mainstream American cinema has to offer today. In short, the movies in class portray something thing severely lacking in movie theaters today, they portray true emotion and soul.
“The Wooden Camera” , a film from South Africa by director Wa Luruli Ntshavheni, presents us with the story of two boys who come upon power. The older boy, Sipho, chooses to wield a gun he finds on a dead man. The younger boy, Madiba,  chooses to take the man’s camera. Sipho accordingly gains the power to destroy, whilst Madiba gains the power to create. I especially enjoyed the parallels between the two characters. The dualism reminded me greatly of an animated film called “Tekkonkinkreet” by Michael Arias. In that film, much like in “The Wooden Camera”, two brothers face a schism as one goes off to wreak havoc on town while the other wallows in his own imaginative reality.
I felt the film was powerful and quite clear in some places in exhibiting South African culture since the end of apartheid. The long panning shot in the beginning showing where Madiba lived was a good way to show the rampant poverty plaguing the region. The way the children reacted when Sipho pointed the gun at them, to me, seemed to convey that they had had this happen to them before. Estelle’s character represents the new way of thinking, while her father plays the counter in that he is the old mindset of the area. Another scene I felt really well done was the staircase scene between Estelle and her father. The positioning of the two characters foreshadowed the rest of the movie quite nicely, with the father falling and Estelle passing him on his way down.
Another aspect I felt was done right was the introduction with Madiba’s sister. It set up his character so that you expect him to be different, he is a creative soul in a bleak setting. He embraces film making as an outlet and finds a kindred spirit in Estelle, who is also an artist in a restricted environment. Their relationship is best displayed in the montage at the beach. Sipho’s  voice over introduction being done at the same time as Madiba’s was a brilliant move. It pairs the two and makes the changes that occur to the characters much more noticeable.
The movie overall was very well done. Honestly there is nothing I can pick out that I felt didn’t work. The actors, although they were mostly younger children, played their roles superbly. The rough and grungy camera work was perfect for the scenes depicting Madiba’s home because you could actually feel the state of poverty these kids had to deal with day to day. The social commentary based on the depiction of South African life from the point of view of a black South African, and the use of many different symbolisms added a refreshing amount of depth to a story that was already deep to begin with .
The other film that really stood out from the group that we saw was Joon-ho Bong’s “The Host”. This movie does very little to hide it’s political commentary, with the monster representing the chaos America threw Korea into. This film was the most popular of the others, which was strange for a foreign film. This was most likely due to the fact that it resembled greatly a Hollywood movie. To me I feel that the movie “Cloverfield”, by director Matt Reeves, borrowed a lot of it’s elements from “The Host”. However the premise was better executed in “The Host”.
The overall tone of the movie constantly threw me off. Even in the most serious of scenes you couldn’t help but laugh. For instance, when everyone is running for their lives, a moment of hilarity occurs when Gang-du, the main protagonist attempts to save his daughter but instead grabs the wrong girl’s hand. Or when the family is mourning the loss of Hyun-seo it is pitiful, but quickly turns into a wacky, over the top dramatic show. I can’t however say that the constant and rapid changing of moods hurt anything, I just found it a bit odd.
Personally I love monster movies. Godzilla was my childhood hero, even if he was a giant dinosaur that for some reason was fascinated with terrorizing Japanese citizens. Usually the monster is either not seen very clearly, or it does not have as big an impact as it did on the Park family. This change up was very well received by me. In my mind’s eye that is how I always pictured monster movies to be (with the exception that the monster always wins in my head), Bong did a monster movie, and he did it right.
Surprisingly I expected a lot more of the Park family to die. I did not expect Hyun-seo to die at all. I suppose this was to help Gang-du become a better father to the young boy. The twists, like there being no virus, keep you constantly glued to the screen. The uncertainty of it all makes the story fascinating since no one is really sure what is happening, not the Park family, not the government, not even the audience. It is quite possible that the only one that knows what is really going on is the monster.
