Christmas is about You.

November 9th. There are exactly 46 sleeps until Christmas, im told by Santa Claus (who I follow on Twitter) and also told that the Christmas music is on and its snowing in the north pole.  By right’s we should be getting excited.
Literally on Halloween, stores were putting up Christmas decorations, eager to entice the public that little bit earlier to buy some presents or something that appears to be a bargain we will surely never see again?

I had a fantastic All Hallows Eve in all honesty.  I had the important people there taking full advantage of the excuse to dress up in outlandish garb without any repercussions. I’ll post some photos when I can, there will also be a Vlog which im editing at the moment.

I was looking over last years posts I made around this time of year and I realised that a couple of them proved to be quite pessimistic.  I don’t mean for them to turn out that way they just do.  I was going to try avoid a pessimistic tone for this post but unfortunately I just cannot do that 🙂

Society has seemed to completely of forgotten all about Christmas cheer and instead like many other seasonal celebratory times throughout the year, Christmas is used to exploit the hardworking and hard up.
Those that are hardworking will undoubtedly work harder and stay later to meet targets and pick up the pieces that have been left by the slackers who want to go to parties and get ill from drinking too much.
The hard up will become even more hard up as they push budgets and skip paying bills in order to give their family or friends the type of present that has been advertised as ideal for them.

Im not saying that we need to remember Christmas as being about the birth of Christ, that’s up to you.  What I am saying is think about others, sure, but think about yourself for a minute.  Unfortunately due to society etc more and more people are becoming increasingly shallow so it may even be that what you get isn’t good enough and therefore its traded or binned. Think about you.  If you break yourself you don’t just do it for Christmas.

The old saying used to be that ‘christmas isn’t about receiving its about giving’ which eventually evolved into ‘you have to give to receive’ which in laments terms is ‘if you don’t give me anything im not giving you anything’ thus that statement alone puts pressure on the hard up who will try and provide for everyone regardless. It can also turn what is supposed to be a magical, family oreintated and loving time into a bitter one where it can become a competition for who got the better more expensive, present.

Im not going to continue this post much more as so far I have found myself becoming nostalgic or excited about Christmas.  This year is the first in 7 years that I will have Christmas off and fortunately for me so has my girlfriend.  This means that we should both be able to get the Christmas spirit in full flow at our house.

It’s a shame my house isn’t big enough for our troubled society 😉

Holla
Ell Himself

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Apocalypto

Last night I watched a film called Apocalypto.  It wasn’t the best choice of bedtime film, you know the sort where you are wanting to unwind and relax and possibly even nod off whilst the tele is still on.  For those of you that haven’t seen the film let me give you a very brief synopsis.

Set in Yucatan, Mexico, during the declining period of the Maya civilization,  Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and destruction of his village.
This tribesman is Jaguar Paw.  At the beginning of the film Paw comes across obnoxious and arrogant encouraging his fellow men to literally take the mick out of one of the friends due to the fact that he is unable to impregnate his wife; but as the film unfolds Jaguar is forced to grow into the warrior that his father knew him to be.

Cinematography is of a nature that is to be expected from the direction of actor turned director Mel Gibson if you have seen his ‘The Passion Of The Christ’.  The Mayan jungle provides lush greens that allow the eyes a break from the browns and greys of the village and the larger city that is seen during the film.  Although even these cities/villages are not that much of an eye sore as as the head dress and other ‘uniforms’ that the civilisation are wearing are colourful enough.

This film is all about the raw nature of a culture that has yet to be civilised and know’s no niceties but at the same time are ahead of their time with the skills and train of thought.  You only have to watch the first 15 minutes to understand what I mean here when a few tribesmen, including main protagonist Jaguar Paw are out hunting a Tapir.  In my opinion Gibson and his team have done a terrific job of capturing the basic/primal instinct of this Mayan culture, this is also helped by the film being shot completely in Mayan dialect and subtitled.

Unfortunately for me though, this was my first time watching this film and although I have been wanting to watch it for some time I was left with a feeling that I just wanted something, abit, well; more to be honest.  at 139 minutes, so over 2 hours run time I thought that yes as tense films go this is one of the best, but probably because your tension builds because you expect something although I felt Apocalypto didn’t deliver.  Action scenes are executed relatively well and show the brutality involved in a primitive race when fighting, though as I said it was as if the film was building up and building up and then, well nothing really.  The final fight between Jaguar Paw and his enemies show that Jaguar has been able to come to terms with what he must do and how he must be at one with the forest and show no fear.  This is shown as if Jaguar gets some sort of premonition and is suddenly okay with being fearless.

Not the best but certainly not the worst.

But! if you want to watch a film containing an indigenous species and tribal acts of sacrifice and tall people wearing barely a thong and a receding hairline then take my advice and watch Avatar as you will most certainly not regret it, that film is a one in a million (well until the sequel(s).  For my review on Avatar take a look here.

Holla
Ell Himself

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