Handy-Dandy Trailer

Once again, I just wanted to alert the Interwebs to the fact that I am not dead... Perhaps it's just me but this week is taking forever. I have three papers due tomorrow, only one of which I haven't completed at this point (as of yesterday morning, none of them had been started).

I kept trying to think of something that wouldn't require much brain power and also wouldn't suck...so here's a video that has come up in my film classes twice now.

Huh? Yeah. The first time we saw it it had to do with three-act structure. This semester it pertained to the literalness of film. I think it's awesome something made by a bunch of 20-somethings that was likely done for fun is showing up in my lectures and is actually relevant.
Sorry I am so lame. Life is busy and I don't have a ton of free time to write (probably has something to do with those 18 hours of classes). Happy Wednesday, regardless!

How Pirates Introduced Me to Some of My Favorite People

Let me start this off with a little music, feel free to watch or let it run in the background.

And now that my heart has swelled with love for the movies of my adolescence… Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Now, Pirates of the Caribbean, I would argue, is one of the best Disney movies. The first one. It’s a freaking classic already. The story is fantastic—a hoarde of skeletal pirates looking for the sole child whose blood will reverse their fate, while one of the crew, previously left to die on a rock, stumbles drunkenly into them in the middle of all this mess. I personally really enjoy 2 as well, and 3 has its good parts but it was horrifically confusing at the time.

When Curse of the Black Pearl came out in 2003, I was 12 and fresh off of watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. (Again, Lord of the Rings was one of those things that I refused to watch because I thought it was either too scary, too old-timey, or something, but then fell in love with.) For me, the preteen, the selling point of this movie was, without a freaking doubt, Orlando Bloom. Of course at the time I still preferred his long, blonde tresses to the mess of hair he sported and the silly English outfit, but still. Orlando Bloom, people. But even before Curse of the Black Pearl hit theaters, I remember very, very clearly seeing a teaser trailer for it and turning over to my friend and saying, “That looks scary.” I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going to see it, and then shoved it to the back of my mind while watching whatever movie came on.

I am so glad I changed my mind.

I went into the films with a crush on Orlando Bloom and thoroughly enjoyed the first in the summer of 2003. I came out of it just so thoroughly impressed with Captain Jack Sparrow’s character…perhaps impressed isn’t the right word…perhaps infatuated would be a better choice. (Regardless, by the time the second one came around, I was so ridiculously envious of Kiera Knightly’s role.)

Curse of the Black Pearl also marks the first time I actually saw Johnny Depp perform. I vaguely knew his name but couldn’t really put a face to it when the previews were circulating, but boy howdy did I learn who he was. Capable of playing characters on one extreme end of the spectrum to the other, I have always been impressed with Depp’s ability to take on such massive characters. And though Jack Sparrow may be a drunk, he’s still nice to look at and laugh at. With. …mostly at. It’s hard not to like Sparrow. He commands the screen and the character constantly demands attention, even in situations when it would be better for him to keep his trap shut. It's like Depp made pirates sexy. Look at who he’s surrounded by—a bunch of really not all that attractive shipmates: Barbossa, Gibbs, etc.

So there was Depp, and then there was this producer—Jerry Bruckheimer. Now, to be honest, I’m still a little fuzzy on what all producers do. They cover a lot in the filming process and evidently have the power to fire the director if they so choose. They are usually the ones putting their own money on the line to get the movie up and running and can choose to end it if they wish. So really, by that definition, the Pirates trilogy belongs to Bruckheimer. One thing I’ve noticed with producers is that they tend to carry a certain style or feel with them from one movie to the next, like Pirates and Prince of Persia, both are overseen by Bruckheimer and both have that action/adventure with a wily character and a damsel-thing going on. Also, both films have a vague Indiana Jones feel to them in my opinion. I love it. I’ve thought on it more and more as time’s gone on, and its almost like Bruckheimer is the new version of Spielberg or George Lucas, and I’m more than happy to watch any films with his name attached.

CASE IN POINT!

There's others I've come to love through Pirates, too, like Geoffrey Rush, who plays Barbossa. His character is just killer! I absolutely love Barbossa in At World's End, his relationship with Jack Sparrow akin to brotherhood and everything. It's always nice to see a villain go good, too. Jack Davenport (Norrington) grew on me in the last two films as well, and I enjoy watching his British comedies.

Why make such a fuss over people? Well, I am only trying to get a film degree. These are the kinds of films I want to be involved with—those adventures where things can go horribly wrong, things happen that make the audience laugh until they cry, romance is right around the corner and things have a happy (or at least acceptable) ending. Dramas are great and everything, but I enjoy telling stories and I think in this day and age escapist films are pretty important. Everyone needs something fantastic in their lives, and the movies can fill the void. I love it when I walk out of a film and feel the need to sword fight or stunt drive. It’s amazing what a good movie (and good casts and crews) can do to their audiences.

