Good Reads

So since I tripped out on LOST in my previous post and don't expect much feedback, I will make another quick post:
Does anyone have any good reading suggestions?
I've got a whole summer ahead of me and possibly lots of time to kill, so I'd like to hear if you guys have read anything good lately...

The last thing I really read was The Road by Cormac McCarthy (same guy who wrote No Country For Old Men) at christmas time. It's really intense, haunting, and powerful. The film adaption of it is supposed to be released sometime this year, and Viggo Mortensen is the lead man. It's one of those books that I'm really unsure how it will translate into a film, but I guess we'll just see.



Anyways, I'd love some feedback on good stuff you've guys have read lately.

The Variable

LOST is getting so good. Don't get my wrong, it's always been good. But there was a definite lag of sorts through seasons 2&3. But holy crap, things are getting so intense now. And while all the time-travel stuff may be really confusing, it's also incredibly well thought out, and is handled so much better here than anything else I've ever seen. Most shows I've seen, it's just like "okay, here's how time travel works, piece of cake" and either they go back and change something right away, figure out they can't change it, or they just keep digging themselves further and further into this hole of changing the past and things just keep looping and looping as they try to change stuff. I also like the fact that they don't really control the time travel, so it's not like they can just do it whenever they want...and that the majority of it is pretty much over and happened the first half of the season...

And no offense here, (I really have no room to talk either because I haven't watched every single episode of the show I'm about to talk about...in LOST watching every single episode is VITAL, which might be the case here too) but I think that's one thing that really turned me off with Heroes. Don't get me wrong I thought the first season was pretty well done, but after that I lost interest. It didn't seem like there was really any reason to keep going, because there wasn't any huge mysteries set up or anything, other than Hiro getting thrown back in time in the finale in Season One. I watched some episodes from the second season and they were just okay for me. And then I saw the first couple episodes of Season 3 and I was just kind of like...okay so pretty much they can keep going back and try to change whatever they want, whenever they want...but that's probably not fair of me to say since I haven't really kept up...sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes there.

Anyways, With LOST, it's like a complete philosophy of time travel and even the island's quantum physicist is still trying to figure out how the heck it works and what the rules are. It's nice because there's at least some rules to it here, and they can't just go and say..."oh yeah all those flashbacks of all the characters that we've let you get to know...yeah those never happened now." I also really like how Jack's character has evolved this season. He has more faith than almost all his fellow LOSTies now, he's done with all the whole coincidence and luck crap and believes he has a destiny, and is willing to let go and let others take charge instead of trying to control everything. So I guess that's my LOST scpheel. After me & my friend watched the episode last night together (when I watched it with him, it was my second time seeing it that night) we sat and philosophied about the show for seriously 2 hours...and then my mind was super tired...but it was awesome...anyways if you don't watch LOST then this is probably extremely uninteresting to you, so I'll stop now. But I will say this. It's not too late to start watching...but don't think that you can start from Season 5...you've got to all the way back to square one, but trust me it's worth it.

Contractions

I'm not talking about having a baby.

So today I randomly started thinking about how sentences sound funny when you end them with contractions.

e.g.

"You're not a boy."
"Yes, I'm."

"I'm going to look sooo sexy sporting this manly jean jacket."
"Yeah, you'll."

It sounds like you're about to say something more, but that's it. And yet, when you add something like a "not" after the contraction it sounds okay.

e.g.

"You're an idiot"
"No, I'm not."

Anyways, I encourage you all to be different and start ending sentences with contractions, and see what strange reactions you can evoke from people.

That is all.

WOW

-World of Warcraft.
It has never been a temptation for me to play. I've seen it suck in a few of my close friends for periods of time, but it's never been able to affect me.
UNTIL NOW.
Don't worry, I'm not playing it.
However, my dorm room just so happens to be on the other side of the wall of the computer lab and about 10-15 WOW gamers are in there and they're giving me a very play by play of their experiences.. I love when some of them yell at the other person who's sitting right next to them that they just cheated. This WOW virus is starting to turn into a real problem. Sometimes, I walk in there in the middle of the afternoon to print a paper and all the computers are taken by WOW addicts.

Parents talk to your kids about WOW.

-Moving on, I've decided to make myself a little list of things to do this summer:
1. Make money
2. If enough money is made, buy a digital SLR camera (probably a nikon d40)
3. Make some videos, even if it is just more of the ridiculous stuff I always make
4. Write some scripts
5. Watch a lot of films, especially the classics I've never seen.

-I made my roommate get a blogspot tonight: http://andineedmoregracethanithought.blogspot.com/

-Well no one commented on my blog about the color/bw although my mom said something about on facebook. But according to Guitar Hero, your mom does not count as a fan. But what the heck. I like the photo in bw and color, but prefer it in bw. The boy's face is pretty exposed and the shadows cast from the fence stand out on his face. There's just a lot of contrast in bw. Also, it reminds a little of the cover for the film the 400 blows, except from more of a side angle...and with a younger boy...who doesn't live in Germany...or in the 50's...and who's life doesn't completely suck...but besides that I'd say they're practically identical. It's a good film, watch it.

