Recent Movie/TV Show Reviews

     I haven't done a blog post in a long while, obviously. I've seen quite a few movies lately and started a TV show so I wanted to let everyone know what my thoughts were on these viewing experiences. Prepare to be wowed and overcome with emotion at my very wise and poignant observations. I've got IMDb links scattered throughout in case you want to check out the movie, actors, etc. in more depth.

     The first movie up is Spring Breakers. Stacey and I saw this a few weeks ago because we were both curious as to how the two Disney stars were going to make the transition into more adult movies (no, not what you're thinking, but I can't come up with a better phrase). Overall the movie was just ok. There was a good message underlying the whole thing. At the end of the movie I think two of the main characters realized that the party lifestyle wasn't all it's cracked up to be and that they needed to grow up more, stop being selfish and be good to people. At least I think it was there. It's what I got out of the movie, if that's not what the director intended then maybe I'm reading too much into it. Anyway this message (if it did indeed exist) was overshadowed by the over the top nature of movie. There was so much violence, sex, nudity, and alcohol/drug use that was really unnecessary. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude and I think these things have their place when they serve the story. I also realize that a lot of this was part of the story, showing that these were hard-partying college students who also get into crime later on. However after awhile it was just unnecessary to keep showing these things. We get it already, you don't need to keep reminding us. So like I said, overall it was just an ok movie. We were glad we caught the matinee.

     We watched the movie Flight on DVD which Stacey got through Netflix. I was very interested to see it when it was in theaters but I didn't get the chance. I always like Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis, the director, has given us such classics as the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump and Castaway (also about ten thousand CG motion capture movies which I haven't seen). Flight was very very good. The basic story is that Denzel Washington is a pilot who (sort-of mostly) lands a plane in a field after the plane starts an uncontrollable descent. Because of his smart maneuvering only six people died. This is tragic, of course, but had he not tried what he did and succeeded everyone probably would've died instead of just six people. He is hailed as a hero until it comes out that he was drunk and high while flying the plane. We follow Denzel through the rest of the movie as he fights his addictions while simultaneously pushing away anyone who cares about him and wants to help. It's heartbreaking because you want him to succeed in battling his demons even though time after time he fails and succumbs to drugs and drinking. I would definitely recommend Flight, it's a very powerful and well-acted story.

     This past weekend we went to see the Evil Dead remake. I was excited to see it because I love the original Bruce Campbell/Sam Raimi series. However I knew this would be different. When Sam Raimi made the first Evil Dead he had intended it to be a straight-forward horror film about five college-age friends who go to an abandoned cabin and inadvertently release Sumerian (I think they were Sumerian, at least) demons that then possess and kill the friends one by one until the last one is left to battle the Deadites (as they later became known in Army of Darkness). However the budget was so limited and the acting was so cheesy that it came across as a horror/comedy hybrid. It became such a cult hit that when they did the sequel, they dropped all pretense of trying to be serious and made it an over the top comedy/horror movie on purpose this time. This new Evil Dead remake was going to stay in the same vein as the original, except this time they would have the budget to do the special effects as realistically as possible (well, when we're talking about talking about fantastical horror that's a tall order) to make it just a horror film. I was kind of excited to see how this would play out, but a little bummed that there wouldn't be any comedy elements like the original series. The movie follows the same basic premise of the original Evil Dead. There are minor differences here and there, but it's mostly the same story. One of the big deviations is that there is no central hero in the story like Bruce Campbell's Ash in the original. One of the characters has some of the same characteristics of Ash in the role that they eventually play, but the circumstances are very different. If all that sounds very vague it's because I'm avoiding spoilers here. Also in that same vein the ending is very different from the original, but again, no info on that to avoid spoilers. Overall I liked it. I still like the original series better, but that's because I'm not a very big fan of horror movies in general. I mostly like horror when it is joined with another genre, ie Shaun of the Dead (horror/comedy) or John Carpenter's The Thing (horror/sci-fi). The other times I like horror-type movies is when they are within the zombie or monster movie sub-genres (if those aren't really sub-genres then they are now). Otherwise I steer clear of the torture-porn/demon-possession/haunting/thriller horror movies that are common today.

