CRASH review

    

       In this 2004 drama from Paul Haggis the viewer gets a rare taste of racial and social tensions that go on in our daily lives by allowing us to live these tensions through the actions of Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, and Michael Pena.  The director, Paul Haggis, sets his movie in the city of Los Angeles that is full of different cultures, and where racial profiling, and first impressions of the people around the streets can lead to miscommunications both verbal and nonverbal.

Interpersonal conflict

     The one interpersonal conflict that I felt after watching this movie that was not handled effectively was the family relationship between Detective Graham Walters (Don Cheadle) and his junkie mother, to whom he promises to find his missing brother Peter (Larenz Tate) that is currently in trouble with the law for carjacking Rick, (Brendan Fraser) the local district attorney and his wife Jean’s (Sandra Bullock) SUV at gun point after having dinner together.   In our reading on primary relationships (Chapter 8 section 4) we learned that” family is a unified and interconnected system, and change in on part of the system creates changes or reactions in other parts of the system.” (Sole, K. 2011)  The pattern in which the relationship between Detective Walters and his mother changed when the youngest son started down the path of crime and the mother did not get the proper help she needed to get clean from the drugs she was/is on.  The relationship between these family members is strained and needs to be handled through professional help by means of drug rehab and telling the truth that Reid has given up hope in finding his lost brother for his mother, even though she believes he can be helped and still cares for her.  In the closing scenes Reid does find his brother Peter, just not the way he had hoped to.  The camera pans from the tennis shoe found lying by the side of the road to the face of a now dead Peter shot by Officer Tom Hansen (Ryan Philippe) after offering Peter a ride and a nonverbal miscommunication is done, with a simple act of pulling the Saint Christopher statue out his pocket to show that even though the two Hansen and Peter come from different cultures they have the same belief in the statue that is on the dashboard.

Survival Guide of A blond-headed girl.

          It is a wonder how I have been able to survive through all of the turning points in my life. The constant moving to a new place after being there for so long, the battles over where to go for childhood vacations, the cruel punishment I put my parents through as a teenager, the lessons learned from my jobs, and the importance of having a good support group for rough times.

Background Information

             I come from many places, life for me starts on an Army base called Fort Carson located in Colorado near Colorado Springs. When I was about five years old I moved from Colorado to St. Louis, Missouri where I learned about multicultural environments being that I was growing up in a mostly all black area and being babysat by an American Indian. I was taught what values, beliefs, and traditions each culture had at school and at my babysitter’s house (Gary A. Witt, Ronald A. Mossler, 2010).

     I also, learned what it was like to be an outsider looking in and how hard it was to fit into a segregated school.  Fearing for our safety my father moved us to Lake Saint Louis, Missouri where I spent a great deal of my adolescent and young adult life.  In, 1995 I married my husband and moved to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina where I became a mother as well as a military wife.

After, serving his time in the Marines we moved back to Missouri and stayed with my mother-in-law in Maryland Heights. My husband enlisted into the Army and received orders for Fort Sill, Oklahoma. At Fort Sill, I became a mother again and a strong member of the companies Family Readiness Group(FRG). My husband then, extended his service time when we found out I was yet again going to be a mother. Our new orders were going to take us overseas to Ansbach, Germany and a completely new culture and living area. Three years later, we came back to Missouri and received orders for Fort Polk, Louisiana this time I became really involved with my husband’s different units and gained a new respect for the military family.  In May of 2008 I was forced to be the anchor for the family, while my husband was to go and serve fifteen months in Iraq.  Thanks to being a key member of the Family Readiness Group we were able to cope with the separation and the reintegration of daddy to the family. (Cited in Matze, 2005) After being in Fort Polk, for five years my husband and I were ready for a change. That change came with orders to move back to Missouri where we are currently based at Fort Leonard Wood.

Vacation Memories

       During my childhood I spent several summers and a few spring breaks going to amusement parks in California and Florida as well as going up to Sister Bay, Wisconsin where I had a great number of experiences that will last a lifetime.  My summers were spent in California spending time with my grandparents and Aunt Pat and Uncle Richard’s family going to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Universal Studios as well as Sea World. Once, while in California I visited Edward’s Air force base and was able to see the Space Shuttle Challenger land. 

