Terri - A very Un-Terri-ble Movie

I deeply apologize for my absence, but I have been one busy boy (I also apologize for the title of this post as well, i couldn't help myself). I just started back at College for the second time to finish a couple of diploma programs (my main one being Television Broadcasting) and it has been absolutely insane! Its hard to find time to write a blog post after long days of shooting and editing videos of my friends acting like retards. I have been just bombarded by assignments and the whole first semester and felt very badly about adding another blog to the internet graveyard. So I figured to break the silence I would talk about what was one of my favorite movies of 2011, Terri.

Terrie was one of the most unique interesting independent comedies I have seen in years. Terri is extremely character driven, with amazing actors like John C Reilly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Boogie Nights), Creed Bratton (The Office) and Jacob Wysocki as Terri. The film is about a naive, overweight, socially separated, depressed 15 year old boy who feels as if he is only floating through life and has given up trying to impress anyone, par example he has decided to ditch conventional clothing and only wear what I would refer to as "Old Man Pajamas". One thing that can be said about Terri though is that he does not have a lack of self esteem and reacts without a perception of what other may think of him.  Terri lives in a big old house with his often pharmaceuticaly comatose Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who is an odd curmudgeon who doesn't often accept visitors and lives a very simple life. It is revealed later in the film the sad reason why Terri is not with his mother and father.

Terri and his sexually confused friend

Near the beginning of the film Terri is befriended by his high school Vice Principal Mr. Fitzgerald  (John C. Reilly) after he notices his obvious social awkwardness and lack of friends. Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald attend weekly sessions as a way to reach out to Terri and discover why he is such a social outcast. Many of the best and funniest parts of this movie come from the relationship between Terri and Mr. Fitzgerald and their unique and realistically odd conversations. Throughout the film the relationship between the 2 becomes tighter and eventually expands beyond the guidance councilor-esq vibe. Through his frequent trips to the principals office Terri also begins relationships a sexually confused girl and a messed up (and possibly schizophrenic) boy named Chad. The world of Terri is one that is so real but at the same time off kilter and not precisely real. At some times this movie is comparable to the very popular 2004 indie film Napoleon Dynamite.

This film is engaging and absolutely and had enough going for it to keep me immersed in Terri's world and mind set. You really begin to feel and care about this unique character as you see that he really has the best intentions but is not understood by the world around him. Terri is very much a 21st century coming of age story like no other. I would easily give this film a 9 pairs of blue pajamas out of 10. Okay I know my ratings don't mean anything because i only write about stuff I like but who the hell cares... or even reads this thing?
 

 

The Godfather Part I - It's about damn time

Okay so everyone knows that Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" series of films are among the critical god tier of 20th century motion pictures. Embarrassingly enough I must admit that before today I had never seen, in it's entirety (though I've seen bits and pieces of the movie many times),  The Godfather (1972) staring an all-star cast of cinema gods like Al Pacino (Scarface), Marlon Brando (Guys and Dolls), James Caan (Las Vegas, Elf) and Robert Duvall (True Grit [1969], Apocalypse Now).

The Godfather is an amazing compelling account of the trials of tribulations of the power that comes with control and the pain and prosperity it can bring. Part I revolves around the Corleone crime family (one of the big five mafioso families in post WW2 America) and the leader Don Vito Corleone (Brando).

The movie begins on the day of  Don Corleone's daughter's wedding, and the tradition of friends of the family friends and business associates requesting favors of Don Corleone. You learn off the bat, through a tense conversation the ideals of honor, tradition and vengeance that are held by Don Corleone. The opening wedding scene introduces all of the main characters and themes of the movie in a beautiful way that at no time feels rushed or forced. You are introduced to Vito's son, Michael Corleone (Pacino), who has just come back a hero from WW2, Vito's other son Santino "Sunny" Corleone, and the families many henchmen.

