When I entered JBU as a freshman I was originally an Animation major. I stuck with it for a year and a half before I decided I didn’t want to work on a computer all day long, so I became solely an Illustration major so I could work with my hands more. Seeing animations like this make me rethink that decision…for like a second.

I think the best way to get out my dreams of directing a movie, animating and writing a novel would be to write and illustrate my own graphic novels. One day perhaps.

btw—in the end I work on the computer all day long anyway

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky will release his newest creation this December. Black Swan stars Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and the cool French thief from one of those Ocean’s movies. Best of all, it looks dark and creepy like many of his previous films.

(His hard-to-understand but beautiful The Fountain is in my Top3 all-time favs.)

I love movie trailers, sometimes more than the movies themselves. They pack 2 min full of funny scenes/special-effects/intriguing characters in the trailer, but when you go see the movie you realize that the other 118 minutes of the movie are just filler and that when they made the 2 min trailer they didn’t keep their cards very close to their chest and save a few aces for the full show. That being said, I watched a lot of trailers this morning and I hope that the full-feature doesn’t fall short of the hype the trailers build.

Final monologue from The Great Dictator

QUOTE FROM CHARLES CHAPLIN’S ENDING MONOLOGUE SPEECH IN “THE GREAT DICTATOR” 1940
”
I‘m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
“The kingdom of God is within man”
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

Globe scene from The Great Dictator

La Isla Presidencial is an internet cartoon series that lampoons South American/Spanish politics. The premise is that all the Latin American presidents get stranded on an island and must survive. The main characters are none other than Hugo Chávez & Evo Morales. So far only two short episodes have been created, but I hope it gets picked up as a regular TV program.

However, what I don’t understand is how they could forget to include Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom. Come on!