Movie Blog and Review (Blog #9)

Blog #9

Movie Review and Blog on Tangled

12/12/10

Professor Purdy

            Last weekend I went to see the brand new animated Disney movie, Tangled.  Going into the movie, the reason I wanted to see it so badly was simply because it is a Disney movie.  They never cease to amaze me and they always have great storylines and actors.  This movie is a spinoff of the original Rapunzel we all know and love, however when you think of a spinoff you think that the movie is going to have a lot in common with the old one.  Well in Tangled that is definitely not the case.  This new movie brings a fresh new take on Rapunzel, with a very cute and interesting story.  The movie begins with Rapunzel being stolen by an evil old woman, Mother Gothel played by Donna Murphy, due to the fact that Rapunzel’s hair holds magical powers that can heal anyone and help anyone.  However, when her hair is cut that hair loses its power and turns from brown to blonde.  For those reasons Mother Gothel steals Rapunzel in order to keep her for herself and use Rapunzel’s powers for herself.  Unfortunately, Rapunzel never finds out that Mother Gothel isn’t her true mother and had no idea she was being used for her special power.  Since Mother Gothel wants her all for herself she is never allowed to leave her house, but on her 18th birthday she finally rebels and leaves after meeting a man named Ryder, played by Zachary Levi.  Ryder is actually in a little bit of trouble himself too, seeing as he is wanted for stealing the crown from the king and queen who are actually Rapunzel’s true parents.  Throughout her adventure with Ryder she puts together the fact that she is the lost princess the king and queen are looking for and she has to get back to them.  In order to not give anymore away I’m going to let you guys figure out what happens when you go see the film for yourself.  Overall, the movie was great and I definitely would recommend it for all ages, because who doesn’t love a good animated Disney film?  Tangled is a stellar nine out of ten stars.  With Mandy Moore, Rapunzel, kicking butt and acting so girly how could she not be my favorite character in this film?  When you get a chance get to the theaters to check out this classic spinoff of Rapunzel. 

Arts and Craft Show Blog and Review (Blog #8)

Blog #8

12/12/10

Blog and Review of an Illinois Arts and Crafts Show

Professor Purdy

            Over Thanksgiving break when I went back home to Chicago, Illinois and attended an arts and craft show.  The show was held at a hotel and resort in a suburb of Chicago.  The hotel and resort was called Pheasant Run, and the show was held inside their convention area.  The reason why I went to the show was because my mom and sister always go to any type of arts and craft show in the chicagoland area and they come back from each and everyone and they tell me all the cool stuff they found and how I would have liked a lot of the things on display.  My mom and sister usually go to these shows and they come back with only a couple of things and I wondered why they would go only to get a couple of things.  My sister told me that she likes to go to the shows to get more of an idea of what other people are doing out there.  She then takes their ideas and attempts to make them her own.  I thought that this was definitely a cool idea, except for the fact that I am not really interested in arts and craft.  However, she is good at making her own ideas from other ideas and she has definitely made me some cool stuff as well.  Therefore, when my mom told me that they were going to attend another show I sprung at the opportunity to check out what these shows are all about.  We got to the show and it was not close by any means, about forty-five minutes away, and when we walked in I thought you just go out and start looking at all the tables set up.  Boy was I wrong!  You have to pay five whole dollars just to get into this thing.  I thought that was pretty funny, but I got passed that and then had an open mind going into look at, I’d say about a hundred plus different tables.  After going around and looking at every table I found some things that I liked and a lot of things that I did not like at all.  One of the things I liked the best there was the cool golf yard game that these two guys there had invented.  It is a take-off of corn hole and it was pretty cool, but very pricey.  On the other hand, there were so many things that I hated at the show.  Mainly the things that I hated the most were the pointless photography works that people had done.  Basically they took a picture that anyone in the world could take; photo shopped it a little bit, and then put it in a frame.  It was so pointless it made me upset.  Also the other things I hated were all the tables that had tacky little nick nacks, like jewelry and all.  Overall, there were a lot more bad tables then good and I ended up walking out of the show only buying one thing.  I bought beef jerky that I still have not eaten.  All in all it was a good experience to have, but I doubt I would do it again.

Movie Blog and Review (Blog #7)

Blog # 7

Movie Blog and Review on Unstoppable

12/12/10

Professor Purdy

            Less than a month ago I went to see a movie called Unstoppable.  The movie had a strong cast, with Denzel Washington leading the pack.  Denzel is the main character and plays Frank.  He has a co-actor with him in the movie by the name of, Chris Pine, who plays Will, Frank’s partner.  The movie revolves around a true story about a train in Ohio carrying 2,898 tons becoming unmanned due to a rail operator hopping out of the train in order to go flip a switch to make the train go on a different track.  What ends up happening is the operator does flip the switch in time, but after the switch is flipped and the train switches tracks the operator is unable to catch back up with the train because the speed of the train increases and the operator cannot catch up with it.  The train then ends up traveling sixty-six unmanned miles at around 51 mph through Ohio before another train is able to catch up to it slow it down using its brakes and have an operator climb on board in order to bring it to a complete stop.  The movie uses that true story to base its own storyline off of.  However, in the movie the setting is in Western Pennsylvania and they change around the train number and company.  They also make the movie a lot more dramatic by saying that the train is carrying a bunch of toxic chemicals and if it derails that the result would be catastrophic.  Overall, the movie was very entertaining.  Even if the only reason I went to see it was because of Denzel, it did have an interesting plot and the action was highly dramatic.  This made for an exciting film to watch, even if it was all about a train.  I would have to give this movie eight stars out of ten due to the strong acting, intense action, and an interesting plot line. 

