Reach out and retouch someone

In class last week we started a conversation as to whether it is ethically ok as a photojournalist to retouch a picture. We used the example of removing a blemish from a flower (see below)

It became quite the heated discussion. There were great points made for both sides. When it comes down to it though, I think it is really a matter of what the picture in question is. In the case of this picture, honestly, I can’t really say it is a terrible thing to remove the black spot.

After finding out how magazines edit the appearance of the people on the front, making them look thinner, removing their freckles, fixing their teeth, and other physical changes, I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with changing the appearance of anything to make it a misrepresentation of what it was before editing. By changing a person’s appearance, you are misrepresenting who they really are. As soon as you change a picture of someone, that picture really stops being of them. It starts being of how you want people to see them: your view of this person. But how can you agree with not changing a person’s appearance, but agree with changing the look of a flower, or a landscape?

I’m not gunna lie. It has a lot to do with aesthetics. A magazine with a great picture of a flower on the cover is gunna sell better then one with a flawed flower. How is this different from changing a picture of a person? With a person, you are trying to sell their image. You are trying to sell their looks. With the flower, you are just trying to make it look like your photographer knows how to take a good picture. You are selling the picture, not what it represents. But how can I not see changing it as a misrepresentation of the flower? Well, with the flower, you could have leaned over and removed the spot when you took the picture. Or covered over top of it. With a person, you can’t make someone thinner on the scene. You can’t make their eyes look different, or their smile better at the shoot.

I think in our jobs, it is really important to know where to draw the line. I have a pretty good idea of where my line is and what it means to me. I hope everyone else does to

One for all the budding journalists out there

I was tempted to save this movie for next week, but I think I will go with it this week as I have much grander things in store for Valentine’s Day movies (due to some great inspiration from some devoted readers). This was a movie I saw before I ever even thought about being a journalist. However, now that I hope to make a living being one, I wanted to give this movie another spin. Boy am I glad I did.

Movie: Broadcast News

Ok, yes, I know, the guy on the poster looks familiar. Yes, Albert Brooks is in this movie too, but this time is different. He’s not doing his own material. He is acting in a James L Brooks (No relation) movie. James L Brooks directed Terms Of Endearment (Ask your mom) and As Good As It Gets. He also has worked on The Simpsons for years (I bet you’re already figuring out why this is a movie I love, but just keep reading. It gets better)

Anyways, this movie is about 3 people. Aaron Altman (Brooks), a very smart television reporter who as hard as he tries, never seems to get the recognition he deserves. Next, there is his best friend, Jane Craig, played by the stellar Holly Hunter. She is a news producer at the station Aaron reports at. She is the best at what she does, and expects the best from anyone else. I’ll go ahead and call her a perfectionist. Lastly, we have Tom Grunick, played by the always charming William Hurt. He is a handsome news anchor, but he really has no business having this job. He has little education and can’t write. Yes, an anchor who cannot even write his own stories. Jane HATES people like Tom, because she worked so hard to get where she is and hates people who get an easy ride. But she finds herself oddly attracted to him. When he gets a job anchoring at her station, things just get more and more complicated.

Watching the scenes with Tom kind of scared me. Knowing that I am working my butt off at school to hopefully get into TV news, and that the jobs used to just go to who looked good on camera. The job is still very much that way, where you have to look good on camera, but the reporters can’t just get by on just looks anymore. At least I hope not, or I should have just taken my school money and used it to get a new chin or something.

But where this movie is not only great as a depiction of how a TV station and newsroom work, it has some of the best written characters I’ve ever seen in a movie. I had never identified so much with certain situations in a movie before I saw this. The characters have real problems, and I was scared of ending up like one of them. I don’t want to spoil anything cause I want you to watch the movie for yourself, but as a big fan of movies, I can honestly say this has some of the best writing I’ve ever heard. Let me end with one of my favourite lonely guy in love quotes of all time, that was brilliantly delivered in this movie “I would give anything if you were two people, so that I could call up the one who’s my friend and tell her about the one that I like *so much*!”

If you live your life afraid, are you really living?

