I am the Invisible Man!!

I am the Invisible Man!!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

(500) Days of Acting

Warning: I may give away parts of movies in this blog. The movies discussed are: (500) Days of Summer, Lord of War, Tin Cup,

I'm currently at work and I just started watching (500) Days Of Summer featuring Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's a very good movie about a relationship, and I would definitely suggest seeing it if you haven't. Wonderfully acted on both the main character's parts, and a wonderfully sad story.

What this blog is about is acting, though, and not so much the movie itself. One of my beliefs about acting, whether it's good or not, is your ability to feel a strong emotion towards a character or not. In (500) DOS, Deschanel does a phenomenal job of making you want to hate her. Just as well does Gordon-Levitt do an excellent job of making you feel so sorry for him. If you have never liked/loved someone and the feelings weren't reciprocated, and you want to know what it feels like, watch this movie, and you'll have a more than vague feeling what it's like.

Speaking of acting that I found to be wonderful, Nicholas Cage in Lord of War. I've never been a huge fan of Nicholas Cage, but his portrayal of a arms dealer in the black market arms trade makes you loathe the core of him. There is a scene towards the end, where he literally lets his brother die just so he can keep making money. Why does he let his brother die?? He lets him die because he tries to stop him from selling weapons that are going to kill innocent refugees. Now my brother and me have never had a great relationship, but there is no way I would willingly let him die for anything let alone because he was trying to stop innocent people from dying.

I've always been a Kevin Costner fan, but one role in particular that is something that always make me feel better is his depiction of a down and out golfer in Tin Cup. He spends the almost the entire movie trying to become good enough to steal away Renee Russo from an old acquaintance/lifelong enemy. He tries to prove that he's the better man by winning the U.S. Open which he painfully loses on the 72nd hole. Luckily, he wins the girl and he doesn't really have to change himself. Why I think it's a superb acting job is because if Roy McAvoy were a real person, I would hope he's just like Costner's version of him.

A side note, while watching the movie (500) Days of Summer, one of my favorite parts just came up where Tom's little sister, played awesomely by Chloe Moretz, made a comment about a fictional man Summer might meet with Jesus' abs. I love the fact that a girl right around her teens fantasizes about a guy with a body like Jesus.

There are plenty of great acting jobs, whether they be in bad or good movies. These actors are what make movies wonderful, and I enjoy watching them.

Hooray Movies!!!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Tween Book Obsession

I've spent the last week rereading the Harry Potter series, and even though I'm 26, it's quite possibly one of the greatest book series I've ever read. It has a great storyline, and great character development, and J.K. Rowling does a phenomenal job of taking the series from a kids series in the first 3 1/2 books and turning it into an for-everybody series over the past 3 1/2 books. I haven't been reading a wide range of books lately, but Deathly Hollows could be the best book I've read in the past few years. A few weeks before that I reread the Twilight series, and was in the same situation of not being able to put the books down.



Which brings me to my next point. I'm slightly worried that at my age, maybe I should be reading slightly more advanced books. I'm not completely worried, because I have at least 2 more friends who have immensely enjoyed the Harry Potter series and another one who loved the Twilight series and they're all in my age range. I guess the thing that really scares me is that I've reread both the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series in the past few weeks and they were the only books I couldn't put down. I literally stayed up all day to read a few of these getting no sleep between work shifts. None of the books outside of these 2 series have captured my mind like these.

Maybe my immaturity has slowly dug in and stayed longer in my reading selections than in any other part of my personality. I wish I could say I've been pulled in my Hemingway and Thoreau, but alas I've been allured most by Meyer and Rowling.

I guess the only thing that makes me not worry about this is that none of the Harry Potter or Twilight books are in my top 3 books of all time. My top 3 is still On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams.

Right now I've moved on to one of the many books in my need to read box, The King of Torts by John Grisham. After 40 some odd pages it seems like a standard Grisham novel, so it should be enjoyed. But not in any similar sense that I have enjoyed either Harry Potter or Twilight. Hopefully one day I will grow up and enjoy reading books like A Tale of Two Cities and War and Peace as much as I like reading Harry Potter, but until that day comes, I will have to make due with Potter and Vampires.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

An usual, unhappy realization

I've felt very odd of late. I don't want to say that life has kind of settled into a blur lately because that sounds too depressing. I also don't really want to admit that I've been fairly depressed as of late, but only because I feel it like I would be insulting people who are truly depressed. I have a decent life. I have a job, and a car, and a place to live, and friends. Even though it's not my house and I don't prefer to live there, it's still rent-free, and even though I don't get to see my friends as often as I like, and even though my job has become more of a hassle, all these things I am very grateful for.