Mr. Ed gets iced

Though Vito Corleone seems very calm and controlled you can tell he is a man of great control. You are proven this early on when he makes a movie director an "offer that he cant refuse" when he asks him to allow a friend of the family to be in his new war film. When the director refuses Corleone has his consigliari place the severed, bloody head of his prized race horse in his bed as a warning.

The Corleone family is stepping into a new world of crime, beyond their typical dealings in gambling and booze, they must weigh the possibilities of  moving into the new, and profitable, world of narcotics. When Don Corleone refuses to enter the drug trade he his gunned down in the street; creating a war between the 5 families. This forces the mostly passive, Michael Corleone to protect the family and their interests while Vito is in the hospital recovering from the many bullets that were pumped into him.

Pacino will never stop being badass.

From here the story is about the changes that Michael goes through and his rise and hold as the to-be new leader of the family. I could go on all day of the details of this movie but I don't want to give to much away, especially if your like me and hadn't seen this film and wanted to go into it with a clean slate. The Godfather part I is one of few movies I could call nearly perfect on all levels. Near perfect shot composition, score, acting, continuity and screenplay are all beautifully weaved together to create of one of the greatest films to ever touch the silver screen (and my computer screen).

I would suggest that anyone who loves movies that they have to see this, and I feel quite ashamed that it took me so long to see this film. I give The Godfather Part 1 a very well deserving 10/10.

127 Hours

Right off the bat I must say that I wish I saw this movie when it was in theaters last year, because it was fucking awesome. Director/writer Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) did an amazing job of recreating the harrowing survival story of adventurer Aron Ralston, portrayed by James Franco (Freaks and Geeks, Pineapple Express, Spiderman).

So if you don’t know (or you’ve been under a rock for the last year [BAHAHAHAHA]) 127 Hours is an inspiring story of survival against insurmountable odds and also a story of how the things and people we take advantage of come back and can be the last thread that keeps us alive.  From the opening scene you can see a hint of the cinematic awesomeness that went into this movie as you see scenes of thousands of people moving, cheering, living showing the amazing situations in which people come together in swarms juxtaposed. After this you are given a taste of who Ralston (Franco) is: a young man with a thirst for adventure. Ralston leaves his house in Utah in the very early morning hours, with a bike, rock climbing equipment and all of the other adventurer accoutrement. Ralston then drive excitedly, in the dark, to Blue John Canyon.

That morning Aron throws some Phish on his MP3 Player and heads out into the vast Utah canyons with a handy cam recording the whole adventure. We are presented with stunning shots of the canyons and far-stretching, dry rolling plains. Ralston bikes for sometime before setting out on foot to find a location he was eagerly set on getting too in record breaking time; until he meets up with some fine hiking honeys. He takes the two girls out to some crazy underground pool and chills and flirts with them and shit before setting back out on his journey (the real Aron Ralston claims that this did not actually happen and he only showed the girls some rock climbing tips, other than that Ralston claims that this film is as close to a documentary of his situation as you could get). 

This is where the story really takes off and where the “meat and potatoes” of this film lays. While traversing the cliffs and crevices of Blue John Canyon Aron steps awkwardly on a boulder and falls into a crevice; trapping his arm between the boulder and the wall (I guess you could say he was stuck between a rock and a hard place =\ ). Aron goes through his supplies which consisted of some carabineers, ropes, a small amount of water, a dyeing head lamp, some food, his cameras and a crappy multi-tool. Over the next  6 days Aron must overcome and survive the mental and physical extremes his body goes through as he struggles for food and water.

While he’s trapped with the boulder, Aron must delve deep into his mind to find the motivation to keep living and trying. During this time you are presented with scenes from his life where you see the many relationships that he has had and left behind and the impact that they have on him.

127 Hours is one amazing movie which really plays on your emotions. During this film I found myself looking back into my own life and the people I’ve forgotten about or left behind. I often overlook the people and situations in my life that have forever  changed me and given me the opportunities to live the life I’ve been so blessed to have. I love and hate when movies do that to me. SO ANYWAY, 127 Hours was absolutely awesome and on my inconsistent scale receives a 9.3. That is all.   

