Daddy's Home

Ok so one thing that I have said about movies so far is that it's a great way to escape. I know that you should not escape all the time but sometimes you just need a break from the world.... and it's problems... and it's stress....

So that is what me and one of my Best Friends, Austin, did on Sunday. We decided to make a whole evening with it and went to dinner, and then laughed our heads off to the movie Daddy's Home.

Now, this was the second time that I have seen this movie. Normally this isn't the kind of movie that would pay to see it twice, but we needed the laugh and there wasn't anything much else that was going to do that for us, so off we went.

I thought that this movie was cute, it was cuter the second time around too. I love Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell but they are knows for doing movies that are a bit..... raunchy. I was a little skeptical that I was really going to like this movie cause that is what I kind of expected with these two actors in this movie. It was not that way at all.

The movie is a comedy, you got a dad and a step-dad that is trying to show boat to the other, but there is a lot of the "warm fuzzies" in there that you could classify it as a more "grown up" family film.

I think that is what I liked about it the most that it was really centered around family, and not centered around sex. It really is about a family trying to work out a new dynamic when the mom gets re-married and the father finds out about it and comes back trying to prove how good of a father that he can be.

Of course like in most movies, they go about it the wrong way.... they are there to help them out any way they can, but they try to buy their love by spoiling them. However, it's one of the funniest forms of spoiling.

Will Ferrell plays the step-dad, who has always wanted to be a fathers, and tries for month's to get his new kids to warm up to him. He does everything that your typical "sitcom father" would do. He is there coaching basket ball, teaching Sunday School, doing everyone at once. Then there is Mark Wahlberg to is out cruising around the world doing some job... that now come to think of it it was never told what he actually did, and thinking that "when he was ready" he could come home and "settle down" with his family. However, he realizes now that it's to late for his backup plan and comes home to try and make Will look bad and get his family back.

You see early on in the movie that Mark couldn't be the father that he wanted to be because he is a free spirit with a problem with authority. He also has a really hard time staying within the cones... He seems to be great at everything, except being with his family. However, Will shows him the way and he gets his family back but not in way he thought he was going to.

Overall I give this movie a sold 7 out of 10. It's funny, cute, with a lot of sarcasm, and I personally think it's a movie that grows on you the more you see it.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Well the start of a new year has been an interesting one to say the least. Trying to get things figured out at work, trying to get school started up again, helping my best friend with wedding plans, and trying to make time for me (and not to go insane), has been crazy. However, it's been super fun. Not nearly as much stress in the last couple of months, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel with work stuff so that a HUGE plus. However, I have not gotten to hang out with friends, or do stuff myself, as much as I like so far.

However, there is one thing that I got to do that totally have made my month, and also has driven me crazy since I did it.

I got the privilege so see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat live at the Tennessee Theatre about two weeks ago!

I wasn't planning on going at all because of work, but because of the work craziness, my shifts got switched and my family had other plans so I was left to either go have fun or stay in my house by myself. I decided to go to the play by myself. Something that seems totally unlikely anyone would do unless you are a loner, but I did it and it was the best play I have ever seen!

The play is based off the story of Joseph in the Bible. He is one of twelves brothers, and was destined by God is do bigger and better things than to work on a farm. However, I do not recall any actual reference to God anywhere in the play. So, it's not a story about faith.... but it is a story from the Bible..... which I am not sure how they made it work so well, but they did. Anyways, off topic! His brothers are jealous because Jacob, their father, favors him above all the others. He shows that by giving him a coat of many colors (It was scarlet and black and ochre and peach...) and his brothers get jealous, sell him into slavery, and tell their father that he was killed....

Now that I am seeing this written out... it's disturbing that this is actually a really good, hilarious musical but it sounds like a horror story..... ANYWAYS

So it Joseph's story on how he went from favorite son, to slave, to ending up being a the equivalency of a prince in Egypt.

The reason why this play still drives me nuts is because of the music. It was so incredibly catchy that I have bought the whole soundtrack, its been out repeat in my car for two weeks and I still can not stop the songs from playing in the background in my head! The songs in this play were not at all what I thought they were going to be. When you watch a musical you hear the first song and you kinda know what you are getting yourself into musically for the rest of the show. Not with this one. The first song is your typical show-tune ballad, it sets up what the play is about, then the next song you are introduced to all of sons and song reminds sounds like you have been thrown into a West Side Story version of the Bible... Then there is never again any sort of consistency with the music. Not at all a bad thing! It totally works for the play. You have someone who sings in the style of Elvis, and the you have a Calypso-esk song, you have country, you have disco, you have a little bit of rock and roll, and there is a small through back to the 20s. There is even a song that the sons sing (without Joseph) where they are all singing with French accents and singing a song that reminds me a lot of the style the Gogol Bordello (if you don't know who they is you a missing out). Its one of those things that everyone will find something they will like.

