Water for Elephants

First let me begin by saying that I have been looking forward to this movie since I first saw a trailer for it. And I am very excited to say that I absolutely loved it. From the very first scene to the ending credits I was completely captivated. This movie is kind of similar to The Green Mile in that it's a flash back movie, and it's set during the depression. Jacob (Robert Pattinson) tells his story of life in the circus. The thing I loved about this movie is that it is visually stunning. It just looks fantastic the whole time, especially when it came to shooting the circus and the acts. When the workers first put the circus together there is a feeling of wonder. That is true with all of the circus scenes; they did a really great job of really bringing the feeling of a circus to life. I believe this has a lot to do with the way it was shot. While watching, it was just like I was there, and I was completely amazed by the acts. I also loved the way it looked as far as a period piece, especially Reese Witherspoon. Her hair, makeup, and wardrobe were just so cool. Everything looked extremely authentic, including the circus sets.
The acting in this movie is extremely impressive. We all know that Reese Witherspoon is very talented and very versatile. This role in particular seemed completely new for her. It wasn't like anything I've seen her in before, and that was nice. She did a great job in this movie, just like every other movie. This movie just made her even better in my book. Christoph Waltz was absolutely FABULOUS. In Inglorious Basterds, he was great, as well. But I feel like for this part, he was perfect. August is a great character in general, but Waltz did a great job of portraying August's ups and downs and craziness. Another great surprise was Robert Pattinson. He can actually act. In the Twilight movies, he is definitely the best actor in the movie, but still not very impressive. Maybe he is brought down by Kristen Stewart's lack of talent. He was very good in Remember Me, but that was also just a broody character like Edward, so I wasn't quite convinced. But this movie has officially convinced me that I like him. The animal actors were good, too. They brought humor to the movie, and Rosie the elephant was like the coolest and most beautiful thing ever. Basically, this movie was really really good. It made me want to go out to read the book, and also buy an elephant. What a great friend for Carl. :)

Busy Busy Busy

Yeah I know. It's been a while. I have just been so busy these past couple weeks, and truth be told, haven't been watching very many movies. School is winding down, so of course that means there is a TON of work to do. My Anatomy class is taking up my life, and my final project for Photography is taking a lot of time, too. My photography project is very enjoyable, however. I have to make a portfolio with 8 photos. They have to be professionally matted and printed, have a theme, and I have to write an artist statement. I am super proud of what I've done so far, and I love my theme. I am recreating iconic things from movies! I really love my pictures and I'm waiting to show everyone until everything is finished. I want it to be a surprise and for it to be seen all at once. So I have been shooting almost constantly when I'm not working, sleeping, or going to school it seems like, and now I have been matting, writing my statement, AND I have to work on a presentation for that class. Like I said, I'm very very busy, but I'm enjoying it.

A lot of other stuff has been going on lately, too. A week ago I turned 20. (Woo!!) I had a pretty good birthday. Got to see all of my friends and got an awesome gift from my parents and had the BEST birthday cake. Right now it's not letting me put pictures, but if you click on my flickr link to the right, you can see pictures of it. My dad made it for me, and that's a big deal because the last time he made me a birthday cake, I was 9 and there were pokemon on it. (Tomboy??) Anyways, went to dinner at Outback for prime rib (of course they didn't have any), ate cake, had lunch with my good friends Elizabeth and Britton, had a light show at work, Jordan got me Coldstone, and Elizabeth, Britton and I went to Macomb to see Erin. It was a lot of fun and I FINALLY got prime rib. (Outback, you were bested by a steakhouse in Macomb) annnd we ate more birthday cake. haha. Besides my birthday celebrations, we did the first half of closing on my house in Arizona on Friday. I feel so accomplished and grown up. It's weird. Arizona is actually becoming real again, and that makes it all the more exciting and nerve-racking. Just so much exciting (and not-so-exciting) stuff going on right now. 

Anyway, back to the point of this post. School will be over soon, and I will finally be able to get back in to watching movies again. I've got an extremely long Netflix queue, plus there are a lot of movies coming out this summer that I'm super excited about. Just have to make it through three more weeks!

Found a Pretty Cool Game

Clockbusters

Its pretty fun. My score was 41/50

I Have a Confession...

