Why 'Lincoln' is incredible.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS.

One would expect a film about Abraham Lincoln to entail gruesome battle details of the American Civil War, loud canon fire, and the former president’s infamous assassination. One would think any film that carries the weight of such magnitude, between a star-studded cast, a prestigious director, and a historical drama will be nothing but an epic. This is not the case of Lincoln, however. While it is definitely a period-piece in artistic direction, it plays like a small indie film in many ways. There are no blood-soaked battles and Lincoln’s assassination is not even shown in the film.

The film exposes the emotion, heartache and moral compasses of our leaders in Washington during the war. At the helm is the president himself, dealing in stories and parables. While the war rages outside, the film’s plot encompasses the Federal Government battle over the 13^th Amendment, which would eventually free all slaves in the United States. Though the audience obviously knows the outcome, the journey of how the president and his fellow lawmakers get there is extraordinary. The man battles not only for the amendment, but on his own home front. He is tested on all sides, and we see powerful and raw emotion behind the giant man with a top hat and beard.

The parallels to our time, coupled with the timing of the film’s release, make it an extremely powerful piece. Spielberg’s Lincoln weaves in poetic rhetoric that is at times confusing, but leaves the audience with an insurmountable sense of importance.  His impeccable speech parallels that of president Barack Obama, whose rhetoric, if nothing else, has captivated the world and arguably won two elections.

One cannot overlook the opening scene, when president Lincoln is speaking with a black union soldier at the time of his re-election. The soldier says with much determination what the future will be for black people in this country, all the way up to the White House. And here we are, in the immediate aftermath of the re-election for the country’s first black president.

I do not usually cry in films of the historical or biopic genres. But in this film, my eyes welled up multiple times, at unexpected places. I watched drama unfold as many of the men who ran this country changed their stance from the ways they had been raised. They had the courage to sacrifice convention for what was right. Their attitudes towards the black population changed. There are lawmakers today fighting the exact same battle for same-sex equality. Though the message is hammered into one’s head during the film, it was extremely moving to see these powerful empathize with the minority. Another battle wages in our House of Representatives  today, and the same men (and now women) are changing their stance on the issue of equality. Lincoln belongs to the ages much more than history could ever predict. He lives today in the fight for equality.

The Un-First Day of School

When I went to bed last night, I saw the multitude of Facebook statuses about the first day of school. I felt old, and am slightly depressed. Each post was a bit different, and from various types of people. Some were teachers I had in high school. Others were professors. Many were underclassmen who are now embarking on their senior year of college. Many were freshmen who were just beginning college or even high school. (Don't worry, the only kids I'm friends with at that age are my cousins.) A new breed of "back to schoolers" became my friends that graduated in May and are now teachers themselves. Mind. Blown.

As for me, I stayed up late last night drinking wine and beer on the back porch with a few very close friends. I have shared 11 first days of school with one of them, as we live around the corner from one another and both attended Temple University. With another one, I had only experienced one first day of school, because we did not become friends until our junior year of college. When I woke up this morning, it was not extremely early. I did not take a bus. I did not groan at my mom as she cried, or later that day read the note that she snuck into my lunchbox. I did not pack my backpack. I did not make sure to look for my lunch money. I didn't throw copious amounts of gel in my hair (Confession, still haven't showered yet today). I didn't pick out an outfit last night, didn't wait in long lines at the overprices bookstore. I didn't hug old friends I hadn't seen all summer. I didn't run around like a chicken with my head cut off through crowded hallways or bump into thousands of people as I maneuvered with my map or syllabus around campus. I didn't sit in my first classes, wondering who in that room would be a friend, an acquaintance, a hook-up, a gym buddy, a crush, or a stranger by the end of the year or semester. I didn't listen to some disgustingly nostalgic playlist that I always put on during times of transition (though...I am now, don't judge) on my iPod (or Walkman) on the way to school.

Instead, I slept until 9:00, made myself breakfast, watched the news, and went on Facebook to see all these notifications about the first day of school.

