Avatar: The Last Airbender – Book 1 “Water,” Episode 6 – “Imprisoned” – Empowerment

    The theme of this episode was resistance, solidarity and empowerment and it was a lot of fun. This was an episode where we got to see more of the Earth Kingdom culture and the brilliance and cruelty of the Fire Nation.

    “Imprisoned” was directed by Dave Filoni and written by Matthew Hubbard and Aaron Ehasz.

    The story begins with Katara, Sokka and Aang stumbling upon Haru, an Earthbender kid who they soon learn has had all the Earthbenders in his village kidnapped by the Fire Nation who are milking the village for all of it’s value and using it’s coal mines to run their ships. The story unfolds as Katara speaks of resistance and fighting back and shares the loss of her Mother to the Fire Nation with Haru. After he is captured she purposely gets captured in order to inspire the Earthbenders to fight back.

The Pros: The Warden – George Takei is the voice of the Warden he plays an awesome character! His character is a cruel and cowardly, but also a really good Firebender. He also has a personality that is quick to anger and is great at instilling fear. When he is beaten it is quite rewarding.

Haru – Haru is a great minor character who wants to fight back until his parent’s fears keep him from doing so as he fears them getting killed. It isn’t until Team Avatar creates enough coal on the ship that he uses it to throw the first punch using the coal at the Warden which inspires them all to fight back.

Sokka – Sokka is the most fearful of them all too and wants to focus on the mission. He is quick to give up on people too as we see him ask Katara to give up but gives in when she puts her foot down about staying. He had a point too about leaving, but I’m glad Katara won the argument.

Aang – Aang is the one supporting Katara through this episode and is a great friend as his Airbending is essential to every plan they use…the first to show Katara Earthbending and the second to get the coal to the trapped Earthbenders. He also doesn’t show any jealousy even though it seems like Katara might be interested in Haru and he is interested in Katara.

Katara – Katara is the driving force of this episode and she is awesome! We see her give some pretty awesome speeches glorifying Earthbenders as defenders of the Earth Nation and that she’d heard stories about them growing up. She never gives up on them and in the end it pays off.

The Message – Don’t give up on people and when it comes to resistance, solidarity is important. It is when all of them stand together, Team Avatar and the prisoners that the Fire Nation Warriors are finally defeated.

Okay: The Fire Nation Ship – Looked cool and the Warden had personality, but that’s about it. Not bad, but not a pro.

The Earth Nation Village – It was a fearful subjugated place but it didn’t have personality the way some past Earth Nation cities did.

  This was a great episode and one that really explores the pain that has been done by the Fire Nation through Haru and Katara’s stories. We also see how fear can break people as well as how hope can inspire action and sometimes all it takes is one person having the courage to stand to inspire others to fight. Also, George Takei as a voice actor, one can’t go wrong with that.

Final Score: 9.5 / 10.

Casablanca (1942): An Amazing Story of Love in a Time of War

       “Casablanca,” is a film I always caught at the wrong time, every time it was on, so much was going on already so the movie was always in the background and usually remained unfinished by the time I would leave. “Casablanca,” is a fascinating film, considering it was completed when World War 2 was still going on. The Nazis still occupied a lot of Europe and it was unknown who would be victorious in the end. The screenplay itself is based off a play called “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The fact that they were writing from a time where history remained unwritten gives the present of the story so much life. 

   “Casablanca,” was directed by Michael Curtiz and is the story of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) who owns a saloon in Nazi occupied Casablanca in the French Morocco. He is a pretty selfish guy whose perspective changes when a former lover named Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) re-enters his life with her fascist resisting husband Victor Laszlo…from here the story unfolds as politics between factions arise as the drama unfolds.

Here is the assessment of the film:

Pros: The Music – God I love the music in this. From “As Time Goes By,” to the orchestra pieces and the jazz…you feel like you are in Casablanca and the music always fits what is going on. I could listen to this soundtrack for days and plan on using it to inspire my own writing. Max Steiner is fantastic.

