Thoughts on The Tree of Life

I apologize for not posting in the last few weeks. I could have gave a heads up or something, but things had gotten hectic in the last few weeks and I was feeling burnt out from everything. So, today, I sit at my laptop scribing this blog to tell you about the things I haven't done in the last few weeks and the movies that I haven't watched. I've yet to see X-Men: First Class, Super 8 or Green Lantern. Basically, I've been out of the loop for movies that I love.
I did, however, get a chance to see Tree of Life with Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. I had a blog post written about this film on my iPhone, but out of sheer stupidity, I forgot to save it; because none of us will ever see it again I will say that it was possibly the greatest blog post I've ever written and that say's a lot because the statistics for Our Morning Wood point to the "Miles Dyson" post as the most viewed in the states and around the world.
The Tree of Life is a hard film to digest. It's a film that you might find yourself hating towards the middle and loving towards the end. If you're like me, you might be indifferent to it and you may find yourself thinking about the images for a week or two. There's a lot to this film and with a run time of about two hours and thirty minutes you're shown the history of the universe and the childhood of three kids. The better parts of the film involve Jack's- played by Sean Penn- childhood memories and had director Terrence Malick focused on this further he'd have a very powerful family drama. This is not to discredit the sequences of dinosaurs and evolution, but there are two different films passing itself as one.
Perhaps that's the point of the movie: Trying to make two things such as God and nature co-exist in a way that they complement each other. It could be very possible that the movie doesn't have a specific point and is open to interpretation as I've yet to find two people that agree wholly on the same idea. What I feel comfortable with is taking what I've experienced in life and what the film displays and making some sort of connection there, but still, no definite answer.
If you find yourself wanting to walk out of this film, don't feel bad. I played with the idea of leaving and getting my money back, but to this day, I've never walked out of a movie, so why start now? If you find yourself wanting to watch the movie, I strongly suggest waiting for the DVD as you could watch it at your own leisure and rumor has it that Terrence Malick is working on a six hour cut of the film that would focus on the life of young Jack even further.
That's it for right now. Hopefully, I get the chance to see some cool things in the coming days as I'm considering today the first day of my break from school. If I do, I'll be sure to post them here.

I Had a Crazy Zombie Dream Last Night

Zombie dreams are my favorite dreams as they encompass love, action, escape scenarios and survival. I remember, I was stuck in the mall with my girlfriend and it took two days to escape. I remember it wasn't easy to just walk out because the zombies had taken over most of the mall, so we had to make our way through vents and back hallways. I had a Portal gun that would take me and my group across large bodies of water in the mall and it was especially helpful in getting injured people crates of weapons across-thanks Aperture!

I remember losing kids and adults in my group and seeing a woman stay with her friend and boyfriend that were turning into zombies. When they made the transition, the zombies puked blood into her face and I had to kill one that was coming after us.
I picked up a habit to close all opened doors. Before we escaped, we met up with this big group that had blockaded themselves at one end and they were having parties and celebrating our arrival, but the mood died when a little girl revealed that she was bit.
After her dad took her into a room to separate her from the rest of the group, we escaped to the parking lot, stole a car and drove home on the empty streets to the sound of state of emergency tests on the radio. Before we got home, Obama was getting ready to speak, so I sped home and tried to get my parents house to open the wrought-iron gate in front.
When they did, we rushed inside and received hugs and kisses from them. I went to sleep and woke up to a confused Obama debating with himself on how to handle the situation.
That's when I woke up. I was confused as Obama and a little bothered by my dogs walking on my bed.

Bronson, Dogma and Thor

Something I've been meaning to mention on Our Morning Wood is the abundance of movies on Netflix that don't get enough mainstream attention. This weekend, I had the opportunity to sit down and watch 2009's Bronson: A film based on the true story of Britain's most famous prisoner, Michael Peterson aka Charles Bronson. Charles Bronson, Tom Hardy, was originally sent to prison for seven years for petty theft, but through a series of hostage situations and fights with guards and cell mates, he managed to extend his prison sentence to thirty-four years. He's spent thirty of those years in solitary confinement. I'm really pushing a lot of people to see this movie mostly because there have been talks about the possibility of Tom Hardy playing Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Some of you might know Hardy from Christopher Nolan's Inception as Eames and for those that were hesitant about another Batman movie without Heath Ledger, I am confident in saying that Tom Hardy will prove to be as charismatic on the screen as Heath Ledger's Joker is. Hardy's commitment to a character can be seen in this training video in which he pushes to obtain Michael Peterson's physique. It also has a cool soundtrack to go along with the films exaggerated telling of the Bronson's life in prison. If you decide to watch anything on Instant Netflix, make sure it's Bronson.