     In connection with the Evil Dead I recently watched Re-Animator on Amazon Prime. In doing research for the history of Evil Dead, Wikipedia mentioned that there had been a comic book crossover between the Evil Dead and Re-Animator. I had put Re-Animator on my watchlist for Amazon Prime a while back because I had heard it was a very good zombie/horror movie. Then when I read that it was similar to Evil Dead and that it was based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft I really wanted to see it. Full disclosure, I haven't actually read anything by Lovecraft but what I have read about him and his stories has been fascinating. I have an anthology of his best known work sitting on my bookshelf, but it hasn't been opened yet, though I hope to change that in the future. So I watched the movie and it was deliciously 80's-tastic. I can see the comparisons to the Evil Dead, because the special effects are very very dated by today's standards, and the acting is barely believable. It seems like it could've been along the same lines as the original Evil Dead, where they set out to make a horror movie but due to budget constraints and limited acting range it came across as humorous, whether intended or not. It basically come across as a very fun, campy, zombie movie. It's not necessarily a traditional zombie movie, but the dead do come back to life, albeit without a taste for human flesh and/or brains. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone who likes zombie movies and over the top 80's movies.

     The last thing on my list is a TV show. Stacey had borrowed the DVD set of the first season of Girls from a friend. Girls is a new show on HBO about, yes, you guessed it, girls. It follows four early to mid-twenty-somethings as they live their lives in New York City. They all have the requisite identity and social issues and we watch them try to deal with all of these issues each episode. That may sound jaded and dismissive of me, implying that these aren't serious/important things. On the contrary these are very serious issues that I'm sure every young woman goes through (I can't really speak to this since I am not a female, nor do I play one on TV) but I feel like shows/movies focusing on these topics have been played out. Of course you can call bullshit because I watch comic book and action movies where basically the same thing happens in every movie, but those movies are where my interests are, so it's more entertaining to me. I don't necessarily dislike the show, but it's not something I'm going to go out of my way to watch either. The thing that I don't really like about it is the same thing that rubbed me the wrong way when I watched a few episodes of The West Wing: no one talks the way characters on these shows talk and no one is that quippy in real life. It's like the show is trying too hard to seem smart and savvy and appeal to a certain demographic (apparently New York hipsters, in the case of Girls). I realize that many people swear by The West Wing, and probably the same for Girls. Again, I don't dislike either of these shows, but they're just not shows that I can personally identify with or get into. I'm sure they are good at what they are trying to do, but I'm not interested in what they are trying to do.

     Hopefully you enjoyed my insights (I can call them that, right?) into the recent movies and solitary new TV show I've seen within the past few weeks. That's it. I'm out, until next time.

Can you see the real me?

So here I am again. Same old, same old. Filled with self-doubt, wondering what direction I should take. Trying to make any decision whatsoever about what direction my life will go in, personally, financially, academically, career-wise, everything. It's been about 3 years since I graduated from college, and for that time I feel like I've been living on hold. I haven't moved forward, nor backward. I've just been running through the motions, living day-to-day and ignoring (or rather, hiding from) the big picture. I'm terrified of the future because I don't know what form it will take. I don't know where I'll be, what I'll be doing, who will be there with me. To me, uncertainty is the most maddening thing I can think of and that's because you have no possible way to control it. As I've said before I feel frozen, not being able to move forward because I'm terrified I'll make the wrong decision, terrified that I'll fail at something. I'm trying to work through these problems, and friends both new and old have been helping, but it ultimately comes down to me. I have to take control. I have to live my life, not just be a spectator to it. It's not easy to go froward, but going backward is not an option. I've got to figure out what I'm passionate about, what makes me tick, and what's going to make me want to get up in the morning 20 years down the road. Again, I know I'm the only person who can decide this. It's up to me to set a course for the future, one that isn't in some nebulous gray area. I've got to find happiness, in whatever form that takes.

The title comes from the song The Real Me by The Who from their album Quadrophenia. The album is one I really identify with because the main character is a young man who isn't necessarily sure who he is or what he wants to do. In The Real Me he goes around to different people (a psychiatrist, his mother, a former romantic interest, and a preacher) asking them if they see the real him. They apparently don't. He doesn't get any really clarity of who he is until the last song when in the middle of a storm at sea he has an epiphany: through this search he's grown and become what he was looking for; he was himself all along. Hopefully I'll have a similar epiphany, when the time is right, and when I've grown up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dlN55SoF4Q

I went back to the doctor
To get another shrink
I sit and tell him about my weekend
But he never betrays what he thinks

Can you see the real me doctor, doctor
Can you see the real me doctor, whoa doctor

