Cinema Paradiso

Considerably one of the most heart-warming films, about films, ever. Cinema Paradiso follows a film director named Salvatore, who learns about an old friend's death.
This leads Salvatore to have a flashback on his childhood when he was an alter boy. One day the priest goes to Cinema Paradiso, a film house, to review the new cinema pieces, so he may censor and cut out the parts of the films that he deems unwatchable. Salvatore, or "Toto," sneaks into the cinema so that he may watch the films.
This leads Toto to hanging out with cinema's projectionist, Alfredo, while he projects the films. Over the time, Toto learns how to project the films himself. Unfortunately a fire breaks out in Cinema Paradiso and Toto saves Alfredo's life, but only after the nitrate films blow up in Alfredo's face, causing him to go blind.
This unfortunate event came with a silver lining to Toto. A football lottery winner, named Ciccio, invests in rebuilding Cinema Paradiso, and Toto is hired as the projectionist, even at his young age.
Then time speeds up, Salvatore is now a teenager, he likes a girl, but his forbidden to move their relationship further. He joins the military, comes back to his hometown after words and is told by Alfredo to leave town, follow his dreams and to never look back, not even once.
Now, it is present time within the film. Salvatore attends the funeral and receives a gift from Alfredo's widow and is told that Alfredo followed Salvatore's with pride. The film is a spliced montage of all the romantic scenes from the films that the priest had censored.
The Cinema is also threatened by deconstruction in order to make room for new parking lots. Salvatore saved Cinema Paradiso by reminding people how important it is.
The film ends with Salvatore making peace with his past.
I find this film enjoyable. I would watch it again, no joke. I usually hate foreign films, but Cinema Paradiso was comedic, dramatic, nostalgic and had all the ingredients for a memorable film.

Metropolis (1927)

Today, I watched Metropolis, a black and white, German, silent film that was filmed in 1927. The movie was in, a present day's opinion, a wreck, but in 1927, it was probably a cinematic masterpiece. I did not dive into this film thinking that it was going to be like "Transformer" just because Metropolis was said to be a futuristic, science fiction movie that was set in the year 2026, but I did show expectations from other black and white films I've seen. Metropolis had to deal with the fact that there was no sound, so expressionism was the form of molding that could keep it together.

The story surrounded the protagonist, Feder, who was living in the lap of luxury in his father's metropolis. During his daily flirting session (or so that's what it looked like) he feasts his eyes on a girl, Maria, who was from the work city. She came to the metropolis to show all the workers' children what the rich people do (bringing them to a place full of half-naked women was not the best destination, though). Dead set on meeting his new target again, Feder travels to the work city to find his new fling. There, he sees a work station explode (or get covered in skin-boiling steam). Appalled by this, he brings it up to his father. Now, this is where the film sort of lost me. His father quickly fires someone, which somehow pisses off Feder. Feder travels back to the work city, switches identity with a worker, which is spotted by some snakey fellow named the "Thin Man." He finds the girl, Maria, who he's been crushing on, who tells a random story of Babylon and claims a prophecy that calls for a mediator who will connect brain and hand through heart. Maria and Feder connect very closely after this meeting and they both decided that Feder is the mediator. Then this creepy mad scientist named Rotwang decides that making a machine man and showing it to Feder's father, while telling him he made it because he was obsessed with his dead wife is a great idea. Feder's father, oddly comfortable (well, as comfortable as a creeped out man could be) decides that Rotwang should use the machine man to clone Maria. Then I get lost yet again, because Feder goes into a 10 day coma after seeing his father with robo-Maria. Riots break out, men kill each other, Feder's work city buddy gets shanked and the work city starts flooding. Back track. Maria was kidnapped by Rotwang in order for the cloning to be done, she eventually escaped. Anyways, Feder's dad and Rotwang fight, then Feder fights Rotwang. