I've Been Called to the Torture! - Ripsaw Wheel Ornament

Been working on this thing kinda slowly for the past month and change as a private commission. Everything done by hand, as always, with a small touch of my own. Super pleased with how it came out!

Happy Hallow's Ween!

Dickin' Around with Latex

Got my trick-or-treat dates goofed and wound up getting all dolled up for nothing. Oh well. Always a learning experience this.

Venting: I really hate America sometimes.

I recently overheard a phone-call my mother was having with the company that helps her get her medication. They recently were withholding some of her medication due to an outstanding fee that my step-father had when he was sick with cancer, this company also procured his cancer medication, and were withholding her prescription until she paid it. Thing is, my step-father died 2 years ago from said cancer and before he even got to use the medication that company was billing my mother for and she had shouldered a good brunt of it, footing the cost of the medication when my step-father was going through treatment.

Now, two years after he passed, they withheld my mother's medication, one that she needs to prolong her life, because of a fee they charged without her ever needing or knowing of it. She, apparently, had been going back and forth with them about this a couple calls before and they gave her such a run around and degraded her, for medication she needs, that she broke down and cried over the phone.

She has been pushing with a stiff-upper lip as long as I've known her, fleeing brutal Communist regime after being held up in the bureaucracy there for 20 years, seeking a better life in America, only to be here for 30+ years and still having to fight for what she needs all that time. Just for some money, they made my mother cry.

...I really hate America sometimes...

It's not the people I have problems with, everyone needs work, and it was because of people that she eventually got it partially resolved. She told me that the rep on the phone was so gutted to hear her cry that they finagled what they could to get the medication my mother needed this one time. She still needs to go through them every time she needs medicine though. After all that, they still will make her jump through a hoop to get it. I don't hate the people; I hate the enterprise. I can't help but think of all the other similar incidents this company must've had like with my mother, but only took a firmer stand, and denied the people outright the thing they needed. 

Such a shitty thing to do and the worst of it being that no one will ever be held accountable for it. These big, immortal, faceless corporations, made of even bigger, nebulous collectives of people, have the same rights as ordinary civilians, which makes it possible to press charges against them (I suppose), but when they're so big and powerful and literally untouchable, what, if any, justice can anyone get? It may be law but not all laws are just and an unjust law is tantamount to having no law at all.

I know it's just me being riled but anyone that defends these companies, either directly or indirectly, from lawyers to anyone that chirps "Well, it's not their fault or responsibility...", is either completely inept or morally bankrupt (aka scum). And what really gets me is we let this happen. For all the reasons in the world, we let it get to the point where highway robbery of the disadvantaged can be protected in the eyes of the law. Just to make a buck. I was hoping to use a line from Unforgiven, "We all have it coming", but the fact of the matter is not everyone does and it sickens me. 

It really doesn't have much to do with anything but I can't help but remember a time when I was accosted by some military guys at the park one night, how grateful I should be to them for being able to enjoy such a place because of them in the first place, and then I think of this current incident. I wonder how proud those same guys would be to know this incident with my mother, and others similar to it, is also what they and so many others, my brother included, fight and sacrifice for.

...I really hate America sometimes...

Especially when I know we can be so much better and so much more.

Netflix's The Little Prince: Short of Something Great

I've not posted anything for awhile and I just caught this film and I've not nowhere else to put it, so it goes here:

Before I start, I want to state that this film isn't bad; there's nothing about it technically that is at fault. It is the sublimate execution of the film that is bad and it is only "bad" because the film shows such potential for being something more. It just doesn't get there, sadly.

For those unawares, The Little Prince is a popular French children's book which acts as an allegory for growing up and dealing with life, love, and loss (though no child is really aware of it at the beginning). How the film adapts it and deals with the subject is actually fairly clever and really shines when it adapts the children's book directly in the form of stop-motion animation. It is in these sequences, I think, that they not just perfectly capture the beauty, the imagination, and the gentle, child-like whimsy of the book's illustrations but builds on them for film. The rest of the film, however, is where the problems are.

The film switches between 3D animation and stop-motion and, whether it was intended or not, the 3D animated sequences are just as dull as the exaggerated grown-up world that it portrays. There's nothing particularly wrong with the animation itself but many of these sequences feel very mechanical and formulaic. It hits emotional beats like a metronome; there's no time to actually build the emotional connection that the film tries to capture. Our "Little Girl" exists in this exaggerated, boring "grown up" world and is sad; she then meets the Aviator, so she's happy; the Aviator gets sick, so she gets upset, and so on and so forth. The most I can say about these sequences is that they build up the anticipation to the stop-motion. Not only are they the most visually impressive parts of the film but that's where the emotional heart of the movie lies, too.

These stop-motion sequences first are done with flat, paper cut outs (pictured above) before transitioning into traditional stop-motion puppets but it keeps the paper "look" throughout for the subsequent sequences. I wish I were verbose enough to adequately describe how I amazed I was at these scenes and the texture that they lent. The use of paper and the wide, varied applications they are used for is staggering. The torn edges of ripped paper are used to simulate cloud formations, crinkles are used to simulate fur and hair, cut strips for grass, and creases for layers in rocks. This even extends to the clothes these puppets wear. Whether or not it's fabric still escapes me but it's made to look like paper. 

Impressive as all that work is to create that level of texture, when it finally comes to fate of the Little Prince, these near-expressionless puppets manage to evoke an emotional response, especially in the short amount of screen-time these scenes make up, more powerful than the rest of the film tries to muster in the rest of time.

Now, I've mentioned this a few times now, how dull and by-the-book the majority of the film is, and though passable as it is, the biggest sin that it makes, I feel, is that by the third act of the film, the story tries to merge the two worlds of the 3D animation and the stop-motion together and it ultimately dilutes the impact of the stop-motion sequences. Because the film is so formulaic, the filmmakers felt that there needed to be some external conflict brought in for our main character to simply resolve and make her matter, and in that, they stamp out the impact of the theme of the Little Prince story. Especially what they decide to do with the Little Prince arc after they perfectly wrapped it up.

It is a real pity because, on paper, the general idea of the film would've been a great had it been pulled off. A little girl in a boring square world, living a square boring life, meets an eccentric old man who recounts to her a fantastic tale of a Little Prince as well as his adventures, and after building a solid friendship, the old man dies and the girl is left to grieve. To deal with her loss, she retreats to the world of the Little Prince and learns through that adventure how to reconcile the loss and carry on his memory.

The actual film itself only carries a nugget of that synopsis' potential and that nugget shines a brilliant gold whenever that potential is glimpsed. But to quote a line from the film, as every star hides a rose; the deserts hides a well. Sadly, this film is mostly sand.