“The Host” was just a likable movie. Even though the entire family was presented as bungling, you had to love them a root for them constantly against the monster from the sewer. Their struggles against a world that is hunting them, and amongst themselves is cliche but just adds on to the likability. And the final sequence with them all coming together at the end was very Hollywood, but a great end to a great movie.
Both “The Wooden Camera” and “The Host” are movies well done. By my standard, a well done movie is one that can draw you in, and keep you there until the very end, and sometimes even after that. These movies accomplished just that. They are constantly enticing us to watch more and more, while informing on a symbolic and subconscious level. Both films represent what movies can offer, as long as you are willing to try something different. I loved them both and will very soon be adding them permanently to my DVD collection among other favorites.

Woody Allen is one of America’s premier film makers. He has done everything from comedies to dramas and was never shy when it came to playing a part in his films. His “early funny movies” are full of good natured humor, while his later dramatic works are enthralling and full of suspense. However it is in these later dramas that there begins to emerge a recurring pattern in Allen’s works.
An ongoing theme in Allen’s films is the roles that men and women play through out the stories. Gender roles in films have been around since the beginning of not only cinema but story telling in general. It was almost expected for there to be a dashing male lead who has to get the gorgeous female out of some sort of predicament. Although in recent times this has somewhat changed to where the heroine must overcome a great difficulty. Disney movies are a good example of this with one of the most recent being “Enchanted” (2007), where the Princess Gisele ends up having to save her “one true love” from the clutches of a monstrous dragon. Allen tends to favor the former with the male roles being dominant.
An example of the male dominated lead, would be Allen’s 2005 drama “Match Point.” The film is about a man named Chris Wilton who takes up a job teaching tennis at a private club. There he befriends a man named Tom Hewett, who is a member of the wealthy Hewett family. Chris then begins a loveless relationship with Tom’s sister Chloe. However, after meeting Tom’s fiance Nola, Chris is instantaneously drawn to her as she is to him. The two have sex in an empty field, but Nola claims that it meant nothing. Chris marries Chloe and begins work at her father’s company, while Tom and Nola end their engagement. Upon hearing the news Chris attempts to locate her and finds her at a museum. The two begin a long affair which ends with Nola getting pregnant and wanting to keep the baby. Nola begins to threaten to talk to Chloe if Chris does not. Although he strongly desired her, Chris realizes the only way to keep the life he leads is to get rid of Nola. He devises a plan which makes her death look like a drug related crime. After several close calls with the police which could have convicted Chris, all evidence ends up pointing toward a dead drug addict that takes all the suspicion away from Chris. Chris ends up dismissing the incident as necessary and continues to live his life with his wife and his newborn son.
“Match Point” has three lead females and three lead males. Chris, being the one who drives the story along, is the strongest of the male roles. Nola, being the true love interest is the strongest of the female characters. Although the other 4 male and female characters are considered lead roles, it is really Nola and Chris that take the spotlight. Chris, like the other male characters represents dominance. Through out the film he has a calm and collected demeanor on the outside while he is constantly debating with himself on the inside. Allen seems to enjoy a sort of dualism in the roles he writes out, a sense of people are not always what they seem. Nola, an aspiring actor, perfectly fills out the dualism role. Even though she is the strongest of the female leads, she still appears like the others as an object, rather than a person. More of a supporting character than an actual lead. This is very similar to how the Rachel Dawes character Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film “The Dark Knight” was presented. She was simply there to build upon the Harvey Dent figure. Thus Nola may be one of the main motivators in the film, but her role is down played to the point where she is almost just a minor nuisance to have around. Nola almost seems easy to forget about.