The sets where very simple but beautifully done. There was so many set changes in this play that they had to do to show his travels from home to Egypt that they did not stay in one place for more than a few minutes. It was so seamlessly done that until you look back and think about it you don't really notice how many times that set was changed. They where colorful, they were artistic, they were a character all their own. They gave the stage the depth of a pharaoh sitting on the thrown and us looking up at him, but also gave the scene of a sad kitchen with the brothers mourning what they have done to Joseph. The costumes where the same way. They were bright and colorful when needed to be and dark and dreary the same way. There was not one thing to make me question why they did that.

Then of course the cast. You can not have a show without a cast. The cast of this play was just Fabulous! They were funny, they were excited to be there, and they really seemed to love what they were doing. This play had the most freedom when it came to the story because they interacted a lot with the audience. Like the Pharaoh came down after telling about his dream and picked a girl out of the audience and gave her the "call me" sign. One member of the cast, who played one of the brothers, was the lead singer of the song "Those Caanan Days" stood in from of the rest of the brothers while they were holding out a long note and started to get them to sing faster, slower, high and lower, and the audience cheered. Then he did the same thing to the audience making them us clap louder, softer, and he praised us for being able to follow directions.  They had a lot of fun getting audience participation as much as they did singing on the stage. I will say I was highly impressed because this is the type of play where there is little to no talking. It is all singing all the time and all dancing all the time. There is no break for them to take until they get to the intermission! They don't even get a break then because they have to change clothes and sets. They did everything from making me want to cry before they were going to arrest Benjamin, and actually making me cry from laughing so hard.

The play had so mush laughter, and sarcasm, in it that you can not help but to love it! They take you, without you knowing it at the time, on this crazy emotional roller coaster ride. It's kinda like the sets, you don't know how many times your emotions changed until you think about. You are never is one place mentally or emotion for too long with this play.

I would have to say that I hope that they come back for another play here soon. That way I can take my mom with me and show her how great it really was.

Let's face it you can read how great it was all you want but you will never really know until you go yourself.

Life is...

So....

Life....

Yeah....

....

Life is.... what? 

That right there is THE hardest question that I have even tried to figure out. When you're young life is... Simple. When you're a teen life is... Dramatic. When you're a young adult life is... complicated. When you're an adult you think life is... easy. As you get older you seem to come across a few things. 

Life is.... not what you think, Life is... not you always wanted, Life is.... not what it appears to be. 

Now before you freak and think that I am some depressed girl letting her angst out behind a computer keyboard. I am not. I am not jumping off the deep end, I am not saying that the world sucks, and this is not some crazy cry for help. 

What I am trying to say is Life is... Now.

 I am 23, worked at the same place for the last 7 years, spent four year getting a two year degree, failed a whole semesters worth of classes earlier this year, retaking those same classes again. Home life is currently a total wreck with no hope on really changing anytime soon, and I have no means to move out on my own, AND have no idea what I am going to do after I graduate.

Life in the now is really all I have... currently Life in the now.... Sucks.

Now I am not saying this because I am going to do anything rash.. I am saying it because until today I did not realize just tonight how much I was just going through the motions of life. 

I knew that I was not fully here but I did not realize how much I checked out just so I could survive through some temporary stuff. I have no idea when in the last year that I stopped putting my heart into things. I have no idea when I stopped caring as much as I did. I know that this was gradual, that I didn't just wake up one day and say "I give up I don't care". 

Funny thing is I learned how much I stopped by doing something I always do.... Watch NCIS: New Orleans. King said something that was my "Wake up call" if you will he said "Don't let a bad situation define who you are". 

It's funny how something that simple can sum up a whole mess of a year. This year has been bad for me. Losing people I love, incorporating new people, work drama, home drama, failing school, transitions at work, looking for a way out and not seeming to find one. 

It's like Marilyn Monroe said "sometimes good things fall apart so better think can come together".

Things are not going to get better right away but I believe that they will soon. 

I turn 24 next week and it's already looking better than 23... simply because.... 23 will not be the year that defines the rest of my life.

Best Picture of 1927/1928: Wings

I will have to say that I was really wary of watching this film. I love old movies, I love the artistry, however, I have not exposed myself to a whole lot of Silent Films in my movie watching experience.

I am glad that I did decide to do this challenge because it's going to make me watch movies that I might not otherwise watch. Wings  being one of them. 