The Cinematography – The cinematography captures the cramped feel of the bazaar, the open feel of Rick’s saloon and the noir feel of the ending in the escape sequence intermixed with the backstabbing and double dealing.

Rick Blaine – Humphrey Bogart owns this role and creates a compelling character who we never know if he is selfish and all about the money…or still the idealist at heart that brought him to Europe in the first place to fight the fascist governments as a mercenary. We see his complexity through his relationships, from Sam who is his piano player at the saloon to the French Captain Louis Renalt and Isla and her husband Laszlo (as well as smaller smuggler characters too), they  each reveal parts of his selfish and selfless side as the story goes on.

Isla Lund – What would you do if you believed your husband to be dead and fell in love with another? This is Isla’s dilemma as her romance with Rich in Paris occurs when she has believed for some time that Laszlo is dead. Also Laszlo loves the cause more than he loves her and Rick loves her. This is an interesting choice and she only gives up her agency to Rick at the end when he tells her he’ll need her to to help her and Laszlo escape. Ingrid Bergman is amazing in the role and gives us a complex character who makes her own path in a situation where it is difficult to do just that.

Sam – Dooley Wilson is the connection to Rick and Isla and is a character with a lot of awareness. He tries to talk Rick out of dredging up the past and tries to help him and Isla move on even as they use him as a tool to express their feelings of love lost in the song he plays, “As Time Goes By,” he is a great singer and the only downside is I wish he’d played more of a part after the First Act. After his attempts fail, he just kind of exists as the piano player.

Louis Renalt – I love this character. He is the kind of character I love watching in television shows…characters who are a shade of grey but when they sell themselves as truly selfish it is believable because of how charming they are and how they do what is asked of them…though with always an added twist. Claude Rains is my favorite minor character and I’d have watched the movie it was just about him and how the events of the story change him or force him to reveal where his true loyalties are.

The Dialogue – Reveals the distinct personalities of the characters and helps show events rather than tell events. The best example of this is when we see Isla and Rick’s time and Paris and how the romance happens. It is subtle and the lines show how each of them are hiding their past but want to be together with what they can give…as well as Isla’s leaving where you know there is more going on, but until Laszlo’s reveal…we don’t know what that thing is.

The Reveal – Renault sets up a Nazi officer being sent to the airplane where Isla and Laszlo will be escaping but the Nazi Officer is killed by Rick who is fighting for them. His choosing to fight for Isla and a higher cause of the resistance is the big reveal as well as Renault being sympathetic and joining with Rick to go and fight the Nazis.

The Message – Love is greater than romance, there are ideals greater than the individual and the theme of solidarity in resistance. Love is greater than romance in that Rick gets over his wish to be with Isla and lets her leave with her husband telling her “We’ll always have Paris.” He has finally gotten past himself and sees that if they were together it would involve hurting her (letting Laszlo get caught) in the process. The other part is when he kills the Nazi officer and re-devotes himself to fighting the fascists. Renault joins him in this and they decide to join the French Resistance. There are also the themes of solidarity in the singing of “Viva la France,” against the Nazi’s nationalist anthem and Rick helping a Bulgarian couple escape by letting the husband win in his gambling so they’ll have the funds to travel to America. There are others as well, but this theme is pervasive and makes the film even stronger.

Okay: The Nazi Officers – They are just kind of there, but exist mostly as a threat. I never felt like they were fully fleshed out in regards to their motivations. Sure they get lines, but there aren’t any characters like the S.S. Officer in “Inglorious Bastards.” They serve their role, but are pretty replaceable.

Victor Laszlo – I really wanted to like this character. He is a resistance fighter with a compelling backstory (fought for the Czech and other resistances in Europe against the Nazis) is put in a concentration camp and escapes, and he forgives Isla for cheating on him. The actor just doesn’t make his character greater than his role though. He is there to be the face of the resistance and love of a cause (he’d leave if he got the chance and leave Isla if it meant continuing the fight), but he just isn’t as compelling as Isla and Rick. I wish we’d heard more about what he went through, we can really only guess based off what we know.

