The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Disney

  • HSU students discover their own spark with “Soul”

    HSU students discover their own spark with “Soul”

    Pixar’s newest animation “Soul” teaches us multiple lessons that can be applied to our lives daily .

    The movie was released on December 25, 2020 and already has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It tells the story of a man named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) who lands his dream gig at the best jazz club in town. On the way, however, he falls into a dark hole that leads him to the “before life.”

    Throughout the movie, themes of compassion, empathy, and self discovery are discussed. Joe is faced with many challenges that help him rediscover his “spark” or purpose in life. The movie is family friendly that people of all ages will enjoy.

    Rachael Kee, is a junior at HSU majoring in psychology and communications who watched “Soul” with her boyfriend Rowan.

    “I loved the movie,” Kee said. “It had so many subtle but relatable themes throughout the film, which really made me think about my own life and my purpose,” she said. “This movie is honestly pretty emotionally intimate for couples to watch together.”

    “Soul” dives deep into the so-called “meaning of life” by teaching us multiple lessons throughout each character’s experiences. When 22 is put on Earth inside of Joe’s body, they become grateful for the little things in life, as small as just the appreciation of living and the ability to breathe fresh air.

    Rowan Feltges is a sophomore, fisheries major and Kee’s boyfriend who also enjoyed the movie.

    “The animation looked almost lifelike and the story was extremely introspective,” Feltges said.

    He not only enjoyed the visual aspects of the movie but also learned multiple lessons that he can use in his daily life.

    “Your passion does not define you as a person,” Feltges said. “What defines you is the pursuit to make oneself feel happy with life.”

    He emphasized that it’s important to not let your passions turn into addictions.

    “As people change and the world changes, so do our passions. It is how you adapt and overcome these changes to find true happiness and self gratitude,” he said.

    Paola Morgado is a senior majoring in chemistry. She enjoyed how “Soul” showed her that the main purpose of life is to simply live it.

    “My main takeaway from the film was, if you’re good to others, good things will come your way such as, second chances and ‘rediscovering’ your purpose,” Morgado said.

    “Soul” was released on Christmas Day, 10 months into a global pandemic. Though intended to be seen in theaters, Disney+ provides us with a thought provoking, heartfelt, and overall positive film we can watch without leaving our house.

    The movie has gained a significant amount of attention on social media in a short amount of time. It first intrigued Kee with its diversity, music, and psychological aspects.

    “Society tells us to grow up, get a job, and pay taxes, and never really allows us to connect to our souls in our individualistic way,” Kee said. “I feel a lesson that we can all learn from ‘Soul’ is that no matter how ‘lost’ or ‘unworthy of life’ one may feel, all it takes is the exposure of a new friendship or interest to pull you out of the darkness. Thus, don’t stop this crazy journey of life and keep going.”

  • 5 Dystopian Films to Watch Now That You Now Live in One

    5 Dystopian Films to Watch Now That You Now Live in One

    Lock yourself indoors and pretend these films are strictly fiction

    With a deplorable excuse of a federal administration lying through their teeth about having the situation under control, it’s starting to feel like the world is descending into the plot of an apocalyptic or dystopian film. Fortunately, there are quite a few films to compare with the current state of the world.

    1. Equilibrium (2002)

    • Equilibrium (2002). | Image courtesy of Miramax

    “Equilibrium” is a brilliant 2002 futuristic thriller starring Christian Bale in a fascist police state mandates daily medication that eliminates all feelings. “Sense offenders” that refuse their medication are rounded up and disposed of in ovens, and books and other forms of media that might inspire emotion are burned. Subtlety is not this film’s forte, but that’s to be expected when it also boasts brilliantly-staged action sequences where Christian Bale uses his guns as all-purpose weapons. It’s “The Giver” meets “1984” meets “The Matrix.” The fighting style is referred to as “gun-kata,” and its efficiency and balance reflects the tightness of the film’s storytelling.

    2. Snowpiercer (2013)

    • Snowpiercer (2013). | Photo courtesy of RADiUS/TWC

    Did you like Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite” from 2019? If so, you might enjoy one of his previous masterpieces. In “Snowpiercer,” Earth is in the midst of a new ice age, leaving humanity to survive within the confines of a train that runs on a perpetual track. The train spins its wheels around the icy remains of the former metropolitan homes of the billionaires responsible for the crisis in the first place. An extreme contrast in quality of life lingers on the train, which continues to spin its wheels until a rebellion begins. “Snowpiercer” is another brilliant deconstruction of the class divide and inequity that reminds us that we all live in a capitalist country.

