Dreamgirls

Dreamgirls was fabulous. Amazing music, amazing costumes, amazing performances. Okay, actually the story wasn't totally enthralling to me, but it's one of those movies you have to see because the play is so well known.
I have this thing that I get chill bumps when I hear music that is really intense and powerful or emotional. Like a really beautiful voice or crescendo. I had chill bumps half the time watching this movie. Every song was powerful. Jennifer Hudson is amazing. I can't beleive she was just a girl who tried out for American Idol before this, and now she's an Academy Award Winner.

Do I need to explain the story? Doesn't everyone kind of know it already? If you like a good musical, or even just good music (there aren't many random burst into song to express my feelings cheesey musical moments), you'll enjoy the movie. I mean, it won an Oscar for Best Picture, how bad can it be? Well, I'll answer that; it's not bad. It's extremely good.

Check out the trailer to see for yourself.


Into the Wild

The main reason I wanted to see this movie was that I’d heard that Robert Pattinson wanted to do Twilight with Kristen Stewart because he thought her performance in Into the Wild was great. So, I wanted to see what all the hype was about, considering I’m not a fan of her acting. Kristen’s not in the movie for long, but I did like her character.
This movie is based on a book about the true story of Christopher McCandless who after graduating from college destroyed all his IDs, donated his life savings and without telling anyone, took off into the wild. The movie goes back and forth in time throughout his journey to get to Alaska to really live in the wild by himself. Throughout the story, Chris (played by Emile Hirsch) narrates his thoughts about society, his fucked up family and just really deep stuff. His sister (played by Jena Malone) also narrates about her brother’s life before he left, and what it was like after he disappeared.

I found the idea of taking off with no warning, leaving everyone you know, society, technology and your old life behind really inspiring. I won’t be running away with a backpack anytime soon, but he made a good point about finding true happiness, not with material possesions or a career, but to find it within yourself. However, at the end of the movie he realizes that he’s actually lonely and that happiness is “only real when shared”.

This movie is definitely what I call a “thinker”. It really makes you think about your life and what it’s all about. It also makes me want to travel more and explore this world. Watch this movie and maybe learn something about yourself.

Wonderfalls

Another great, and sadly short-lived, series by Bryan Fuller. The premise is that Jaye (a Brown graduate now working in a Niagra Falls souvenir store) starts to see and hear any inanimate object with an animal face talk to her. They tell her to do things, sometimes in vague terms, and never with an explanation. She does what they say and she ends up, in a very round about way, helping people.

I thought it was very funny, cute and smart. The crazy plot of each episode starts out fairly comical, but in the end there’s deeper meaning in everything Jaye did. The longer plot lines include Jaye dealing with her trying-to-be perfect family, a love interest with a cute bartender with baggage, her best friend who deals with all her crazy ideas, and Jaye’s internal struggle to figure out what these voices are all about and why she is the way she is. Fans of Dead Like Me will find Jaye to be a lot like George; young, cynical, underachiever. The kind of dark humor is the same as Fuller’s other series.

The series is only 13 episodes, so I say check it out if you like this type of quirky characters and humor.

Friday's Fave Five

Bryan Fuller
First, a friend introduced me to Dead Like Me. Then Pushing Daisies started. And most recently I watched Wonderfalls. All created by Bryan Fuller. All my favorites. Therefor, I’m a Bryan Fuller fan. I don’t know what else to say other than watch these amazing shows (all cancelled after 1 or 2 seasons). The characters are so quirky and lovable and two (Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls) feature the adorable Lee Pace.

Spring
Yay! Spring is here! Not so yay- I got a sunburn enjoying Spring yesterday. That’ll teach me. Just because it’s only April and only about 20 degrees, doesn’t mean the UV rays aren’t out at full force. So from now on I’ll be enjoying the Spring weather with my SPF 30.