Now in the title I know that it says that it was the best picture of two different years. Well when the first few years of the Academy Awards they did it by non-calendar year. So, the first few of these movie are not going to be for one year. Also, in the first few years of the Academy Awards they only allowed five films to be nominated. We are used to there being ten nominated films because the rules were changed in 2009 to have between five to ten movies nominated.

But I digress.

Wings was produced by Paramount, Main producer was Lucien Hubbard, and was release August  12, 1927. The film had a 2 Million Dollar budget, and that was money in 1927 equivalent to about 26 Million Dollars today. It is one of two silents films to win the Best Picture Award (the other surprisingly is The Artist which was released in 2011). The film also won Best Effects, Engineering Effects at the Academy Awards that same year. The Effects were done by Roy Pomeroy. The film was thought to be lost until 2012 when it was found, restored, and redistributed for a limited time in the movies. In 1997 it was officially put into the National Film Registry for being the first film to win Best Picture.

Wings was in contest for Best Picture agaistn Howard Hughes's The Racket (1928) also with Paramount, and William Fox's Seventh Heaven (1927) from Fox.

The Movie is about two young men, who are in love with the same woman, going off to fight in World War I. The stars of the film are Clara Bow, who plays Mary Preston a young girl infatuated with a Jack Powell. Charles "Buddy" Rogers plays Jack Powell he is the "boy next door turn war hero" of our story. He thinks he is love with a girl named Sylvia, Jobyna Ralston, but in reality he is in love with the idea of her. It takes the whole film for him to realize where his heart really lies. Jack starts off hating another young man from him hometown, reason is because this young man is in love with Sylvia too. This wealthy, and handsome, character is named David Armstrong who is played by Richard Arlen. The plot of this movie is how these two men form a true friendship, despite them loving the same girl, during the struggles and tragedies of the war.

Once you see the film you quickly see why this film won best effects. The Director, William A. Wellman, wanted to make a movie about the war as realistic as possible. This is the film in which all war movies would be compared to. This was the film that changed how action sequences were shot to begin with. A lot of thought and preparation was put into the film. During this time when films were shot in about two months, this film took nine months to shoot. Wellman wanted everything to be as realistic as possible. Since he was an aviation pilot in World War I himself, it was something that he was passionate about. He wanted part of the film to be shot up close in the cockpit of the aircraft.He had the actors trained to fly a plane and then he mounted a camera on the plane for the close up shots.

He only needed to have one of his stars trained. Along with Wellman, Richard Arlen also fought in World War I and was also an aviation pilot. So, when you watch and think that the effects of them flying look very realistic for the time period it was made, that is because it is realistic. When they are up there flying around and acting in front of the camera they really are!

As visually stunning as the film is there are some who did not care for the film that much. One of them was star Clara Bow. She says "Wings is... a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie". She believed this because the film was rewritten so Paramount could put her in the film, because she was the number one box office draw with Paramount at the time. Despite some of the negative reviews the movie ran for an astonishing 63 weeks before it was moved to second run theaters. Seeing that some movies today are beginning to be pulled after the required two week screening contacted by movie theaters (Jem and the Holograms anyone?) and this film lasted a year before it got to a bigger audience. I would have to say that that is an overwhelming success! 

Since I have not seen the other two movies that were nominated that year, I can not whole heatedly say I would agree with The Academy or not. However, watching this film and all the accomplishments it has had and the work put into it I can see why it was nominated. The film to me was visually stunning and slightly scandalous. It was one of the first films to show brief nudity. I was shocked to see this because most of the films that I have seen were under The Motion Picture Production Code, which prohibited nudity. However, with further research I leaned that censorship  was trying to be enforced during this time is was wildly ignored. The very strict Motion Picture Production Code would not be really enforced until 1934. It will be interesting to see what Hollywood was "getting away with" in these first few films before that code was enforced.

This movie is not going to be very high on my "must see" list but it do believe it will be on of my most memorable for the visual effect and the innovation of war films.

With all of that being said 1 down 86 to go!

You're Doing Fine Oklahoma!

So it has been a while since I have updated but I started back to school so fun stuff is out the window but I wanted to add this update because I felt like I needed to.

Now if I haven't already stated this, but really I shouldn't because It's kinnda obvious, but I am not a writer. I am just a girl who likes movies and wants to record her own thoughts. If there is anyone out there who is actually reading my inner nerd then welcome to what I call the hope post.

For whatever reason that last few weeks I have been in a bad slump. Like I have no energy to do anything. Like I don't want to hang out with friends, I don't want to go to work (I really do love my job so for me this is weird), and I don't want to do anything really. I have never been diagnosed with depression but how I imagine what it feels like this would be it. Since I don't want to proclaim that I am depressed I am just going to call it my slump.