Nine Years of Neopets

If you’ve used the Internet for a significant amount of time, especially in the early 2000’s, if you have a child or a young relative, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it. Neopets is the virtual pet site that’s been up and running since November 1999.

As of September 14^th, 2010, I’ve been on the site for nine years.

...Rachel. You’re a college student. Why on earth are you playing that game…still?

The short answer is simply that it’s addicting. Is/was. I certainly don’t play it like I used to in elementary/middle school, when I easily blow hours at a time on the site. Nowadays, I couldn’t tell you last time I spent an entire hour in one day with it.

It is a virtual pet site yes, but it’s also a game arcade and a social medium as well. The site has over 180 million accounts today. It’s coming close to having one trillion page views. It’s fantastically popular. The creators were heavily involved, they had accounts of their own and were known to interact with regular users. Many, many "plots" have been spawned since it's inception, some as hunt-and-gather type of things where clues are spread out for you to unlock some secret. Others (my favorites actually), were actual wars where you got to pick a side and fight against baddies to see whose side could get more points. But the site's gone through some massive changes in the last few years. Not all I’ve particularly agreed with or even appreciated, but the general public claims it’s been for the better overall. I don’t keep up with the politics so much anymore, now that I’m in college and I have other stuff to keep myself busy. But I was very active in the day of the sale—when Viacom bought Neopets in 2005. This led to a plethora of changes and a huge spike in users as well as an eventual site-makeover.

One of the biggest changes involved a ton of redraws of pets and the ability to 'customize' them, or dress them with clothes and...stuff. The pets pictured overhead are called "Lupes." The first pet I ever made was a blue Lupe and originally looked like the top one.

I know I’ve taken a couple hiatuses, but somehow, I’ve managed to come back, and I’ve kept the same 2-3 accounts the whole time. (Those unfamiliar with the site, the Neopets Team…the rule makers, essentially, have said that one human being is allowed to have 5 accounts to accommodate all the Neopets you make or adopt.) My first account was made September 14^th, 2001, and my second about six months later. I use the second the most.

Originally, when I was still a little kid, I played the site daily. I made and adopted pets. I opened a shop and sold spare items, I explored far and wide, I played their arcade games so much that I made enough money to buy “paintbrushes” to change the color of my Neopets. When I painted all of the pets on my first account and had 300,000 Neopoints (their currency) I thought I was hot stuff. I might have been in 6^th grade by the time this occurred.

But then...I actually learned some stuff. In the first two years for sure, I taught myself HTML on the free “pet pages” each pet came with. I made up back-stories for my pets. I joined “guilds,” which were essentially just clubs of people, and in my first few years, it was essential to me to be a part of a worthy guild and to socialize with its members. When I turned 13 I played around with their chat boards, which were really more like forums. There, I learned about role-playing for the first time.

In a way, Neopets taught me a lot. So the long answer here is that I keep coming back to the site because I have a nostalgic spot for it. It’s taught me a lot about Internet politics, about business, about how people fuction, about websites, about storytelling. It gave me so much practice in writing and drawing that I’m grateful to have found the place. It is just a game, the pets are just pixels, but when you invest so much time into it all, it becomes more than that. It may just be a website that only exists in the invisible space that is the Internet, but it’s become something of an actual place to me. Of course it’s changed and I’ve not kept up with the news or the politics of it lately, but back in the day, it was like sliced bread. Not only could you play games and be imaginative, but you could meet (presumably) real people who liked it as much as you did.

Again, even though I’m pessimistic and old-fashioned and prefer the old site with its real sidebar (and not this top bar that I still don’t like the organization on), I’m glad its still around. It’s been a pretty great nine years, and I’m perfectly content to keep coming back, even if it’s only to play the arcade games between classes.

Now wait for it...old school ad time!

An Early Look At "The Tourist"

Hmph.

Two things you should know: I dislike Angelina Jolie, not because I doubt her acting ability, not because...not really for any one particular reason, but I just don't like her. She seems snakelike. Then, there's the simple fact that I love Johnny Depp.

The trailer's not bad, however from all the hype I had been reading, I was expecting something more...serious. More dramatic and less windows-exploding-in and less of Depp acting silly. I don't know why, given his recent list of characters, but perhaps I thought the mood of Public Enemies was going to carry over into The Tourist given it has the--let me quote--"king and queen of Hollywood" in it. Let me put it this way: I like the music.

Honestly, from this alone, the movie looks like an updated version of North by Northwest (which I conveniently watched this semester for a class!). Depp's got a case of mistaken identity and has a run in with a shady femme fatale. If not that, then it reminds me of the trailers for Salt where Jolie plays some secret double agent type yet again, only this movie has a significant other for her to exchange witty banter with. (Let it be known I did not see Salt.)

