Reel Access

Today is a great night to watch many classic and silly horror films since it's Halloween. On AMC, they are showing horror genius, George A. Romero's 1968 classic film, " Night of the Living Dead". This film was ground breaking on so many levels. It was a low budget film that looked like a major studio produced it and it featured a African American actor in a horror role, which was very rare at that time. This movie opened a lot of doors to prominent horror directors today that I love.

There is so much you can choose from to watch tonight if you're not at a party or the awesome Halloween parade in New York. I just want to wish everyone a safe and fun Happy Halloween. This is the time to be out of your element and be a ghoul or whatever scary character tonight. So enjoy yourselves tonight.

Lauren

I just finished watching Spike TV's fourth annual Scream Awards. I have to be honest, I have never watched this award show until now. I found it to be interesting since it was dedicated to fantasy and horror related entertainment. Some of the winners were Megan Fox, Taylor Lautner, Anna Paquin and of course Twilight which took the award for best fantasy movie. I'm going to be utterly honest even though I'm a Twi-fan and say that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince or Watchmen should have won that award.

That was a complete shock to me on all levels. I enjoyed Twilight, but it was not done to the standards of what it should have been. Watchmen and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince were two extremely good movies. This is where I feel that movie ethics have gone so wrong on my views. I know for a fact that most of those voters were between either the age of 15 to 24 or 18-35. They voted purely because of the actors in the movie and not of the production of the film. I feel that title of " Best Film" or whatever it may be is misconceived. I wish people can vote the correct way when it comes to things like that.

I know as Americans that we have the right to our opinions and so on, but come on... Be civil and realistic about things like that. Overall, it was an okay show with George A. Romero was introduced a lifetime achievement award which was presented by Quentin Tarrantino. Battlestar Gallactica got some love as well.  That's pretty much my thoughts on the award show.

Vampires seems to be  a very appropriate discussion since Halloween is almost among us. Recently I just finished my an review article on the soundtrack for New Moon. It was actually rush released on October 16th, but it's official release was on the 20th. I have to admit that this soundtrack is the indie-music lover's dreams come true. This soundtrack features one of the top acts in indie-music at the moment. I was very impressed by the choices of who was picked to be on the album.

Some of the artists include Death Cab For Cutie, Grizzly Bear, Ok Go, Lykke Li and Thom Yorke. I was quite taken aback in a good way, when I saw that Thom Yorke was on the album. As most of you know, Thom Yorke is the lead singer of Radiohead, one of the greatest bands of all time. His song, "Hearing Damage" is on heavy rotation on my Ipod. I just love this song so much. I also love the lead single, " Meet Me on the Equinox" by Death Cab For Cutie. Muse's remixed version of their song " I Belong to You" is also another one that's on heavily on repeat on my playlist.

I don't want to go into too much detail of the soundtrack because I will have a link posted to my articles on The Ticker's website. I will promise to get a separate post referring to that link. To wrap up my brief post on the soundtrack, I definitely feel that it's worth listening to even if you're not into the whole "Twilight" phenomena. The music should not be over sited due that so in retrospect please get a chance to listen to the soundtrack.

I would like to first off apologize for my lack of posts this week. I have been swamped in mid-term exams, work and writing articles for my school newspaper. A lot of positive things have been happening and it was difficult for me to keep everything in order. I will definitely try and make it up next month since October is over this Saturday. On top of my very busy schedule, I'm moving to a new apartment so that complicates things even further.

On a lighter note, last Tuesday was my first show with Reel Talks, a pod cast show that I host with friends of mine. I did mention this in a previous post about this project. Things are going smoothly, but surely with our show. The show is recorded on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. and last about two hours. I'm also in the process of finishing my article on the New Moon soundtrack review for my school's paper. I will supply a link to The Ticker, so you can check out my articles as well.

It has been difficult for me right now to process all the new changes that are happening in my life right now. I'm still in college, which adds more stress, but gives me an opportunity to publish articles and make strong connections with people.  Once again, I'm sorry for the horrible delay in my posts and will promise you the future of my blog will look brighter.

Thanks

Lauren

Director Spike Jonze has directed awesome critically acclaimed art-house films such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation puts  his own unique spin of Maurice Sendak's beloved classic children story, "Where the Wild Things Are". Released on October 16th, I was anticipating this movie because like Jonze, Sendak's story is one of my favorites to date.