Jackson Rathbone
He’s my current celebrity crush. Really only because he’s adorable. And he’s in a band. That’s hot. And I always see him wearing suits, even in casual situations, which makes me believe he’s got a good fashion sense and boys in suits are adorable (like Jude Law in Alfie). He’s much cuter with his natural brown hair than his vampire blonde hair. So, I’m not crushing on Jasper, I’m crushing on Jackson. Just like I’m not obsessed with Edward, but I adore Rob Pattinson. I know some of you Twihards don’t seem to know there’s a difference between these boys and their vampire counterparts, but there is.

Speaking of Twihards…

Twihards
While not a Twihard myself, I find myself fascinated by the people that are. I’ve never experienced that kind of obsession with a book, movie, celebrity, or in this case a whole sub-culture. These people get tattoos, stalk the film’s actors, and believe Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart “belong together” because they can’t tell the different between them and their characters.
I liked the books, I liked the movie, I think Rob’s a babe and vampires are cool, but I’m not obsessed. I can’t remember ever being this obsessed with something besides maybe the Spice Girls when I was younger.
Most Twihards are much to old to be obsessing and confusing fiction with reality, though. Sad, really. It’ll all be over in a few years when the last movie is made and people have new stories and hot boys to obsess over. All that will be left are the horrendous tattoos they got when Twilight was the “it” thing. Sigh…

NYLON
The April issue features Lindsay Lohan on the cover. She may be a total mess in the media’s eye, but I still think she’s beautiful and talented. I even liked I Know Who Killed Me. Besides the Lindsay article, the issue also featured lots of amazing fashion as always and little notes from former cover girls saying how much they love NYLON, because it’s the 10th anniversary issue. I’ve only been reading NYLON for a few years, so it was cool to see stuff from past issues and learn about how the magazine was started.

Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide on Keeping up with the Hiltons

As a daily reader of PerezHilton.com, I was curious to see what his book was like. Turns out it’s funny, sarcastic and quite clever.

He has twelve steps to becoming what he’s dubbed a “hilton”. A “hilton” is a celebrity more famous for their ridiculous personal lives than actually doing anything of worth. These twelve steps include getting a DUI, whoring out your kids for money and milking your celebrity status for all the money you can get.

If you’re smart enough to know better, you can laugh at his suggestions of how to be a hilton and see that although they’re funny, it’s really quite sad because it’s all true. These things are really how people acquire fame and keep our interest. Unfortunately, young girls are very impressionable and are apt to take these steps seriously to get attention. For me, it was funny and interesting to learn more about how these hilton’s lives really work, like how they often call the paparazzi and have deals with companies to be seen wearing/eating/drinking/using their product.

Perez also includes a section about what he sees for the future of this crazy celebrity world. More than just making scandalous predictions about today’s young stars’ future fuck-ups, he writes like the celebrity expert that he is. He understands celebrity culture, the media and how it affects the average public. Although he writes about it in a light-hearted way, beneath that you can tell that he’s really not condoning this behavior, he’s just giving the people what they want: celebrity gossip.

In the last section of the book, Perez describes his life as a celebrity gossip blogger. I was intrigued to learn about where he gets his information, his repertoire with certain celebrities, and what publicists really do to get their client’s name and reputation out there.

With a forward by Andy Warhol “from heaven”, and an epilogue from Perez in response, I saw the connection that Perez Hilton is this generation’s Andy Warhol. Because Andy was right about everyone having their 15 minutes of fame in the future, and to all aspiring “hiltons”, Perez is the mentor they have to inspire and impress to get their 15 minutes (or more).

MirrorMask: Book

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read a few of his books and MirrorMask is one of my favoritest favorite movies. So, of course, I wanted to read the book it was adapted from, even if it’s just a short children’s book.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting the book to be like, considering it’s so short and a movie is not. It turns out the movie was exactly like the book, just with more detail and dialogue added. Besides one step/detour on their journey to find the charm, the story is identical and the dialogue from the book is exactly what made it to the movie.

The illustrations were drawings by Dave McKean combined with screenshots from the movie. The text was sometimes all over the page or in wavy lines (not in a way it was hard to read, though). The book had the same visual feel of the movie, which I love.

