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/.