Thursday, April 9, 2009

Adventures in Movies and Clothing

Today is another movie review day!

I will be reviewing a movie that I just saw today called Adventureland.

It looked like such a promising movie from the previews. Kristin Wiig and Bill Hader are in it and I love them. Also, Bill from Freaks and Geeks is in it and he is awesome. The previews made it out to be a really funny movie, but really it wasn't. It was so awkward that I didn't even know what to do with myself. I liked the main character just because he was cute and articulate, but he didn't really have any chemistry with any of the actors. Especially his love interest Kristin Stewart.

Speaking of Kristin Stewart, this is probably blasphemy on this Ning because everyone loves twilight, but I hate her. She cannot act and every scene with her in it was just awkward. You know how she played Bella? She played this completely different character exactly the same. It made no sense. I really don't get why she is such a big movie star because she is just ok looking and she is the most awkward actress I have ever scene on film.

Then we come to the writing. O my god the writing. It was just so uninspiring and forced. It seemed like they really wanted to make it funny, but it just wasn't. Everything was so heavy and it just didn't work. This is coupled with directing where they held out this pointless scenes where everything is awkward, but they are trying to play it off as either artsy or deep when really there is no substance there. No character is having a revelation, nothing is being brought to the surface, it's just filler. For example near the end of the film they seriously have about 5 minutes of shots of the main character sitting on a bus and views of windows with rain on them and blurry lights outside. They aren't even framed well so it's not even that pretty.

I just don't get it. I was cringing in my seat for half of the movie or hanging my head in a "when are they going to move on I'm bored" gesture.

I have had several people tell me that they saw this movie and loved it, but I really just don't get it.

Oh and a note on a different movie
I just saw a movie poster for that new Crank movie and it's tagline was actually "You thought he was dead, but we found out how to bring him back" or something to that effect.

IT'S ACTUALLY A SEQUEL!!?? NOT a PREquel like I thought it might be because it is the only thing that makes sense?!

Jeez I don't even know what to do with that.



In other news not related to movies:
Today I had a lot of fun dressing crazy and wearing it out to the movies. My roommate brought out these different colored sequined, feathery eye masks today to show me because we are going to a "Feathers, fur, and fangs" party on Friday night. I tried it on and after a little bit just pushed it onto my forehead instead of taking it off. I decided then that I didn't want to take it off so I just wore it as a headband. Then I wore my crazy high heeled oxford shoes and went out. It was fun watching peoples reactions when they saw my head crowned with feathers.

Here's a picture of the mask:



Imagine that on the top of my head all night.
I know, pretty crazy awesome right?

Also another new development: I bought this cool notebook tonight that has robots on the cover. I know robots! exciting right? Anyways, I bought the notebook so I can start writing down whats happening in my life right now with the getting into France and everything. I want to record this period in my life into something tangible that I can keep with me to look at when I'm older.

So new project number one!

Ooo I totally just had an idea about what my next post will be!
Get your embroidery floss ready readers because I am going to be teaching you guys how to make a friendship bracelet!

Till Tomorrow!

Picture of the Day
:



"watching girls go by my my my"

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

2 Parts: Childhood and Movie Confusion

Part 1:
So I was inspired by Danae's blog to include in this post a story about my childhood.

As my dad tells me I have always had the "wander lust" which is, for those who cannot guess. a need to travel, wander, see new places. This was most prevalent when I was about 6 or 7 and in Kindergarten.
I had this best friend, Tara, who lived up the hill from me. I think I must of found her house more exciting than mine or maybe her mom wouldn't let her come over, but what matters is that I was always at her house. Even if I didn't ask my parents or if they said no I would still just walk up there whenever I wanted to.
I actually remember one of the times when my parents said I couldn't go over after I asked them,
I lived in San Francisco Bay Area at this point so of course it was raining and getting dark on top of that. I went down to my room in anger after my parents refused to let me go. I then, of course, decided to go anyway. I didn't even put on real shoes, I put on my ballet slippers, went out the sliding door into my back yard and trudged up the hill in the rain.

That's all I really remember, but my dad helpfully fills in from this point. He says that night he took me aside and asked me why I was always leaving the house and going to Tara's. Of course my response is "I just HAVE TO!" in true little kid fashion. Let me give you a picture of approximately what I looked like at this age.



That's me on the left with my older sister Kate.

Ok so imagine this little face saying in complete desperation " I just HAVE to!". As my dad tells it he just melted at how cute I was, but of course he had to be firm and tell me that it wasn't good what I was doing.

So anyways, I was a crazy child and I've always needed to keep moving from place to place.

Part 2:
I just needed to say something about the new Crank: High Voltage movie coming out. Some of you might know that this is the second Crank movie, with the same actor and presumably the same premise. In the first movie a guy involved with the mob or something like that gets attacked and injected with this poison that will kill him if his heart rate gets below a certain count. So basically it's an action movie with almost no downtime because if the main character gets downtime he dies. I saw it with my dad when it was in theatres. Honestly, it was a little awkward in some scenes because it is definitely rated R for a reason.

