So I have submitted all but one of my college apps. And this last one involves a rather nonsensical essay prompt. I mean, truly nonsensical… like it really doesn’t make too much sense. Anywho, I’ve been bored with Pandora, and I needed a new way to discover music, and I came across this site called MusicIP, and it’s pretty amazing. So the “playground” is this cool tool. You search an artist that you like, then click on it and it shows a bunch of albums by the artist, click on an album and it shows the track listings, click on the track listing and it shows you a bunch of songs that are similar to that one. It’s pretty nifty. What’s even cooler is the software that the company created. It’s called the MusicIP Mixer. It syncs with iTunes (and whatever music management software you use) and you use it like iTunes except you click this little button and it creates a playlist of songs from your library that are similar to the one you’re currently listening to. And it works… it’s cool if you have larger music libraries and you’re in the mood for this one song… or one type of song… but you don’t want to search through. It’s pretty amazing… I wouldn’t use it as a normal music management tool though… it’s kind of ugly looking compared to iTunes. But it is quite functional and I love it. What’s rather nice is that if you don’t like the look of MusicIP Mixer cuz it’s plain ugly… you can click the send to button and it sends the playlist created based on the song to iTunes and begins playing it… i love this thing!!

so i’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. and right now, i really want to procrastinate a bit and write a post while taking breaks in a 5 hour beloved reading fest filled with annotating and the such. so i am gonna give my opinion on the recent movies. (and i realize that the formatting of this post sucks but i’m too lazy to fix it.)

american gangster

this is a really well done movie, unfortunately it is really long, and at points (mainly the first hour or so) it moves really slowly, and i’m not really sure why. it does have a great soundtrack which helps to move the story forward. i think the main problem is that it covers much too broad a time period. the movie is incredibly ambitious in that it tries to chronicle the rise and fall of frank lucas. this leads it to be needlessly long. the acting and the script are pretty amazing i have to say. it’s interesting… in regards to frank lucas, denzel washington’s character, i don’t think you really like him that much… his portrayal is not very likable. yet at the same time he demands respect, and not because of his power of because he was the first black druglord to have done so much, it’s kind of hard to explain why but you end up respecting him (definitely moreso at the ending, but it’s always there). as for russel crowe’s character, he’s incredibly idealized of course, and this definitely leads you to really love his character. there are attempts throughout the movie to try and ground his character more, but for the most part he’s the ideal person that society really wants people to strive to be. the message behind the film i think is incredibly powerful, it’s about the corruption of our justice system. it’s been done before but not nearly as well i think.

bee movie

it’s a cute movie. and really, that’s all it is. a cute lovable kids movie. unlike other kids movies, it doesn’t really have that much of a message behind it, except maybe that humans have the right to do anything they want because it’s nature’s method of balancing(?). not very agreeable. and as a kids movie, the characters are all flat and two dimensional, if not only one dimensional. some of them annoy me and the movie begins with ten minutes littered with hundreds of groan-inducing bee puns. but after that it’s funny and it’s cute, and that’s all it is.

mr. magorium’s wonder imporium

this is an interesting movie. i think that the story and the concept behind the story are absolutely brilliant. i think the movie had tons of potential. but as it stands it kind of sucks. i mean, the concept of the magic toy store teaching these characters some incredibly existential philosophies, it’s amazing and brilliant. first of all the narration really interrupted the story too much. it wasn’t really narration but beginning each scene with “and this chapter is called blah blah blah” which interrupts the flow of the story which makes the movie hard to get into. secondly, the kid actor/character was annoying. i’m not sure if it’s the acting or the character really. but i didn’t like him. through the entire movie all his lines seemed completely forced, he didn’t really show that much emotion, and he was really selfish in his emotions, completely disregarding the hardships of natalie portman’s character. and also he’s really the only character that didn’t progress or evolve in the story. at the beginning he’s antisocial and has no friends and wears weird hats. at the end he’s still antisocial but has one friend and still wears weird hats. the accountant and natalie portman’s character both progress and sort of come into realization of this philosophy regarding magic and all that, but the kid remains relatively static. i liked the underlying aspect of music (natalie portman is a composer struggling to finish a song). it was brilliant, but it wasn’t good if that makes any sense.

assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford

this is one of my favorite movies now. it is really amazing. it’s about as long as american gangster, but it feels shorter i think. it’s not as slow paced, though admittedly it does go slowly at times but it’s not that bad. i thought cinematically it was amazing. one common motif i thought was that a lot of the scenes were filmed through windows and through the glass… well not a lot but enough for me to notice. normally it wouldn’t be very interesting except that it’s handmade glass, so it distorts light because of the waves in the glass. and it makes for a really interesting effect. there’s was one camera trick, that is that the center was in focus but radially outward they went out of focus, that was used a lot. namely, it was used during narration. and as for the narration, i thought it was brilliant. it wasn’t like normal movie narration… it was very poetic and interesting to listen to, not unlike a river runs through it. the acting was amazing. i thought the characters were really interesting and how they were portrayed… you end up loving jesse james but you know he has to die, but you don’t want him killed by robert ford… and so you end up hating robert ford but then at the end he demands sympathy and even respect. it’s really interesting how the characters are portrayed. the score was interesting as well… the score and the narration (paired with the camera effect with the narration) made the movie feel like a story, one that is verbally recounted to you, rather than just a movie, which is incredible.