I want something else from both of these actors. They're fine people, and I know they're capable of a lot! But another secret agent-esque role for Jolie? And a virtual nobody (as far as we know) character for Depp? Seriously? I want--I expect a hell of a lot more from Depp after falling in love with both Edward Scissorhands and Jack Sparrow. He makes characters his own. He needs something more than supporting male role to the suspicious female. And that's another thing, I think because of his lack of character Jolie is the one commanding this movie when recently Depp's been the name-sake heavyweight (Alice in Wonderland). Although it will be interesting to see if the power balances or shifts at all, given both Depp and Jolie have been given the title of "sex symbol."

Regardless of whatever reviews, previews or what ever else may surface between now and December 10th, I'm seeing this. It's a hobby of mine to attempt to see any and all Johnny Depp movies, and so far I've probably caught about half of them. I think I'm more excited for Rango, not only because it's animated and looks cute, if not quaint, but also for the second year in a row I'll be getting a Johnny Depp movie on my birthday!

Um, hi?

Holy crud. I just wanted to say I've not fallen off a cliff or jumped off the face of the earth or anything like that. My internet, since I returned to the apartment on Sunday, has been completely out. It just came back today about 20 minutes ago.

And here's the thing: the internet for the past two weeks has gone down nearly everyday for about 2-3 hours in the evening. But nope, mine just went kaput entirely. (But now its baaaack yaaay! It really makes me rethink and almost take back everything I said about wanting to live in the 80's. If I was born today and was somehow time-travelled back, I wouldn't make it for more than a couple days. I'm terrible.) The manager said our provider was renegotiating stuff, and when they did that it knocked a few of the Mac computers completely offline.

Greaat. I said.

So I went and bought two routers and fought with them, had a horrible day yesterday, so horrible in fact I thought it was Murphey's Law day (anything that can go wrong, will most definitely do so in epic proportions). It was just the most frustrating thing--knowing that I'm a tech-savvy person and that if I was at the house, I could have fixed this...but here I was helpless without access to the apartment's hardware. I finally called the Internet provider myself today and they said they'd send someone, when my roommate called after a measly one day of no service and they reset the modem and everything came back.

I promise a more meaningful post will come tomorrow. Until then, I have to work my tail off on dinner (fish tacos!) and writing this film paper I have due in 2 days (but couldn't even attempt because of the downed Internet).

Happy Tuesday!

An Early Look at "Buried"

What.

Really, to me, that preview is both amazing and completely ridiculous. There is 2 seconds of an image on the screen, courtesy of a lighter. The preview, really, is a complete waste of a trailer. There is no visual. This thing is essentially a radio ad. And yet as much as that bugs me, I want to see it. About 60% of that has to do with the fact I enjoy watching Ryan Reynolds. The rest has to do with me being completely baffled as to how these people are going to pull off a full-length feature of a man trapped in a coffin. There might be a couple minutes in the beginning out of the coffin to provide backstory, and perhaps he gets saved in the end and we see the light of day again. But really, this movie is going to spend all it’s time figuratively six feet under.

People taking risks like this…Buried is likely to pull in big bucks, and a lot of that is due to the spectacle of it. A lot of it will be due to the actor we’ve come to love in the past year thanks to Wolverine and a little help from Sandra Bullock in The Proposal.

It just really amazes me how things like this come to be.

I’m looking forward to it—not because it’s a “thriller” (again, how on earth do you make that happen in a movie that’s completely contained in a body-sized box?), but because I want to know how this was put together.

Three Quotes for Thurday: The Sarcastic Edition!

Here we are again on yet another lovely (if not hot and humid) Thursday. I've decided to mix it up a bit, going off of media I've seen recently and picking out my favorite sarcastic quotes to share. A bit of an expert on the subject myself, I love dry humor. I'm so damn good at it people sometimes have to ask me if I'm being serious...well, perhaps I'm good at sarcasm or they're not too bright. I have found that sarcasm is hard to communicate over the interwebs and text messages but I think these quotes are sharp enough to spell it out.

"I'm an immortal sir, not a gazelle!" - Dorian Gray (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

Oh, of course you're not a quadrupedal animal, Dorian. You're funny. Geez, watching this again for the first time in half a million months made me realize how cheesy some of the dialogue truly was. But I liked the execution of this one.

"Dying people lie too. Wish they'd worked less, been nicer, opened orphanages for kittens. If you really want to do something, you do it. You don't save it for a sound bite." - House (House M.D.)

House, the terrific doctor who really never seems to have anything nice to say. Luckily for us he keeps opening his mouth and spouting off whatever it is he has to say, often times putting me in stitches (oh, ho, that's not at all a pun). I missed most of last season though...hopefully I'll find a recap here soon and can start back up again this year. But in all seriousness, this is one of those that resonates with me--if you want something, some success or positivity in life, run after it like there's no tomorrow.

"If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists." - Ian Malcom (Jurassic Park)

Not unless they're also zombies. In that case, everybody would be screwed. Also, isn't it neat to think that a decade after this movie was put out that Pirates was made into it's own trilogy too? And the pirates didn't eat anybody after all :)