Anyways if you haven't seen this movie and want to see it and don't want to have the ending ruined this is the official

SPOILER ALERT

In the end the main character dies. Not in an enigmatic way either. He literally falls out of a plane and hits the ground. There's no coming back from that. SO how can they make a sequel, I ask. Honestly I haven't watched any of the previews or read any reviews or summaries so I have no idea if it's a prequel or not. I actually have no intention of doing it either.

So here's a question for any of those people reading this... how do you think they are going to explain the fact that he is alive if it is actually a sequel?


And as always we will end with the...
Photo of the Day:



In the immortal words of woody "Reach for the sky!"

Monday, April 6, 2009

Decisions and Nostalgia

Well today hasn't been very eventful except for:

A. I met with the guy that runs the ropes course I want to photograph for my final project and it seems like it's going to be really easy to get pictures.

B. I found out that the school bulletin that lists the requirements you have to do to graduate lied to me and I don't have to worry about taking this class until after I get back from France. (omg I'm going to France)

C. Decided that I am going to Seattle to go to Sasquatch (big music festival) with my cousin on Memorial Day weekend. Don't care what everyone else wants me to do.

D. Studied for a big french test I have tomorrow

E. Worked for 8 hours.


Honestly today I just wanted to crawl on the counter and work at take a nap. I mean I could have done it, there was about an hour where only about one customer came up to the counter. Man I hate closing on mondays, not only am I alone, but they are hella slow so I have absolutely nothing to do to entertain/occupy myself.

Oh wells.

It was really warm today, it made me yearn to be in so-cal where the water is slightly warmer and you can swim in it without fear of hypothermia.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for the summer nights in high school when me and couple friends would drive to the beach in the moonlight and I would end up jumping in with all of my clothes on. It's strange that when I was in high school I didn't really buy into the whole "this is the best time of your life" bit, but I can still get nostalgic for the simpler times with no worries about money or school really.
I used to not like Los Angeles very much, but now I get kind of nostalgic and want to go back.
Maybe LA will be on my list of the many places I will live once I graduate.
Who knows what will happen.
Picture of the day:

Drip drip drip, the sky is falling!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Momentous... moments.

Yesterday a moment I will probably remember for the rest of my life happened.

My letter from the CSU International Programs Office arrived. In said letter awaited the fate of my next school year.

I held it in my hands and thought:
What will this tell me?
Am I going to be studying in France for a year?
Am I going to be devastated when I open this letter?

A ray of hope shined through when I felt the letter and it felt thick.
Why would they be sending me so many papers if I didn't get in?

I yelled for my roommate to come stand near me as I opened the letter.
As I slowly opened the cover letter by two thirds I read the first word in the first sentence.

For 5 seconds all I could see was "Congratulations!"
This was then followed by me screeching "I GOT IN! I GOT IN!" and jumping 2 feet in the air before grabbing my roommate in a hug and shedding a few tears.

I, Marie Bryan, will be going to the south of France this coming August to study and hopefully become fluent in French.

I am so excited, I cannot wait for it all to be finalized.

What's between me and august now other than time?
The first in a series of packets of forms to fill out.
This first packet? 45 pages long. *sigh* The next couple months will be a frenzy of paperwork, school work, regular work, and hopefully some friend time in there too.

And now for the...
picture of the day:



I think I shall miss my city by the bay a little when I'm in France

Friday, April 3, 2009

Failing, Succeeding, and Worryng

First the fail part.

I laughed and cried a little bit in my head when I saw this on fail blog today.

fail owned pwned pictures
see more pwn and owned pictures

I really wonder if you can seriously order this for your kid!
I just thought about it and you could get your kid so sick from having them collect all the crap that's on the floor and keep it right next to there faces like that!
Silly people cleanings for adults not kids!

Second the succeeding part.

So I am taking a photojournalism class right now (duh, I am a photojournalism major) and our final project is to do a photo story consisting of 12 pictures that tell a story about someone or someplace that is photojournalistic. Let me begin by saying that when I first heard of this at the beginning of the semester I thought "how the hell am I going to think of someplace, talk to them, and convince them to let me follow them around for six weeks taking pictures of them?". Then when my professor starting making suggestions of following someone in a battered woman shelter, an aviary, a soup kitchen, a mormon church, I thought "god those are all so cliche and I don't want to do any of that."

So now we come to yesterday, she told us that we have to start our projects now and have our topics thought of and interviewed by next thursday. I panicked. I had no ideas and I really just didn't want to talk to people and try and convince them to let me do this. I know, very anti social Marie, but I was just being the lazy person that I have become.

Ok enough dragging this story out. SO I finally had an idea pop into my head. Last semester I took this recreation course called "Growth through Adventure" and one of the activities we did was go to a ropes course. For those of you who don't know a ropes course is a place where they string high tension wire and ropes up in the trees for you to walk across and it's really challenging, especially for me because I am a little afraid of heights. The cool thing about this ropes course though is that their purpose is to bring in kids and community and teach them leadership skills and teamwork through this ropes course. So I looked them up through my teacher and found out that the organization that runs the course is actually part of my school which is something I never knew. I emailed them last night asking if it would be ok if I did my project on them and the guy emailed me back today sounding really excited about the whole thing!!! So one less thing to stress out about. Woo!