Limitless - lesson of this movie: doing drugs will make you popular and successful. It's crack time!

The night after I saw Suckerpunch I ended up going right back to ye ol' movie house to watch Limitless, starring Bradly Cooper (The Hangover) and Robert De Niro (Godfather Part 2, Meet the Parents). I had seen a trailer and a few TV spots and found the concept of this movie kind of interesting, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the story would not live up to the concept. Thankfully they did a decent job on this picture.

After the intro you are introduced to struggling-lowlife-dirtbag writer Eddie Morra (Cooper), who as had a severe case of writers block that is ruining his life. He starts to run out of money fast and his girlfriend up and leaves his stank-ass. A few days later he runs into his sisters former coke dealer ex-boyfriend who suddenly seems to be happy, successful, and to all outside appearances a legit guy. The brother, says hes working for a pharmaceutical company and hands him a new pill the "company"  invented and was pending "FDA Certification". On his walk back to his apartment, and realizing he has nothing to lose, he takes the small
 transparent pill.

This is when the movie really comes together story and cinematic wise. When he takes the pill the film goes into this really really unique continuous zoom that's really hard to explain in words. It's almost as if the camera is zooming into a picture in a picture in a picture and creates a perfect image to go along with how Eddie is supposed to be feeling. Soon after he takes the pill he starts writing his book and cleaning his life up at an insane pace. The rest of the film is about the trials and tribulations of having access to such an amazing catalyst. You get to see the fame and happiness in the life that the pill can create, but also the horrible downside.

Limitless was a really fun and interesting watch. Though it was a great film for the most part, it was not without its flaws. The main problem with the movie was the story, at times things jumped and moved around and skipped ahead so fast that it was sometimes hard to keep track of where things were going. Though it was a little frustrating once or twice in the movie it was still overall a great flick.

I give it an 8.64/10

Sucker Punch - Sure to be one of the best movies of this year!

One thing I absolutely love is when I get to see a movie that I have herd almost nothing about, have not seen trailers for, or even knew the release date of. I find the experience so much more genuine when you don't know the storyline before hand.

So last night I hit the ol' movie house to see Sucker Punch starring Emily Browning (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), Jena Malone (Donnie Darko, Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys) Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical [ =\ ] ). I must say off the top that this movie was absolutely amazing. I was completely blown away at every scene. It incorperated everything I love in a movie: hot girls, action, guns, a great fucking storyline, flawless CG and believable characters. 

So basically (without giving too much away) this film is about Baby Doll (Emily Browning), and her struggle to escape from a mental hospital she is forced to live in. While undergoing a procedure upon entering the facility Baby Doll reverts into a world where she is enslaved by a Burlesque house in what seemed like the 1940's. In this world her and the other enslaved girls must dance for high powered men and crowds of rich people. Quickly they learn that Baby Doll is the best (sluttiest) dancer in the bunch, and through her dancing her and the other girls enter different worlds where they must kill and fight their way to find a boss, defeat him, and collect his item. When you get right down to it seeing this movie was alot like like a video game. Sucker Punch included all of the basic elements for a great adventure game: 3 different main worlds, fight through enemies/past obstacles, fight 3 boss', collect items and kill the final boss.

This movie was completely stylized right to ever tiny detail. Right down to the warn out walls of the burlesque house, the stains on the Cooks apron and the filth on his face. The camera work and CG was also phenomenal, especially in the scenes where Baby Doll and the girls are on their way to the boss battles. This is probably one of the best movies I have seen in years, the unique story structure and the powerful and sexy cast make this movie an instant classic. At no part of this movie did I feel disappointment and the film constantly kept me paying attention. This is almost nothing negative I could say about this masterpiece of a film. 9.5/10

