Sunday, August 8, 2010

Notes: Random Historical; Random Film

This post will eventually be below a few longer posts about cinema that I've been thinking about for a while, but I've been having two totally unrelated thoughts that I haven't been able to figure out how I wanted to post about, so I thought I'd just throw them out there.

The first is a historical clarification that I read about and learned about only recently. I've definitely heard the term Scots-Irish and Scotch-Irish before in reference to immigrants to the States, heard about their descendants' successes (many presidents have been Scots-Irish descent), about where they settled, and about how over time they've come to help build what we know as an "American Identity". The clarification that I learned about was that they were neither Scottish nor Irish. They were political and religious dissenters from the north of England, disparate backgrounds as far as clan affiliation or possible emigrant status from places like Denmark, but who shared a single thing: Calvinist beliefs. The ol' C. of E. wasn't for them (that is, as I've read it referred to before, the Church of England). Since the people were from the north, they were derisively called Scots, and sent in exile in the north of Ireland. Northern Ireland was populated by these dissenters, which is why today there is more than just a line carving the island of Ireland up; there is a political and cultural difference in the backgrounds of people from Ireland and Northern Ireland. In any case, those same folks who were booted from England were given opportunities for cheap land in the great big new colony across the sea, and many took them.

The second note is is three fold and was discovered by watching Toy Story 3 at the IMAX in 3D. Fold One: the IMAX screen is too large for 3D movies; if the center is in 3D, then the sides are blurry, and if the sides are in 3D, the center's blurry...Fold Two: Toy Story 3, while being the best entry in the canon in my opinion, didn't need the 3D thing, and wasn't benefitted incredibly by it.

Fold Three: the incinerator scene near the end was one of the most mature and intense scenes ever committed to film, in any media.

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