This week, to keep the wordiness down, I think I will only do a movie review for submission to be marked, but still write blogs on music and TV. In keeping suit with things going on in my life right now, I had my choices narrowed down to 2 movies. I figure I’ll save the other movie for next week, or for just before Valentine’s Day. This movie though can work for me right now.

Movie: Defending Your Life

This week I chose to write about this movie because again, it is one of my favourites. But it also rings true with the way I’ve been feeling lately. I’ll get back to that point later though, and I’ll tell ya about the movie first.

It was written, produced, directed and stars Albert Brooks. You probably know him best as the voice of Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, or the voice of Marlin from Finding Nemo. He is a hilarious actor and comedian. Fun trivia tidbit, he is the brother of Super Dave Osbourne, and their birth last name is Einstein. Yes, his birth name was Albert Einstein. What odd parents.

Anyways, the movie is about a man named Daniel (Brooks) who dies while driving his new car. He is sent not to heaven or hell, but to Judgment City. It is a large metropolitan area where you stay for a few days after your death. You have to go in to a court and defend your life. You have to prove to the judges that you lived your life to the fullest and deserve to move on to the afterlife. If you lose the trial, you get reborn. While in Judgment City, Daniel meets Julia (played by the lovely Meryl Streep). They begin to fall for each other.

When Daniel’s trial begins, they point out that his majour downfall in life and one of the deciding factors as to whether he will move on or not is fear. Was he fearless enough in life to move on, or was he afraid to do things that made him happy? This is why I love this movie. I am tired of living my life in fear. It made me realize that. I don’t want to always be afraid to say or do something, because that way I wouldn’t be living life to the fullest. They show Daniel all the moments in his life where he missed out on something good, or missed an opportunity to be happy because he was just too afraid.

It was those scenes that really opened my eyes with this movie. I realized that there are alot of things I could have done differently, or fixed, or tried to work through, if I hadn’t been afraid to do so. This movie is one I think everyone should see because although it isn’t easy to start facing those fears, seeing what could happen if you don’t sort of shocks you out of it.

If this doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight

I think that is an appropriate title for this blog because today’s theme is scary things. Scary movies, and shows, and albums. The main reason I chose that specific title though, is because it is the tag line for my favourite horror movie of all time. A movie that the first time I watched it, at 2 in the morning, I got so scared and so paranoid that someone was in my house, that I almost had to turn it off.

Movie: Black Christmas

Now, this is not the movie that came out a few years ago around Christmas time, from the director of Final Destination. That was just an over the top, really dumb remake of this movie. The remake was soo bad that I laughed in the theatre. The gore was neat, I’ll give it that, if you’re in to that kind of stuff, the gory over the top bloody scenes. But back to the original.

The original was filmed in Canada, which is just another plus not only for the movie, being proudly Canadian, but I see it as a boost and a big plus to the films of Canada, since Canadian films usually get a really bad wrap for just being, well, not good. It is about a killer, whom is never seen, and we never find out anything about, who climbs into the attic of a sorority house, and starts to kill the girls living in the house. The girls don’t notice that people are missing in the house, because as the title alludes to, this movie takes place at Christmas. The girls just figure that they’ve gone home for Christmas. The only clue they have is that a stranger keeps calling them and saying lewd and disgusting things into the phone, and finishes off one of his calls with a death threat.

This movie is my favourite horror film because we don’t know anything about the killer. We only know that he is a guy who is killing these girls out of cold blood, and in very creepy ways, for what seems like for no reason. He has no Jason Voorhies, Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers background. He is just some messed up guy. On top of that, the fact that our homes are the places where we feel safe, where we feel secure. So to be thinking of a killer living in your attic while you are downstairs and unaware is just terrifying.

The other amazing thing is that this movie has every scene with the killer filmed from his point of view. This movie is where John Carpenter got the idea for Halloween, and having a first person view for the killer. In fact, John Carpenter loved this film a lot, and when he asked the director, Bob Clark, if he ever planned on doing a sequel, he said that he didn’t really want to do a sequel, let alone any more horror movies, but if he was going to he would have the killer escape from a mental institution at Halloween. Sound familiar everyone? But Bob Clark doesn’t mind that Carpenter ran with the idea, because he wasn’t going to do anything with it anyways.