Sony Walkman NWZ-S545 MP3 Player Review

For yours I have been militantly boycotting the iPod and almost all Apple products, accept the Macintosh II (only because it is so old and badass).  Apple is a company that seems to be all about profit and limiting control which really bugs me. But because of this boycott I have found it hard to find good alternative in the world of MP3 players. In 2006 I got my first MP3/video player the Creative Zen Vision: M (60 gig), which up to only a few months ago (even with a screen with half the pixels burnt out) served me as a great music player. After that, for a brief time I owned a 120 gig Zune (which was amazing) which unfortunately was damaged beyond repair :(

You served me well Zen

So a few months ago i went out to the Sony Store and picked up an MP3 player I had looked at while working at a Best Buy, The Sony Walkman NWZ-S545. My first impression, to be honest, was not amazing, as the first one i bought was broken when I bought it and had to return it the next day. I figured I would try my luck on another one, which turned out to be a great decision.

So I guess I should highlight exactly what the ma fucker can actually do. The model I bought can hold 8 gigs of music/pictures/video/voice recording.

Music: The quality of the music playback is fantastic! The sound is crisp and detailed and contains an equalizer to customize the sound of the unit to your personal preferences. When used with my pro headphones the sound is fucking brickhouse! The Walkman also has very simple library navigation making it easy to find the song/album/artist your looking for in no times. This version also has 4 speakers on it (2 in back 2 in front) that for such a small device are actually really loud and clear and are great for when I'm at work and need to be able to transport my music throughout the warehouse.

Pictures: The picture viewer on this device is of fairly high quality but is extremely limited to the small size of the screen. To view most images properly you have to constantly switch between vertical and horizontal and fiddle with the zoom feature. But to be honest, the picture viewer gets almost no use from me.

Video: Good video playback on an Mp3 player is extremely important to me. I spend a lot of time per day on buss' and rely on movies or TV shows to distract me of the fucking smelly fat weirdos surrounding me. The video quality is fantastic on this device. The quality is bright and clear even on such a small screen. Often time i forget I'm watching movies on what is essentially 2' x 1' screen. My only problem is skipping ahead in the videos (and music) is bloodcurdlingly slow, and really annoys me at times. Other than that the video playback and size of the video compressions is great.

Voice Recording: Haven't used the feature, chances are I probably wont, but you never know. Could come in handy...at....school?

Considering its $115 price tag, its tiny size and its fairly decent features the NWZ-S545 is a pretty decent Ipod alternative, and I can see it serving me well until I can afford something better. Though his player is great, the interface is kind of weak, the battery life could be a lot better and the scan feature during movies and podcasts is dismal. I give the Sony Walkman NWZ-S535 a 8.6451/10

Easy A - Easily an A.... ha ha ha....ha.......ha.

So it seems that lately I’ve been branching out beyond my comfort zone and indulging in movies an television I usually wouldn’t have anything to do with. This week par example, after a brutally stressful situation at home I took my woman out for a nice movie date.
On this particular outing we landed on seeing the motion picture: Easy A starring Superbad’s Emma Stone and Amanda Bynes (pretending to be young enough to be in high school).

I had seen commercials for this movie plastered on bus stops and television commercials for the last month or so and figured it would be just a horrible cookie cutter teen comedy to be used as a springboard to help catapult a young actress’s blossoming career, turns out I was sort of kind of halfish wrong? Well in the sense that I’m sure this will be great for Emma Stone’s name, but it wasn’t exactly horrible, or particularly cookie cutter.

The movie is about this girl named Olive, who despite being a crazy hot teenager in a California high school, is still a virgin. Through a series of rumors (started by her) she ends up basically becoming the schools prostitute in an attempt to surround her name with infamy and legend... When really, she just accepts gift cards to different stores in exchange for starting rumors about her fucking around with various nerds and gay guys to stop them from getting shit-kicked at school. Of course, this amazing plan ( =\ ) ends up going south and a lot of hilarity and sadness ensues.

