Last Saturday, I went to my local Blockbuster (yes, we still have one of those) and rented three movies: Batman: Under the Red Hood, Clue, and Men Who Stare at Goats. I didn't actually get to watching them until today, which was when they were due, so I had a nice marathon.
Batman: Under the Red Hood
I'm not too crazy about the animation design of this one. It reminds me too much of the bland, dead-eyed, Canadian-animated cartoons that plague German kids' networks (like this for example). Actually, it probably resembles the Young Justice TV show a bit more; a little more stylized and shaded, and having slightly more expression in the eyes.
What I do like about this is the voice acting. Bruce Greenwood (Thirteen Days), Jensen Ackles (Supernatural), John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time), Jason Isaacs (Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Harry Potter series), and Neil Patrick Harris (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, How I met Your Mother) all give good performances. And really, just the fact that THIS is our cast still floors me.
Very well done. Short and sweet.
Clue
Long story short (too late), someone made a movie based off of a board game, and it didn't suck. It's hilarious, and I want more movies with multiple endings.
Men Who Stare at Goats
So this is loosely based off of a non-fictional book written by a guy who interviewed to former members of the "First Earth Battalion". It's a weird one. What I find odd is that it seems as if everyone here is type-casted. George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey basically play the kind of roles you would expect them to. Ewan McGregor is the audience avatar. And Robert Patrick was in here somewhere, but I'm still not sure who he played.
It's pretty bizarre.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
More Morose Bitching
I'm writing this at 2-something AM. I have no idea why I can't sleep. Maybe my mind is actually racing with thoughts and I just haven't been paying attention.
As for the status of anything at this point, I have started editing the Rugrats in Paris review. This might be like editing the first Rugrats review, where I grow more and more reluctant and irritable the closer the review gets to completion. As for any other review ideas, I've had a few, but none that compelled me to actually write something out.
While that's sort of going on, I'm also making progress on fanfics. They seem to be the things I actually enjoy writing. I've finished and posted a one-shot on DeviantArt and FanFiction.net and quite a few people (two) have asked me to write a continuation. I may be up to that once I finish this other fanfic that I haven't updated since September. Irritating how time flies by.
This is my third month back home, and I still don't have a job nor am I taking any classes. I have been applying though. Granted, I haven't been putting all that much energy into it. I've also been told to apply for scholarships.
When I'm not wasting away my days on Tumblr, I tend to do a lot of thinking. The sort of thinking that would get me into a somber mood, guaranteed. I'm not sure how long this has been going on. I wanna say that it started while I was in Germany. That much alone time, especially in an awkward school setting, can be used for existential quandary. Though I'm not sure if I did this same sort of thing back when I was in school, even before my first relationship. Perhaps I was too busy to notice back then.
Whatever the case, I get into these slumps filled with nagging thoughts about the future and how I will view what will eventually be the past at that point. I'm not sure what my deal is. And part of me wonders if I should see someone about this. I can't really go to my friends, most of them are too busy to hang out with me. I don't want to worry my parents too much. Then again, how else could I get an appointment with a therapist?
I don't know anymore.
As for the status of anything at this point, I have started editing the Rugrats in Paris review. This might be like editing the first Rugrats review, where I grow more and more reluctant and irritable the closer the review gets to completion. As for any other review ideas, I've had a few, but none that compelled me to actually write something out.
While that's sort of going on, I'm also making progress on fanfics. They seem to be the things I actually enjoy writing. I've finished and posted a one-shot on DeviantArt and FanFiction.net and quite a few people (two) have asked me to write a continuation. I may be up to that once I finish this other fanfic that I haven't updated since September. Irritating how time flies by.
This is my third month back home, and I still don't have a job nor am I taking any classes. I have been applying though. Granted, I haven't been putting all that much energy into it. I've also been told to apply for scholarships.
When I'm not wasting away my days on Tumblr, I tend to do a lot of thinking. The sort of thinking that would get me into a somber mood, guaranteed. I'm not sure how long this has been going on. I wanna say that it started while I was in Germany. That much alone time, especially in an awkward school setting, can be used for existential quandary. Though I'm not sure if I did this same sort of thing back when I was in school, even before my first relationship. Perhaps I was too busy to notice back then.
Whatever the case, I get into these slumps filled with nagging thoughts about the future and how I will view what will eventually be the past at that point. I'm not sure what my deal is. And part of me wonders if I should see someone about this. I can't really go to my friends, most of them are too busy to hang out with me. I don't want to worry my parents too much. Then again, how else could I get an appointment with a therapist?
I don't know anymore.
Monday, April 15, 2013
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
This is the sort of novel I think that everyone should read at some point. It certainly was a novel I needed to read, especially at this point in my life.
The novel, later adapted to the screen by it's own author, is a collection of fictional letters written by a teenaged boy who refers to himself as "Charlie". These letters detail "Charlie's" freshman year of high school as well as certain events of his past. Whom the letters are adressed to is never really explained beyond "a person who didn't have sex with this other person at a party, whom some girl was talking about being very trustworthy and stuff".