Last week, I mentioned that I was able to retrieve my DVD collection from storage. While digging through the boxes, I decided to sit down and watch Dogma- a movie that I saw years ago as a preteen looking for a tit on cable television. Instead of tits, I stumbled upon this profound flick on Starz and really it was the first of it's kind that I had watched. The movie is about two fallen angels, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, that after finding a loophole attempt to return back to Heaven despite whether or not the implications that they are putting all of reality at risk for destruction by doing so. Dogma's director, Kevin Smith, mended Catholic religion, his signature dick and fart jokes and really great dialogues into this criminally underrated movie. 

His work in dialogue-whether it be in dyad or triadic groups- always feels organic. Lately, Kevin Smith has put practice to his talents in dialogue on Smodcast Internet Radio or S.I.R. for short. He has molded the Smodcast Network into a live internet radio cast. When I first heard of this project, I was blown away at Kevin Smith's work ethic, as earlier this year he announced that he would take his current movie, Red State, across America on his own dime to market his film to his own audience. For fans that like Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob or like talk radio and Star Wars and other pop culture talk need to check out his internet radio cast here.

I ended the long weekend by seeing Thor with my brother and girlfriend. This was my brother's second time seeing Thor and he was just as intrigued as he was the first time and I can see why. The movie is a great connector *Highlight for Spoiler* Jeremy Renner from The Hurt Locker as Hawkeye? Holy shit! *Highlight for Spoiler* to the upcoming Avengers movie and origin story and I can only anticipate this summer's Captain America.
I didn't like two things though and one of which had nothing to do with the movie. On the other end of the theater I heard a group of teens talking and giggling throughout the movie and it kind of makes me eagerly await the day when I can download new movies to my TV and enjoy a private screening of my own. The second was the scene at the end of the credits, which has been Marvel movie's literal signature for the past few years, in which I thought could have been put before the credits. The scene itself wasn't bad, but the studio could have pulled an Incredible Hulk and put the scene at the end of the movie, because it didn't reveal much. At any rate, the flick was damn good and took first place at the box office ahead of Bridesmaids- which I now kind of want to see after Judd Apatow was revered by all of Twitter. When Thor heard about his achievement this weekend, he was spotted celebrating in the woods,

Conan, Serenity and the Double-Sided DVD

On Thursday, my brother and I skipped school to go to see a taping of Conan. When I walked into the studio, I was in disbelief that I was actually there. Having been a fan of Conan O'Brien for nearly ten years, it was exciting for me to finally see the show live. Seeing Conan was also a unbelievable and it was a trip to see how tall the guy really is, because he as gargantuan as he appears on TV and possibly even more so than most would imagine. John Krazinski of The Office was on and so was a mumbling Blake Griffin. All of which-including Andy Richter- looked like a display in a big and tall section at Macy's when they stood together.
Conan's crew also seemed to genuinely enjoy their jobs and as I watched the pages keep everybody in control and camera men set up, I noticed a lot of them seemed to be having as much fun as we were. Just from over hearing what some of the pages had to say, I could tell that Conan and his producers work very hard at making not only the audience happy, but their crew as well. It was really impressive and I really can't wait to go back.

I was a homebody for the rest of the weekend, but I was a one with a purpose. I managed to salvage all my DVDs from storage and I spent the better part of my free time sifting through oddball movies and major comedies to find something to watch. I'm proud of my DVD collection, but I have to say its can actually hinder my enjoyment because I always spend so much time figuring out what I want to watch. This weekend, however, I settled with Mad Max and Serenity.
Serenity is a movie by Joss Whedon-director of the upcoming Avengers movie. I really think it's worth checking out. It's a continuation of his ill-fated Fox show "Firefly"- which I have yet to see- but viewers will not feel lost upon seeing the movie, because Joss Whedon really does a great job on letting viewers know what's going on and gives just enough snippets of the history throughout the movie to get everyone on the same page. There's some really good action in the movie and great CGI and I have no doubt that Joss Whedon will do a great job at directing The Avengers.
As for Mad Max, and other movies with this issue, all I can ask is why the double sided DVD? What was the deal in the early millenium that they couldn't get the special features or an entire movie onto one side of the disk? It's redundant at best and really hinders the viewing experience. 

Sam Jackson's "Avengers" Script Found

While skimming through my twitter feed, Chris Gore- of Attack of the Show- posted a link to a blog that was in negotiations with a source that claimed to have Samuel L. Jackson's copy of the Avengers script on hand. The source wasn't clear on how he obtained it, but he did show proof that he indefinitely had it in his hands.

The blogger, wasn't very tempted to buy the actual script at the source's cost of several thousand dollars and who could blame him because it's very likely that he would be sought by Disney and Marvel executives for posting the script online. For what it's worth, Matt Holmes decided to post the pictures that the source sent him so that we could read about Tony Stark and Captain America running around. [Obessedwithfilm.com]