The classic story which would take you literally two minutes to read was adapted into an 98 minute film. The movie tells the story of an destructible boy named Max (Max Records) who is dealing with his mother (Catherine Keener) dating again and his sister who is quite distant from the family. I was taken away by Max Records performance as Max. Records was unbelievably natural and the glue to the whole entire movie. One thing  I would say is that this movie may be a adaptation of a children story, but it's no movie for a child.

The subject matter is way to mature for any child under 12 years-old to understand unless they are familiar with divorce. Max is completely unruly and is quite rude to his mother demanding her to feed him. I was wondering how Jonze was going to film Max going off to the island of the Wild Things, but did a simple way of introducing it. The movie's theme of emotional bonding and sticking together as a family flowed through Max's world and right into the monsters world.

James Gandolfini was breath taking as Carol, a monster who can't control his feelings. Gandolfini gave a emotional performance that made me cry while I was watching it. Paul Dano was also awesome as Alexander and Catherine O' Hara was an delight as Judith. This movie does brings out feelings that are raw that rings true in the real life. Maybe that's why this movie touched me so deeply because I know how Max feels. I can't wait to see more from Max Records. I enjoyed this movie despite the negative reviews from critics.

I would say this would be by far the most difficult topic that I would share to all of you who are reading my blog. I started this in August, so I didn't get the chance to express my thoughts on the loss of Michael Jackson. This weekend coming up the documentary of Jackson's last rehearsal for his comeback tour will be released for the world to see. This film will definitely show Jackson working to his best efforts to reunite his music with his fans. Unfortunately the whole world will never get that chance to see him perform because of his tragic death.

At the MTV Music Video Awards in September showed a trailer for the film and I have to say JEEZ! that would have been the hot ticket show that you could not afford to miss. There was so much awesome concepts that Jackson wanted to share to his fans. I'm still baffled that he looked in good condition while rehearsing his legendary songs. I'm just not understanding what went wrong.

I will try and get the chance to see this movie to support the memory of Michael Jackson because like many of millions of people grew up knowing his music and his love for saving the world. I, sometimes to this day, can not believe that Michael Jackson is gone. My support and prayers goes to the family and the legacy he left behind in his children.

 June 18, 2010!!! That is the release date for the long, but anticipated third installment to Disney/ Pixar's beloved Toy Story trilogy. I just finished watching two official trailers on yahoo.com, which I had to suppress my laughter because I was watching it in my school's library. From the trailers, I don't think anyone will be disappointed with this one. The synopsis of the film is that the toy gang is in risk of being donated due to Andy starting his freshman year of college. (I know. It's hard to believe that Andy is starting college.) So what do they do best? They go off and try to catch up to Andy. I'm such a big fan of this series and I can not wait for it to come out. To watch the trailer of Toy Story 3, you can follow this link at http://disney.go.com/toystory/.

To continue my post on Wednesday about sequels and everything in between, official pictures of Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas in Money Never Sleeps aka Wall Street 2 have been posted on the Internet. Shia looks extremely cute in a gray suit and Michael looks stunning as well. So far I know about the synopsis of the sequel is that Shia is the fiance of Gordon Gekko's daughter who is played by a possible Oscar nominee, Carey Mulligan for An Education. I read on Fandango.com that Frank Langella, Josh Brolin, Susan Sarandon, and Charlie Sheen are starring in it as well. I hope that the sequel can deliver because the original was fantastic.

Unfortunately, The Simpsons will not be coming back to the silver screen for another awesome movie. I was pretty upset about that, but understands because the sequel would mean the ending of  the series completely.

Next on the sequel train or you would call it a whole new series is the Family Vacation movies. This time around we follow Rusty Griswald and his family. You may remember that Rusty was the son of Chevy Chase's iconic character Clark Griswald. It's funny this is coming up because I was talking to mom about the Family Vacation movies.

It's no surprise that Vemon is having it's own movie coming soon. Must I even write about this. LOL.

It looks like Quentin Tarantino might be turning his beloved Kill Bill series into a trilogy. I can not express the joy and excitement that I'm feeling right now. I mentioned in an older post about Kill Bill being one of my favorite Tarantino films. Tarantino explained according to The Associated Press  that he has plans, but is waiting for 15 years from now, he would do a third version of the series.

I seriously don't care how long I have to wait for the third movie to come out. As long as Tarantino plans on eventually making it, I'm all on board on spending my money to see it. Uma Thurman was awesome as " The Bride" and I know that both Uma and Quentin will produce a good action film. We are in a stage where remakes, comic books and adaptations are the new craze of what people want to see on film. I have discussed this before with friends. I mean currently now here in New York, director Oliver Stone is shooting part two to the well known film, Wall Street. I have heard mixed reviews about this since that movie is great. This will be further discussed if sequels of prominent and great movies should be made. In Tarnatino's case, HELL YES!!!!

