Querube Barber - Bridge to Terabithia

Do you believe in myth and fantasy? Do you have the ability to create magical places in your mind? Children often can do this. An example of this can be found in the movie Bridge to Terabithia.


Bridge to Terabithia was a fun movie to watch, and I really enjoyed watching it. Bridge to Terabithia is a movie about a boy and a girl. The boy, Jesse, lives with his family in an old house. They are poor. The girl, Leslie, and her parents moved in next door to the Jesse’s family. She becomes the “new kid” in school. Leslie’s parents are writers and are well off. They have a happy family. Jesse, on the other hand, does not. His family lacks the happiness and contentment that Leslie’s family has.


At the beginning of the movie, Jesse and Leslie don’t have any friends at school. While Jesse is quite, reserve and almost shy, Leslie knows how to stand up for herself. Leslie befriends Jesse. The two children seem to get strength from each other in order to face the challenges at school.


The two kids find a spot in the woods near their homes and call it their place. Leslie names that place “Terabithia.” In this part of the movie, the producer makes great use of fantasy and myth. Leslie has a great capability to imagine things. Jesse thinks she got it from her parents since they are writers. Leslie’s imagination allows her to create in her mind magic creatures out of the animals that are in the wood and giants out of trees. When Leslie tells Jesse what she sees in Terabithia, Jesse calls her a liar. She tells him that she is not lying but imagining. This reminds me of the movie “Big Fish.”


Leslie tells Jesse, “open your mind” so that he could also see all the fantastic things she sees. As soon as Jesse does, he starts “seeing” all the “magical creatures” Leslie sees in the wood. In Terabithia, Leslie is the queen, and Jesse is the king.


Jesse likes to draw and is very good at it. One day, the music teacher invites him to the museum. When Jesse comes back, he finds out that his friend, Leslie, had died. At first, he refused to believe it and has a difficult time dealing with the death of his best friend. He looks for refuge in Terabithia. At the end of the movie, Jesse takes his little sister to Terabithia and makes her a princess there describes for her all the “magical creatures” that are in Terabithia. His little sister, of course, can’t see them. So, Jesse tells her, “open your mind.” As soon as she does, she also starts “seeing” all the “magical creatures” and the giants.

300 will mccabe

The director of 300, Zack Snyder has created a great film full of visual sensations, and testosterone filled battle scenes. This film is unlike anything I have ever seen. It combines old mythmaking with modern cinematography techniques. He uses a common 35mm film camera to capture all the light and contrast. But there’s more he shoots a lot of the film in slow motion, this amplifies each blow from the Spartans, making my jaw drop at the action. Slow motion may be harder for the actors and cameramen because everything must flow, however this was not an issue in 300. A scene I like is with horsemen coming up over a ridge, you see there feet gallop in slow motion, and zoom out to the riders in front of a bright sky, full of clouds and an intense sun, and a vivid mountainous landscape in the background. One more scene that I thought was unique was the scene with the Spartans looking over the cliff at the Persian ships being tossed about during the storm. It is like it is a comic strip or a Greek painting on a wall, very artistic and clever.

Garrett Dalton-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Are our lives predetermined or do we have the ability to effect the outcome of our lives? The film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, seems to show that both are possible. A person can make choices and at other times have no control over the events in their life. The film is a great love story on the surface focusing on the relationship between the lead characters Joel and Clementine that begins well, but ends in breakup. Unable to cope with the memory of the relationship, the two characters visit Lacuna Inc. to have their memories erased. During the procedure to relieve Joel of his memories of Clementine, Joel comes to the realization that he is truly happy when he is with Clementine and he attempts to prevent the procedure's success. It is from these two events that the movies seems to show Joel's ability to make his own choices to effect his life. Joel saw a problem and tried to make a change. Ultimately, the memory of Clementine is lost. However, not soon after Joel encounters Clementine on a train and the two fall in love all over again. Despite having their memories of the past relationship erased, the two onces again seem to strike a connection and fall in love. This seems to show that their lives were driven as much by fate as they were by choice. Joel and Clementine's relationship was predetermined and no choices Joel could have made would have changed anything.

