So I moved to NYC…

Yep…I did.

I got here the afternoon of July 16, took an almost $40 taxi ride from LaGuardia airport to my new apartment in the East Village (the cab driver took a really out of the way route), and hit the ground running. We went to IKEA in Brooklyn and spent the better part of 3 hrs looking around and buying stuff. My room is incredibly tiny (a little bigger than a large walk-in closet so I have to get really creative with storage.

(It’s not finished and still really messy cause I still need to get some wall storage but it’s getting there.)

Since Monday, we have been to see Once the musical (phenomenal and so beautiful), gone to a rooftop bar, and saw The Dark Knight Rises at midnight (the audio in the theater was terrible and I was squirming the entire time because of it).

I am still looking for a job. Hopefully something will come up soon.

The Hunger Games

I haven’t been this excited about a movie for a long time. I’m going to the midnight showing! It’s strange also because I don’t think I have ever done the whole read the series then see the movie thing. I saw all of the HP movies but never read any of the books.

Been A Long Time

So I’ve been encouraged by a couple friends to start blogging again. I haven’t really had a ton to say before now because there hasn’t been a ton going on, but as of now I will be moving from Carrboro, NC to Los Angeles, CA in less than a month (July 28) because I took a job as a Production Assistant at movie trailer company called Workshop Creative. Basically, I’m the person who does all the stuff no one else wants to do, but hopefully, I can impress them enough with my editing talent that I will only have to be doing it for 9 months to a year. The only thing I don’t have nailed down is housing. That is still TBD. Hopefully it all works out. I’m confident in God’s plan…whatever it may be.

Michael Jackson Was Still the Man, Even At 50

Sunday night, I went and saw This is It, the recently released Michael Jackson documentary.  However, contrary to many people’s belief, this was not a documentary about the life of Michael Jackson and everything that was wrong with his life.  Instead, the film showed his last days as a performer getting ready for his upcoming London tour.  It almost gave the audience, which for our showing was just me and Sarah in the theater, a greater sense of the man, myth, and legend that was Michael Jackson.  The man was 50 years old and could still sing and dance like nobody else alive or dead.  The film with interviews from the dancers that had been hand picked by MJ himself to perform with him on the tour.  We kept thinking how crazy that must have been to wake up every morning and know that you are going to be performing with one of the greatest performers ever.  That had to be earth shattering for all of them. I would absolutely love an opportunity to do that (if any of you know of anything let me know).  The fact that his moves are still so iconic after more 30 years is a tribute to the impact that he had on the world of dance.  You can pull out any move in his arsenal and people automatically know where it came from and many of them from what video.  There was a point in the film where they were doing a remake of the Thriller video and I just sat there in awe thinking about the fact that those dancers got to be a part of remaking the most iconic music video of all time.  You could tell he loved to be a big part of everything that went into his performances.  He was consulted on everything from the lights to the music to the height of the crane that would carry him above the audience.  He was a perfectionist.  Also, he thought so far out of the box that I am not even sure he knew there was a box.  He used words like “sizzle” and “nourish” to describe the feel of the music.  Even the little things like holding a note out another couple of counts was a big deal to him.  He wanted to make sure the audience got the best show they would ever see.

He may have had his issues throughout his life and he may have done some bad things, but no one can deny his ability to perform.  You can boo him for his lifestyle but, you have got to respect him as a performer.   I know he is one of the biggest influences in my passion for dance as well as dancers all over the world.  He will be missed.

Did I mention that he was 50 when he was doing all of this and was going to perform 20+ shows?!

Citizen Kane…THE BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME

…well at least thats what they say.

Last night, I finally sat down with a group of friends and watched the famous Citizen Kane.  I had recently seen a bit of it on TV a couple months prior but it was really late so I didn’t stay up to watch it.  Being someone who studied Media Studies and Production, you would think I would have seen this movie a long time ago and even multiple times but for some reason, my professors were never really that excited about it so they never really showed it.  I don’t really know why but they didn’t.  You would think a film of this magnitude and clout would be shown in any and every film criticism class.  Alas, it was not. So that being said, I finally watched the movie last night.

I didn’t come into the movie completely ignorant, I had read some stuff in school in textbooks and had read a couple things on IMDb and Wikipedia (the temple of all knowledge in the world) about the film.  I’m not going to go into all of the detail about what the movie was about and all that.  You can read that or go see it on your own.  I am simply here to give my opinion of it.

Finally, the moment you have all been waiting for…
So I came into the film with a lot of high expectations with all of the chatter about it, but walked away kinda feeling not all that impressed.  Maybe its due to the fact that this generation is no longer impressed by a lot of things anymore.  We have become so jaded by the numerous different special effects that every film employs to wow its audiences that we fail to see the gravity of the films that employed them for the first time in their first forms.  I guess when I watched the film that way, yes, I could see why it was so highly acclaimed but the story itself just didn’t draw me in enough.  There were so many points of the film that were baseball-ish (I often go to baseball games not to watch the game but to have conversations because the game isn’t the most exciting thing and there are a lot of starts and stops. So if I say that again, you will know what it means).  The thing that probably kept me intrigued the most was the mystery of “rosebud,” Kane’s dying word.  Much like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, its something that is never figured out in the film and left to viewer interpretation.  Overall, I would give it a 3 out of 5.

P.S.  if I ever decide to just end this blog, I want my last post to be titled Rosebud.  Let’s see if my current readers remember that if they are still reading when this thing ends.

P.P.S. please comment…it makes me feel like i actually have readers

Reviews and Such

2 reviews for this entry:

   Yesterday the new Switchfoot album, Hello Hurricane, came out after 2 years of anticipation.  A week ago, Switchfoot had the entire album streaming on their Myspace page so I was able to listen to it in its entirety…multiple times.  I absolutely love it.  In my opinion, its their best album yet, both lyrically and musically.  The title of the album concerns the proverbial hurricanes that  we all face on a daily basis and how we can overcome them with Love.  I really connected with this album and its lyrics.  In interviews with the band, they talk a lot about how the process of making the album was a very trying time for them.  They just recently went independent with their music so they could have more freedom.  In the past 2 years, they built their own studio and recorded 90 songs.  90 SONGS! Thats a lot of songs to choose from for one album.  I, of course, was not able to hear the other songs that were not chosen but I think they did a great job with the mix of hard hitting songs (“Mess of Me”) with slower rock melodies (“Your Love is a Song”).  The Deluxe album is on iTunes ($12.99) and Amazon MP3 ($10.99).
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Along with buying the new Switchfoot album, I also rented the newly released, Michael Bay directed, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I was not able to see this this past summer because I was working camp.  I was really excited about but had heard nothing but bad reviews.  Much like all of Bay’s other films, it was filled with explosions and special effects.  However, for some reason, Bay went with a much more humorous feel to this film.  I have to admit much the comments and jokes were funny but they almost seemed out of place in this film.  Because there were so many pauses in the action, the movie seemed to drag on at times.  Attempting to flush out the relationship between Sam (Labeouf) and Makayla (Fox), Bay turned half of the movie into a very teen angsty soap opera.  Overall, the visual effects and robots were stunning and a force to be reckoned with.  I would give it a 3 out of 5 stars.