Obviously, I'm a bit sad. I'm happy about the no homework thing. Hallelujah. Also happy about the fact that I'm not spending ridiculous amounts of money on books I may or may not open. But make no mistake, I have accepted that school is over (until I go to grad school for...something. And until I become a teacher later on down the road), and I am on to the next piece of my life. Many of us are. One status read as follows:

Everyone is posting their pictures of their new ID badges for their new careers and posting about their first day. Just a shout out...I'm so proud of all of you for making your dreams come true! 

I could quote all the cheesiest movies right now in the form of Ferris Bueller's send-off, but instead I'm just going to talk about how awesome school was. Maybe I just got lucky or fortunate to have a great school, great after-school programs and extracurricular activities, great teachers and professors. Not everyone has that. But honestly, education is absolutely one of the best aspects to life. It is the first major aspect of our lives. Education takes up the first quarter of one's life. Does that sound right? I was never good at math. Got a 5 out of 40 on an Algebra II test. Four points were for my name. One in every four of the days are spent on learning. We learn not only about foreign languages, grammar, histories of every corner of the world, training in our career fields, and scientific equations, but about ourselves and about people around us. Here are some of the best lessons I learned over the course of the past 20 years of education (excluding ages 1-3).

1. You have to balance breadth and depth of your interests. It's good to know a lot about a few subjects,  but to dabble a bit in the rest of them so you have basic knowledge.

2. No risk, no reward. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You have to take a chance, on a new class, on a new friendship, on a new lover, on a new neighborhood.

3. The ability to collaborate with others others is one of the most successful, unique and beautiful aspects of human nature.

4. Always keep the door open. Literally and figuratively. You never know who may walk in.

I think that we both dread and get so amped for the first day of school because it is a way to start fresh. That can be fresh coming off a bad year, or fresh coming off a good year and continuing in the same way. The first day of school is something we can all share. Education and these first days have taught me that there is so much to learn about in the world. Maybe that's where I get the nerdy excitement. There is a great deal of suffering in this world, as well as a great deal of (oftentimes rightly distributed) pessimism. I think, however, that many don't realize how good we have it, both as Americans students and as human beings. The earth is huge, time is huge. It's a all a big textbook waiting to be explored. One of the expensive glossy ones though. You can find it brand new or in the used section. Either way, it's a good book. Not like the crappy Calculus books.

Happy First Day of School.

Summer Movie Update

This has so far been a dissapointing summer in terms of films for me. Which is weird...because I am the easiest to please when it comes to them. And the critics are usually much more harsh. However, either the critics are getting lazier, or I am setting my standards too high.

Film..................................................Rotten Tomato Rating | My Rating | My Review

Moonrise Kingdom..........................94%  | 50 % | Pretentious, Overrated, Tried to be deep but was just weird

The Amazing Spider-Man................74%  | 69% | Beautiful 3D (Close to Avatar and Titanic), Incredible Soundtrack, too similar storyline, tried to be darker but wasn't, Spider-Man is not a hipster.

Ted.....................................................69% | 58% | Whereas Family Guy is hilarious and offensive, this is even more offensive and not that funny

Brave ................................................76%  | 65% | Not up to par with other Pixar movies

Beasts of the Southern Wild..............85% | 90% | Stunning characters, artistic department, cinematography. Story could have picked up a bit at the beginning

Next on my list to see: Katy Perry, Magic Mike, Dark Knight Rises, Ruby Sparks

Then I take a break until Oscar season.

Stay tuned!