I went back to my mother
I said, "I'm crazy, ma, help me"
She said, "I know how it feels son
'Cause it runs in the family"

Can you see the real me, mother, mother
Can you see the real me, mother, ooh mother
Can you see, can you see, can you see the real me
Can you see, can you see the real me, the real me, the real me

The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane

The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house
Yesterday she passed me by
She doesn't want to know me now

Can you see the real me, can you, can you
Can you see the real me, can you, whoa yeah

I ended up with a preacher
Full of lies and hate
I seemed to scare him a little
So he showed me to the golden gate

Can you see the real me preacher, preacher
Can you see the real me preacher
Can you see, can you see, can you see, oh
Can you see the real me doctor
Can you see the real me mother 

Can you see the real me me me me me me me me me me me      

Froyo so far

Most of you out there won't care about this but for those of you with Android phones I wanted to give my first impression of Froyo (Android 2.2) so far. The main feature that was touted (at least in the news sources I was reading) was the speed improvement. I can say that this is definitely true. I notice things going faster, apps opening faster, scrolling happens faster, etc. It's not mind-blowingly faster but I do notice a pronounced difference. Then there's the Flash 10.1 support (or lack thereof). Android 2.2 does come with Flash support, however you can't actually download it from the market which will probably have a lot of people confused. I know I was at first. Then I remembered a post from a few weeks ago on droid-life.com (probably the best Droid-specific site out there) that there was a developer's release you could download. So I did that and presto-chango, I had Flash on my phone. It is a neat feature but not one I'll probably use all that often. It's just nice that I have the option to use it (Steve Jobs would not approve). Chrome-to-phone is another neat feature. If you have the app installed on your phone and the extension installed on the Google Chrome browser you can send webpages or maps straight to your phone and the corresponding app will open. Good idea if you're looking up directions on your computer right before you need to leave. There are little UI tweaks here and there but for the most part everything looks the same. I did notice that Arabic charcters display properly now. This means that even though I have no idea what they mean, I can see the title's of Olivia's photo albums on Facebook on my phone now. Another feature I haven't really messed with is the app-to-sd where you can install and/or move apps to the SD card rather than having everything installed on the onboard memory, hogging the little space there is to begin with. Those are my thoughts so far. Supposedly there's another update coming in the very near future to possibly fix some bugs already but everything's only a rumor at this point. As I said earlier, droid-life.com is an amazing resource for anyone who has a phone in the Droid family. Over and out.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.9

My Wake-up Call

Do you ever have one of this epiphanies where something seemingly heavy (not weight-wise) but painfully obvious gets dropped on you? I had one of those moments. I realized it's time for me to grow up. Maybe most people realize this earlier in their lives or maybe this is normal, I don't know. I only have my own experiences to go off of. But I now understand that I need to be better prepared to deal with the future and that means it's time to make more responsible choices and get myself into a better position to do the things I want in life.

Not that I'm a particularly irresponsible person. I just have to better prepare myself for what I can do in the future. I need to believe in myself. I know a lot of people do and that's comforting to a certain extent, but that only goes so far. If I don't believe in myself and my capabilities, I'm not going to get anywhere. For a long time I've been crippled by self-doubt. I think it started when I graduated from college. When you start school in kindergarten you have a clear path. Go grade by grade until your senior year and then you graduate. Then you either find a job, join the armed forces or go to college. Many people end up going to college because anymore that's what is expected of you, even if you have no desire. Now I'm not one of those people, I did very much want to go to college; but I think that there are people who don't want to go and do anyway because of societal norms. These people don't belong in college and that's not because they're not smart enough, but it's because they don't want to be there. It's going to be a waste of time for them because even if they are capable, they won't gain much from it if their heart's not in it. That's mostly a tangent and doesn't have a lot of bearing on what I'm writing about but I thought I would put in my $0.02. I went through college, chose a major, changed things around, added another major and then BAM, I graduated. Had I thought about the practical applications of my major(s)? Only very little. This was my fault entirely, my professors had given me ample opportunities to explore the options for the future but I had never really been sure that archaeology/classical studies was what I wanted to do. I in no way regret the work I did in college. I enjoyed all of my classes and professors very much and I learned a lot. But I had no clear career path.

