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Sunday, August 18, 2013

This Week In Pop Culture

Movies

The Truman Show

Up until middle school, before my acting career was destroyed,* I used to pretend that I was starring in a giant movie about my life. That everyone around me were extras, and people in some far off planet were enjoying the story of my life. Now, it would make a pretty boring story, but I thought it was a pretty imaginative idea. Turns out it's not so original, or Peter Weir has the same brain as me, because I finally got around to watching The Truman Show. I heard about it a few years ago but was turned off by the Jim Carrey-ness of it. Turns out Carrey does a fine job here, and literally everything about this film was how I pictured the logistics of the scenario. The mise-en-scene, structure, cinematography... everything was perfect and built like little puzzle pieces that reveal more and more of this world as you go. Absolutely brilliant. And that ending. Gave me chills. 

*I auditioned for the 7th grade production of The Three Musketeers, so confident in my skills in the dramatic arts. Let me preface this by saying that if you don't make the cast, they put you in the crew.  I didn't even make the crew. Needless to say it was a crushing disappointment and my pursuit of the theater was short-lived.

Elysium

In a film not as good as District 9, Neill Blomkamp goes for a more heavy-handed allegory here about immigration in a sci-fi setting. But it was visually beautiful, and it had Matt Damon, so I can't complain too much. I guess I just had too high of expectations after District 9. Blomkamp seems to be a one-trick pony.

Music

Stomp

I first saw a video of Stomp in fifth grade, and I attribute my pursuit of percussion in middle school and high school to that moment. I wanted to be as cool as those guys. Of course I never quite acquired Stomp-like drumming skills (this is just a post full of my failures, huh?) but I've always appreciated a good beat using anything and everything you can find in the world around you. Seeing this show live was unreal. Knowing the basics of percussion, I can't even get over how hard some of that stuff was. And it's hilarious. I mean, just check out this newspaper sequence:



Katy Perry's "Roar vs Lady Gaga's "Applause"

Right now I'm feeling "Roar." But that could change in the next hour.


YouTube

I'm a big fan of Hank and John Green, but I've never actually seen the videos that started it all, the Brotherhood 2.0 experiment, where the Vlogbrothers only communicated via video blog for a whole year. So I'm starting from the beginning. It's nice to see that John Green has always been the same smart, hilarious novelist we know and love, and Hank has gotten over some of his earlier creepiness. These brothers making being a nerd awesome. DFTBA.




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