Lessons I learned from The Amazing Spider-Man

As many know, Columbia Pictures has released yet another Spider-Man film, despite having released the first one and two sequels (apologies, one sequel and one musical...and no I'm not talking about the actual musical). Here are my thoughts after seeing the latest rendition.
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS

Lessons I learned (in no particular order).
1. Emma Stone is still a goddess.
2. Flash Thompson should be living in my bedroom and not in this movie.
3. Peter Parker apparently = angsty/sassy good-looking hipster.
4. There is a reason why most films do not have three screenwriters.
5. Bad guys ALWAYS sound better with a British accent.
6. Gashes on human flesh heal in about a day without stitches. Good job, make up department.
7. Incredible soundtracks matched with an average movie make the composer look like a fool and a genius at the same time.
8. The producers are catching on to the fact that 3D/IMAX films are overpriced, and reward its audience by giving them free posters now.
9. Marc Webb still found a way to make an extended indie music video.
10. Cranes are so. effing. cool.
11. 3D was made for three films: Avatar, Titanic, and this one.
12. Cell phones have perfect reception in the sewers.
13. Spiderwebs can stop a bullet wound.
14. Your hands are only sticky sometimes if you're Spider-Man.
15. The weight of the word "responsibility" only works in the first film.
16. Spider-Man/Peter Parker is the only one that deserves character development. All other characters are allowed to be one-dimensional and have weak objectives.
17. The second Dark Knight Rises trailer apparently makes me cry when it is on a big screen.

Bucket lists and my funeral

Yes, there are multiple bucket lists one can have over the course of a lifetime. They can change, too. I have one for the summer, and one for my life...I work in media and entertainment so...some of them will simply not be possible.

Summer 2012

• Go to da beach and blast Nicki Minaj's "Starships" at least three times on the way there.
• Go to Atlantic City
• Start learning French
• Submit "North"to film festivals
• Find a job or legal means of income
• Find an apartment
• Actually follow through with all the movies I want to see this summer
• Finish spec script for Modern Family
• Finish first and second draft of romantic comedy called "Love Square"
• Begin learning piano or guitar
• Start weekly tradition of game night or pot luck with friends
• Go to a drive-in movie theater
• Attend a concert
• Keep up with blogs
• Write every day
• Go camping

Life Bucket List

• Go skydiving
• Travel to: Australia, Chile, Japan, Mexico, the Carribean, Brazil, Madagascar, South Africa, Portugal, Turkey, Israel, India, Ireland, and Cambodia.
• Travel to: San Francisco, Nashville, Las Vegas, 
• San Diego, Miami, Honolulu, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon, Quebec, Napa Valley
• Get married and have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren
• Attend a Superbowl
• Attend a World Series Game
• Teach high school
• Receive an Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, or Golden Globe Award...hell I'll even take a Razzie.
• Attend the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies
• Meet Lady Gaga, Daniel Radcliffe, Baz Luhrmann, and Emma Watson
• Audition for professional theater
• Have an annual Christmas open house
• Go scuba diving
• Live in New York City
• Live in Los Angeles for longer than two months
• Live in Spain
• See Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Elton John and Lady Gaga Live
• Own a small boat
• Own/run an urban community theater or an Italian restaurant or hookah bar or venue for independent bands or youth rec. center.

We'll see....I've been pretty blessed so far. I wasn't sure where else to awkwardly put this...and I do not plan on passing away anytime soon (knock on wood), but here's some things to know. I'll make an official will sometime...for now, a blog will have to do.

• I want to be buried, the coffin doesn't have to be elaborate
• I want an open casket as long as I don't look that bad
• I want a party after the wake and funeral. Moscato must be there.
• Encourage people to wear other things than black during the funeral
• Play the song "Good Life" and have someone sing "Eagle's Wings" at the service
• My facebook password is....HA! Just kidding
• Bury me with a pack of Gummi Worms from 7-11 and a little bag of Reese's pieces

That's all for now!

Life Advice Part 2

This is something I wrote for my Writing for Journalism class at the end of my senior year of college. I'm happy to say I've done most of these things. Still wish I could have taken my own advice in a few areas.

“How to make the most of your senior year of college”

In western society, we are constantly fed messages of youthfulness and living each moment.  We have characters like Peter Pan, and phrases like “carpe diem,” “No day but today” from the musical “Rent,” and most recently, the forever-tweeted #YOLO (You only live once). 