The identity of the person he writes to isn't really that important, because really, I think the point of the book is that "Charlie" could be anyone (YOU, for example) and could be writing to anyone (YOU, for example). Granted, my life isn't as fucked up as "Charlie's", but there are still things I could identify with.
I seem to remember at some point, way back when I had to read Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn for school (twice), that I was pretty annoyed at the fact that there were so many books, TV shows, and movies about high school kids with such depressing/interesting lives (self-harm, abuse, sex, drugs, wild partying, et cetera) and almost none about high school kids with lives similar to mine (i.e. boring, would not make good television). The thing is, I was more passive back in junior high and high school. I wasn't even the person with the "normal" life who had friends with "depressing" ones; I was the person who had the "normal" life who had friends with "different but not sad" lives. And I was very much aware of this. So at the time, I regarded this sort of material with a slight animosity (though, I haven't heard of Perks of Being a Wallflower until years later).
I remember when a production of the musical Spring Awakening came to Yakima's Capitol Theater. My family, being theater goers, went to see it. And I remember being angry at how needlessly depressing that show was. It had everything. A scene about masturbation, a scene where a girl tells her friends about her father abusing her, a scene where the female lead asks the male lead to hit her with a riding crop so that she could know what it's like to be abused, a scene where the male lead has sex with the female lead even though she doesn't know that that's where babies come from because her mother wouldn't tell at the beginning of the show, a scene where a kid is driven to suicide by his own sexual frustration, a scene where the male lead is held responsible for the kid's suicide because he gave him a book about sex, a scene where the male lead is thrown in jail while the female lead's mother takes her to get a back alley abortion, and a scene where the male lead breaks out of jail only to find the tombstone of the female lead. Fuck. This. Noise.
So why would I like Wallflower, even though it has such content, and write off Spring Awakening as a waste of time? Really, it's because Wallflower is a book. It takes me a while to read books, meaning that I have more time to spend with the characters, and more time for me to get attached to them. A musical is a story concentrated to 2-3 hours, giving me less time to give a shit about characters that are essentially recycled archetypes anyway. So in musicals, I focus more on the plot and goings-on than I do the characters. And when all I have to focus on is depressing shit piling on like that when I'm not invested in who it's happening to, I get irritated.
That being said, Wallflower also has a few choice quotes, which I'm sure some of you have seen repeated endlessly. This is where "I swear we were infinite" comes from. But there is certainly more beyond that.
So by all means, read this book.
The novel, later adapted to the screen by it's own author, is a collection of fictional letters written by a teenaged boy who refers to himself as "Charlie". These letters detail "Charlie's" freshman year of high school as well as certain events of his past. Whom the letters are adressed to is never really explained beyond "a person who didn't have sex with this other person at a party, whom some girl was talking about being very trustworthy and stuff".
The identity of the person he writes to isn't really that important, because really, I think the point of the book is that "Charlie" could be anyone (YOU, for example) and could be writing to anyone (YOU, for example). Granted, my life isn't as fucked up as "Charlie's", but there are still things I could identify with.
I seem to remember at some point, way back when I had to read Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn for school (twice), that I was pretty annoyed at the fact that there were so many books, TV shows, and movies about high school kids with such depressing/interesting lives (self-harm, abuse, sex, drugs, wild partying, et cetera) and almost none about high school kids with lives similar to mine (i.e. boring, would not make good television). The thing is, I was more passive back in junior high and high school. I wasn't even the person with the "normal" life who had friends with "depressing" ones; I was the person who had the "normal" life who had friends with "different but not sad" lives. And I was very much aware of this. So at the time, I regarded this sort of material with a slight animosity (though, I haven't heard of Perks of Being a Wallflower until years later).
I remember when a production of the musical Spring Awakening came to Yakima's Capitol Theater. My family, being theater goers, went to see it. And I remember being angry at how needlessly depressing that show was. It had everything. A scene about masturbation, a scene where a girl tells her friends about her father abusing her, a scene where the female lead asks the male lead to hit her with a riding crop so that she could know what it's like to be abused, a scene where the male lead has sex with the female lead even though she doesn't know that that's where babies come from because her mother wouldn't tell at the beginning of the show, a scene where a kid is driven to suicide by his own sexual frustration, a scene where the male lead is held responsible for the kid's suicide because he gave him a book about sex, a scene where the male lead is thrown in jail while the female lead's mother takes her to get a back alley abortion, and a scene where the male lead breaks out of jail only to find the tombstone of the female lead. Fuck. This. Noise.
So why would I like Wallflower, even though it has such content, and write off Spring Awakening as a waste of time? Really, it's because Wallflower is a book. It takes me a while to read books, meaning that I have more time to spend with the characters, and more time for me to get attached to them. A musical is a story concentrated to 2-3 hours, giving me less time to give a shit about characters that are essentially recycled archetypes anyway. So in musicals, I focus more on the plot and goings-on than I do the characters. And when all I have to focus on is depressing shit piling on like that when I'm not invested in who it's happening to, I get irritated.
That being said, Wallflower also has a few choice quotes, which I'm sure some of you have seen repeated endlessly. This is where "I swear we were infinite" comes from. But there is certainly more beyond that.
So by all means, read this book.
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