So here I am after graduation and I have nothing lined up. Up until that point my entire life had been one long string of events all connected together, one stage following the next in a logical progression. I always knew what was going to happen next. Now that progression had been broken. And that's when I lost confidence in myself. What do I do now? I've always known what was next before, but now everything's hazy? What am I supposed to do? I began to second guess what I was capable of, what I could be good at, what I should be doing. When you're not sure what your direction in life is it's a very unnerving depressing thing. In the movie Unbreakable Samuel L. Jackson's character tells Bruce Willis: "Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you're here." My sentiments exactly. Of course, Sammy L. (as my good friend Evan likes to call him) goes on to explain that he basically became a super-villain and committed quite a few terrorist acts to draw out someone who was his opposite so he would know who he was. I don't think I'm really the type to go Lex Luthor so no one reading this needs to worry that I'll come up with a secret lab somewhere in which I come up with dastardly deeds against humanity. Besides, I'm not very good at building giant robots or chemistry so my career in super-villainy is very limited. But in all seriousness, when you don't really know what your purpose is it's a scary thing.

My response has been less than admirable and very counter-productive. I've basically shut down. I doubt myself so much that I don't want to try anything new. I don't want to change anything because the evil (or stagnation, in this case) that you know is better than the evil that you don't know. When I look back over the way I've been it's pathetic, really. But I've never bothered to change. I've let down people that I love and I've just not been myself for a long time. But that's going to change. I'm tired of making excuses. I'm tired of wallowing in self-doubt and self-pity. I'm tired of not feeling like myself. I'm tired of not knowing. I'm not getting any younger so it's now or never. I've got more than myself to think about. This is it, this is when I've got to separate who I've been from who I can be. To the people I care about who've never left, thanks for sticking around. I love you all and thanks for doing the same.

My favorite song for a while now has been Baba O'Riley by the greatest band to ever play music, The Who. After listening to it time and time again I realized the third verse is very pertinent to what I'm trying to get across. I take it to mean the narrator is leaving behind the things he's comfortable with in order to move on to better things before it's too late. I don't know if that's what Pete Townshend intended when he wrote those lyrics but that's what I'm taking from them. I'll print those lyrics below but the entire song is amazing and I get chills every time I hear the intro. Check out the song here.

Sally, take my hand
We'll travel south 'cross land
Put out the fire
And don't look past my shoulder.

The exodus is here
The happy ones are near
Let's get together

Before we get much older.

Confessions of a former telemarketer, Education, and Marriage

It's been quite a long time since I've written one of these. It's not easy to keep up with one of these as I can attest to from experience. Originally I had started this blog to write about my experiences travelling abroad during the fall semester of 2006. That's been almost 4 years ago and I haven't written too much since then. I can't say that this is me turning over a new leaf because I just happened to have the drive to write something today. I don't know if this is going to be a regular occurrence but I suppose I'll make an effort.

One of the main reasons I'm writing this is because there have been a lot of changes in my life as of late, mostly good ones. I've switched jobs a few times and now live in Oxford, Ohio for the time being. I'm going back to school to get into the information technology field as it's something I've always been interested in for as long as I can remember. Also I now have a lovely wife as of June 19th, Olivia Mote. More on all of these tonight at 6!

No but really, things have been up and down for a while. Ever since I graduated I was doing jobs that I didn't really care for. Most recently I basically worked as a telemarketer. Talk about walking in someone else's shoes. That was quite the experience. I was talking to people who already had Discover cards about adding Discover's identity theft protection coverage. Having done that I can say that it's a very good idea for people to have identity theft protection. The facts we were given to talk to people about identity theft were of course mostly used as scare tactics but they were facts nonetheless. Millions of people are affected by identity theft every day and it takes a lot to get yourself out of a mess like that. Not all companies are fair and forthcoming about what their coverage actually entails so you really have to do your research in order to get the best product. With that being said I think identity theft protection is something you have to make a decision about yourself. I can understand people not wanting to get it. They think that it won't happen to them and thus they don't need to pay the money for the service. That's probably true for most people, but the way I look at it car insurance is the same way. You never know if something is going to happen to your vehicle so most people get it covered just in case. It can't hurt. Anyway, like I said I think people should be able to make an informed decision about what kind of coverage they do or don't want and over the phone is not a good medium for that. As a reformed (haha) telemarketer, I can tell you that probably 75% of the people who call you don't want to be calling you. They have to. Likewise the people who are pushy on the phone probably aren't really pushy people; most companies have sales quotas you have to meet and when you're not meeting those numbers you are forced to try other measures. It's not a good business to be in if you are empathetic whatsoever. I'm glad that chapter in my life was as short as it was.

