a few weeks ago my mother, who works at a jewish community center in seattle, was surprised to hear the infamous westboro baptist church would be protesting at her place of work (on a saturday, the sabbath of all days). the westboro baptist church is famous for protesting at the funerals of war veterans, lgbt events, places of jewish congregation, and other areas they believe the wrath of god should be felt. my hour or so long experience around them was interesting, they were friendly and non-confrontational, didn’t speak unless spoken to, however they projected beliefs i neither endorse or agree with. i don’t seek to promote their causes so i won’t continue to write about them, however i will let the video i took below speak for itself.
i’m all for free speech, however some people take it too far. i’m getting really tired of all the hate mongering that continues to pervade our society.
bored last night after hitting up the bars, i decided to watch “doubt” which features academy award nominated performances by meryl streep and philip seymour hoffman. usually i know what a movie is about before watching it, but i went into this with absolutely no idea of what was to come, the only thing i knew was that it was a film somehow about nuns. i found the editing and cinematography to be superb, allowing the emotions and psyches of the characters to be easily detectable through the screen. the on-screen battle between streep and hoffman, based purely on suspicion and steeped in doubt, was in interesting psychological examination into the balance between traditional catholic practice and contemporary (more specifically, 1960’s) ethics. on on hand streep’s character was a traditionalist, trying to to keep the church in “the dark ages,” while on the other, she wasted no time violating the vows and traditional chain of command bound to her profession. all of this to prove true the supposed wrongdoings of hoffman’s enigmatic character.
4 out of 5
to only those that have seen the film: i don’t know how i feel about the ending. the priest did act in a suspicious way and was quick to resign from his post, but in my opinion that does not necessarily indict him. his reaction to the principle’s supposed call to a sister at his last church did indicate guilt, that does not fulfill the burden of proof.
i don’t like kobe bryant, never have and probably never will. however i will admit i was quite interested in watching spike lee’s espn documentary titled kobe doin’ work. i got in about 10 minutes late so i saw mostly game footage, filmed beautifully and presented in some of the best hd i’ve ever seen. espn had something like 18 cameras covering the game for their tv broadcast, with lee having an additional 16 to focus solely on kobe, 34 in all, this made for quite an impressive look into the game. i’ve always appreciated the work basketball players do, not just the superstars. while this film was a nice look into the hard work of a guy like bryant puts in for his team, it all but ignored the role players, and overstated kobe’s. last i checked basketball wasn’t an individual sport. i was a bit put off by a post-game scene featuring kobe, his wife, and daughters as they walked down a hallway to the player parking garage. each girl held a ‘daddy for mvp!’ sign, in perfect handwriting, something most kids that age are pretty incapable of doing, sooo did vanessa make those signs? did kobe help? whatever, i know they’re young and love their dad, but if i were him i’d show a little more humility and politely tell my girls to leave the sign at home, at least until he can win a ring without shaq.
4 out of 5 – for filmmaking, not for content, spike lee is a master
we’ll see if kobe can get his “work” done tomorrow, when the struggling lakers face the houston rockets in game 7 of the western conference semis.
just finished watching ron howard’s 2008 academy award best-picture nominated frost/nixon. i thought this was an excellent film, by far the best of the three (slumdog millionaire & milk) nominated films i’ve seen up to this point. i didn’t know much about the nixon story or watergate, let alone anything about the david frost interview so this story served to be a compelling primer on the nixon story. however what impressed me most about this film was the performance of frank langella in the role of richard nixon. i would venture to say that his portrayal was of the best acting performances i’ve ever seen, up there with russell crowe in gladiator, heath ledger in the dark knight, and dare i say marlon brando in the godfather. it was incredible to see a man i’ve only heard and read about portrayed in such an incredibly convincing way.
the name tanya morgan sounds like “a neo-soul songstress” (as their artist description on last.fm states) but they’re not, they’re a rap group hailing partly from brooklyn, partly from cincinatti. tanya morgan is two individual acts in one, Von Pea and Ilwil. on tuesday they realeased their new album titled BROOKLYNATI. definitely one of the best albums i’ve heard this year. another indication of how alive the underground hip hop scene is right now.
I’m back! I’ll be posting regularly again, but in a slightly more amended format than before.
Can’t really give a good reason for why I’ve been gone, basically just been lazy. I used to spend a lot of time putting entries into different categories and under different tags, so I’m just gonna go simple from here on out.
Check soon. Check often.
I’m gonna get a twitter for the blog soon, but until then follow me: jeff__brennan
You probably all know Billy Mays from his literally thousands of infomercials, I haven’t personally purchased anything that he’s promoted, but the Big CIty Slider Station looks pretty tempting…
Here are some bloopers, the last one literally made me start crying.
Well I’m back from my unplanned hiatus. Yeah I did post some videos over the last 1.5 months, but I’ll have some new original content up soon.
While I was gone the blog had its one year anniversary as well as it’s second busiest month, so maybe to keep my viewership up I won’t post anymore? Nah. Anyways, thanks for reading and look forward to some new content, starting with some funny Billy Mays videos.
So I’m about to finish my first calendar year with the blog, and felt a wrap of 2008’s music would be appropriate. You’ll find lists below where I rank my favorites from the year.
(p.s. album reviews that are long overdue should be up by new years.)