The reason behind this blog is not so much a declaration of my problems or of the fact that I'm not exactly thrilled with my current lot in life. More so it is an announcement that I'm not happy with who I think I'm starting to become. I've never been a huge go out and see the world type of person, although I've always wanted to explore more than I do. As of late I have noticed I've become even more shut in than ever, grasping harder to things that our comforts.

The instance that made this obviously aware to me happened just recently. I loaned a book to my friend, a series of 4 books actually. He had a lot on his plate, so I wasn't really surprised that after a long time passed he had yet read them. During his time with my books, another mutual friend asked to borrow the 4th book of the series as she had read the first 3 but didn't have a copy of the 4th. I agreed and noted the transfer of the one book from one friend to the other. The subsequent borrowing was asked at a Halloween party a week prior to Halloween, and I'm guessing the book switched hands shortly after that. I don't want to drag this explanation in such detail, but I feel it's necessary to understand as much of my psyche on the subject as possible.

As I said above, I've become more closed off lately and one of the things I have tried to occupy my time with is reading. I've never been a fast reader, but I've always been able to get through books pretty well when I focus on them. One thing I like about myself when it comes to my reading is although I'm probably slower than most, I tend to get fully engrossed in what I'm reading. Feeling the emotions of the characters, imagining the visuals in my head, letting my imagination take over while I'm reading. If you've ever been around me while I'm reading for pleasure, you will most likely frequently hear or see me react to what I'm reading. I consider this a gift, as I see, allowing me to enjoy reading even more.

So, I have been reading more lately than I have ever in my life. The easiest comparison to make would be to state the facts. I don't have an exact time frame to relay or exact numbers, but I would estimate that from birth to about 19 or 20, I hadn't read more than 30 books, including school. That number of course is not counting the number of children's books that we all read as we're learning the skill. I mean, I probably hadn't read more than 30 books from cognizant age forward, and this is a high estimate. I never took too many English classes in school and the one that involved the most books had me read about 5 or 6 books one semester. However, I've read more than 30 books this year alone. When I really focus on my reading I can pop out a book a day. Since I've really aimed at reading more, I've probably read close to 100 to 150 books, and grown my collection quite considerably.

Finally to bring these two points together, I decided to re-read the books I had lent my friend. When I asked him for the books back so I could absorb their story again, he informed me that he only had the 3 and that the 4th was with our mutual friend. I noted that and figured I had time seeing as how I've been trying to not focus all my time on personal reading. Unfortunately once I started reading this particular story, I couldn't stop. I went as far as to completely change my sleeping patterns to finish these books. I got through the first 3 books in a little more than 3 days. As I finishing the 2nd book, I asked my friend to see if he could retrieve the 4th book seeing as how I would need it soon. He told me he would, and I felt satisfied that I would have my book back shortly seeing as how they worked together.

Over the course of the next 3 days, I hammered my friend with another 4 text message inquiries and more back and forth responses asking about the book. He told me it was coming but for some odd reason that wasn't a gratifying response. I tend to think I have accrued a reasonable amount of patience over the past 26 years that I've been alive, but for some odd reason, I was really unhappy by the fact that I couldn't get my book. Finally after stewing and moping about, feeling like I was forced to read another book in the absence of my much needed 4th installment of the series, which I did read another book, I started to come to this realization that I initially started this blog about. I started to realize how sad it was that I was getting mad at my best friend over a situation that he had no control over. I was blaming him for the fact that I couldn't read that book, to the point where I considered never loaning out a book of mine again. Once I finally got the book back, and have now finished it, I really wonder where this path in life is taking me. I'm not going to lie, reading that book was immensely pleasing, and there is still a part of me that was glad I kept pestering him to get it back to me. But the very vast majority of me is starting to worry about myself.

I don't know, maybe this is all part of life. Learning to find a balance of sorts, I don't know. But I just wanted to get these feelings out of me.

The Dingo's Bookshelf reserved for his favorites

  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
  • The Twilight series
  • The Harry Potter series
  • Fight Club
  • On the Road