In “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Allen 1989), an ophthalmologist named Judah is having an affair with Dolores an airline flight attendant. She wants him to leave his wife for her, he refuses and she threatens to tell his wife about the entire thing. Desperate to protect his marriage, Judah asks his brother to hire a hit man to kill Dolores. Judah becomes guilt ridden and for once in his life he believes that there is a God who is passing judgement on him. At the same time Cliff, a failed documentary film maker, is hired by his brother-in-law, Lester. Lester is a television producer who wants Cliff to make a documentary glorifying him. During the filming, Cliff grows to actively despise Lester. Also during the filming, Cliff falls in love with Lester’s associate producer, Halley. Cliff, who is in a failing marriage, attempts to try to woo Halley by showing her footage of his other documentary about Professor Louis Levy. Levy is renowned philosopher and Cliff tells Halley he is only making Lester’s documentary so that he can continue making the one about Professor Levy. Cliff dislikes Lester greatly and resents it when he  goes after Halley. She leaves to London after Lester offers her a producing job there and returns months later. Cliff learns that her and Lester are engaged, and that he sent her a bouquet of white roses every week when they were in London. Cliff is heartbroken and quickly realizes that he is incapable of that kind of affectionate display. In the end, Cliff and Judah meet by chance at the wedding of daughter of Ben, who is one of Judah’s patients and Cliff’s brother-in-law. Judah has overcome his guilt about killing Dolores and engages Cliff in a hypothetical discussion that draws upon his moral quandary. Judah believes that with time, any crisis will pass but Cliff, still bitter over losing Halley, claims that one is forever fated to bear one’s burdens for “crimes and misdemeanors.”
In a similar fashion to “Match Point,” the women of Crimes and Misdemeanors are more objects than people. Both Dolores and Halley are like unattainable trophies in the lives of Cliff and Judah, with Dolores representing lust and Halley representing escape. With Judah and Dolores, Dolores is threatening Judah by wanting him to leave his wife for her. Again we see one of the main women characters as more of a supporting role than anything else. We also see the dualism return with Cliff being an almost all new person when he’s with Halley, yet with his wife he lacks passion and is instead simply going through the motions. Dolores’s wanting to confront Judah’s spouse is minor in comparison to the guilt he receives after he puts a hit on her. Even when he thinks he’s gotten over it, after the conversation with Cliff in the end, the guilt is seen returning into his eyes. Halley ends up being a tease to Cliff’s life. To him she was a means to escape the hum drum relationship he had with his wife, both physically and mentally. Although it would seem that Halley is in a position of power between the two men, in reality she is merely a vessel through which Cliff and Lester attempt to harm one another. This again reinforces the conviction in Allen films that women are objects rather than other full leads.
“Match Point” has Chris both killing an object of his lust and looking for a means of escape. In “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” that role was divided between Judah and Cliff. Nola is Chris’s way to escape his empty unfeeling relationship with Chloe, in almost exactly the same way that Halley was Cliff’s escape.  Although to Chris, Nola was not a vessel though which to damage someone. She was simply his life that could have been. By killing her, and by Judah killing Dolores, they have removed temptation from their lives and can stay focused on their wives. Cliff does not kill Halley, but when he realizes he can never have her, she is too effectively separated from his temptation.
The women in Allen’s films represent general symbols usually portrayed in stories. They are objects of lust, leading the male lead to do things that they never thought they could, or would ever do. They usually hinder the male lead in his pursuits and cause a lot of trouble for them. But in some cases, such as the Halley character, they provide a confidant. They can help balance out the male character and put him on steady ground such as Chloe brings stability to Chris’ life by getting him the job with her father’s company and by buying that apartment for them. In a similar fashion, Halley takes interest in Cliff’s documentary and helps him develop and fine tune it. She helps his intellectualism grow by engaging in meaningful dialect with him, unlike Lester who often mispronounced words.
Although Allen does favor male dominance in his dramas, he gives his female players a strange sort of power in that they truly drive the story by working behind, or in some cases in front of the male leads. He dares to question, to what lengths would you go to get someone? Would you cheat, lie, steal, or murder? He further empowers women in the cinematic world by having them present these question to their male counterparts. Allen presents women as vessels of greater power than they actually appear, helping to further blur the line in concerns to gender roles. As time goes on, it is highly likely we will see as many heroines as we see heroes in future movies, television shows, and wherever there is a story to be told.