Now to the worrying part.

Today I get a text from my friend Cassie saying "I'm going to Spain!". She applied for the same study abroad program I did except instead of France she chose Spain. I'm soooo excited for her, but it just makes me want to find out all the more. It also makes me worry because my mail is not so reliable (my new credit card got lost in the mail) so I may not even get it and what if I don't get in? God, I really need to go to France because truthfully I am bored to tears here. It's just a bunch of crap all the time and nothing exciting really happens. I need France to get me excited about school again.

Oh well we'll see how it goes.

Picture of the Day:

Oops almost forgot the picture of the day! Since I was talking about my friend Cassie I will give you a picture of her that I took recently.



I love the expression on her face here. And that the guy in the background looks so worried.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

#2 BEDA: FML- A look at the phenomenon

"Today, at work the police were looking over video footage of an incident earlier in the day where a car had slammed hard into another one in the carpark. My manager came into the kitchen and asked if I wanted to come see it to for a laugh. The car that got hit was mine. FML"

This is one of the many stories you will find on fmylife.com
It's kind of crazy how popular this site has become.
It makes we wonder why we all love it so much.
Does it make us feel better to see how much other people's lives suck?
Do we just like laughing at people's stupidity?

I think it's a little bit of each. I know I read some of them and laugh, but there are a lot of them that are just sad. The ones that make me the most annoyed are the bad parenting ones. I really don't get how some parents think it's ok to say some the stuff they do to their kids. It's just so insensitive and cruel.

But then there are some of them that are just a misunderstanding that could be easily solved by a simple explanation.

Like this one:
"Today, I was called by my 9 year old son's teacher. He had handcuffed himslef to his desk with handcuffs he found in my room. I was told to please bring in the key and not to leave my sex toys out where a child could get them. I am a cop. FML"

Just tell the teacher you are a cop!!! It's really not that hard. Plus then the teacher would feel horrible for saying that to you and you just got your revenge right there.

I also find it fun to read this site with my roommate. We sit here and read it together and laugh or get angry together. It's pretty nice.
So maybe fmylife.com has a postsecret like quality to it. It brings people together by sharing common happenings and feelings. Hm the internet is an interesting place.

You might be asking why did she decide to do a blog post on fmylife? Actually it was because I've never seen fml used so much then when I was looking through all the blog posts on here.

And now that catches me up on my blogging because I started a day late so I wrote two today to compensate for that.

#1 Blog Every Day in April - Here's the start

So before I copy paste this I should explain that Maureen Johnson, a young adult author, decided to blog every day in april and make it a project for herself. Then everyone decided to do it and I decided to join in the crowd. This is the first post. It was first posted here: http://maureenjohnson.ning.com/profiles/blogs/blog-1-introductions

Hey everyone out there in the Maureen Johnson world.
This is my first attempt at a blog post for the blog every day in April project.
So here we go!

I guess I will start of telling you guys that I do have my own blog on blogger, but I never update it. In fact I just had to go on to the site to remember what my blog is even called. I did find it though, it happens to be called "Musings of a Mad Woman" and the site address is this: espoirpaixamour.blogspot.com.
Interesting fact about what my address is "espoirpaixamour", it is actually what my tattoo says. My tattoo has three words in french surrounding three rosebuds. It's on my hip so not many people see it. The words are espoir, which means to hope, paix, which means peace, and amour, which most people know means to love.
I felt the need to get this tattoo because at the time I was getting to be really cynical about everything in my life. My tattoo tries to remind me to see the good in the world. There is no point in focusing on the negative if you are not going to do anything about it to make it positive. You will have no fun in life if you are a constant cynic is what I say.

Moving on, I think maybe I should tell you guys a little about myself.
I'm 20 years old and I live in San Francisco and go to school at San Francisco State. SFSU is at times very frustrating, but I'm pushing through my classes. My major is photojournalism and I'm just stating out in photography. I really love taking pictures though, maybe I'll post some of my work up here so you can take a look.

Maybe that's one thing I can do on here everyday. Make it a photo everyday april. It will get me out and taking pictures everyday and will actually help me improve my photography.

Ok so there is one idea to help me commit to this site and this project.

I think I will end this first post with a little tidbit of what I am waiting on this week. So my school has an awesome study abroad program. I have been studying french for the last couple semesters after studying it in high school and I decided I really wanted to become fluent in french. Also, I really love traveling. There is something so invigorating to go to far away places and learn about history and cultures. These two things led me to really want to study abroad so I applied for a learn language program in the south of France, specifically in Aix-en-Provence. After the crazy application process and waiting for about 2 months I am finally going to find out this week whether or not I got into the program. I am so nervous!

Well so long for now.