I found that at the beginning of the film Easy A was trying way too hard to disassociate itself from other movies tied into a similar genre. There was a few awkward points where the basically made attempts at calling itself unpretentious when really it should have been left to flow naturally. But I guess character introduction is either really smooth, or kind of rough there isn’t really an in between point.

Overall though I found this movie very funny and easy to pay attention too (where a lot of movies leave me looking over my shoulder trying to read the backwards letters for the deaf people on the thing above the projector). The interactions with her parents (who are new aged and funny, but not annoying like the fucking god damn parents from Juno) are worked in smoothly and with a lot of well timed and placed laughs. Also the adage of the schools Christian Youth Group (lead by Amanda Bynes) ended up creating some good Clergy based jokes.

Overall Easy A was a very pleasant surprise of a movie. I love when I walk into a movie that I think I’m going to be disappointed by, and come out with a smile on my face. This film achieved its goal of taking my mind off of my at-home drama, and to that I think ye Easy A. On a scale from 1–Awesome I’d give it a "Great Job Sport" (I think that’s like an 8 on a normal scale)

Transformers: Rise of the Fallen

Okay lemme start by saying....seriously, Micheal Bay, you couldn't have come up with something more original than "Rise of the Fallen" ...I think that's what Evanescence is called now that Amy Lee is gone....

So let me start by saying I am one who can not stannnnddd the first Transformers. As visually appealing and ``explosioney`` as it was the dialogue and screenplay were just horrendous. Also! The comedy between the parents was just absolute garbage.

So you can imagine that I was not going into this movie with high expectations, I actually was gonna place a boycott on Transformers but decided to lift it so i could make an educated decision on the matter. Transformers really seems to be one of those movies where you either loved it or hated it. It really just plays on what you want in a movie, if your down for dummed down dialogue and lots of shiny flashy stuff (which theres nothing wrong with of course...) then Transformers was your kind of flick.

So I had imagined from both friends and the films Rotten Tomatoes rating that I was in for absolute garbage. I must say wasting my money on garbage films kind of has to happen every once and a while. To be honest its almost as entertaining seeing a really bad movie because you can laugh your ass off after when you all meet up lay the critique down.

So I walked into the theatre and had to wait in line (the combination of it being ``cheap Tuesday`` and a brand new section of the theatre opening up made the place uber packed) which i really hadn't done in a looong fucking time. So i trampled grandmothers and disabled children to get to a good seat and sat down to prepare for the visceral crapfest i believed was in my near future.

So I have to say it really was not terrible. But that's not to say its good either. Over all they improved on the problems of the first movie but not really to an extent that would raise this movie to the heights of great grandiose action flicks like Dark Night. So here`s the scoop: Zacks goin to college, a shard of that huge cube makes him crazy, he goes to school meets wack bitch, Deceptacons fuck some shit up, Autobots stop them, then more shit happens, break for a shot of Megan Foxs` ass more robot fighting, army guys shooting big robots, Optimus fucks shit up. In a nut shell of course.

The dialogue was alot smoother but would be really over cheesed by Micheal Bays annoying amera movements and rediculous shot layouts (really evident in basically EVERY shot in Armageddon). The comedy had some huge improvements especially with the relationship between Zack (Shia LeBeuf if you didnt already know) and his parents. But once again lacks in other parts as they have once again over the top racially stereotyped ``black`` robots like that car Jazz from the first movie, which was really just annoying. I guess ill keep on the hatein`track and mention that the story was as if they picked cool looking scenes from a hat but didnt spend enough time melting them all together to make a storyline that seemed smooth and continuous. New huge parts of the storyline would come over and over again leave no time for a decent concluding scene. The action and CG though was of course the point of this franchise and i must say it does deliver heavily. The interaction between cg robots and the human actors like flawless and totally real. I also loved the focus on the detail of showing every little piston and wheel goin on the robots bodies.

So overally Transformers one a scale from 0 to Awesome it would get an Alright...which comes right after 3 on the Awesomometre.