So... this past weekend I went with my mom to go see Insidious. They must not have had ANY advertising campaign because I had never even heard of it until last week. Anyways, my interest was really peaked when Entertainment Weekly gave it an A. I think it was very well deserved. It's about a boy who is haunted by demons....kinda. I don't really know how to explain it without taking forever and ruining the whole movie. But I thought it was really good. I mean, you have to take these types of movies for what they are. It's not going to be realistic, and it's probably going to have a predictable story line. That being said, the scares were awesome. Just the whole entire movie I was in suspense, and even when I knew something was going to happen, it STILL got me. I will give it credit for having some really original scares; it definitely caught me unsuspecting a few times. The images are like burned into my mind...which leads me to my confession: I have had to fall asleep with the TV on two nights in a row because I am freaked out by this movie. And I also had to run through a dark room because I got scared. THAT's how I know that this movie was at least decent, if you're into this type of movie. For me, I'm always looking for some movie to really scare me, because it is very rare. It's happened twice before that I can really remember: once with Nightmare on Elm Street when I was like 10 or 11, and then Reincarnation when I was a sophomore in high school (a FANTASTIC movie by the way--check it out). Anyway, now Insidious is on that list. It was definitely surprising; when the movie first started I just kept thinking to myself, "This is just Paranormal Activity with a real budget," and it was, but not really in a bad way. All in all, this movie was fun to watch...and that's really what's most important.


P.S- After just finding that poster... same producers as Paranormal Activity. Go Figure. haha

MAD at EW

So... I was glancing through the Entertainment Weekly movie reviews and found their review for Battle: Los Angeles. They gave it a D!! Needless to say, I am not happy about it. How can it get a D? I thought it was so good, and usually my tastes are pretty similar to the magazine's. But anyway, they reduced the movie down to the fact that there is a lot of rubble and smoke. "If only there were an Oscar for Best Debris"--What do you expect? The movie is about aliens invading; there's gonna be some destruction, obviously. They also say that it is just a mix of a bunch of different alien/disaster movies. To that I say that you can say that about pretty much any movie ever made. It says it's a mix between War of the Worlds, Starship Troopers, District 9, Earthquake, and Independence Day (if I recall correctly, this is another nominee for Best Debris, perhaps?). The last thing that it says is that the aliens are "visually nondescript--just metal from another planet." I actually liked that. Not everything has to be like Alien or Independence Day.

Anyway, the review just really bothered me. I only read the little blurb in the magazine because apparently they didn't have a normal pre screening. You can read the whole review here:
Full Review

Battle: Los Angeles

Last night, my mom and I went to the movies to see Battle: Los Angeles. Very similar in storyline to Skyline that we watched the night before (What can I say, we like Sci-Fi), but Battle: LA was leaps and bounds better than Skyline. While Skyline was better than expected, but still not very good, Battle: LA was fantastic and totally blew me away. What I wasn't expecting, is that it was a full-scale militarized alien movie. The first of its kind I'm pretty sure. My mom argued that Aliens was the Marines and aliens, but I don't think that counts because they were in space. Yes ALL alien invasion movies have the military involved, as they are our only defense, but there are never any movies about the military and what they're doing. Needless to say, I thought that part was very interesting. This movie was gritty and action-packed like a war movie but it had aliens which always gives humans a sense of helplessness. This movie you never really know if they're going to prevail or not; in typical war movies, I feel like the outcome is already known or extremely predictable; not with this movie. It was suspensful and realistic. They didn't go too crazy with the aliens or the effects, which was good. I just really liked this movie. From the moment it started, I was totally engrossed, and I cared about all the characters. That's hard to do in a movie like this. This movie makes you feel like you are right there with them trying to make it through this city. I suggest that you see this movie. I know that aliens are a hard sell for some people, but it really is great. And if you don't like aliens, think of it as a war movie, which it most certainly is.

MmmMMmm Brains.

Tonight my mom and I were extremely bored, so we decided to check out On Demand. I saw Skyline and remembered being interested in it when it was in theaters. After we ordered it, I also remembered that it was in theaters for just a hot second. I did not have very high expectations. In fact, I had zero expectations at all, so maybe that has something to do with this, but I'll say it.... it wasn't that bad. It was a pretty good alien invasion movie. Parts of it reminded me of War of the Worlds-- mass human extermination and the aliens coming in to the homes and them having to hide were the parts that were like that. Unlike War of the Worlds, however, it felt too much like the aliens were singling this group of people out, and that bugged me. I realize the movie wouldn't necessarily SHOW what was happening to other groups of people, but at least with other movies, you can tell that other things are happening while this alien is after these people. For example, in War of the Worlds, when the alien was in Tim Robbins house, you could still hear the booms and things outside. It's like the aliens came to Earth solely to get these people. What was really interesting about this movie was WHY the aliens were there. **SPOILER ALERT** (If anyone is ever going to watch this movie) When the aliens took the humans, they were like harvesting their brains and using them to survive. I thought it was pretty interesting that they were using our own brain power to destroy us basically. Then you start to think that we aren't using our intelligence to its highest potential. I liked that a lot about this movie. It was so different from just the unprovoked or "we-want-your-natural-resources" type movie. All that being said, the movie was pretty good until they didn't know how to end it. Although part of me is glad that they finally explained the significance of the bad skin rash, it was just plain stupid. It also never ended, the same thing over and over. It basically almost ruined the whole thing, but I can see the good points of Skyline.