Royal Wedding Mania

YAY!! Wedding!! For those living under a rock, the biggest royal wedding of this century will be happening this Friday, April 29th, between Prince William and Catherine Middleton. TLC has gone crazy and everything on TV has something to do with the Royal Wedding, which just shows how us Americans are going crazy about the wedding. But what's wrong with that? In an age where girls grow up with Disney princesses, why shouldn't we be excited about a real woman becoming an actual princess by marrying her prince. It's an unbelievable idea that will actually be happening. Not only that, but think how amazing it is to be Catherine, planning her wedding, and knowing that all of London, England, and the world will be celebrating with you. Around London, plans for booths and hat-making crafts for children lend a type of carnival celebration atmosphere to the whole event and I think it's really special to know that so many people want this marriage to be a success. Therefore, I will definitely be waking up at 4am to drink tea, eat a scone, and enjoy this fabulous event!

P.S. Can I just say how fabulous and classy Kate Middleton is, love her!
P.P.S. If you want to be a "classy" American, then go to royalring.com to purchase a commemorative heirloom engagement ring for a mere $19.99...thank you tacky American businesses based in New Jersey...

Ones We Lost Too Soon

So, the last few days as school is closing up and finals are beginning, I've been relaxing and of course, watching movies...no shock there. In fact, friends always mention how I'm either watching movies, sleeping, or in dance class, my life is very small. But anyways, from all this movie watching, I've rediscovered two of my favorite movies Dirty Dancing and Selena. The first you've probably heard of and the second, probably not. What connects these two movies are that both deal with stars that we lost too soon.

Selena: for those that don't know who that is, she was an Latino singer that came out of Corpus Christi, Texas. Music was a family business; Selena's father Abraham began the band Selena y Los Dinos that started with Selena as the lead singer and her two siblings playing drums and bass. As Selena and her siblings got older and the band picked up momentum, they slowly gained more members and also gained popularity as Latino artists. Selena was only 16 years old in 1987 when she won Best Female Vocalist at the Tejano Music Awards and the next seven years, she would dominate these awards. She also went on to win Best Mexican-American album at the Grammy Awards. Unfortunately, Selena was murdered in 1995 at the age of 23 by the ex-President of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar.

Selena made waves in the Latino music community and had such a great effect on so many people. The reason most people don't know about her is because she focused mainly on Latino music during her life and died before her English language album was due to come out in stores. It was during 1995 that Selena was going to debut as an English language singer. Seeing how much of an impact she had on the Latino music community, one can only imagine how well she could have done with her English language songs and albums for the future. She was certainly lost too soon from the world at the age of 23. But it is certainly magnificent how much of a success Selena was just during these first years and how much she came to mean to so many people.

For more of a view of her life, I definitely encourage watching the movie Selena, a biopic made in 1997 starring Jennifer Lopez as Selena. However, all the singing done in the movie are recordings of Selena singing so you get to hear her voice. Also, here is a music video by Selena: Amor Prohibido Music Video.

Another artist that we lost too soon was of course Patrick Swayze who starred in Dirty Dancing. Although he led a considerably longer life than Selena, Swayze died less than two years ago in 2009 at the age of 57. After watching Dirty Dancing, I realized just how much I love that movie and how great Swayze is in it. As I went to look for other movies he's been in that I would enjoy, I found very few. As such, it's sad to know that he didn't get a longer time to continue working as an artist.

Of course, there are many other artists that we've lost in recent years including Heath Ledger and Brittany Murphy among others. If you have any favorite actors, singers, dancers, etc that you feel we lost too soon, please share.

Quick and Random

So, since I'm getting into the swing of being a blogger, I want to try to blog somewhat consistently. Therefore, here's a quick and random blog with three things that you, and most other people, probably don't know about me. These things are not earth-shattering nor do they even play a very important role in my daily life, they're just things that I occasionally think of and forget to share with people.