Art Series Blog #2 (Blog #6)

Art Series Blog #2

Phyllis Chen Concert

Thursday November 18, 2010 7PM at the Sears Recital Hall

           

            The opening information given for this art series event was, “A classically trained pianist—she began at Oberlin Conservatory—Phyllis Chen has a passion for pushing the boundaries of performance, most notably by embracing the toy piano. This concert will include works on a traditional grand as well as the toy piano. Chen, whose playing has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “a dazzling delight,” is a rising star of the New York music scene.”  In order to explain what concert I saw I felt it was necessary to give you the ‘official’ background on what the concert was all about.  Ok, so now for another wonderful art series review from yours truly.  I made it to the concert early and on time and I was excited to see what was going to go down, seeing as I had attended the presentation Chen had the night before and I was ready to see more.  This concert opened up a lot stricter then the presentation, I’m guessing because it was purely a concert, but I liked how she talked at the presentation and gave openings for her songs, as well as information about herself.  However, at the concert she did not do that and it felt like blur after blur, she would just bounce from song to song and I wanted to know more about them.  Chen opened up with a song called “Mirabella” which was played just on the toy piano.  The song was very up beat and fun but overall the sound was not pleasing and I was a little concerned if the whole concert was going to go this way.  She then moved to a song called “Macrokosmos Book 2” which I really did not like.  She used both the toy piano and the grand piano in order to play this song.  The grand piano sounded like static when she played it and I was not sure if that was the sound system of the recital hall or how she actually meant to play it.  Another comment I have on her overall play is that I just do not like how she physically plays the piano.  I feel that her body motions are all very unnecessary and she is trying to put across emotion that I don’t feel comes through her music.  Her music does not touch me at all in any way.  It seems as though her music is a lot of jumbled up notes and sounds and she has no rhyme or reason for why she plays them this way.  It is very hard to understand her work and I cannot relate to it at all.  The fourth song she did was called “Colura” where she used both the toy piano and bowls.  The song was actually painful to listen to.  I almost thought about leaving to be honest.  The one thing I can say about her playing that I enjoyed was not even on the toy piano.  It was when she played the grand piano and used the inside of the piano by running her finger along the inside strings.  At times it was a strange sound, but kind of cool that she could do that with the grand piano.  However, the sound that her song produced was not pleasing at all.  After playing on the grand piano she switched back to the toy piano and used her computer and boom box in order to produce a background sound for her while she played.  She introduced the song by saying that it would sound like rock n’ roll and what it actually sounded like was a bunch of loud annoying racket.  I feel that if I had gone up on the stage I could have made better sound.  Overall, I am not sure why she is referred to as a rising star and the performance itself was very startling, alarming, and bad.

Art Series Blog #1 (Blog #5)

Art Series Blog #1

Phyllis Chen: Playing With Toys Presentation

Wednesday November 17, 2010 7PM at the Sears Recital Hall

            Less than a month ago I went to see a speaker presentation on toy pianos.  The speaker was up and coming star, Phyllis Chen.  She began the presentation by explaining how the toy piano was first marketed as an educational toy.  However, today it seems that toys kids want the most are marketed more electronically, such as guitar hero, rock band, and video games.  Due to that happening the toy piano has fallen off the market.  She went on to explain that the toy piano drew her attention because it was almost a fantasy world she was able to enter.  When she would play she was able to have fun and let go of everything else that clouded her mind and just play.  After giving a brief explanation on how she fell in love with the toy piano she then started to describe the features of it.  She told the audience that the toy piano has no low pitch and no foot pedals like a regular grand piano.  Also, there is a lot of extra sound due to the piano being made of metal rods.  Therefore, each and every toy piano sounds differently because it depends on how long the metal rods are cut and shaped.  She then told the audience of her fourteen toy pianos that are located all around the world in order to make her travels easier.  Phyllis went on to tell of her background explaining her part time job at a puppet theater in Chicago.  At the theater they had a toy piano and this is where she said she finally met and fell in love with the unique keyboards and sounds of the toy piano.  She explained how she went to Northwestern and Indiana for her schooling.  She then developed tendinitis due to the amount of work she was doing in school and outside of school. However, this unfortunate event ended up to be a blessing in disguise.  Chen realized that she was not going to be able to play the grand piano anymore because it was too much for her hands to handle.  Therefore, she was able to realize that the toy piano was jut right for her due to the keys being shorter to play and not as hard to press down.  She now has no tendinitis since she has cut down her workload and mainly plays the toy piano.  She then played a couple of songs on the toy piano and said that in order to hear everything she had to offer we would have to come back the next night for her concert.  I was not able to get enough of a taste from her demo songs so I went back the next night and you can read about that in my next blog.  Overall, the presentation was very interesting and I found Chen to be an intriguing individual.

Annotated Bibliography for my Artistic Movement Paper

Here is the link for my annotated bibliography for my paper on the postimpressionist artistic movement.

My personal library link is = http://www.diigo.com/user/coreywaa

My group link for all members doing the paper is = http://groups.diigo.com/group/english101waa

The Road Not Taken (Remix Edit)

Two ways have I vary in a yellow wood and plagued it could not travel both.

I am a traveller, the length it is maintained and inferior is observed in the part.

Until j' it could with where s' one bends in the weeds of the forest.

Then it has taken l' another one, as soon as how much hardly and

Having perhaps the best demand, of c' he was l' grassy and intentional use.

Nevertheless with respect that one to go avévano the really approximately.

Transported identical and both here that the morning on the other hand extends in layers. Ah, j' it has maintained first by another day! Nevertheless to know the way.

Then introduces the way, j' doubted if not of dismissal never.

I will say to this with the ages d' a certain sigh part and age therefore:

Two ways have I vary in a wood and I has taken that more than less than and that one has differentiated all the above.