As I said earlier I'm now going back to school for some sort of degree(s) in the IT field. As my family and friends can attest, from a very early age I've been fascinated by technology. We got our first computer when i was in fourth grade, I believe, and I've been on one ever since. I'm always reading about new technology in my free time and I'm always eager to use the newest gizmos and gadgets when I have the finances for them. The degree I'm going for right now is a certificate in PC Support and Administration at Ivy Tech in Richmond, Indiana. Olivia (more on her later) is getting a master's degree in comparative religions focusing on Islam a Miami University here in Oxford. She's already got one year behind her so she'll be done next summer. I just started my degree this summer and so unfortunately I won't have time to complete an associate's degree. So right now I'm doing this certificate, maybe adding another since I'll probably have time for that. Then when we go to wherever Olivia will get further schooling (possibly a Ph.D in Islam, more likely a Ph.D in political science or a law degree), I will enroll either at the same school or somewhere close and get a bachelor's degree in computer science, with my Ivy Tech credits hopefully transferring. When I'm done I hope to work in an IT department either for a business or for a school.

The last (not in importance, though) big thing has been getting married to my best friend of 7 years. Olivia and I got married on June 19th at the Horizon Convention Center in Muncie, Indiana. It really was amazing, having many of my closest family and friends all together to witness the special occasion. I'm so lucky to have Olivia and I'm really looking forward to going through life with her. I think she feels the same way but I can't be sure because a week after we got married she fled the country to go to Beirut, Lebanon to take an intensive 6-week course in Arabic for the rest of the summer. At least that's what she told me she was doing. She most likely is doing some solo globe-trotting with the educational cover-story. She gets to do that while I'm here at home being slowly eaten to death by Ruby, the now 7-month old Yorkshire Terrier/Shih-Tzu mix Olivia got in January. I feel as though I've been tricked.........

So that's the update for now. Like I said, lots of new and exciting things. Stay-tuned for more possible updates, possibly even in the near future! It's possible! (This message brought to you by the abstract idea possible).

When I grow up, I want to be...........

There's an interesting phenomenon that I've just recently thought about. Ask a kid, any kid, under the age of 10, what they want to be when they grow up and they'll have an immediate answer. Fireman, policeman, rock star, president, professional athlete, astronaut, even exotic animals. It runs the whole gamut, from mundane to outlandish, but the thing is, they know exactly what they want to be. It may change from year to year, but these kids know what they want to be. Then growing up happens. You find out that it's not practical to be an astronaut, very few people become rock stars, and they're not just handing out superpowers at the local supermarket (if that isn't a misnomer, I don't know what is). You found out, probably as a teenager, that you have to grow up and be logical. I started out thinking I was logical. I loved history and I loved adventure, so why not become Indiana Jones? Of course, going into college I knew that I was not going to become a fedora-wearing whip-carrying archaeologist such as the movies depict, but I still thought I was being smart and playing to my interests to do something I would love. Then I think the tediousness and mostly little findings that go along with actual digging turned me off. I still loved history and learning about ancient cultures, but digging them up and piecing them together didn't appeal to me. So I went straight to the (written) source and decided to learn about the cultures through their texts. (We're not going to get into the history vs. archaeology debate, suffice it to say I think they're both very important). I learned Greek and Latin and loved it. But now I've graduated college, and what exactly am I supposed to do with my degrees? as evidenced earlier, I don't want to dig for a living. I also know that the market for classical studies professors is limited. This leaves me in a bit of a bind, because I'd like to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. I did something that I was very interested in during my college years but now there are few practical applications for my degrees. So what do I do? I think I'd like to teach something, but what can I get into that will be not only fulfilling but also carry with it long-term job security? I'm trying to find out the answers to these questions and am not coming up with much. Life has been pretty well in a logical and well-formed order for the first 22 years of my life, and now I'm not sure where to go from here. I've got big decisions to make about my career future, and it only gets more difficult as time passes. In the meantime, I'll keep thinking. Maybe I'll get lucky and be exposed to radiation and become a full-time crime fighter. Or maybe not. Yeah I'll go with the probably not.

Does Anyone Read These?

I'm not very good about keeping up with blog posts and I wondered if anyone even read them anymore when I do post them. Let me know if you do. Seems kinda pointless otherwise.