We even stopped once and explored Carlsbad Caverns where I learned about stalagmites and stalactites. If, my parents decided to go and visit my Aunt Janet and Uncle Joe in Florida I got to go to Disney World, and Sea World and other historic places. The best vacations from my childhood were spent in Sister Bay, Wisconsin where I got to swim in the Western Coast of Lake Michigan, go fishing on a charter boat and stay in a cabin with a television that made people look like aliens. My father even taught me how to shot a bee bee gun at empty soda cans off my swing.  Looking back on these vacations I clearly see that they affected me by showing that I will always be a child at heart, who likes simple things and spending as much time as I could with my family.

Lessons partly learned

            Being part of a family of five that always faced some kind of a change is a major part of my childhood. My mother, Pamela and father George who have endured many hardships through their marriage. Showed me that even through good times and bad times that life still goes on no matter how many knee surgeries and medications you have to take.  My two younger sisters Erin and Katherine, gave me a glimpse at how hard raising kids really is, even when you have gone through all the stages of raising one.  My grandparents from both sides taught me the joy of the outdoors and that no matter what you have to fight until the very end with cancer.  My cousins who always treated me like a little sister explaining the hardships of being a teenager and that when you meet the right person you will know.  My aunts and uncles taught me what work and perseverance can gain you almost anything in the end.

Teenage years

       As a teenager I was a hard worker at school, even with my somewhat low self-esteem. As explained in our reading “children with low self-esteem tend to believe failures are a reflection of whom they are and that they cannot succeed even if they try harder.”(Erdly, Cain, Loomis, & Dumas-Hines, 1997 Adult development and Life Assessment p.11) I was able to break out of my shell with the help of friends that were both popular and those that were not. When, I was old enough to get a car I ended up staying out past curfew, being out of control, experimenting with underage drinking, as well as smoking and destructive to items that were not even mine. In my senior year of high school I had a major reality check done when my parents took my car away and explained to me that I needed to be more responsible for my actions. 

         Had my parents read the article by Christine Frank on Webmd they might have been able to understand why I was rebellious and broke curfew and why I did was so, afraid to call them when I received my D.U.I. after going out with friends. In the article Ms. Frank’s gives five behaviors to troubleshoot.  The article gives solutions for five problems that teens go through.  These problems are teens hating their parents, the over use of mobile devices, staying out past curfews, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and dealing with teenage drama.
    
Adult years
 During my young adult years I had many jobs until the birth of my son in August of 1998. My jobs ranged from babysitting where I would help the children with homework and interact with them either by playing games or reading a book to them, to being a family readiness volunteer.  My next job was when I was in high school working the fast food industry in the drive thru area or preparing food for a customer, or fixing a problem that came up with an order.  While I was working at the fast food places I was also, working part-time in a local bank, filing checks, making copies, rolling coins, and taking mail to the post office, I even worked as a safety deposit clerk on the weekends.  I left fast food and banking for a local gas station where I stocked freezers, made pizzas, and ran the cashier spot and took care of the deposits for the graveyard shift.  I also, did a newspaper route for the St. Louis Post Dispatch as a newspaper roller.

This, had to be one the hardest jobs I had since, I could have had a newspaper hit me in the head as it went hurling out my window.  After, I got married and moved to North Carolina with my husband Jeffrey I worked for a nationwide inventory service that would go in and count all the products or items in a certain store.  I learned very quickly that accurately counting an item and to be quick were required skills besides having taken a course in data entry in high school.