I was lucky enough to get this book for next-to-nothing, I’m not sure I would have paid the full $22.99 for such a small book. If you’re a fan of the movie, Neil Gaiman or Dave McKean and can get this book for cheap, I’d say get it.

What's the Big GOOPing deal?

I decided to see what the deal was with this GOOP site by Gwyneth Paltrow, and after looking around the whole site, I still don’t really get why people like it. Or her.
The site has six sections: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, and See. Each page has posts (written by Gwyneth, I’m supposed to assume), but only about 6-8 in each section. It looks like there’s only a new post/article each month.

It’s supposed to be a lifestyle website, but all I got from it was Gwyneth writing about her lifestyle. And with new posts few and far between, I don’t see the appeal. Sites like that need to be constantly updating. I guess because she’s famous Gwyneth Paltrow, people would go to it no matter what it was about.

I really just don’t get what the big deal is. But maybe it’s just not my kind of site. You may like it.

One last thing: what the fuck does GOOP mean/stand for? My only guess is that the G is for Gwyneth, the P is for Paltrow and maybe she has two middle names that start with O?

Back to the Future

My second movie about time travel in a week. This handles it very differently than The Butterfly Effect, though. Back to the Future is a total 80’s classic and I can see why. A cute Michael J. Fox in the lead (he looks exactly the same today, the dude doesn’t age!) with Christopher Lloyd as the crazy scientist for comic relief. There’s also a lot of cheesy-only-funny-in-the-80’s jokes and situations, like the cringe-inducing scenes when Marty’s mom (in the past) tries to get with him.

This isn’t really my kind of movie, but I like it for what it is: cute, funny, 80’s story. I didn’t like the improbability of when he went back to the present and everything was perfect for his family. I thought it would have been more realistic if he’d turned his dad into a rage-aholic and other things changed that he couldn’t have predicted. But, that’s just me, I’m not a fan of happy endings when they don’t make sense.

I Love You, Man

Kim and I went to see this on Saturday and the only thing I didn’t like about it was all the annoying, loud, obnoxious teenagers in the theater. This movie was hilarious!

Paul Rudd was amazing at being this incredibly awkward weird guy, trying so hard to make friends and be liked. How does he come up with these crazy words? Not even words, weird sounds. Jason Segel was also incredible. His character was actually very normal for most of the movie, only having crazy outbursts more and more as the movie went on. He was also good at playing awkward, but in a very different way than Paul Rudd’s character.

All the other actors were great as well, but Paul Rudd really steals the show. There was one character that was clearly trying to be Kristin Wiig with her weird way of talking and saying inappropriate things. I kept thinking; either this part was written for her, or this actress is trying too hard to be like her.

This movie had me laughing all the way through it. There weren’t any disgusting, sexual or inappropriate jokes, so anyone could enjoy this movie. Everyone should go see it. Unless you’re some weirdo loser who doesn’t like laughing til you can’t breathe.

Happy Easter!

Aren't you glad Jesus rose from the dead so we could have a four day weekend and yet another holiday that comes with chocolate?


I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend and their chocolate. I'm enjoying my Cadbury Mini Eggs right now. Because it's Easter I went to church this morning with my parents. My dad (a retired minister) was being a big gossip before the service started, talking to the lady in front of us about an old lady's bad dye job. I was also immaturely amused to hear Jesus referred to as a bastard in one of the choir's songs. Well, it's true, he was a bastard.

I'm going to enjoy my Easter Sunday by catching up on all the new movies, TV series and books I got recently. So I'll have many reviews coming this week of everything, including I Love You, Man which I saw last night with Kim. It was ridiculous.

In the spirit of this most chocolatey of days, enjoy this cheerful video about a chocolate Easter bunny.



Happy Easter!

.tish

S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G Songs

I started thinking about all the songs I know that spell words in them. So here is a list I compiled. It's edu-tainment!


Glamorous by Fergie “G-L-A-M-O-R-OUS, yeah!”

Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani “This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S”

Alcohol by Millionaires “Let’s get fucked up! A-L-C-O-H-O-L”

Ghetto Rock by Mos Def “Black Jack Johnson N-Y-C R-O-C-K-I-N-G”

U.G.L.Y. by Daphne and Celeste “U-G-L-Y You ain’t got no alibi, you ugly!”

L.O.V.E. by Ashlee Simpson “L-O-L-O-L-O-L-O-V-E-L-O-L-O-L-O”

Obsessed with You by The Orion Experience “I got it back again that O-B-S-E-S-S-I-O-N”

Pinkberry by The Lady Tigra “P-I-N K-B-E R-R-Y Pinkberry!”

Pump It by The Black Eyed Peas “F-R-E-S-H We fresh! D-E-F, that's right we def! We definite B-E-P, we reppin' it!” “B-L-A-C-K E -Y-E-D P to the E, then the A to the S”


and my personal favorite, the spelling song that started it all...

"A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K!" by Arthur Reid

Spanky with Kim

Sounds dirty. Isn't. Spanky is what we call Pysanky. It's a way of decorating eggs with wax and dye. It's how they make those really intricately designed Ukrainian eggs. Kim has all the dye and equipment and we learned back in high school art class how to do it, so we've been doing it around Easter time for a few years.

That's all the stuff you need. You need to soak the egg in vinegar for a few minutes before you start. Gloves to protect the egg from the oils on your hand which will resist the dye slightly and make marks on your egg. Lots of paper towel. Over ten different dyes in jars.

The process is kind of backwards. You dye it a color (starting with the lighest color) and then put wax over top of that color wherever you want that color to stay on the egg. Then you dye it the next color, put wax on, etc.

I started with what I wanted white, which was the outline of my pattern. Kim started an egg she meant to do light grey to start, but it turned out dark grey so she was going to do dark grey and black, but when she was finishing the egg she dropped it onto the table and it got a little cracked. Then when she was finishing it anyway, she squished it right on the cracked area and it broke all in her hand. Nasty.

My first color was yellow, so i dyed it yellow then covered the part I wanted to be yellow in wax. This is what that looked like when I was done. Then I went through all the colors, from lightest to darkest, putting wax where I wanted that color. When it was all covered in wax, except the section I last dyed, I (got Kim to) melt all the wax with the candle flame and wipe it off. And then you have your beautiful dyed egg!

Kim's second attempt was going to be a random pattern but as she was filling in a big section with wax by pouring it on, she made a big blob where she didn't want so she got mad and gave up. For her third egg, she decided to not try any pattern and all and instead dripped wax onto her egg making lots of blobs in all different colors and then finishing with black. The result was awesome and totally 80's and reminded us of a shitty rock n' bowl.


Our masterpieces! Hopefully mine doesn't rot like last time. You need to keep them somewhere they'll get ventilation because we didn't empty them like the pros do. Kim assures me if I just keep it on top of paper towel it'll be okay because she still has one from last year that's fine.

Friday's Fave Five

Once Soundtrack
It took me a while to watch the movie after I got it, because I wasn't sure how interesting it would really be. It was a little dull at times. It's just a mellow little story, no extreme plot. I wasn't into the music in it at first, either, but then a few of the songs really stuck with me, and I really loved the rest. The movie is about a busker who meets a girl who is also a musician. They write songs together and record a CD and then go their separate ways. The music was all written by the two stars of the movie, who are musicians on their own and only acted for this movie. It's emotion-packed acoustic guitar and piano songs. A few ballads, a few more upbeat, but they're all pretty intense with emotion. I love them all and can't stop listening to them.

Alice in Wonderland
I just got this made-for-TV version of Alice in Wonderland. I vaguely remembered Whoopi Goldburg as the cheshire cat, so I wanted to see it again. I love the crazy story of Alice in Wonderland, but I always thought the Disney version was too cutesy with too many musical numbers. Although I miss the blonde hair and blue dress look of Alice in this movie, it is definitely better than the Disney version. This movie has so much more detail from the original book, it really expands on the story and creates this crazy Wonderland world. You'll recognize a lot of the actors, including Tina Marjorino, (from Napoleon Dynamite), as Alice.

