No Time for TV

I don’t want to watch someone else live their lives.
by Keyyth G. of whataboutkeyyth

Photo from Edwart Visser’s flickr (flash.pro)

TV; we all love it. Everyone has that favorite show that they set time aside to watch. The really dedicated TV lovers have several that they time their lives to. There is something for every member of the family. Cartoons for the kids, lifetime for the ladies, sports for the men, soaps for grandma; there are an endless variety of chooses. Sadly though that seems to be the most exciting part most people’s day, they wake up and watch the news while they get ready for work, on their lunch breaks they catch up on the drama of their soap operas, after which time they spend the rest of the day wondering what new plot twist tomorrows show will bring. Then when the day is don’t they rush home unwinding with their regularly scheduled programs, and end their nigh by listening to the news again; allowing the night anchor redeliver news the morning anchor may have missed.

I myself don’t watch TV for two reasons. The first; I did at one point share the same love for TV as anyone else, and I also had my regular shows that I would make sure that I caught. The shows that I watch depicted situations that I was dealing with in my everyday life. I’d watch and see how the main character would present his problem. Somehow in the 22 minutes of the program he’d managed to make several attempts but fails to fix his problem sparking a few laughs along the way, address someone else’s problem, and ultimately fix his own problem, and learning a life lesson all in that made him better for the experience.  I’d engulf myself in the show, but get anger when I see that my own situation isn’t resolved with a TV show-like quickness. I’d adopt a desire for someone else’s life only because they may be presented with adversity but before the day was over they had it solved. I guess you can say I was one of those extreme TV watchers.

The second reason: I don’t want to watch someone else live their lives, I want to experience the excitement of doing something for myself. When we live through the people that we watch eventually we will grow to dislike the life we have.  I want to be the person jumping out of the planes, or breaking records in someone’s Olympics. I don’t want to talk with friends about how they life they lived on that one show was exciting, I want to be able to say “they could have made a show from my exciting life.” I’m sure a little TV is fine, but at this time I just don’t have time for TV!

Get up and live, the TV will be there tomorrow;
life is now!

I’m a 22 year old college student currently pursuing my associates degree in computer science. I’m an artist, well I am whenever I get a chance to be which is far and in between here lately.

How To React When Things Happen In Real Life

Have you ever done something that was so unusual and different that you didn’t know how to react to the situation, purely because you’ve never seen how it should be reacted to?

by Ann Skelly of blANNd

Photo from Haley Neal’s flickr

Sometimes I react to things in such ways because that’s how the character in the movie reacted. That’s how the fictional person in the book reacted. That’s how normal people react. But when faced with completely new experiences and situations you end up not knowing how you should act, you end up not putting everything you can into opportunities because you’re too busy second guessing yourself and trying to remember if you’ve read about this somewhere.

The best thing to do with everything and anything, is everything and anything you can, with everything and anything you have. I learned this from winning a competition last year, but I was too busy trying to act how I thought I should be rather than having fun and making the most of it. Now I watch the videos of me on YouTube and I cringe. Partly because I know I could’ve done so much better, and partly because I know that my hair wasn’t how I thought it looked. Damn.

It’s better to do more than less, is probably the moral of these few paragraphs. Or it could be to experience opportunities without fear of looking stupid. For me, it’s both. I know now that I should embrace looking stupid because someone’s always going to think you are anyway. There’s no point in trying to please everybody otherwise you just disappoint yourself and you miss out. Don’t mind others and do what you want, how you want.

I’m Ann Skelly, retired Anantara’s 2011 Elephant Polo Reporter, currently an Irish teenager. I like to write about things.

Is Asian Horror Better Than its American Remakes?

American remakes of Asian horror films tend to be overly explanatory.
by Deborah Bell of Seshat Travels

Photos are screenshots from Ju-on, Ringu and The Echo

For a good part of the last decade much of Hollywood devoted itself to cranking out remakes or adaptations of successful Asian horror films less well known on our own shores. Prompted by the success of “The Ring” starring Naomi Watts in 2002 – Gore Verbenski’s remake of Japan’s highest grossing horror film to date, the 1998 film “Ringu” — the marketplace was flooded with Americanized versions of East Asian flicks. Unfortunately for Hollywood, their attempts to cash in on this trend proved wildly uneven and produced far lower box office revenue than was anticipated.

Thus the flood of remakes dribbled to a slow leak. One trouble with these movies was that filmmakers on this side of the Pacific seemed to (wrongly) think that American audiences wouldn’t understand the subtleties and symbolism that permeate Asian horror. They replaced creeping tension with jump scares and offered slam-bang CGI instead of psychological shudders, and so ended up stripping their scripts of the very elements that made the originals work so well. But even a truckload of visual effects and a hot Hollywood actress in the lead can’t save scripts that lack true chills at their heart.

American remakes of Asian horror films tend to be overly explanatory, and usually resolve according to traditional Hollywood standards: with most of their plot threads tied up neatly at the end. Such ready explanations do not always exist in the Asian horror originals, where plots are often a lot more complex and sometimes told in a non-linear fashion, thus making those films all the more fascinating to unravel.

With endings that can be interpreted in multiple ways and containing cultural themes or ideas outside of our more familiar Hollywood horror standards, Asian horror challenges its viewers to pay attention and use their brains to try to figure out the plot twists and turns for themselves. This results in a much more involved movie experience than what the majority of the remakes provide.

The wise horror fan knows to avoid those carbon-copy American remakes and head straight for the originals. It really doesn’t take much effort beyond accepting the idea of subtitles in order to “get” Asian horror. “Ju-On” (2002, Japan), “The Echo” (2004, Philippines), “A Tale of Two Sisters” (2003, South Korea) and “Pulse” (2001, Japan), are all are excellent and incredibly scary films that deserve a worldwide audience.

But beyond the obvious first selections, there exists a slew of other fantastic Asian horror flicks out there that luckily Hollywood hasn’t touched yet. “Audition” (1998, Japan), “Infection” (2004, Japan), and “The Maid” (2005, Philippines) quickly come to mind as offering first-rate scares and/or psychological shudders aplenty. The Internet abounds with lists of dozens of really excellent Asian horror flicks that American fans may not have seen, but would greatly enjoy. I invite horror fans who may not be familiar with these films to take a look, it’s definitely worth it!

What is the creepiest horror film for you?

I’m a Tampa Bay Pop Culture Reviewer for Examiner.com, and a contributing writer at SciFi4Me.com, where you will find a vast array of sci-fi news and reviews, interviews and cool links to other science fiction sites.