movie of the week: Little Miss Sunshine
Monday, June 22, 2009

This week's movie just appeared on itv, I beleive it was TNT. It's about (if you don't already know) a disfunctional family living in Albakerkie, New Mexico. The Mother Sheryl(Toni Collette) is trying to quit smoking, proffesion unkown. The father Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a speaker for step by step program on being a winner. Their son Dwayne (Paul Dano) is a freshman in high school and has taken a vow of silence until he has been accepted to flight school. His sister Olive (Abigail Breslin, in her Oscar nominated role) was the runner up for a pagent in Albakerkie. Her grandfather (Alan Arkin, in his Oscar winning role) is a crack adict and is coaching Olive for the pagents.

The story begins when Sheryl's brother (Steve Carell)gets out of the hospital for a suicide attempt and comes to stay at their house. While their having dinner, Richard brings up a phone message he recived about the Little Miss Sunshine pagent. Olive is estatic, and the family is off to California in their yellow VW bus.

The family runs into many inconviniences, but I don't want to give them away. It won two Oscars for writing and Alan Arkin's performance. It was also nominated for Abigail Breslin's performance and Best Picture. It was the little film that could people called it, and in way, it did.

>Matthew

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posted by Matthew @ 9:39 AM, ,


"One of a kind" cups
Friday, June 19, 2009


If you live in New York City, you might, and probably know what I am talking about. Even if you don't you might.

I have always seen these blue coffee cups with a white square in the middle of them on tv shows set in New York such as 'Sex and the City' and '30Rock' and it intrigued me. What was this amazing coffee that seemingly everyone in New York was having. So, one day I googled 'blue coffee cups in New York City' and clicked on the first result. The result said that it wasn't a coffee joint at all. It was simply a company that made coffee cups for coffee joints in bulk. Apparently they're a New York icon ( I have seen them everywhere) and tons of coffee joints have them.

So once I knew what they were, I wanted to know what they fully looked like. It's greek apparently, and the white box on the blue cup says 'WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU' written in orange text, bordered in a puzzle-like pattern, and a bottle of sorts on both sides. "It's one of a kind" says the New York Times.

Have you heard of these cups before? Were you interested? Do you live in New York? Have you had coffee out of these cups before? Let me know!

>Matthew

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posted by Matthew @ 10:57 PM, ,


movie of the week: Proof
Monday, June 15, 2009


This week's movie is again one of my favorites. It's about a girl named Catherine, Gweneth Paltrow, who has a gift for math. But, the story begins with her dad, a famous mathematician, already dead. She quit college at Northwestern University to take care of him, he has schitzophrenia, and lost many opportunities for herself by taking care of her dad.

Her sister Claire, Hope Davis, comes the next day for the funurel, so does a guy named Hal, Jake Gylenhall, who teaches mathematics, and had a strange encounter with her the other day. Anyway, the day after the funurel, Catherine gives Hal the key to a drawer. Inside it, he finds a notebook with a full length proof. He and her sister both think it was written by her father. But, she claims she wrote it.

The rest of the movie is filled with flashbacks leading up to the truth of the authorship of the proof, and how proof and trust are two very different things. It is a very good movie with superb writing, and excellent performances, especially from Paltrow and Davis. It was adapted from the play which won the Pulitzer Prize. Tell me what you think of it!

>Matthew

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posted by Matthew @ 4:19 PM, ,


Rain on my parade
Thursday, June 11, 2009

Today was the start of my town's "fair" ,or something like that, called John Paulding Days. There is always a parade to kick off the days. I was in that parade. I am in the marching band, and we had to march for the parade. I didn't really want to do this, but I did anyway. However, the day of the parade, it rained. Not just a sprinkling, or light rain, it poured.

But not at first. I was getting ready for the parade, and went to my school to go. I got my instrument, and walked with my friends in the band to the starting point of the parade. Then it started. But, it was just sprinkling. But as the walk progressed, the rain became more and more malignant. I was sooooo irratated. Once we got to the starting point, it was pouring and freezing. Then, throw marching and playing with every note memorized......... screw it!

So, I just needed to tell you that. But, I want to know if anything like that happened to you this summer. A bad event, or a strenuous task. Let me know!


>Matthew

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posted by Matthew @ 7:29 PM, ,


movie of the week: Best in Show
Monday, June 8, 2009

I absolutely adore this movie. It's one of my favorites, and it's probably the funniest movie I've ever seen, yeah, it's that good. It's a mocumentary (a movie made to look like a documentary, and obviously mocking a certain group of people), and Christopher Guest is the king of mocumentaries. This, in my opinion is his best (in show, to make a splendid pun).
It's about five different groups of people, all whom own show dogs. It documents (again, all fiction) events leading up to the Mayflower Dog Show in Philidelphia and each snippet is hilarious. I'm not really sure, if all of it is written, or if most of it is improvisation. Either the writing is superb, or the acting is superb. Not only is it funny, but it's interesting to see how ridiculous these show dog handlers are, if they're really like that. And it's fun to see who the winner is going to be.

I would defiantately recommend this movie to anyone who wants to laugh, or just see some really good actors with brilliant writing. That's why I chose Best in Show for this week's movie of the week. Let me know what you think of it!


