Movie Review: The Broadway Melody (1929)
Not a bad movie. I really wish I had a little more to say about it, honestly.
Thanks to my days from being a part of my High School drama club, I have a soft spot for musicals. I played rolls in West Side Story, Guys and Dolls and our own medly that our director came up, piecing together a lot of classic bits.
Allthough, I wouldn't really call this a musical, it's more of a movie about a bunch of people doing a Broadway musical. Two sisters try to make their big break, and end up in a big "love triangle," that really ends up as more of a "love square" with a lot of diagonal lines in the middle. It becomes a little show in the middle, as we are pretty light on action, and the humor might not translate well being almost 80 years old, but there's plenty of character development, and a great deal of personal conflict between all the characters.
All in all it's worth a watch, but I don't feel like I was missing anything not having seen it before. This would be a great canidate for a remake, and I might try to talk some of my local film making buddies into giving it a shot. I even have a few folks in mind for casting.
Movie Review – All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Perhaps the finest war movie I have ever had the pleasure of watching. To borrow from the movie description:
"It's not about one country, it's about all countries. It's not about one war, it's about all wars."
Based on the anti-war novel by Erich Maria Remarque, this film captured my attention and never let go. Anyone who passes on giving this film a watch is doing themselves a great injustice.
101 Things To Do In 1001 Days
I'm not usually one to fall for blogging trends, but this one caught my eye. A little more than a year ago, I started a "101 in 1001" list. Basically, the goal is to make a list of 101 things to do, and set a time limit of 1001 days to do it all. At the end of timeframe, you are supposed to take the number of uncompleted items, double it, and donate that amount in dollars to Charity.
I must admit, I started off really well. But, a few things in life knocked me off track. My wife and I had a baby, I changed jobs, and a slew of other things. I've realized that I've only got about a year left, and I really need to get moving.
Probablly my most ambitious of my 101 goals is to watch every movie to ever win an Academy Award for "Best Picture." At first, I wasn't able to find a lot of the movies, especially the early ones from the 1920's and 1930's. A then... I found Netflix. One of their categories for finding movies is, guess what, "Best Picture Winners." Looks like I might be able to knock this one out after all.
I'll be adding more pages to the website for each of the more indepth projects as I go along. Today, I added my full 101 things list, and a page for my "Best Picture" list. Next, I think I'll restart my Home Theatre PC project.
Fighting The Good Fight
Anyone that knows me should have figured out two things. One, that I love technology, and two, that I love music. Hence, that's why I tend to get very excited about the music industry and it's love/hate relationship with the technical world.
One of my favorite bands, Nine Inch Nails has joined what I call, "The Good Fight." Real original, I know, but the name works for me. Recently, Trent Reznor release a new album, "Ghosts" entirely online, without a label. Here's an excerpt from their website:
"Now that we're no longer constrained by a record label, we've decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.
We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. It's licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons."
If that's not awesome, I don't know what is. I highly suggest you grab a copy of the torrent, and help spread it around. There's already quite a bit of buzz going around about it, and I'm seeing some amazing speeds from the torrent. I plan on helping support the cause, and buying the entire package online.
You can get more info at the official website, at http://ghosts.nin.com
I've also uploaded the torrent to my website, which you can download at http://ryannedeff.com
I hate that word.
Blog.
It's like the sound you make in the can after a night of having too many adult beverages.
You kids today and your abreviated words. What ever happened to Journal? Or Diary? Well, I guess diaries are for 12 year old girls. But anyway, Is "Web Log" really that long to where we had to abreviate it? Maybe I'm just settling into my old man stage of life again. Or maybe kids today are just lazy.
While you're at it, Get off my lawn...