On Mourning

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

My grandfather was a fantastic man, am I am blessed that for 23 years he was my grandfather. But the time came for him to leave us a few days ago. The verse above has taken on a new meaning in my life this week. I knew that in a time of mourning, that God would provide me and my family with peace, but I had not expected to be surrounded by such love and support from my friends. My friends are surrounding me with such love and care. It doesn't at all stop the pain, but it alleviates the hurt.

I cannot say I didn't have enough time with Grandpa, he was ninety years old. He and Grandma were married for 60 years. They had five children together. Seventeen grandchildren. One great-granddaughter. Grandpa served in WWII, he was an inventor, and an all-around amazing man. Truly one of the last of his generation.

And as sad as I am at this time, I cannot be sad that he is gone. The past five years were awful as his health steadily declined. He had battled cancer in the late nineties and ended up having a lung removed. He went on to live another fifteen years after the surgery. What is hard, however, is seeing my Grandmother without her husband. She is physically unbalanced as she walks around, she looks so dazed and lost. The wake yesterday was awful. Seeing Grandpa in the casket like that....it wasn't him. My Grandpa was gone, that wasn't him. Grandma looked so tied and frail. When the time came to leave and go back to her house, she didn't want to leave him. She was sobbing on my momma and daddys shoulders. And Grandpas sister, his only remaining sibling, is just as heartbroken. I saw her, and I saw myself, seventy, or eighty years down the road all alone at my last siblings funeral. Seeing them sobbing during the wake was physically painful...

I'm finding out that grief is a strange thing. It is a physical pain, it hits you at strange times. It messes with your head. The aunts, uncles, and cousins all came in for the funeral, and spending the past few days with them  has helped immensely. We filled Grandmas house with love and memories together. But when the time came for us to say goodnight and go home, that's when things would get worse for me. The only night I didn't cry myself into exhaustion, was the night that one of my friends skyped with me and sang to me silly musicals. But this is all just a part of the grieving process, this is all normal. I will be ok. Not today. Not tomorrow. But every day I get a little bit better, a little closer to ok.

Casual Encounters of the Blog Kind.

Man, Shannon is a good blogger. Like, really really good. Ok, that could just be my opinion, I'm not really in the blogging world at all. Maybe she's actually a horrid blogger. But to me, she's good. Her posts are always well thought out, often personal matters that she has chosen to share. Me? I blog about the weird, random junk that clutters up my head. And I blog very sporadically, when I feel like it. For me, blogging is just a fun way to yell nonsense into the internet. No one here knows my name (unless they knew it prior to finding my blog, and I tell very few people about my blog), and I don't have the established readership that Shannon does. Well, except for Southern Brother (Hi dude). I know he reads it.

 I could probably do an entire post about this picture.

But the thing that keeps me writing, that keeps me spewing my randomness into the void is seeing how much blogging can be a useful way to express your feelings. Shannon has gone through a lot in her life, the past few years especially. I've seen her draw strength and support from her readers, and become a better person through the therapeutic expression of emotions. Though I have had little that compares with the hardships she has faced, what I have dealt with was hard for me. I've shared about my two very much failed relationships, the problems I've had in higher education, and family health problems. It's helped, knowing that somewhere out there, someone read my problem and for just a minute, listened to my woes. Though as I said, I don't have much of a wide or regular readership, someone in the world cared for a moment.

 So go ahead, try blogging! It's fun, it helps organize your thoughts, you'll meet cool people, and you might just learn more about yourself!

Hope y'all enjoyed this brief foray into my head, and thanks to Shannon for letting me be a guest blogger!

30 Days of Movies: Oh Goodness, Why Am I Doing This....

Damnation  but I hate Twilight.

I won't even post a picture, cause I don't want to even Google the movie poster.

I have seen a LOT of movies. A lot have been based off of books, cause I really like books. But from my years of experience reading books and watching movies, I have learned that book to film adaptions can go really RIGHT or really WRONG.

Twilight went really wrong from the beginning.

I can't blame everything on the film itself, the source material was pretty lousy. But the first Twilight movie was just so bad...so very bad

. First off, the movie is blue. VERY blue. As in, shot through a blue lens for no reason blue. I still can't figure out the bizarre lighting choice, if it was meant to set a tone, well it didn't really work too well. It just made everything look weird and all the people look like they had frostbite.

But once you stop noticing all the weird lighting choices, you notice all the horrid actors. And you WISH you could stop noticing the bad acting and go back to that blissful time when just the lighting was weird. But the acting is bad. Like, how do these people call themselves professional actors bad. Again, I realize they were working off piss poor source material, but still! They are all so stiff in their roles, clearly trying to live up to the impossible standards that millions of Twi-hards had dreamed up by the time the movie released! It was pathetic to see actors that in other roles were superb (Rob Pattinson MADE Cedric Diggory) so ridiculously miscast. I've seen the actors who played Jasper and Rosalie in a few other roles and they actually weren't half bad. But really, for the most part, the cast sucked. Kristen Stewart can't even PRETEND to like her character, and the rest of them are all over acting, trying to 'embrace the character' and its 'full potential'. GAG.


Ugh, even just thinking about how much I used to like this fandom bugs me.
Ah well, live and learn, I suppose.

My rating: 1 star. Watch at your own risk. Unless you have rifftracks or something to make it more tolerable.