Garrett Dalton-The Jacket

The Jacket was, in this viewer's opinion, one of the most fulfilling films shown in class thus far. Though neglected by the public at large, the film contained not only a fantastic mystery/suspense feel but also had an intrinsic value found by those that looked hard enough. Jack Starks, played by Adrian Brody, is a Gulf War veteran turned drifter after his return home after suffering a severe head injury. Starks is quickly caught up in a homicide after hitching a ride with a felon, which lands him in a mental institution. Starks is there the victim of secret experimentation by the staff of the asylum. Tied up and imprisoned in a confined space, Starks discovers his ability to transport himself to the future. It is in the future that Starks falls in love with Jackie, whom he met years ago, and learns of his eminent death at the asylum. Starks takes it upon himself to not only discover the cause of his death, but to change Jackie's life for the better. The average movie goer may see this as a sci-fi twist, but the movie contains several religious ties. Siberian shamans were said to have the ability to transcend the normal plain of existence while undergoing extreme stress in order to help others within the tribe. Starks could also be seen as a Christ figure. In the movie he is born on December 25 and undergoes suffering in order to help others. In the end, that suffering would ultimately cost Starks his life, however this again is a parallel to Christ. Starks sacrifices himself in order to make a better life for the one he loves.

David Wilder - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This was actually the second time I've seen this movie. In all actuality, the first time I saw it I didn't enjoy it very much, neither did I pick up on many of the existential points made in it. However, this time I understood more of it and grasped the plot better, and I didn't mind it so much. Fate vs free will certainly seemed to be at each other's throats throughout the whole movie. It was difficult to pull the two together at times in fact. Joel and Clem had their relationship and it turned sour. They erased the other from their memories, met, and started a relationship. Within the movie, the doctors represent fate, a controlling aspect. They make sure things go as expected, as they've been planned out, and according to the map. However, despite their influence, the patients still try to hold onto their connections from their previous lives. Joel and Clem reunite. Even Mary, who had her love for the doctor erased, fell in love with him again. But is this true free will? Surely she isn't following the fate the doctors had planned for her. The final scene of the movie was incredibly powerful for me. Joel and Clem walk across the snow filled beach. The snow could represent a purity, a new start, clean slate. However, my point is in the reoccurrence of the scene. After the two pass out of sight, the scene restarts and they once again cross the beach. It implies to me that the two grow tired of each other, have each other erased, and for a third time begin a relationship, hence the "eternal" sunshine. But if they continue in this supposedly chosen loop of circumstance, aren't they still fated? They are fated to remain in this constant unfullfilling cycle. They will forget and meet, forget and meet, without escape and without a doubt. Their actions and fate appear to be sealed. Just like how Mary will continue to fall in love with the doctor. She's fated to.

Jeff Pfeiffer -- free blog

"This is as much as to say that religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religous need expresses an unquenchable ontological thrist. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness. The unknown space that extends beyond his world -- an uncosmicized because unconsecrated space, a mere amorphous extentinto which no orientation has yet been projected, and hence in which no structure has yet arisen -- forreligious man, this profane space represents absolute nonbeing. If, by some evil chance, he strays into it, he feels emptied of his ontic substance, as if he were dissolving in Chaos, and he finally dies."


The scene that struck me the most in the movie the Seven Seal, was when Block entered a confessional in a Catholic church and cried out for knowledge that God was real, for proof that God was all that he had ever dreamed of the sacred to be. He cries out to be assured, to be given proof of God. He could no longer bear to live on faith alone. The mystery of God or the ‘mysterium’ as Otto refers to it in Ideas of the Holy, was too much for Block to handle. He lives for nothing else but to ‘know’ that God is real.
An interesting addition to the scene was the fact that on the other side of the confessional was not a priest it was Death, who would later use Block’s weakness against him. The scene was a perfect representation of a dark time in my own life, when the world I built around me could no longer be held by faith alone. I felt I needed more, I needed to KNOW that I was living in reality and not a world of illusion. It was the hardest time in my life. I cried out in the same way as Block did. I felt that no one was listening or even worse my enemies were listening and using my doubts against me.
What is it about humans that we will search our entire lives to touch sometime that God has touch, to come in contact with something sacred or even the sacred itself? The Bible states it as having eternity written on our hearts. Why does the mystery of God scare us so much?