        I stayed out of work until my youngest daughter was able to start school.  It was not until we were in Fort Polk that I started working again.  I worked as a volunteer for my husband’s Family Readiness Group, where I became a co-leader and learned that you have to follow rules and regulations for fundraising, not to try to argue a point with a Major about the safety of soldiers drinking and driving, and that being a point of contact can be very time consuming and interesting.  It was once my friends started leaving the group that I ended up having to take on the extra responsibilities of being a leader and keep the morale of our soldiers up as well as the families that were left behind.  Besides, the FRG I was also, working at the school libraries shelving books, entering data on new students and clearing them when they were moving to new areas or schools. It was at my youngest daughter’s school that I got a taste of what teachers go through in a day when I was asked to substitute there until a replacement could be found.  Based on Holland’s personality types the reason why most of my jobs did not last as long as others was because they did not fit my personality type of being artistic which would of allowed me to be creative that involved something in the field of arts, and gave me a way to express myself through creativity and independence. (John Holland’s personality types p.57-58)

13 Ghosts Film Review

Thirteen Ghosts

     After countless hours of debate over which version of Thirteen Ghosts I was going to do my review on, I finally picked the remake of the 1960’s version. My main reason for this choice of picture was the ghosts themselves and the use of computer graphics to enhance each ones checkered pasts and ability to appear and disappear throughout the film. Director Steve Beck’s ability to draw the audience into the terror/suspense of the film from the beginning to the climax is a sure fire example of how a horror picture was made in 2001.

Story telling

       The story telling for this film was well written and easy to follow even with the flashbacks and forwards that we see through Dennis Rafkin’s eyes played by Matthew Lillard. The film starts off with a shot of an abandoned junkyard covered in crime scene tape, suddenly there is a large crash of cars as a tanker truck plows its way into the yard followed by three S.U.V.s and a vintage Rolls Royce carrying two passengers. The camera closes in to show one of the two men getting out the Rolls as a well dressed gentleman, and the other looks to be suffering from a rather bad headache, dressed in a sweater and jeans with a plastic jacket over his clothes. By having the camera jump around the yard we see that the other members of this crew are setting up speakers and a large, clear cube with wires and tubes attached to it being lowered into a makeshift pathway.  Once, everything is set up, the order is given to start this weird medieval chant as the tanker truck drives down the pathway spraying blood on the pathway leading to the cube.

     The scene itself gives you part of the back story as to how this well dressed gentle who we find out is named Cyrus and played by F. Murray Abrahams is killed while capturing his twelfth ghost as well as some idea of what he had in store later on had he survived.  The film then jumps forward to a 360 degree shot of a gentleman sitting in a chair looking out a window, with laughter and conversations with a female. The scene then changes and the feel of the surroundings when the sound of a fire alarm blares in the background and the audience hears what has happened to this once happy family as a fire has caused the death of the mother/wife of this family. As, the camera finishes its pan of the room it too changes from white walls and bookshelves filled with books and family pictures sitting on a desk to dark and empty walls with boxes stacked in a corner of a small dimly lighted room we see the same man sitting in a chair looking out a window with a view of bricks on the other side of the glass.  There a sudden knock on the door and the camera pans over to it where the audience sees a wall filled with past due notices and a teenage girl telling the gentleman who is her father that he needs to get a move on or he will be late for work. The audience is then taken to a small kitchen where we see the teenage girl ( Shannon Elizabeth) cooking what is to be breakfast, a small boy( Alec Roberts) reading the morning papers current obituary into a tape recorder as an African American woman (Rah Diggs)  corrects him on the pronunciation of decapitation. It is here that we gain an understanding of the changes that the family had to go through after the loss of the mother/wife and that things are about to change with the approach of a dark figure in the hallway outside the apartment they now live in.  From this point on the film starts to gain a type of this is too good to be true feel when the family is shown the last will and testament of Uncle Cyrus (the well dressed man from the junkyard) and are given a key to a house that is completely furnished and made out of what looks like glass by the lawyer Ben Moss (J.R. Bourne).  After, seeing the video of Cyrus’ will the family drives to the house to see it up close and discover the house is off the beaten path of civilization and see a repair guy trying to get into the house which he claims is causing a power outage.  Unknown to the family this is Rafkin trying to figure out what Cyrus was up to with capturing of the ghosts. Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) notices that the glass walls are etched in Latin and the rooms are filled with priceless artifacts. While the family looks around Rafkin goes down to the basement of the house where he notices the containment cubes holding the ghosts he helped capture.