The Length – This movie at times feels long. This is good for building tension, but sometimes can drag. This isn’t a con though since I love all the time with the characters…it just needs to be addressed since it isn’t a pro. It would have been a pro if it didn’t feel long.

     This is one of my all time favorite films after tonight and one I intend to watch again in the future. There is a reason it won 3 Academy Awards and why it is recognized as one of the classics. It’s themes are timeless, it’s characters are great and the music is some of the best from any movie. It is a near perfect film and reminds us of the things worth living and dying for. I can’t recommend this film enough.

My final Score for the film is 9.8 / 10.

Glory (1989): Memorial Day and What is Forgotten

The reason I chose to review this movie besides the fact that I had never seen it before, but because today is Memorial Day. Memorial today was created to honor the fallen soldiers of the Union and the Confederacy (http://www1.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp)…Yes, the Confederacy, the group that was fighting to defend and uphold the immoral institution of slavery. I think this is one thing that people forget that should not be forgotten. War is complicated and sometime necessary, slavery is not. It is a clear moral wrong yet historically we still honor many of the people who perpetuated it (this doesn’t apply to all members of the Confederacy but definitely many of them given what the Confederacy’s goal was). How can I honor soldiers who believed and upheld wrongs or choose to commit wrongs today against their fellow man. It is for this reason I use today to honor the victims of war and the honorable soldiers who lived/live right action.

“Glory” is about the first all African American volunteer regiment and their leader Colonel Shaw who is dealing with the conflict within his own regiment and inside the Confederacy during the time of the Civil War. Here is my assessment:

The Pros: The Actors – Denzel Washington steals it, with Morgan Freeman taking a close second. His raw emotion and reality behind his eyes of the character (former slave) he is playing…there is a reason Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors. This movie was living proof of that. Charles Elwas of “Princess Bride” fame also does a great job contrasting the order of Matthew Broderick’s Colonel Shaw.

The Message: The movie achieves a few things with it’s themes and messages such as the reality of slavery and how immoral it is (largely through Trip’s (Denzel Washington’s character’s) eyes, the horror of war (you see the blood and heads exploding), racism (both the Confederacy’s overt racism through Slavery, and member’s of the Union and how they saw African Americans as less than them and kept resources from them as well as paying them less). There is also a theme of solidarity too, for example when Colonel Show chooses for himself and the white soldiers to go without pay because of how little the black soldiers were getting paid. This movie also avoids turning Shaw into a White Savior which I appreciate e a lot. He isn’t perfect and he grows and much of the movie is more focused on his men than him.

The song before battle:

The Battles: Are really well done. There are consequences to each one and it shows the consequences of weapons and what they do to bodies. It doesn’t hold back, which is appreciated.

Okay: The Historicity – The movie is mixed in regards to how accurate it is in regards to history. The changing views of race by the Union soldiers is accurate but the fact that in the movie they were presented as former slaves isn’t accurate – most were free men from Massachusetts. Here is a good summary of the issues of history in the film: http://cwmemory.com/2008/10/21/the-54th-massachusetts-regiment-in-myth-memory-and-history/

The music: Beyond the song for battle it was okay, just not super memorable, not a soundtrack I would seek out.

The Character Arcs: The character arcs could have been handled better. Trip’s and Shaw’s arc were great, but a lot of the characters either didn’t have a character arc or existed as archetypes (The wise man, the rebel, the academic, the corrupt officer, the racist officer) to serve a role for Trip and Shaw. This is okay, but it doesn’t make for great storytelling.

The movie was good, and Memorial Day can be a good thing…but we cannot allow ourselves to forget the wrongs done by our nation, ancestors and done during war. By ignoring or forgetting we do a dishonor to all the good men and women who do live or lived with virtue and the real struggle people faced, like those in this film.

The Ending: Without giving away spoilers it sticks to the message, but for a movie with so much hope in it at times I think any sweet at all would have made it better, showing that someone connected to these people knew them…and remembered.

I would recommend this film, it is a story that needed to be told and still does to this day.

I would give this movie 8 / 10.