Stephen Caldwell's Space » Entertainment

Boom De Ya Da

Stephen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:03:16 +0000

This is really quite old, but every once in a while I’ll come across something on the internet that makes mention of this video and I absolutely love it. So I thought that I’d share it with you (if you haven’t already seen it).

I wonder why YouTube’s embed feature doesn’t give you the widescreen version by default.

Movie Queue: December 2008

Stephen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:20:45 +0000

This isn’t really anything in particular. This is just kind of a way to keep track of the movies that I want to see in the future. These are usually somewhat based on the trailers that I’ve seen whilst at movies.

The Spirit — I want to see this mostly because of the stylish presentation.
The Wrestler — I am a fan of Darren Arnofsky’s work and I’m kind of excited to see how he worked with Mickey Rourke.
The Soloist — Robert Downey Jr. is back on the scene and Jamie Foxx once again shows his range as an actor.
Gran Torino — I have a soft spot for grumpy old men.

Thanks to the Soloist trailer, I’ve learned that I absolutely love Yo Yo Ma’s renditions of Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major.

Week In Review 10/5-10/11

Stephen — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:51:29 +0000

This has been a fairly uneventful week. I watched a few movies and contracted a cold.

Movies:
Burn After Reading – A comedy written by Joel and Ethan Coen of No Country for Old Men and The Ladykillers fame. A rather entertaining offering from the brothers which definitely draws from several of their past works and well as some of the works of others, like The Departed. I’m hardly a movie reviewer (plus it’s been a week since I’ve seen the movie and I didn’t exactly take notes … It’d have been kind of weird since I wasn’t alone) so I’m not going to try and write too much about it. Overall, if you like thrillers (and this one is definitely thrilling whilst fun) you should give it a viewing.

The Getaway – I recently signed up for Netflix and the first two months or so was watching seasons 1 through 4 of Entourage since I never had the opportunity to watch it when they were on television since I don’t have any desire to pay for HBO. I’ve gone through and added a bunch of movies that are related either to actors I like, or directors I like, or franchises that I like. I’ll probably chronicle what I watch as I go. Part of my motivation for doing this is that I would like to make a hobby/part-time career out of video production and I want to soak up as much great directing/acting/production as I can. I’d like to think of my self as a semi-cinephile in that I’m not an obsessive devotee to the art. I’m planning on getting a Panasonic DVX100 at some point, but that probably won’t be until next year at best.

Anyway, back to the movie, The Getaway (1972) staring Steve McQueen as ‘Doc’ McCoy and Ali McGraw as Carol McCoy, chronicles the adventures of Doc and Carol as they escape a crime boss, who gets Doc out of prison and tasks him with robbing a bank, a backstabbing cohort, and the law. An excellent flick all around. One of the things that I like the movie is that overall there is relatively little dialogue, but you don’t ever feel underwhelmed by it because there is generally always something going on when the characters aren’t directly relating to each other.

Toastmasters:
I was supposed to give a speech this past Wednesday, but I have had a hard time coming to grips with a topic that I really want to speak on.

Aside from that, I’ve mostly just been going to work and slowly putting my stuff away. I’ll be glad to get some kind of order to my apartment.

The Dark Knight

Stephen — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:40:53 +0000

I went to see The Dark Knight last night in Imax. It was a pretty fun experience. There was a ton of people there, as a matter of fact the were completely sold out. Those theatres hold quite a lot of people too.

Overall I’d suggest going, but be sure to get there early or wait for more of the interest to sure down some.

39 More Steps

Stephen — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:07:38 +0000

So, 39 Steps is an awesome play.

The premise is that a guy who is a bit bored with life as not much interesting happens meets a strange woman one night. She tells him that men are after her and that she knows information that could save Britain. She is later murdered that night and the main character is blamed for her death. He goes on the lam, pursued by the police and some strange men. He makes his way to Ireland where he meets up with a professor who is actually the villain of the play. All in all, it’s a sight to behold and if you ever get a chance to check it out. Do so.