Speaking of the director, he also directed another great Christmas classic: A Christmas Story. With Ralphie and the Red Rider BB gun. Yes, this man made not only the best Christmas horror movie, he made the best Christmas family movie.

Anyways, sorry I got a bit off track there, but I love filling people in when they think Halloween was the beginning of slasher films. But yes, the movie has such a great scary atmosphere and attaching a scary negative stigma to the one holiday where people try and think happy and feel love is just genious. So if you’re looking to watch an intense movie, with a creepy atmosphere, and that’ll have you checking your attic before bed, then check this movie out.

No for a TV show. Picking one out of the many creepy shows over the years was tough. But sometimes it’s good to go with the classics.

The Twilight Zone (The 50s and 60s version)

Now I’m not saying that these are some of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. As a kid who grew up in the nineties, had I been shown these episodes as a kid, I probably would have laughed. There are some episodes of The X Files, Millennium, Twin Peaks and Masters of Horror that just freak me out with their visuals. But where The Twilight Zone lacks in the visual scares, it makes up for in the psychological ones.

Thinking about the show in the era it took place, post World War 2 America, where everyone was afraid that their neighbours were damn commies, the time itself was scary enough. People weren’t as trusting as they had been, and this show really played off of that, just like how these days, a lot of shows play off of fear of people after 9/11.

A lot of episodes sort of dealt with “aliens among us” or being in your neighbourhood and trusting the people around you. Not only did it play off of social fears though, it played with people’s personal fears. Many episodes deal with just being inside one person’s head, or something only they can see, and the thought of being crazy is one that harrows and terrifies lots of people.

So while this show may not make you jump with it’s monsters and special effects (which, I’ll admit, are soo cheesy that they’re laughable these days), but the way it will make you think, and make you paranoid and make you realize fears you didn’t know you had, is why it tops my list.

Some episodes of note are: Nightmare at 20,000 feet (The one with William Shatner and the monster on the wing of an airplane (If you saw the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror where the gremlin is destroying the bus, it was an homage to this episode), Time Enough At Last (Where a man who loves to read finally has all the time he needs to finish his books), The Eyes Of The Beholder (One of the top favourites of Twilight Zone fans, about a woman undergoing surgery) as well as just a slew of others. They may not be jump out of your seat scary, but when you think about the episodes after you watch them, you’ll see what I mean.

Finally, for an album, this was a tough choice. There are 2 albums I own that when I listen to with all my lights off, they just give me goosebumps they’re so creepy. The first is the soundtrack for The Shining. The other one was this one.

Music: Suspiria Soundtrack

I bought the movie that this soundtrack is of on a whim. I had heard good things about the director, and it sounded like a cool concept (I’m sure I’ll review the movie at a later date) When I popped the movie in and turned up the volume, the score is what really got me scared. The music makes this movie what it is. It is very very creepy. It still creeps me out to listen to the whole album in the dark. The band who recorded the entire thing is named Goblin. They did the music for the original Dawn Of The Dead and other various horror movies. They are sort of a bizarre, techno electric metal band. They use some instruments in their music that I had never heard, let alone heard of, before I listened to this score. I didn’t know that instruments could make sounds like the ones that appear in these songs.

The opening track, called Suspiria, starts with a creepy techno synth sort of thing. Then it gets into creepy chanting that goes from quiet to loud and booming. The singer also starts just saying “La la la la la la la” but in this scary haunted doll house kind of sound. As the tracks go on, the music just gets more intense. istening to this with the lights off you just start to feel panicked, as it just gets really intense and loud to the point where you can’t think of anything that isn’t scary. It’s hard to describe entirely, but it is creepy, and if you’re in the mood to be scared, give it a listen.

After this blog, I’m gunna try and cut the length down as I am way over 500 words, but this one was just too good to not put up all as one big blog.