Twi-hards Hate Mail to LaineyGossip.com
As you can see from my Gossip Blogs list on the right, Lainey Gossip is one of my regular sites. I recently started checking it out because it was always linked from other gossip blogs for articles about the New Moon cast filming in Vancouver. One of my favorite things on the site is when Lainey posts examples of hate mail she gets from Twi-hards who are mad at her for posting articles and pictures that suggest Robert Pattinson and Nikki Reed are fucking. Here are some examples of obsessive fans' hate mail:
"YOU ARE A LIAR!!!!!!!!! Rob would never be with Nikki because he wants to be with KRISTEN!!!! You probably like her because she’s dirty like you. Lol!!!! But WE deserve a better Rosalie. Why do you keep messing around? You know nothing you’re just a stupid gossip making up stories so if you don’t have anything nice to say, just stop saying it. We can go without all your Twilight news. We can get it somewhere else! From Rob’s Girl"

“I just watched the video you posted of Rob and it’s disgusting that you posted it. They need to leave him alone! He just wants privacy! You need to stop telling people that “she” is his girlfriend. You need to stop being a festerer of gossip. You are in the black book already. Don’t get yourself into more trouble. Of course you’re stupid. Only someone as stupid as you wouldn’t figure out that Rob and Kristen belong together and they “ARE” together already!!!!!!!!! You asshole!”

My New Starbucks Tumbler
When I finally saw Kim last weekend after a month of mono, she had a present for me. It's a Starbucks tumbler (their word, not mine). She thought I'd like it since I had mentioned how I like those coffee thermoses without handles like they have at Starbucks and also because this one is 27% recycled and is all "green". It's ridiculously small (8 oz. / 237mL), but I learned that's a "Tall" at Starbucks. I suppose for coffee or hot beverages that's enough, but when we tested them with water it was like -gulp- done.

Homemade Popsicles
I started making my own popsicles a few weeks ago when I had mono because I needed nice, smooth, cold things to sooth my throat. Now I just eat them all the time because they're so delicious. I make them with different flavors of V8 Fusion which is 100% fruit and vegetable juice so they're nutritious and delicious! Mine aren't exactly like the picture, but you get the idea.

The Butterfly Effect: Director's Cut with Commentary

First of all, the commentary feature was very hard to find on the DVD because there are so many special feature menus with all the Infinifilm features and extras. Which is awesome, because I love me some special features and behind-the-scenes stuff, but it took some digging to find the commentary.

The commentary is only on the director's cut because the commentary is by the co-directors and co-writers, Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, and of course they prefer their cut. I've seen both versions of the film and I prefer the director's cut because it has extra scenes which add interesting plot points and the theatrical version had a very Hollywood ending where everyone lives happily ever after, but the director's cut has a darker ending in which Evan saves everyone else by sacrificing himself. (Hope I didn't spoil the movie for anyone there.)

The commentary was really interesting. They talked about technical aspects of making the film, specific scenes that were hard, what was happening behind the camera, etc. They also had lots of jokes to tell about things happening on screen as well as behind the camera stuff. I found out about a lot of themes in the movie I didn't realize before, like the color Miller Red that only appears on screen when the scene has something to do with the kids' molestation by their father. A lot of digital color correcting happened to the film, especially for flashback scenes which get increased or decreased saturation, and all the different worlds Evan creates has its own digital color treatment.

As far as commentaries go, this one is really good. They talk consistently throughout the film. You'll learn a lot about how the film was made and get more insight into the complex story.

This is My New Blog

This is what I'm going to write about:

- stuff i do/adventures/what's up with me/rants about life
- reviews of movies, TV episodes/seasons, books
- articles i write for the book i'm working on, The Little Pink Book
- fashion
- videos i make for youtube
- Friday's Fave Five - five things i'm liking that week
- anything i like and want to share - website i discover, new movie i want to see
- baking - pics, about, maybe recipes/directions

Enjoy!