Moon – Not to be mistaken for New Moon

Moon (2009)

Quite a while ago Kieran and I went on a man-date to see Moon, a science fiction movie about the experiences of Sam Bell who is employed by a company to harvest ‘energy’ from the sun.  In the last few months we’ve had a knack of picking out movies which have required a little bit more brain-power than anticipated and so a word of warning for those who decide to watch the movie, be prepared to have to use the good old grey matter.

It’s hard to write much about the movie without giving too much away, but its simplicity and the minimalist nature of the sets really focus your attention to the “two” main characters in the movie: Sam Bell and the other character in the movie is a robot who is brilliantly voice-acted by Kevin Spacey.  The characters are the “movie”, so forget about amazing technological advances, lots of crazy futuristic space fighting, this movie simply raises moral and ethical questions.  The questions are not raised in a in-your-face confrontational way and can easily escape you, if you’re just trying to work out what’s actually going on.

Science fiction is normally not my cup-of-tea when it comes to movie choices, but this movie is definitely worth seeing.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner

Don’t you just hate it when a movie ruins a book?

I made the mistake of watching The Kite Runner at the movies a couple of years ago. I say ‘mistake’ only in that I should have read the book first.  Whenever I read a book, I build up images in my head, I pretty much form a movie in my head. I’m going to admit that I’m a slow reader, mostly because I allow myself the time to take into the book, think about it, process it and play it in “pictures” in my head.  The Kite Runner (the book) by Khaled Hosseini is wonderfully discriptive and is poetic in its imagery, particularly in the way in describes the Afgan landscape.

I should mention that the book is fiction, which I don’t typically tend to read a lot of.  Reading this book may just be the catalyst I need to read Harry Potter. Yes that’s right I HAVEN’T read Harry Potter.

I’m sidetracking from my point here (if ever I really had one), but watching movies first before I read the book tends to make me ‘remember’ the movie and takes away the creativeness and ‘fun’ in reading a book.  By watching a movie first my mind is filled and corrupted with someone elses thoughts and images and eventhough I gave myself two years before touching the book, much of the pleasure of reading the book was taken away. This may be a problem as I’ve watched the majority of the Harry Potter movies and yet to read a single word. *sigh* I should never have caved into watching those movies!

For those who haven’t come across The Kite Runner, the book is set in Afganistan during the time of the Soviet Invasion of the country. I won’t get into the politics of it all but for those who’d like a bit of a history lesson, it’s pretty much around the time when the Taliban start to grow, courtesy of US government (the benefits of hindsight).

The beginning of the book evolves around two boys Amir (the rich kid) and Hazara (the servant’s boy) and their childhood.  Their friendship and each of the boy’s personalities are developed through their involvement in “Kite Fighting” (not as violent as it sounds).

As the story moves on so does the war and eventually the story moves on to California, USA.  There the book follows the life of Amir who endures the pains of all things ‘cultural’ when falling in love with a fellow Afgani refugee, whilst working for his father at the flea markets.

You’d think that the book would end happily there with Amir falling in love, but there’s a twist which leads to Amir returning to Kabul, Afganistan during a time when the Taliban pretty much ruled the place.  The last part of the book gets pretty emotional and I guarantee that once you get to the last third of the book you won’t be putting it down.  I have to say that I was extremely touched by the ending and despite already knowing the ending from having seen the movie it still left an impact on my thoughts and moods for a few days.

Look Me In The Eye

Look Me In The Eye

Q. How often was I told when I was younger to look the teacher in the eyes?

A. Countless number of times, yet the old teachers when I was in primary school had not taken into account the cultural differences between what we would consider to be appropriate in the Anglo-Australian world and the Chinese-Australian world.

I always felt conflicted when it came to making eye contact. At home I’d be in trouble for looking into an adult’s eyes, at school I appeared to be ‘disrespectful’ and inattentive to a teacher’s demands.

In hindsight all of this was only trivial in my younger ages and I eventually sorted and worked it out myself I’ve just finished “Look Me In The Eye: My Life with Asperger’s” by John Elder Robinson.  I have a special interest when it comes to reading books about people with disabilities (as most of you know I work with children with a variety of different (dis)abilities. I was about six and seven years of age when the issues of eye contact were raised, (basically in Kindergarten and year one) and I was only a typically developing child with English as my second Language or more correctly  Anglo-Australian as my second culture.

If I was confused I can’t imagine what it would have been like for John at that age.  John Elder Robinson describes all the prejudices he encountered throughout his life, yet the book isn’t a whinge about the way he was treated, but rather an insightfully written memoir of what it was like to have “Aspergers” for the majority of his life without actually knowing.

The book begins to raise many questions within myself and because I work with a lot of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders I am myself very wary of the “Autistic” like characteristics I also have.  Most of us in the profession recognise that there’s a little bit of ‘Autism’ in all of us. After all it is a ‘Spectrum’.

To be honest I’m very aware that I’ve had some very anti-social behaviours and challenges especially when it comes to connecting with people, not because I don’t want to know people, on the contrary, but like  people with Aspergers I find small talk arduous and I find coded conversation and non-verbal cues tiring. I’m pretty clued in the majority of the time and pride myself in the ability to work out a lot about a person’s personality from their subtle non-verbal cues, but I find that people hide themselves behind veneers.

There are other things in the book that make me wonder quite seriously where I sit, because he describes quite well how he is able to focus on things that he has high interests in, but as soon as he loses interests in them he often loses the in-depth understanding he had. I look back to high school and I look back at maths in particular. I started off in year 7, being pretty ordinary, but by the end of year 10, I was to my surprise actually in the top 60 students in the grade, but that was because I was interested and enjoyed the challenge, but the time I hit year 11, maths started to bore me and the realisation that there were no real practical application of the things we were learning made me lose interest very quickly and by the end of the HSC I had managed to score within the lowest band in 3 unit maths and somehow managed a low Band 5 (Band 1 = lowest and Band 6 = highest) score, without evidently trying. This of course is only one example, but believe me I have loads of examples just like this.

How much of it is just interest? and how much is typical? and how much of it means that I am somewhere on a Spectrum? Of course I don’t really think that I’m on the Autism Spectrum, but like I say to many of my friends, we all have some odd and strange behaviours.

Back to the book, I found the book intersting, but at times long, but that’s the nature of the writer’s style and considering that it’s meant to provide insight, then it has done excellently. I would recommend that book to anyone wishing to get a better insight into these things.

For those interested in the subject I would also recommend The Black Balloon which is an Australian made film documenting the challenges of growing up and living with an Autistic person.

Following that another Australian claymation film currently playing at the cinemas is Mary and Max I saw this at Roseville Cinemas last night and the story is sweet and plain beautiful. I haven’t seen a movie that evoked such subtle emotions in me, in a long time. It deserves a lot more than it’s getting. I’d encourage anyone who loves a good story to go and see it. It’s clever, witty, funny, sad and at times thought provoking.