Tom and Jerry, Movie Review, Mayan Hieroglyphics, Homeschooling Blog, New Digital Art and Photography
Tom and Jerry
I was able to introduce Minime to the hijinks of a Tom and Jerry battle today via Cineplex Odeon's Family Favourites.
Our most beloved cat and mouse frenemies bring their epic, animated spats to the Big Apple, as both take up residence in a luxury art-deco hotel ... luxury hotel where most certainly mice are not welcomed guests even if they are clever, cute and have a flair for interior design. Newbie hotel employee, and part huckster, Kayla, played by the very likeable Chloë Grace Moretz, is tasked with getting rid of Jerry. She enlists Tom as an assistant. Neither is particularly welcomed by the head of hotel events planning, and the very ambitious, Terence, Michael Peña.
Meanwhile the wedding of year is being planned for a very well-meaning, but high maintenance social media famous-type couple, Preeta and Ben. The groom very much wants to impress his Indian bride, and alas more importantly, his soon-to-be very stern India father-in-law. Riding in on elephants, mating peacocks roaming freely, and a tiger on a leash may sound nuptially impressive and Bollywood romantic in theory, but turn out chaotic in practice and the makings of an animal tornado. Add to the melée a short-tempered bull dog, one blue cat and his Persian lady love, and one mischievous mouse with a penchant for diamond rings and fragrant cheese ... and keep your contractors on speed dial.
The film mixes live action and animation. All the humans and the sets are real, and the all the animals cartoon and talking, except for Tom and Jerry of course. Tom does however sing and play the piano. One cool cat.
It was delight to have Minime laugh out loud at this most cherished cartoon duo of my childhood. An iron in the face never gets old, I guess.
We are working our way through Mayan culture and have moved on to Mayan hieroglyphics.
From our studies ...
Mayan hieroglyphics were inscribed in blocks and arranged in horizontal and vertical rows. To me it does not look like writing but designs or drawings. I am used to writing that has long rows with punctuation and uses an alphabet. The letters form words, sentences form thoughts, punctuation organizes and separates thoughts. All of it together create a narrative that matches the way we think.
Like us the Mayans read left to right and top to bottom, but all of their lines were the same length. They had a tighter structure to their written language that probably did not match their spoken language.
Someone with my understanding of written language might not recognize Mayan writing as writing. Scholars did not recognize the Mayan writing system of bars and dots until the 19th century as a writing system. Some glyphs represent specific people and cities and some syllables. We understand around 85 percent of the symbols now.
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