However, I feel like I see a way out of the slump. I think that I need to do is just make myself do things. I know that sounds weird but it's the truth. If I get myself to do some things that I don't want to do I start to feel better. The reason that I am saying all of this is because today I was really excited about doing something but it kinnda feel apart...

One of my all time favorite movies is the Classic Rogers and Hammerstein hit Oklahoma. Now, if you are a fan of the movie the title of this post makes a little more sense. Anyhow, I found out a few weeks ago that They were doing a 60th anniversary theater release of the movie in a few cities that the city I live in was one of them. However, it was not in the normal theater that they do this kind of stuff in and it wasn't really advertised. Truly if I did not catch the post of facebook I would have totally missed it.

Well, I buy the tickets and my excitement to see this movie gets interrupted, I got some bad news. No one died or anything but it just was not good news.  So, my excited movie watching experience turned into a good movie watching experience we this slight constant worrying in the back of my mind.

However, leave it to movies to give you the very thing that you need to hear right when you need to hear it.

See as much as I love the movie I haven't seen it in almost a year and a half. So some of the finer lessons that come from this movie I don't remember. In the movie Laurie is the girl of Curley's dreams. They have a really playful relationship that I really love! Toward the middle of the movie Laurie turns to her Aunt Eller and asks her why do things need to change. She wants everything to stay the exact same that it is right now. Well, before the bad phone call came that is what I wanted everything was good and I wanted it to stay that way. How the movies go it didn't stay that same for very long. Laurie marries Curley, Judd tries to kill them, and Curley ends up accidentally killing Judd and all of this happens on the wedding day. While they are taking Judd to the Dr. (before he died) Laurie and Aunt Eller start to talking. Laurie asks why did this have to happen? Why do bad things have to happen to happen at all? Aunt Eller then says something that I really needed to hear.

She tells her goes something like this. That you can't account for bad things to happen. What you can do is look at all the good on one side and the bad on the other and say "well ok" to the both of them. I was shocked that really that's the way to look at life. That things are going to happen and after they do that only thing that you can do it look at everything and go ok that happened what now.

Life is really just rolling with the punches and make some choices. Not making choices and rolling with the punches. Right now everything is kinnda sucks. However, I know that this is not going to last forever and I will be ok. I just have to look at both good and bad and find the balance.

The Avenger in Us

Yeah I know it's a lame title but I can't think of anything else to call it.

I went with my best friend to go and see the Advance Screening of the new Avengers movie last night and I have to say that it's SO much better than the first movie.

Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the first movie! It's was really good, fantastic writing, my only complaint is that they waited too long to bring Thor in, but still really good. This movie was better cause it seemed more like how a team would intact with each other rather than the uniformed team that just fights and secretly hates each other..... but I digress.

I didn't really want to write this blog to do a review of the movie, cause I would totally spoil the whole thing if I did, but I did realize some cool stuff as to why the movie was so popular to begin with. The characters are totally relatable.

A Chance at Heaven

Have you ever been in one of those moments where you think "I know that is wrong, and I know that this isn't going to end well, yet not matter what I say or do it's going to happen anyways and I can't do anything to stop it"?

Today was one of those days...


Today was supposed to be one of those moments that you dream of, one of those moments that you share with you kids and grandchildren. Yet, I know that this story will be told but not in the way they will want to. It will be a sad story, that will eventually get a happy ending, but this start is a sad one.

Right now is her "Chance at Heaven".

For those of you who don't know what that movie is, the movie stars Ginger Rogers and she has been dating a man, a good guy, for two years and right before he is going to propose this high and mighty girl swoops in and marries him before Ginger can.

Now before you think that my life is the one person is Ginger and her man was taken away, it's not quite like that. See the man in this story is the one not to be trusted. The person sees the man as a Change at Heaven for getting that love that she feels that God so wrongly deprived her of. Really God was trying to work to get her to a place where the real love of her life can come in and they fall in love. I am Ginger Rogers, and no my man was not stolen either, I don't even have one of those yet (hint hint God lol). No I am Ginger Rogers watching this story unfold and knowing that it's not going to end how she wants it too. Knowing that it's she that is going to be left instead of he. Knowing that all I could do is just try and be there for her when thing eventually all fall apart. Her Chance at Heaven is really going to be her own personal hell of earth. That alone is enough to make you go crazy.

I also know that, that the movie, everything has it's own way of working out. That this is going to last forever and she is going to be a better person because of it.

Knowing the God can take this hell on earth and really turn it into a great chance at heave later on is enough for me to keep going and praying for that fact that it's all going to be just fine.