[Nfbc-info] Bird Box

Sun Jan 6 02:47:13 UTC 2019

Hi all,

There are quite a few implications when it comes to this. I’ll refer you to a couple of Facebook posts, one of which is mine. You can find them here: https://www.facebook.com/100006019308026/posts/928875897323045/

This particular email thread is mildly problematic. The email containing the article is, though perhaps unintentionally, an example of blatant plagiarism. In my line of school, that’s an offense I could be easily expelled for. If you’re not in school, that holds absolutely no bearing on the fact that this was someone else’s work. It’s great to share this on here because it’s incredibly relevant, but I think the most proper way to do that would be to write an introduction to it, then paste a link. Besides, that gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts on the topic and the article. I recognize that the author’s name was left on here and there’s a link at the end, but the article is not properly put in block quotes, and the citation is not done correctly. There are so few things in this world that we receive proper recognition for... at least let people keep their written works. Also just going to point out that the term used to refer to people around my age is “millennials” not “millenniums”, and “millenniums” is actually not a word. Thanks!

All best,
Cricket

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 5, 2019, at 17:48, Lisa Irving via NFBC-Info <nfbc-info at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey NFB Fam,
> 
> 
> I really think we can jump on the Bird Box wagon and make this a win-win.
> What an opportunity to do outreach! There are so many possibilities here.
> Think about it and talk about it with your chapter members. Let's make this
> work for us and connect with people who want to take the Bird Box Challenge.
> 
> 
> Lisa Irving 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NFBC-Info <nfbc-info-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Frida Aizenman
> via NFBC-Info
> Sent: Saturday, January 5, 2019 10:43 AM
> To: nfbc-info at nfbnet.org
> Cc: Frida Aizenman <nfbfrida at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Nfbc-info] Bird Box
> 
> Yesterday, I was watching the news in Telemundo, and I found out that,
> courtesy of Netflix, after watching the movie Bird Box, millenniums walk
> around everywhere with sleepshades, but no canes!
> Read on:
> Frida
> 'Bird Box' Ending Explained: How Movie Changed Book for the Worse The
> Hollywood Reporter
> 
> January 04, 2019  1:10pm PT by  Andy Crump
> 
> How 'Bird Box' Tweaked the Book's Ending It's a small shift, but one that is
> more important than you might think.
> Courtesy of Netflix
> 
> It's a small shift, but one that is more important than you might think.
> article
> [This story contains spoilers for both Bird Box
>  and A Quiet Place]
> 
> When the world's on fire and the only way to allay suicidal impulses stirred
> up by induced psychosis is to shut your eyes, a blindfold is your best
> chance of survival. We don't live in that world, thankfully, but that's not
> stopping people from blindfolding themselves anyway to see if they can hack
> it in a post-apocalypse scenario where eyesight's a bane rather than a boon;
> they're caught up in the Bird Box challenge , the first quantifiable (and
> totally absurd) byproduct of the Netflix original film's unexpected
> popularity.
> 
> It's a near guarantee that Bird Box's inexplicable mass appeal will yield
> better returns than social media trends as time moves on; the streaming
> service has declared it their most popular film to date, a claim equally as
> dubious as palatable. On one hand, Netflix hasn't yet verified the roughly
> 45,000,000 account figure they posted to Twitter
>  the week after
> Bird Box's premiere on Dec. 21. On the other, social media has gone full
> goose bozo over the movie since it went to air. Putting too much stock in
> Twitter reactions as a gauge of a pop culture totem's true popularity is a
> rookie mistake, that's for certain, but when a movie like Bird Box forms
> enough of a fan base to inspire its own self-titled challenge, well, that
> movie's obviously doing something right .
> 
> Here, "something right" specifically refers to casting, perhaps, or speaks
> to the temperature of the day and pop culture's increased fixation on
> apocalypse, or maybe audiences liked A Quiet Place so much that what's
> essentially "what if A Quiet Place but for eyeballs" has unintended built-in
> allure. For all their doom and gloom, these films are, in their fashion,
> optimistic: 
> Mankind prevails
> over evil, whether extraterrestrial or otherworldly, triumphant but steeled
> for whatever comes next, be it more monsters, as in the case of A Quiet
> Place, or a life confined within the walls and beneath the forest canopy of
> a school for the blind smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Northwestern USA,
> as in the case of Bird Box.
> 
> There's a respectable internal logic to A Quiet Place's conclusion
> : After a noisy battle with one aurally enhanced alien beast, it stands to
> reason that other aurally enhanced alien beasts might hustle on over to see
> what's shakin'. Emily Blunt cocks her shotgun.
> Millicent Simmonds
>  readies her sound amplifying doohickey. Cut to credits. But the ending of
> Bird Box defies such logic in favor of contrivance, which isn't the fault of
> the film per se; director Susanne Bier and writer Eric Heisserer merely
> adapted the story from the 2014 Josh Malerman novel of the same name,
> condensing its plot and swapping its setting for the sake of economy and a
> stronger visual palette. (The American northwest is ever so much more
> striking than
> Detroit.) It's not their original work. So when Malorie (Sandra Bullock) and
> her two kids, Girl (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Boy (Julian Edwards), arrive at
> the formerly disused, newly inhabited Janet Tucker School for the Blind,
> that's in keeping with Malerman's intention.
> 
> But Malerman at least made blindness a choice. In his book, the survivors
> Malorie encounters in the greenhouse safe haven she's been searching for
> have blinded themselves on purpose, having realized that blindness makes
> them immune to the insane wiles of the eldritch, invisible creatures
> haunting Earth.
> In Bier's movie, well, the people she meets are presumably blind by natural
> causes, whether they were born blind or became blind in life. On its own,
> that's not a particularly big ask, but coupled with that whole "school for
> the blind" thing, and Bird Box's climax reads as aggressively convenient.
> Who builds a place of learning for blind people in the middle of the woods?
> Near a raging river ? Totally separated from all civilization?
> 
> Maybe Bier simply didn't have the time or the budget to pull back and show
> us that Janet Tucker did in fact have the good sense to built her school
> adjacent to highways, emergency services, and other essential amenities of
> modern day living. But Bird Box shows us no such accomodations, and gives no
> such consideration to her residents' impairment; put bluntly, the creative
> decision making here is straight-up bizarre, and that's not even getting
> into the function of the building itself, wrapped around an atrium that's
> covered by tree branches. Apparently, fauna's enough of a barrier to keep
> the whispering, malevolent entities tormenting the planet out of an enclosed
> space. If only someone had run that by the cast earlier and saved them the
> time and effort of slapping newspapers over every window in sight.
> 
> Bird Box wraps up too neatly, too cleanly, with too much security; if the
> magical leaf blockade that wards off evil (but also somehow lets in ample
> light for all the survivors who aren't blind!) isn't enough, then let the
> appearance of Dr. Lapham (Parminder Nagra), Malorie's OB-GYN, last seen
> admonishing our hero against drinking while pregnant, serve as the
> punctuation mark to the film's artifice. 
> Everyone's happy and snug beneath the treetops; the story forms a complete
> circuit.
> Not that that'd stop Netflix from funding a sequel, mind you. If a sequel
> can be spun out of A Quiet Place , a sequel can be spun out of Bird Box, no
> matter the narrative gymnastics required to make it happen.
> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/bird-box-ending-explained-how-
> movie-changed-book-worse-1173171 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> NFBC-Info mailing list
> NFBC-Info at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> NFBC-Info:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org/peacefulwoman89%40cox
> .net
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> NFBC-Info mailing list
> NFBC-Info at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for NFBC-Info:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbc-info_nfbnet.org/cricketbidleman%40gmail.com