While these messages can be overbearing, they do hold some valued truth. We obsess with youth because as a society we are afraid of old age and eventual death. Perhaps more deeply than this, we are afraid that we will fade away and not make an impact on the world in the short time we are here.

So what can we do? We cannot neither slow down nor rewind time, at least not yet. What we can do, is make the most of the time we have. So here it is: how to make the most of your senior year of college.

The first step is to purchase a planner in August right before your senior year. If you’re overly tech-savvy, you can just make one in Gmail or on your iPad. Set your big dates on there first: birthdays, holidays, last day of classes, that pretentious indie concert, your friend’s 21^st birthday, and all that jazz. Then, once you get your class syllabi, go through and write down all the due dates for tests, essays, and exams. If you are really meticulous, highlight each class a different color. 

From there, maybe on the notes page, create a weekly schedule. Write the days of the week across the top and the times (8 AM, 9 AM, 10 AM and so on) down the side. Then begin to fill in your calendar with blocks of time for each event. Highlight your classes in one color, your work in another color, and your extracurricular activities/meetings in a third color. 

This will help you have a set schedule so that you can fill in the holes with time for yourself, time for friends, your workout routine, and anything else that might pop up. So now you have a calendar, and a better sense of how much free time you will or will not have.

The second piece of advice is to make a bucket list for the year. Go crazy as possible, then hone in on what is a little more realistic so that you don’t disappoint yourself when you don’t get to everything. If you want to make it more interactive, you can go on bucketlist.org and create one that your friends can see.

The third piece of advice is to make an on-going to do list; preferably in the same place you keep your notes for class or close to your bucket list. This list will not cease to exist. Just accept it, and get over it. For each item, mark the date you wrote it down, and the date you would ideally like to have it finished by. You will not finish it all on time, but this prioritizing will help you keep your sanity and prevent it all from piling together at once.

The last “preparatory” step that you can really do before the year starts is to create a budget. This is extremely difficult, especially for college students who spend more money on alcohol than on food, realistically. Making a loose budget will help you not panic, divided into as many or few categories as you please, will really help you not panic about your finances and will make great practice for the future when loans start coming in.

In a perfect world, those four pieces are started a week ahead of your first day of school. Yeah right, but let’s just pretend. From here, you can move into a daily routine. On that very first day, do what works for you, but really try to wake yourself up each morning “seizing the day”. About.com’s Physical Therapy section shows that those who stretch in the morning have increased mobility and blood flow throughout the day. This also lets you breathe; think about the tasks and activities on the schedule for that day. 

Another step to your “daily” routine would be to arrive a few minutes early to each class. On a professional level, senior year is about making connections so that you can essentially get a job after graduating. This often comes from working with professors. Networking becomes an astronomical part of this process. If you do not have one already, create a LinkedIn profile. If you really want to get yourself out there, make a website. Wix.com will let you make one for free and all you have to pay for is a cheap domain name. Go can also go to vistaprint.com to get extremely cheap business cards. Use all three of these tools to network. You can even use LinkedIn to see an actual map of all your connections, using inmaps.linkedinlabs.com.

According to Professor Sherri Culver of Temple University, true networking comes from actual friendships, not using someone else’s connections for your own professional self-gain. How perfect and lucky then for you. This goes along with the next step to making your senior year worth it: spending time with your closest friends, taking time to meet new ones, and working to catch up with old ones.

One very important aspect of senior year to learn, especially if you have a capstone, is to not take on too much. For many, freshman and sophomore year are all about spreading your wings and getting involved in campus as much as possible. Come senior year, it is time to just be involved in one or two activities you love, and replace the time dedicated to the others with time for yourself.

Taking time for yourself is a huge and vital part of your senior year. What you do in that time is up to you. Some, for example, take an hour or so before going to bed to just cruise on Facebook or watch TV. One method that works very well, if you can stick to it, is to work during the week and then take Sundays as your “day of rest.” Sleep in, guilt-free. Watch movies or TV all day, read some books, go to center city and explore. The most important thing to do in this personal time is to reflect.