1. I LOVE to donate blood...not the actual act of it because, for real, who really wants a needle in their arm...bleh! But, besides all that, I find donating blood to be extremely rewarding and such an easy thing to do in order to help people. You feel so good about yourself afterward and the arm-wrap bandage thing they give you is like a badge of honor for me. However, I'm unfortunately no longer allowed to donate blood to the Red Cross because, for an unknown reason, my past two donations have tested positive for Hepatitis B. Of course when I first got the letter I freaked...I mean that is not good. So, logically I went to the health clinic and paid an exorbitant amount of money for them to test my blood for any diseases, including Hep B, and the results? Nothing. I'm fine and healthy as can be. But then the second time it happened, it didn't matter if I went to get it checked out because the Red Cross has a rule that if you get two positives, or even false-positive results, you are no longer allowed to donate for the sanctity of the blood they distribute. It all makes sense to me but its still something that makes me sad because it was one of the things I was really looking forward to consistently doing once I turned 18...alas, not.

2. I want to live in the treehouse made by the Swiss Family Robinson in the 1960 movie. Yes, you did just read that correctly. But seriously, have you seen that movie and how awesome that treehouse is? Its totally ridiculous and completely awesome at the same time. I think I like it because there's an appeal to the mixture of both civilized life and total nature being mixed together....or maybe I just think its awesome to be able to pull up the ladder that reaches the house each night in an effort to keep the tigers away...

3. America's Test Kitchen on PBS is one of my favorite television shows. Don't understand? Just watch an episode and try one of their recipes and then you will understand. Just a note, the Cincinnati Chili Recipe is the bomb-diggity!

Alright, so that last one was kind of a cop-out because when I was thinking of what I was gonna write for this post earlier, I actually had a really good third random fact...but oh well, so much for that.

Jane Eyre...what??

This past Saturday, I felt so grown-up! I woke up early and made french toast for breakfast and then proceeded to get ready for the day to go see the new Jane Eyre movie by myself at an early bird special. While I was on the school shuttle, I bumped into a good friend I hadn't seen in awhile and convinced her to ditch what she had been planning to do to come watch the movie with me instead. Huzzah! She did and afterward we enjoyed an extremely delicious three course lunch at Cafe Deluxe in Bethesda...great success! But before that, we of course ran through the crazy rain to go watch Jane Eyre. And how was it? Well, we should look at a few other things before tackling that question.

Exhibit A

As far as Netflix shows me, these are the 1934, 1944, 1973, 1983, 1996, 1997, 2006, and 2011 film adaptations of Charlotte Brontë's classic novel Jane Eyre. For comparisons sake, there have only been five adaptations of the arguably more popular Pride and Prejudice. Anyways, I myself have seen four of the eight adaptations and have been more often disappointed than completely happy with the films. Which leads me to...

Exhibit B

THE PLOT

 

It's long and for some it's a tedious book to get through, so how do movie-makers consolidate all that story into a short 2 hour film? Well, since some of the versions are mini-series, they obviously aren't able to do it with great success, which is probably why they keep making new versions. But of course, you also need audience interest to keep trying for money reasons. So along those lines, while I was watching the newest version, it suddenly occurred to me that Jane Eyre is actually a very dark, dramatic story rather than just being another story of love and life as with many Jane Austen novels. Therefore, I think there's a certain appeal to a period piece movie that isn't all sunshine and happiness, but actually kinda creepy.

It's probably for this reason that Charlotte's sister Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights has also been able to reach success and become a classic novel as well. Personally, I find Wuthering Heights extremely overdone and annoying to get through with all the issues that Heathcliff and Cathy seem to have in the story, but hey that's just me... Anyways, I always assumed most people also felt the same way I did about Emily's work, but then it occurred to me that there's probably a whole group of people out in the world that love Wuthering Heights as well as a group who feel the same way about Jane Eyre as I feel about Wuthering Heights. So, some people like the dark and twisty stories and some don't and to what it extent, it always varies. Which finally leads me to, what did I actually think of this year's version of Jane Eyre?

