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Jane's Musings of the World
20-06-2014
The First
Welcome... foremost to myself and to other who might stumble upon this by accident or by choice.
This is the first time I have used a blog; however, it is not the first time I've put words on a screen, expecting them to be read by no one but close friends. Livejournal, is what I used back then. I poured out every emotion I experienced over those years out, hoping it would serve as a catharsis. It didn't always work, and in the end it backfired immensely, as persons about whom I never wrote, read the journal and started pestering me, humiliating me about past inserts. To avoid that now, I would like to use this blog to convey my thoughts on books, films, events that happen around the globe, rather than focus on emotions felt at that particular moment.
For the same reasons mentioned above, Janebie is pseudonym, the pet name of my kat Jane. I will also not mention the people I know by their full name, only by their initial, to protect their privacy.
I will write down what I think and what I believe to be real or unreal. Never has it been that everyone in the world concurs with another's thinking, so while you or someone else might not agree with whatever I choose to write down, bear in mind that this is simply one person's opinion, in a world that inhabits 6 billion people. We are bound to disagree on some occassions. I invite everyone to convey their thoughts (agreements - disagreements) with me, but keep it civil and polite.
English is not my native language. That might become more apparent as the blog progresses. However, I do my best to respect the grammatical rules of the language in which I have chosen to post. I live in a country that has 3 official languages: Dutch (or Flemish) in the north, French in the south and German in the east. Recently, Arabic could be added as the fourth (albeit officous) language, since there has been a substantial increase in immigrants of arabic-speaking countries.
During my school years I have had to learn first French, then English and then German to complete my education. When I went to college, Italian was added to that bundle. All but English remained languages I could understand but never fully master. A pity, and to this day I still regret not having spent more time and effort in learning the other languages properly.
For some reason English comes more naturally to me than the others. I find it easier to express myself, my sentiments, my thoughts in the most internationally used language. Dutch is a fine language, and the Antwerp accent of my province has some gems that should be treaured and never forgotten, but it would not serve me well in writing this blog. I wish to interact with other people, to let them know what I think and to have their thoughts returned to me. And to make myself comprehensible to a wide audience, English will do what the other languages won't: reach out to an international crowd.
The movie, not the boardgame. I don't remember when I first watched Jumanji. I remember someone from my 6th grade class in elementary school having the board game, so it must have been around the age of 10-11.
When I first saw the movie, I was entirely engrossed in the fact that a board game could spawn so many 'evil' creatures in the world. The question of how Alan Parrish survived in the jungle with all sorts of nightmarish creatures 'with fangs and claws, who hunt you day and night', for 26 years...my young mind struggled to phantom that. But survive he did.
Together with Mrs Doubtfire, it is undoubtedly one of the best Robin Williams movies to date. Watching Jumanji now, at the age of 26, has done nothing to dampen the effect it had when I was a pre-teen. Even in a cinematic world where it has become standard to use CGI, bluescreen and all other digital effects, it still holds its own. Naturally, years of watching newer movies filled with digital effects (new star wars, lord of the rings, harry potter), make movies that do not have these features (aka, 90's blockbusters) look like cheap stuff.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell everybody that there ARE other great movies out there, that might be older than your children or grandchildren of pet dog, but that are not to be dismissed simply because they lack 'effects'. Look at the monkeys that come out of the game in the first half hour. Look at the lion that is released with Alan from the jungle. Look at the spiders that attack Alan, Sarah, Judy and Peter in the last 20 minutes of the movie. Totally fake. Utterly unconvincing by today's standard. But that's the beauty of it. Back then, they did what they could, with whatever they could, to make people (or in this case kids) think that all of that was real. I know I was scared of the spiders when I was 10. I know I thought the monkeys looked quite real. I didn't know any other way of how monkey were digitally injected in movies at that time. And I'm glad I didn't. It preserved the special meaning it held to me to this date. I'm grateful, to have been part of the generation *before* the 'Third Industrialisation' of this age. And you know what? Sometimes I pity the children who were not born in the 20th century. They may be better prepared for the technological future, but they also missed out on a lot.