It’s based on the movie The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock which was released in 1939. The movie is based on the novel The 39 Steps by John Buchanan.

One of these days I’ll rent the movie and tell you about it.

Penguins r W1N!

Stephen — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:19:21 +0000

So, stumbling around on youtube the other day and I came across a video of a band’s 1989 BBC performance. This band you ask? It was the Penguin Cafe Orchestra and let me tell you… they are quite awesome. I suggest you head over to youtube and search for “Music for a Found Harmonium”. Harmoniums are awesome too.

OMG Sweet!

Stephen — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 01:24:07 +0000

So, I was watching a little TV here in my room in England and a show on BBC2 featured a performance by The Arcade Fire. The Arcade Fire is a fairly awesome band and they are definitely worth checking out. They are reminiscent of The Decemberists. Anyway, one member of the band was playing this fairly bizarre instrument. It had a crank, a couple of strings, and a keyboard. And after a little bit of cyber sleuthing I found out that the instrument is called the “hurdy gurdy”. The hurdy gurdy consists of a rosin wheel which drags across several strings. The keyboard presses on the strings which causes changes in pitch. It’s a medieval and renaissance era instrument that has a reasonable following over parts of Europe and there has been a increasing interest in it in the US. There are hurdy gurdy festivals on the west coast. There are a few videos of hurdy gurdy players on youtube such as here and here. There have been a handful of other mainstream artists who have used the hurdy gurdy in their music such as Sting and Led Zepplin. Check out wont you?

Quadrophenia

Stephen — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:10:43 +0000

So, I watched Reign Over Me this past weekend. It’s quite an awesome movie. I suggest that everyone go out and watch the movie. It once again reaffirms how awesome Don Cheadle is and it shows that Adam Sandler can play a decent semi-serious character. Though, what I didn’t understand was how Cheadle’s character could have been written so as to not like Quadrophenia… I mean, it’s The Who. I don’t understand how anyone could not like The Who. It just doesn’t really make any sense to me.

Anyway, go and see Reign Over Me.

Bogged Down

Stephen — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:32:15 +0000

I’ve been so bogged down with school work the last few weeks. I’ve been working on my AI project a lot the last few days and that isn’t going quite as well as I had hoped. I had a number of midterms the last few weeks. Those had a few good and bad moments. We’re entering in the last few weeks of class. The last day of classes is April 18th, which is a little more than 4 weeks from today. I’m still looking for post graduate work. It’s been slow going because I’ve been focusing more on school work at the moment.

In other news, I saw 300 last week. That’s a fun movie.

Persian Emissary: A thousand nations of the Persian Empire descend upon you! Our arrows will blot out the sun!

Stelios: [smiles] Then we will fight in the shade.

Smokin’ Aces

Stephen — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:21:01 +0000

I have definitely been enjoying Hollywood’s recent endeavour to intentionally put out movies with very thin plots. They don’t try and convince themselves or their audience that the movie is anything more than 90 minutes of blowing stuff up. I like being able to go to a theater and completely veg out for a little while watching bullets fly and bombs explode.

In terms of veg-factor Smokin’ Aces was up there. The plot was effectively crap, but it wasn’t marketed as being “deep”. The star-studded cast was all right. I like the fact that Common had a role which I think suited his persona extremely well. Alicia Keys however needs to stay away from Hollywood and get back behind a piano in some New York lounge. It didn’t try to take itself to seriously so it was exceedingly humorous. Overall, it was a good time.
A movie that I saw when it was still in the theaters, that was a plotless manfest, was Crank. Considering that there was essentially no plot at all, it was an awesome movie with exception of the ending. I can suspend disbelief only so far before I just get annoyed. I found it somewhat odd that they used Google Maps as scene transitions. I can see that they were trying to be “topical”, but I felt that it was completely unnecessary to toss the Google logo in the corner like they did. Aside from those little annoyances, it was a total veg-out film.

Disclaimer: I don’t just watch veg-out movies. I like movies with deep emotional content. Requiem for a Dream & American Psycho are some of my favorite movies.

Till next time…