Oh so many mixed feelings... Well, I definitely think this landed farther on the side of good than bad for sure, but it still wasn't a great film. My cons for the film include that once again it just doesn't do the plot complete justice. I actually really enjoyed the inter-splicing of past and present moments in Jane's life, but when the story is mainly focused on her time at Thornfield with Mr. Rochester, it just feels choppy and without any sort of flow to connect all the key moments they showed. It felt more like it was giving me a summary of what happened than actually just showing me what happened. I also missed seeing a better depiction of Jane's childhood life at Norwood and her friendship with Helen Burns. However, the pros of this film definitely made me very happy, especially the casting for the two leads Jane and Mr. Rochester. Even though the actual progression in the film didn't suggest a growing relationship, the acting and chemistry between the two made me believe it. It was also nice to see for the first time a blonde Jane Eyre versus a brunette. Michael Fassbender as Rochester was also a great choice because despite the dark character of Rochester, you still need someone who can make you believe that a person like Jane would actually want to marry him. I also really loved the different settings and the great cinematography of Thornfield and the countryside of England. Overall, I would say I'm happy with the film, but only because there are so few other good ones because in reality, the film isn't able to be great due to its choppy presentation...like I said, a lot of mixed feelings.

P.S. I'll try to write my next post not about a movie...

Good Chick Flicks -- I Bet You Haven't Heard Of

It seems fitting, given that I'm a HUGE movie buff, that I make my first post about movies! I don't know about you, but my life would not be the same without the use of Watch Instantly on Netflix. Sure, not all the movies offered are classics, one of the greats, or even passably good, but occasionally you do find a really good film that kind of comes out of nowhere (if you're in to big, sweeping epics, Agora is a pretty good one). Anyways, this post is specifically to make you aware of two great "chick flicks" (I cringe to use that term, bleh) that I've discovered on Netflix.

#1 My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
Made in 2010, this film stars Alyssa Milano as the female lead and although there's a definite happy-go-lucky, made for TV feel to the movie, I still was happily impressed with it. It's about a girl who appears to meet two great guys at the same time and simultaneously dates them. As both relationships progress, you start to feel miffed at Milano's character and how she can appear so sweet and yet be jerking these two guys around. However, if you are a clever movie-watcher and great at guessing plots, then the twist probably didn't catch you by surprise. Alas, despite all the movies I've seen, I still can't seem to guess movie plots to save my life. Therefore, the very surprising plot twist did catch me by surprise and suddenly turned my miffed feeling into a completely happy one. Happy to have discovered something that was both sweet and surprising. It was nice to see a movie that didn't rely on violence and sex to make an interesting story, but instead actually thought about the plot and created something interesting to watch.

#2 The Good Guy
Made in 2009, this film stars Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter, and Bryan Greenberg in a story that proves that good guys don't finish last. I'm gonna tangent for a moment and say that I love most "chick flicks" like any other girl but there's a certain amount of delusion in those films when a girl ends up with the suave, debonair, extremely rich guy who just so happens to also be sweet. Chances are that in real life that guy is a player and a huge douche...but I digress. The point is that any self-respecting girl in real life probably wouldn't end up with a guy like that for self-preservation reasons, especially when they use more product in their hair than you do. That is why I really enjoyed this particular movie because it sets up the story, making it appearing that Bledel's character is dating a real catch, a Wall Street star whose making tons of money and looking good while doing it. In the end though, the film progresses to show you the guy's true nature and brings forth his colleague as the real contender, an actual good guy despite some awkwardness. That is real life because good guys won't finish last because girls will always prefer the sweet guy to the jerk, no matter how most movies paint it otherwise.

In other news though, a chick flick that I'm looking forward to coming out on May 6th is Something Borrowed starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Colin Egglesfield, and Kate Hudson. The movie is an adaptation of an Emily Giffin novel and I must say that I love Emily Giffin books (although that one isn't my favorite). So, if you're looking for good chick-lit, check out her books; my particular favorites are Love the One You're With and Baby Proof. Enjoy!