Last week, Michael Bay posted on his blog that official release date for the third Transformers movie is July 1, 2011. For some reason it took me quite sometime to post on this because I wanted to gather my thoughts properly on it. I enjoyed the first movie, but I thought the second was okay. My anticipation for the second movie concluded on my disappointment on the whole thing. From the ending of the movie, a third was a definite obvious thing. I'm just curious what the screenplay for the movie is going to consist of.

I found myself confused with The Rise of the Fallen. A lot of people I knew was also confused and annoyed by every over the top action scenes. I do have to admit that Megan Fox was right about Michael Bay focusing more on the action and not the acting. I came to that conculsion before that statement Fox made, so I'm not the only one that feels that way. I am excited though about the movie and I get to see Optimus Prime. I do enjoy Michael Bay's films and I'm praying that this one works out quite well.

Disney Pictures and Pixar are a force to reckon with when they collaborate on movies. They have produced the best cartoon movies ever. Monsters Inc, The Incredibles and of course my favorite Toy Story!!! I was so happy to know that not only was Toy Story 2 was in theatres again, but it's in 3D. I have not seen it yet in theatres and I will definitely make the trip sometime this week to go and see it.

It landed at number 3 on this week's box office list, which it was not a big surprise to me because Toy Story was a box office hit when it originially was in theatres in 1995. I heard that there is going to be a third Toy Story movie, which I can't wait for it be released. I'm just dying to know what Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz (Tim Allen) are up to. I'm also wondering who will voice Slinky since Jim Varney passed away in 2000. I hope it is someone who can voice the part well because Varney truly did an amazing job voicing Slinky. We just have to wait and see on the development of this film.

As I mentioned last month that major changes will be in perspective of plans to build my blog and my career. As of tonight, I gladly accepted a business proposal from my friend Gus Garcia, who is building not only a website, but a podcast as well to all things entertainment and much more. I am excited and also lost for words because of the plans that will be put into motion quite soon. I am happy to be working with people that share the same desire and hunger of being an self made bosses. This is a committment that I am fully ready for and accept because this is what I want to do as a career. A lot of creative people are involved in this so there are no slackers part of the team. Gus told me that we already have a street team not only in New York, but in Florida as well. This is great news because the exposure is going to massive. I can feel it already!

Since I'm in a film writing class at Baruch College, my screenplays will be developed into real films, probably next year. We have a goal to be up and running by this month and have something real solid by the end of this year. Like I mentioned, there are no words to describe the feeling that I'm feeling now. My advice to people is that you can not wait for something that you want come to you, you need to get up and make it happen. That is something that all of us is doing now. This is not a game. This is our talent and lives involved in this. I will keep you posted on this developing business venture.

Thanks
Lauren

Forgive me for being so late on reporting on Paramore's brand new album which was released on September 29. I also have written an review for Brand New Eyes for The Ticker, my college's newspaper. Paramore did a 360 turn from their Riot! album. It started out with their familiar punk rock edge, but in the middle the sound was mellow. Since the album was recorded in Nashville that could be a possible factor in the their new songs. I honestly love this album. My favorites songs, besides their first single, " Ignorance", I like " Misguided Ghosts'" and " The Only Exception." Those are the ones that I play over constantly. LOL. I feel that the album is going to be in a high position in the Billboard 200. I mean come on! They have some many Twilight fans who loved " Decode."

In general this album was good. Haley's vocals are still killer as ever especially in " All I Wanted."They kept it real, but added some cool things like acoustics in some songs. This totally just hit me as I'm writing this, but they remind me of No Doubt. They actually toured with No Doubt earlier this year so that is pretty ironic.  This is a sign that Paramore is going to be around for a very long time.

I didn't have time to post this up because I was so caught up in school assignments, but I read in the newspaper that Johnny Depp may not be returning as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean's fourth movie. I was so shocked and upset because Johnny Depp IS Jack Sparrow. This is the role that put him back on the map and I would hate to see someone else playing his part. I rather not see Jack Sparrow in the movie than some other actor as Sparrow. The reason that Johnny Depp will not be returning is that he was not too thrilled that a fourth installment was in talks.

I do agree just like other people that the Pirates installments needs to be left alone. It would be nice to have another movie to follow up on the lives of the characters. If you remember in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) got married and had a child, but Will took his father's place on Capt. Davy Jones's ship (Bill Nighy). This is a topic that is definitely something I will keep on posting on. You can click on further info at my favorite links on the subject.