Let’s get things rolling

Well, I dunno how much of an authority I am on movies, television, or music. But they are all something I love. I love to go home and put on an album, or put on a movie, or watch one of my favourite TV shows. And I know what you’re thinking, like how lonely is that? But I don’t always listen or watch alone. Sometimes I’ll have a friend over because I wanna watch a show or movie or share an album or song with them. Since I obviously can’t be friends with all of you, and can’t have all of you over, I figured maybe I’ll try and share these things with you by informing you on them and why you might like them. So why are you gunna care what I think about these things? Well, I can’t give you a whole slew of reasons, but I’ll tell you this:

I own over 80 seasons of TV shows on DVD. I keep them around because I love TV shows and I love watching some of these shows with people. Sharing shows that are long since canceled, or may be on channels none of us actually get. I also don’t just love only one kind of show. I love comedies, sure, but I also love some of the good dramas, or action shows, or cartoons even. I am very eclectic in my tastes. Some of the shows I love are cartoons from when I was a kid, but just because a show is a cartoon, doesn’t mean it’s not a good show.

I own over 150 movies on DVD, and countless VHS tapes. I love watching movies. Now, I’m not gunna claim to be some movie expert. I’m sure there’s amazing movies out there by directors whose names I can’t pronounce that I have never seen. I couldn’t tell you Jean Renoir’s best movie. I’m no expert. But I do love movies. I try and find a new movie to watch alot of the time, but there’s some movies I own that again, I love to share with friends, or just watch myself over and over.

I own like 200+ albums vinyl. I LOVE vinyl. I love the warm sound of it. It isn’t ones and zeros and compression on a disc. It is grooves, it’s all analogue. It sounds real. I love vinyl. Now, I mainly love classic rock and progressive rock, but my taste in music is even more eclectic than my taste in movies. It’ll sound crazy because I love rock, but I also love disco. I don’t love what it did to rock, but you’ll have to keep reading to find out what I like and don’t. But I’m not just an outdated dinosaur. There is a lot of new music that is pretty good, and I’ll try and mention it when I can.

So the other thing I guess you might be wondering is who is this guy? Is it a guy, or just some unlucky lady with a beard? Well, I am a 20 year old college student. I go to Mohawk College Fennell Campus in Hamilton, Ontario. I am a freshman in the Journalism program, hence why this blog is part of an assignment. As stated above, I am just a guy who loves his TV and his turntable. But I also love introducing people to things they might really like. I love shining the light on something that may have been in the shadows for a person. So thats what I want to do here. Each post, write about a movie you should see, a TV show you should try and check out, and an album, or maybe just a song, that I think is great.

So all that said, sorry, I know you’re prolly bored by now and wondering “When is he going to post about a movie and show and album or whatever?” Well, I can tell you, I’m gunna do that now.

Movie: Robocop

Well, let’s just start off with my favourites. My favourite movie is Robocop. Now, I know, why would this guy, who says he watches all these movies, have a gore filled 80s action movie as his favourite movie? Well, I’ll tell you.

Now, the first time I saw it, I was a kid, and it really freaked me out. To have a big, hollywood movie that all your dads thought was cool and couldn’t wait to show you, but it has a scene where a guy is torn apart by shot gun fire. Like that was huge. This is alot of people I know’s first R rated movie, because of the lack of sex, your parents didn’t mind as much that you’d see it young. So yes, as a kid I just thought it was cool. A robot man who kills bad guys, and saves the good people. Plus his characters name was Alex, which is my name, so I always thought that was cool, to have a hero figure with your name.

But other then the fact that yes, it is an action movie, it has alot more to say then just “Bad guys should be punished”. When I watched it for the first time in years just a few years ago, I realized how much more this movie had to say. If you watch all of the little news briefs in the movie, and see how the future was predicted, at least the way the world sees America. As well as that, how the media changes the outlook on the way you should be watching the news. On top of all of that, the movie shows how we are just getting more and more obsessed with owning things, with having everything we can. Consumerism at it’s best. The movie’s best quote is one said by no major character at all, but by a television character whom everyone adores. “I’d buy that for a dollar!” It just goes to show how consumer based the future would be. Oh, and again, on top of it all, it has some coool action scenes and great quotes. So whether you’re in the mood for a cool action movie, or just want to check out a movie with good acting, funny one liners, and good political and consumer satire, it’s a good one to check out.