>Matthew

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posted by Matthew @ 6:00 AM, ,


Television thinks we're stupid, or are we?
Saturday, June 6, 2009


As you might know, there are many new season premieres for shows opening in the summer. I happened to catch one of them, it was called Royal Pains. You might have heard of it as well or have seen it. I was dissapointed, but not only was I dissapointed, the show pointed out something to me. It occured to me while I was looking up reviews for it on my favorite critique site, metacritic.com. While I was on there, I found severel comments that said remarks such as, "Entertaining and mindless, just what audiences want." and "It's fun and not much to think about.", does the entertainment business really think we're that shallow? We want a good time, but nothing to make us think, our use the slightest bit of brain power we have?

Then something else occured to me; maybe we are that mindless. Do we only want to be entertained and not have to think about anything? Maybe. Then something else occured to me; maybe it's not such a bad thing. We do other things to work out our minds, like reading, crossword puzzles, school, work and watching tv is a nice thing to be entertained with, without straining our minds too much.

All these thoughts have been swirling around in my brain for the past few days and I had to put it somewhere. So tell me what you think. Have you seen Royal Pains? Did you like it? Do you think television thinks we're stupid? Are we? Is it a bad thing it's not mind boggling? Let me know!

>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 9:39 PM, ,


Summer Vacations... =)

This is really just a quick post. I wanted to blog
about
summer vacations though, mainly because I want to know where you're going this summer. Well, this summer, I'm going to Seattle, WA. I go there almost every year because I have family out there, but I love going to the city, and seeing the Space Needle! I might also go North Carolina (yeah, I know, not excactly a vaca spot), but again, I have family there. And I love seeing my family!


So, again, really short post. But, let me know where you're going, if you are going. And tell stories that happen to you while you're away! Let me know!


>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 9:19 AM, ,


Hilary Duff, I will never take you seriously


When I was in grade school I loved watching the Disney Channel show entitled Lizzie McGuire. I loved Hilary Duff, and I even bought her album. Now, I loath her. I loath everything about her. Her cutsie little voice, her horse teeth, the desperation to be taken seriously. Well guess what, Hilary Duff? I will NEVER take you seriously.

You might be asking what all of a sudden ignited this fire within me to started hating on Hilary Duff, well I just watched a trailer for her new movie called Greta, which despite Hilary Duff actually looks pretty good. But everything she says is totally not the character. The Character in the movie wants to kill herself, and wears black makeup and jewelery. Hilary Duff, however, acts like she just had tea with Mickey Mouse. You might also notice how her style in music changed, I recently saw her new music video called All I Want is to Feel You. Yeah, dirty. She tries to be Rihanna, but she just isn't. Then what should she do? Nothing. She just isn't talented. Sorry Hilary.

Do you like Hilary Duff? Do you hate her like me? Did you watch Lizzie McGuire? Have You seen the trailer for the movie? Did you like it? Let me know!


>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 1:54 AM, ,


Netflix: a love/hate relationship
Friday, June 5, 2009


I love movies. Making them, and watching them. I always, like many people, rented movies from a video store, in my town we have Movie Gallery. Then I started seeing more and more advertisements on tv for Netflix, an online video store where you can pick whatever movie you want and they will send it to you via mail right to your door. This intrigued me, so I signed up and immediately I loved it, it was love a first sight. But then after a long time of having it I noticed some problems.


1. It took a while for the movies to come (why not just go to the video store and get it today?)

2. No dvd case ( I know it isn't that big of a deal, but it's something I was used to and liked.)

3. The new realesed dvds took at least a week for it to be on the database, and able to order.


Those three things troubled me, but then I looked at the bright side.


1. It was only only $15 for as many movies you wanted a month ( and that's for 3 dvds, it's only $5 for one.)

2. They had any movie you wanted, and they mean ANY.

3. There are no latefees.


So, no. I'm not going back to the video store, I will remain on Netflix, because despite some shortcomings, it's worth it in the end.


Do you have Netflix? Do you like it? Do you use the video store? Have you thought of getting Netflix? Let me know!


>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 8:32 PM, ,


Dell is Crap, Apple is Expensive


Today, I was about to edit a video I made and went to my storage space on my Dell laptop to find the video files I saved. Then, once it was opened, my laptop froze. I pressed the escape key to try and get out of it, but as I've learned, the escape key never works. So I turned my laptop off for a few minutes, and restarted it. I went back to my storage space, hesitantly, and realized, to my dismay, that I had one gigabyte left on my hardrive. It had a an exclamation mark by it surrounded by a yellow triangle (the triangle of doom). I decided I needed to clean out my laptop. However, much of it was needed. So I purchased an 8gb flash drive to put all of stuff on, well 8gb of it.


After all of this, I thought to myself, this laptop has froze and had all sorts of crap happen to it, way before my storage space was running low. And then I came to the conclusion: DELLS SUCK.

So, of course I wanted to buy a Mac, I know many people who have them and say they have had very few if any problems with them. So I searched them online, and found the cheapest to by just over $1,000, and my Dell laptop only costed $499. So, my Apple future is looking a little grim at this point, but hopefully my time will come soon.


Do you have a Mac? Do you like it? Have their been any problems? Or do you have a PC? Do you like it? Or do you experience the problems that I do as well? Let me know!



>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 8:01 PM, ,


Tell Me More!
Thursday, June 4, 2009

This is a blog about telling stories, not fictional, but everyday things that capture my attention that I want to share. Tell me your stories and I'll write a blog about it tell everyone. I tell you stories, you tell me stories... everyone's happy.

>Matthew

posted by Matthew @ 11:24 PM, ,