    3. Looper (2012)

    • Looper (2012). | Photo courtesy of Alan Markfield, Looper, LLC

    From Rian Johnson, director of the best Star Wars film, comes an exciting thriller in which time travel is possible, but outlawed. Gangsters send victims back in time to be killed by a hit man until he becomes the target. Unlike most time travel films, this one accepts and plays around with many of the potential paradoxes of time travel and stages scenes only possible in films with time travel. It takes great advantage of the strengths of its cast, as all Rian Johnson films do, and is a whole lot of fun, as all Rian Johnson films are. All of them.

    4. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

    • Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). | Photo by Giles Keyte, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

    OK, this one takes place at the time that it was made, and isn’t particularly dystopian, but to be fair, it’s about a group of rich vigilantes, who already killed the entire Obama administration in the previous “Kingsman” film, “The Secret Service.” Thus, they are indirectly responsible for the Trump presidency, which is a major part of the plot of this film. Now investigating a foreign cartel with a monopoly on drug trade, they discover the cartel’s plan to poison cannabis users and hold the planet hostage so that drugs will be legalized. In the real world, this would just mean that Big Pharma takes a huge share of the market and kills their business. But in the Kingsman world, it means a healthy helping of flashy action helped out by an Elton John appearance.

    5. Planet of the Apes (1968)

    • Planet of the Apes (1968). | Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox

    Before the Andy Serkis trilogy and the underwhelming Tim Burton effort was the original 1968 classic, “Planet of the Apes.” It watches more as an extended “Twilight Zone” episode than a futuristic adventure film, and it is superbly well-crafted, with intricate and detailed sets. The chemistry between the humans and the apes is a wonderful tone balancing act that offers plenty of ideas on race relations. And its brilliant twist ending goes down as an all-time classic.

  • A (cynical) guide to surviving the Infinity War

    A (cynical) guide to surviving the Infinity War

    Navigating the Marvel Cinematic Universe

    There are too many Marvel movies for people to keep track of. The combined 18 movies have earnings of more than the GDP of a significant amount of nations.

    Here is a guide through the Marvel storm as we approach the Marvel cinematic singularity: The Avengers: Infinity War.

    Disclaimers

    The movies and the comics are in two totally different realms of existence, especially when you consider deep comic book lore. For example, in the comics, Captain America is secretly a Nazi and Ant-Man beats his wife. For the sake of this guide, let’s pretend they don’t exist.

    There are two Marvel movies that take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that I have not seen. They are Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk, and Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming. (There are just too many Spider-Man movies.) If anything incredibly important happened in those two movies that directly relates to Avengers: Infinity War, sorry.

    Plot

    All of the movies in the MCU somehow relate to objects called the infinity stones. For the purposes of the movies, they are convenient plot points. Something for heroes and villains to fight about. There are six infinity stones: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. They are supposedly fragments of what came before the universe, and you know they’re important because they glow. The end boss of all the Marvel movies thus far is a mysterious purple man named Thanos who really wants to put the glowing stones on his glove.

    Characters

    There are the Earth Avengers, the Space Avengers and the Avengers In-Between. Only three characters have had three movies all to themselves: Thor, Captain America and Iron Man. Each of those characters represents a division of the MCU. Each of them has their own team of lackeys who make up most of the characters. The Guardians of the Galaxy are a separate group who also represent a sizable amount of characters. Every character connects with the infinity stones in one way or another.

    Where we left off

    When we last saw our brave heroes, Captain America’s lackeys and Iron Man’s lackeys did not like each other very much. Thor was in space after successfully destroying his homeworld with the help of the Hulk, and the Guardians of the Galaxy were also in space after killing Kurt Russell. The infinity stones are spread out amongst our heroes. The red stone was last seen out in space with Benicio del Toro, but his house blew up so no one really knows where it is. The purple stone was dropped off at John C. Reilly’s place, but Thanos has it in the Infinity War trailer, so R.I.P John C. Reilly. The yellow stone is in the living incarnation of Iron Man’s computer’s face. Benedict Cumberbatch has the green stone, and Thor’s greasy adopted brother has the blue stone. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that we’ve seen the orange one unless Spider-Man has it and no one told me.

    Predictions

    All 50,000 characters are going to learn to work as a team and form the mega ultra avengers. At least one of the main Avengers will die. All the actors must be tired of this whole thing by now, though it’s not clear whose contract is up yet and who will get an out. (It has been a decade since the MCU started, and each of them must have enough money to buy entire nations at this point.) Thanos will almost destroy the universe, but our brave heroes will stop him, and Disney will have all the money in the world by 2030.