Reflection is a huge part of your senior year, for better or for worse. According to PyschCentral.com, activities like journaling “helping you come to terms with [stressful events], thus reducing the impact of stressors on your physical health.”

You can journal when and however you feel. This will help you to sort of see what is on your own mind, and then return to it at a later time when you can look at whatever you were feeling in that moment rationally. Another method, and usually the best one for college students, is to look back at old pictures. Facebook has enabled us to do so with incredible ease. 

Reflection and nostalgia are absolutely wonderful and destructive tools that we embody. They help us to remember where we came from, and remind us where we might go in the future. There are different ways in which to document one’s time here on earth. Some write. Some take pictures. Some make bucket lists. But the best and most interesting make playlists.

The recent invention of the iPod and the even more recent release of Spotify in the United States have made making a playlist not only a convenience, but a truly beautiful way to document our experiences and now share them with one another. Music has a way of documenting moments of our lives. Songs remind us of lovers, of crushes, of family members, of birthday parties, of the first day of school, or that special weekend last summer.

If you are the least bit nostalgic, or sad about graduating, make a playlist with any and all of the following songs. Most will cheer you up, others will depress you further.

“Good Life” by One Republic

“Good Riddance” by Greenday

“Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield

“Forever Young” by Rod Stewart

“I Hope You Dance” by Leann Womack

“Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann

When you get to the end of your senior year, and you begin to freak out because you don’t have a clue where you will end up once you graduate, just put on your playlist and remind yourself that you have the next 40 years to work. If you don’t work for a year, will it really matter in the context of your life? If you don’t have the highest GPA, or if you skip a class in order to go to a friend’s party or art gallery showing, will it matter in the context of your life?

Absolutely not. What will matter is that you look back on your senior year without regret. It will matter that you took a risk, created a friendship, or fell in love only to get your heart broken. It will matter that you stayed up until 3 in the morning chatting with friends. It will matter that you kept in touch with  your professors, and stuck with them long enough so that they could give you advice about life and not just about class. What will matter are the memories you created during what many call the best time of your life.

Video Review: "Eyes Wide Open" by Dirty South

I now move from "Dear So and So" format to music video reviews for a bit. Here is Dirty South (Dragan Roganović), a Serbian-Australian DJ, with his video for "Eyes Wide Open" with Thomas Gold featuring Kate Elsworth, also Australian.



Though the song in itself is nothing extraordinary and will easily get lost in the huge amounts of electronic dance music over the next few years, the video is captivating.

It is refreshing in that it doesn't ever show the singers singing or the DJ playing. Obviously a music video usually showcases the artist, but to have the artist not directly present makes it much more cinematic and interesting. The plot is simple enough, but this interpretation could be different from what the artist intended: girl is broken-hearted, has flashback of an amazing relationship, but the relationship ends abruptly and she is alone.

The Rubik's cube, while visually stunning, especially in the parts where the color matches the color tone of the scene, is a bit confusing as a metaphor. Perhaps it talks about one's life finally coming together when love is found. We get closer and closer to putting the pieces together, but we are never fully complete until another person makes us so. However, the foreboding tone and sad face of the girl putting it together might be a symbol of attempting to put life together, or dreaming of putting it together, but not actually achieving it.

Ending with the white side could be a symbol for many things. In physics, all colors of light put together create white. Maybe it's again a symbol of all those beautiful pieces of her life coming together. On the other, the white could represent an emptiness, a blank slate, or the idea of starting over.

And maybe it just looks effing cool and there's no reason for it at all.

The nostalgic camera work at the beginning of the video is breathtaking. One can just feel the warmth of the late afternoon sun as the picture progresses. We have all been there before, feeling the grass, letting the sun set on our skin, intimately holding hands with another person. As the video picks up, it shares similarities with Calvin Harris and Rihanna's "We Found Love." The songs are similar in that they tell a flashback, a love story that came apart.



The rapid, montage editing, color correction, and close-ups make the video a thrill to watch over and over again.