Movie Fan

            I enjoyed a lovely trip to the local movie store this week with a few friends. I had never been to this store, so I was looking forward to what it would be like. I was quite pleasantly surprised when I walked in and noticed the tables to sit down at. It seemed much more friendly than a place like blockbuster since you could sit down and maybe have some food as you talk to your friends. I also enjoyed the smell of pizza from behind the counter. I then continued into the store and looked at all of the movies. As a large fan of movies, I was quite at home in the store. I also did not think a small place like that would have so many movies. As a person who still owns a VHS, I had a large appreciation for the old school tapes. We spent a long time walking around the store looking at the new movies we have not seen yet and the old movies we have not seen in too long. After a long time arguing about which movie we should rent, we finally decided on scream 4. This was immediately followed by the realization that none of us had any money on us. However, we did get a little information sheet with all the prices on it. Even if we did have money, we did not have state ID’s or credit cards to get a membership. The one drawback was the prices of the movies. At the redbox, you can get a movie for about one dollar a night; with an additional dollar every night you keep the movie. It was like three bucks to rent a movie here and I am sure the late fees are even more. I found these prices a little ridiculous, but there were a lot of deals with buy on get one free movies, so it was not terrible. The trip was also not an entire waste because we had a quarter to get a gumball and if you get an orange gumball, you get a free rental. However, we just got a plain old yellow smiley face one, bummer.

Drive

Well, its midnight and I went home this weekend so I am not really in the school state of mind. I have no idea what to blog about; so I will do a blog on the movie I just finished two minutes ago, Drive. For those of you that don’t know, Drive is a movie that came out this year starring Ryan Gosling, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston and a few other famous people. It is about a driver whose name you never really figure out who works as a stunt driver for movies during the day but is a getaway driver at night. That sounds really lame and gimmicky but the movie is actually awesome. It’s a really good story that is expertly acted.

Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks in particular were especially good. Gosling only opens his mouth maybe once every other scene in the entire first half of the movie, using his silence and body language to give him a really unique, almost awkward attitude for a protagonist. Albert Brooks on the other hand, who was the voice of Marlin in Finding Nemo for all you Disney fans out there, is really powerful as the main bad guy. Both actors play smart, realistic characters that can be both relatable at times and downright vicious in the uber-violent second half. For those of you who have seen the commercials, you might be thrown off by this movie in the first half hour. Besides a slick opening getaway, the first half of this movie is comprised completely of dialogue and developing the relationships between all the characters.

Those looking for a straight up action movie will be turned away, but those looking for something deeper to connect with will find a lot to love. Around the 45-minute mark the talking tones down and the action picks up. It almost reminded me of a Quentin Tarantino movie where the story is mainly progressed by smart dialogue and all the sudden, along the way you are treated to scenes of overwhelming violence that you did not see coming (the first head that gets blown up in this movie reminding me a lot of the first scalping in Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards).

I don’t want to ruin the movie for you by describing much else, all I can say is that it is an extremely quality film and that I enjoyed every minute of it. I didn’t even mention my favorite part which had to be some of the most cinematic camera shots that saturate the screen with color and style that have a very 80’s style to them, including the cover arts pink neon font. However, the visuals are best left to be seen, not described, so if you’re looking for a good movie, I highly suggest Drive. (465)

Books, Pictures and Stuff

So, when I read the prompt for this post, I was not really sure what to do considering the books I read these days do not really have any pictures in them, nor should they. I do not know if I would still want to read Dexter if there were pictures on every page illustrating the countless number of people he has killed (who am I kidding, I would still read that). But I would have to say the last book I have read with pictures in it, besides Captain Underpants, is the Series of Unfortunate Events. I read the first twelve and bought the thirteenth once it came out way back when, but never read it. I think I never actually wanted to know how it ended, or I just forgot about it, either way I am defiantly looking up the ending on Wikipedia after I post this, but I digress.

           

            When reading these books, I specifically remember many of the images due to the fact that the art style was so unique. If you were to read the book without ever looking at the pictures, you would probably picture quite normal people and realistic settings, however, the illustrations provide a sort of wonderfully dark and twisted, yet childish world, due to the fact that these books were aimed at a younger audience. The pictures, in this case, are actually what make the book truly unique. It is almost like a Dr. Seuss book in a way since the story itself is good, but becomes truly classic when paired with its images. The illustrations are also a large reason of why I hated the movie version of this book. Not only are the images too bizarre and structurally unsound (a skyscraper high, twisting building with a massive telescope on top if memory serves), but they also attempted to force the first three books into one movie while mixing the plotlines by still putting the end of the first book at the end of the movie.

            Anyways, when it comes to pictures, they are not abundant in the books I read today. However, when it is done well enough, the images are quite capable of becoming more iconic than the text itself.

-P.S. I read the ending online, made no sense, but then I remembered I really had no idea what was going on when I was actually reading them. (400)

Blackhawks

For our blog about anything, I thought I would write about the Chicago Blackhawks. I grew up watching hawks games with my dad and siblings and they are the only sports team I try to watch every game for. College makes things hard since we do not get all the channels the games are on, but at home my whole family sits down to watch every game. I cannot tell you how crazy my family and friends went during the playoffs two years ago when they won the Stanley Cup. I went to see the cup twice when it came to places around my town. My uncle has season tickets so we go to their games as often as we can.

My favorite player without a doubt is Marian Hossa and I even have one of his customized jerseys. He is my favorite since he was born in Slovakia and because he is one of the best players in the game. As for our season this year, anyone who has been following the hawks will understand the we have looked better, for those of you that don’t know, every year we have a nine game away streak and we are almost halfway through. We were looking like some real contenders for the cup this year but then we went and lost six games in a row. This is the second year in a row that we have started making things more difficult for ourselves on the rush to the playoffs. Despite having two of the best defensemen in the game, Keith and Seabrook, our defense has been loosing game after game, with no stellar performances from either of our goalies, Crawford and Emery.

Even with no shutouts this year, I will never loose faith in these boys and we still have plenty of games to get our act back together and show them what we’ve in the playoffs. Here’s hoping for the cup this year. P.S. Vancouver sucks. (328)  

Commercials

So, while watching Storage Wars this week (highly recommended show), I noticed a certain trend in almost all of the commercials during the episode. Most every commercial that aired in the hour was for another show on the A&E or History channel. This makes a lot of sense considering all the people seeing these ads are already watching the channel and it may convince them to continue watching new shows or more episodes. I did not completely understand why the History channel was getting so much air time on A&E but my only guess is that they are either owned by the same company or they jut paid for that much advertising.

            As for the rest of the commercials, the remaining majority revolved around food. Whether it be fast food, sit down restaurants or even groceries, there was plenty of advertised food. The most popular had to be ads for McDonald’s new chicken Mcbites, Chilie’s twenty dollar dinner for two and of course Dole fruit bowls. However my favorite commercial had to be for Wonderful Pistachios (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJBk7NOYzo). This particular commercial features the angry birds and describes how they crack their pistachios. I love these commercials for two reasons. The first is the most obvious, pistachios are delicious and everyone should eat them. The second reason is because I think these commercials are a really good idea since they each feature something different, usually popular icons, and funny ways they crack their pistachios. I am sure most of you have seen and can remember one of these commercials, which feature people from Snookie to piano cat, the Winklevoss twins, and even a dominatrix for the crazier crowd of pistachio eaters.

            That pretty much sums up my hours of TV watching minus the awesome storage wars episodes. While I was not a huge fan of taking these commercial notes, I have to admit it made them go by faster. However, next time ill stick to HBO. (324)