Silver Screen

The 20s are all about indulgence. There is something to be said about doing what you want. So often we sacrifice our yearnings to do what others would us. When you're able to do what you most enjoy particularly when it has become a rarity, there's nothing better. It may be cliché but life really is too short to miss out on what you love most. Live your days as if you're they're picture perfect adaptions that are just about to hit the silver screen.

 

The experience of going to the movies is a powerful pastime. Purchasing tickets, grabbing a freshly buttered bag of popcorn with it's alluring aroma, and a gigantic overpriced 64 ounce drink. Enter the dimly lit theatre with geometric shaped patterns, stadium style seating, and nostalgic red velvet curtains. Choose chairs and settle in for the previews. Phones off, worries put away, and mind focused on nothing more than where you are. The feature film comes in, production studios set the cosmogonist atmosphere, and the film's score breaks through with roaring surround sound and clear imagery. For two hours you are drawn into a captivating world on a silver screen. The credits roll, you pocket your ticket stub, and walk about with this lingering feeling as if you were part of the on-screen world you just left. Sometimes you're forever changed by the silver screen.

 
Movies have this transportive quality about them. There is nothing like joining an audience in a theater for a feature film. Surrounded by strangers you have this seemingly out of body experience. It's reminiscent of a religious ceremony in that you seem transcend time and space to join a reality other than the one you usually exist it. Movies have these pervasive moods and motivations about them that deliver you to some profound place. Laughter, tears, fear, anger, joy, suspense, and curiosity in every scene. Messages conveyed about how societies are, can be, were, or should be leave you asking big questions about your existence. Good and evil, right or wrong, love or hate and all the ambiguity in between all come alive on the silver screen.
 
Watching movies for me has also been this significant experience. As someone who truly is exhilarated by knowing about the behind the scenes work that goes into production movies are truly impressive forms of expression. I love knowing about the directors, actors, screenwriters, etc. that come together to make it all happen. Cinematography, how videography and editing combine with special effects, and all the little things like scene continuity matter to me. In the theatre I'm not only watching what's on the screen but what's off of it too. The perspectives that are shown and those that are not. I wonder about the decisions made to shoot this way, say a line with an intonation, or how a location was scouted. I love the magic of the silver screen.
 
Kingsman: the Secret Service Review:
What happens when you take the debonaire espionage of James Bond, the kick-ass high impact sleuthing of Captain America & Black Widow à la Captain America: the Winter Soldier, and the innovation of young agents that's reminiscent of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series of books? You get the blockbusting smash hit that is Kingsman. The movie is fast-paced, expertly self-aware, modern, sleek, and downright smashing good fun. The film leaves you excitedly breathless as if you've taken a wild ride. The film is well casted and acted. Colin Firth surprises and never crinkles his suit, newcomer Taron Egerton holds his own, and Samuel L. Jackson plays a humorous Russell Simmons/Steve Jobs villain whose take over the world scheme is rational but dubious nonetheless. The jokes are funny, the action is beautifully shot and clean without being distasteful, and the costumes are simply dapper. The iconic indescript Baptist church scene is loaded with some disturbing slurs but they have purpose and the following minutes are potent retribution. This movie is a must-see. It'll tide you over until the summer super-hits come along. 4.8/5 stars

The Duff Review:

High school movies somehow end up having the exact plot. All-American jock is enlisted to help not so popular girl transform into a beauty and *spoiler alert* ends up falling for her in the process. In the age of clever writing leading women like Emma Stone in Easy A, Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, and the original with She's All That with Freddie Prinze Jr. & Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, the Duff tries unsuccessfully for engaging snappy dialogue. Mae Whitman owns as the offbeat girl going through the transformation with a post-modern twist complete with cyber bully and technologically oblivious adults. Robbie Amell - the CW's golden boy (give him another show already #Firestorm) - has great on scene chemistry, and good comedic timing but lackluster as this film's leading man. The social media references get old fast, the plot is all over the place (especially since it is a book adaptation), but the "moral of the story" is delivered well. Overall the film won't hit Clueless, Sixteen Candles, or Heathers cult status but it's enjoyable nonetheless. 3.5/5 stars

My blog post question for the day is ... what's a movie you saw in theaters that profoundly moved you? Maybe it was because I loved the book but the film adaption of Lois Lowry's the Giver hit me hard.