When you live forever, what do you live for?
 
Better movies than this one.

30 Days of Movies: Interstella 5555

Daft Punk + anime = this

Another prime example of my wide taste in movies, after one viewing, this movie shot to a place on my top 5 list of favorite animated movies. Fan-frikin-tastic.

First off, this movie is NOT for everyone. There is no dialogue. None. Not a word. Anything that's 'said', is expressed through the beautiful lyrics of Daft Punk. This whole movie is the 'visual realization' of their album Discovery, so the songs craft the plot and provide a sort of dialogue for the characters. On top of that weirdness, its not traditional style animation, its anime style. And the characters are blue aliens. Soooo....not for everyone.

But for those who are intrigued enough to look into this, you are in for a treat. The plot is a bit confusing, I had to watch it with the Wikipedia plot summary up on my laptop. Somethings will be easier to understand with that up. For example, the characters all have names! Never would have known that just from the songs.

The animation is so pretty, it's really my favorite style of anime. The lines are so clear and precise, and the detail is stunning. Daft Punk makes everything better, so in this instance it makes a good move absolutely great! The soundtrack really sets the tone of the film to the point that you almost don't notice the lack of dialogue. And what character wouldn't want development to happen while Daft Punk's Superheros played and you jumped out of a plane?

 My review: 5 stars. Give it a chance.

Cause there's something between us anyway.

30 Days of Movies: The Grey

Or, as I call the movie: Liam Neeson: Wolf Puncher

I hate football. So I decided that seeing a movie I knew NOTHING about rather than watch the Superbowl. I cannot emphasize that enough, I knew nothing about this movie.  Hadn't seen a single trailer, had no idea what the plot was, and I honestly thought the title was Wolf Puncher. I had just been expecting a simple film about a guy fighting wolves somewhere....like some kind of weird hobby, or fight club.

Needless to say, I was a bit confused when the whole plot thing showed up. The plot is interesting, don't get me wrong, but also predictable. It's an action/thriller so there is plenty of tension, action shots, and shaky camera work. But for all the beautiful scenery, breathless moments, and touching flashback scenes, the movie still felt like it was lacking something. I never truly felt drawn into the story, the entire film I was very aware that I was an observer watching a film in a theater. 

I didn't feel much for any of the stranded men. Even as they [spoiler alert] one by one are killed in horrible [and almost humorously predictable] ways, I just didn't care. They had cheated death already once when they survived the plane crash, and you CANNOT cheat Hades for long without any repercussions. As the pack of wolves picks off the survivors one by one and with nature taking care of the ones the wolf pack misses, I decided it was best to root for the killers so as not to incur the wrath of Hades on myself. I liked the more creative deaths and rolled my eyes as they slowly became more ho-hum.

But for all the things I didn't like about the film, there is something I couldn't complain about. It was shot magnificently. The setting really helped tell the story, and I found myself admiring the trees and rocks more than even Liam Neeson. And I adore Liam Neeson.

Now, all that being said, I think this film would be brilliant in the perfect setting. It would be a great movie to watch with a group of friends to make fun of it, while also allowing for a more serious discussion of the battle of man vs nature and the futility of the human struggle. I was lucky in seeing it with a friend who didn't mind talking during the show, so we naturally made snarky remarks for most of it.

My rating: 2.5/3 stars. Best seen only when the time is right.

Live or die on this day. Live. Or die.

30 Days of Movies: The Help

Yaay standing up to racism!!

 I really wanted to do a movie that WASN'T based on a book but...well I didn't. I'll eventually get to that. If it makes you feel any better, I haven't read the book yet. But I'll eventually get to that too. Now I'm kinda tired tonight so this is gonna be a brief review.

Ok, so, The Help. Good movie. But just as with Crazy, Stupid, Love, I think this was a bit over praised for me to really enjoy. The storyline was a bit predictable, but the cast was phenomenal. It began to feel a bit long, oh, around the halfway point. Ultimately, though this was such an interesting topic, I just wasn't as entranced as everyone else. Oh well.

My review: 3 stars. Hoping the book is better.

Be wary of disgruntled former maids bearing pies.

30 Days of Movies: As You Like It

Because SHAKESPEARE!

Shakespeare is not an easy author to understand. The English of the time Shakespeare wrote in is so far removed from our modern English, that you genuinely have to work to understand the meanings within the meanings WITHIN the meanings! It's mind-bending. But it is oh so worth it. I'll admit, I'm a bit of an English major fail here...I've never read the play. I know, I know, but I never claimed to be a great English major. OR even LIKING being an English major. But I like Shakespeare, I know that.

As You Like It is easily my favorite adaptation of a Shakespeare play. As you might have guessed from my Bride & Prejudice review, I like films that adapt books in a unique and different ways. This play is typical Shakespeare work, but the film transplants the activity to 19th century Japan. The costuming is gorgeous, and the score sets the tone of the film without being distracting or annoying. I adore the casting selection, especially in the roles of Orlando and the two Dukes (played by the same man)

Like any work of the Bard, it takes repeated viewings to really understand. I think I've seen this movie five times and every time I watch it I notice something new! 

In the interest of full disclosure, this was not released in theaters, it was broadcast on HBO. But it's my blog and I wanted to review it so THERE.

My review: 4 stars.Watch, but with a dictionary next to you!

All the worlds a stage.