Ok. Wow. So up next. After this blog I think I’ll post movies, shows and songs that are sort of linked to one another. But for this post, I did say I would stick with favourites, so I’ll just pick my favourite show, which as an avid television fan for shows over the years, it’s hard for me to pick a favourite, one that is the best no matter what era they are from. Yes, my favourite show is a cliche, but honestly, don’t let this confuse you, I like a wide spectrum, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

TV: The Simpsons

The Simpsons. Yes, yes, I know. It’s alot of peoples’ favourite shows. It’s gotten really, really bad as of late. I know. But as someone born in 1987, and the show having started in 1989, I was raised on this show. It was what I grew up on. And it was amazing. Seasons 1-8 are some of the best written, and funniest programming ever to grace the small screen. It launched the career of many writers and producers and other talented people. Brad Bird went from The Simpsons to go on and direct The Incredibles. Conan O’Brien started as a writer for The Simpsons, and then got his own late night talk show.

Not only was this a funny, well written show, it was one of the best pop culture referential shows ever made. Celebrities aplenty made special appearances and guest spots. Everyone from Albert Brooks (Hank Scorpio) to Michael Jackson (Michael Jackson and Leon Kompowsky) made appearances. Doing a guest role on The Simpsons became a huge ego trip for celebrities. To have a show be such an iconic thing in Hollywood culture is just amazing. I could go on and on about The Simpsons, but I’ll try and wrap it up. Hilarious, dysfunctional family situation comedy style dealing with real issues and parents who simply don’t always have all the right answers. If you haven’t ever checked out The Simpsons, then you must be living under a rock or something. Haha.

Ok. Rounding the bend. I love a wide variety of music. But my favourite album is, yes, a classic rock album. But it is one of the most amazing albums I have ever heard, rock or otherwise.

Album: Who’s Next

Who’s Next by The Who. Ok. I dunno what words to use to describe this album, other than amazing and astonishing. It opens with Baba O’Riley, or some of you may know it as Teenage Wasteland. It opens with this crazy synthesizer sounding opening. It’s simply astonishing. You’ll be taken aback by it. It just leaves you in awe, considering this album was from 1971, before synthesizers were very big on the scene. The whole band comes together and makes such a strong sound altogether it’ll knock you on your ass.

From Baba O’Riley we just move on to even better songs. This Song Is Over is another great song. Haunting vocals and great piano. Behind Blue Eyes is just another sad, ballad sounding song, that turns into a real rocking anthem. All the songs just flow, because it was created as a concept album originally. So to round off the ending, it finishes with an AMAZING song. Won’t Get Fooled Again. It’s the theme for CSI Miami for those who watch that show. It just rocks sooo hard and builds up soo great, that its an amazing finish of an album. It wraps it all up nicely.

So there we go. There is more to come soon

This is Goatee and Glasses’s First Blog

I have started this blog as part of a class requirement. I don’t have lots of experience writing for the whole wide web, but it’s something I’d like to get a grip on, and that I’d like to get good at. I have always loved to write, and I think you’ll find that I sort of write how a person talks. I don’t always believe in following the proper rules of grammar unless I have to, for essays and such. I just like to write and have the person reading it feel like my written words are having a conversation with the reader. I don’t like writing to feel cold. I like reading something that it really feels as though the writer took their readers into consideration, and don’t want it to be boring.

Now, for a blog format. I am thinking I may do movies. Or music. I will have it decided by the next time I blog. I’m not a great movie expert. I don’t know everything about every movie. But I love to watch movies. I love to sit down and be taken into another world. Thats one of the other reasons that I love music. You can turn off the lights, turn on an album and just escape. Maybe I will do a joint kind of format, where maybe I’ll do a movie and album of the day/ week / blog posting. Whatever time frame I may choose, or more likely have chosen for me. Haha. Anyways, tune in next time to see what I have decided on and what I’m gunna write about.