-I'm going to start a movie section on this blog, for reviews and reccommendations and whatnot.
It'll be called:

WATCH AND DON'T WATCH
And even though it's called Watch and Don't Watch, I'll always start with Don't Watch because I always like getting the bad news first.
DON'T WATCH: Fighting
Well to be honest with you, I can't give a full review here because I only saw an hour of it while I was on my break (I work at a theater). However, to me it seemed like this year's version of Never Back Down (which admittely I didn't see either...nor did I want to see). Pretty much Fighting seemed like a formula movie to me. There was a fight every 20-30 minutes, and they weren't even very good. In between the fights it felt almost like a chick flick set in a different atmosphere than normal chick flicks. Just felt kinda girly. And of course most of the girls watching were just there for Channing Tatum anyways.

Watch: Paris, I Love You
The format of the movie is pretty cool. It's 18 short stories, each about 5 minutes long, all put into one movie. Originally, I thought every story would be a love story about how this couple first met in Paris and quite a few of them are, but not all of them. There's a huge range as far as style and subject in the stories, since every story had a different director (the Coen brothers even direct a story). Some of them are very realistic, some are extremely ridiculous, some have got elements of fantasy to them. There's a lot of French and English mixed together into the movie and several American actors such as Natalie Portman, William Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Elijah Wood star in some of the stories. I can almost guarantee you're not going to like every story, I know I didn't. One of them was about a dude hitting on another dude and another was just so absurd it didn't make any sense. It was about this old dude selling Asian hair products to these salon people, it was so ridiculous...but intentionally so. Anyways, those were some of the low points. But for the most part I really enjoyed most of them. A couple that stood out to me was the one with the Mime, Natalie Portman's story, and Elijah Wood's vampire story, just to name a few. Another reason I really liked the movie was just because they were all short stories. As a student filmmaker, that's all I can really realistically do right now. I don't have the kind of funding or experience (or even script for that matter) to make a feature length film yet. But these 5 minutes shorts are just perfect for me, it's great to watch how these professional filmmakers can develop these stories in such a short amount of time. I have a problem with always making my stories too long, and so these are great to study. Anyways, I'd reccommend the movie to anyone who's into film.

-Okay I'm going to go now, no more ranting tonight. I'll go to bed now...and hopefully avoid any next door WOW gamer induced nightmares...

Class

I'm in class right now.
Here's a picture I just took on my mac during class.
Troy is the kid behind me.
As much fun as it looks like we're having, I hate this class.
Somedays, I forget to charge my mac before i come to class...and so it dies 15 minutes into class...and then I have nothing to do for 35 more minutes.

Yesterday I worked all day on projects. Cut stuff, glue stuff, write stuff for like 12 hours straight. Now, I'm tired. I want to skip lunch so I can nap. Does anyone ever have this predicament? Would you function longer without:
A. Sleep
or
B. Food

CAST YOUR VOTE NOW!

Also, while I'm making this blog interactive, I might as well throw another poll in there.
For part of my photo journal yesterday I had to compare color vs bw. This is a photo I took that I put in my journal.
.



Do you prefer this photo in:
A. Color
or
B. BW

CAST YOUR VOTE NOW!

"Find your opinions and tell them to me"- Balloonshop

If anyone actually votes on this, I will tell you my opinion.

-Today the movie Obsessed comes out. Beyonce and Ali Larter acting in movies is a joke within itself. Add a super lame erotic thriller plot and then combine it with the fact that the director Steve Shill has only directed on TV shows his whole life and you get something that's as much of a cinematic masterpiece as something like...Jumper...that's right Hayden Christensen, you better watch out.

Woo

Hey, guess what? I've signed up for yet another website I probably won't be able to keep up with!
Haha, we'll just see I guess. Twitter wasn't my cup of tea...I know blogspot's been around forever...but what the heck I can do pretty much whatever I want here...so I guess I'll just tell you a few of the last things I've done...

-I watched No Country For Old Men twice in the last couple days...I think that the Coen brothers are geniuses...I still don't think I even quite grasp everything they're trying to convey yet...but they're definitely some of the smartest filmmakers out there...I haven't even seen very many of their films yet...just No Country, Burn After Reading, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Miller's Crossing...

-I just noticed that blogspot is saving this entry as I type it...that's rather nifty...I remember I always used to lose my xanga posts because the computer would screw up while I was in the middle of typing or while it was publishing.

-this summer I'm going to become a lab rat for some clinical studies and probably get paid well for it. I signed up for the screening for it and they told me that for the study there would be 4 injections into my upper buttox. A couple days later they called me back and said that there was some updated information for the study and they had to make sure that I was still able to participate. They told me that I couldn't participate if I had any tattoos in the injection area. The lady asked me if I was still able to participate and I almost started laughing as I said yes. I thought it would be really funny if you to admit to this random lady that you have a tattoo on your butt.

Okay, I'll keep this short and sweet.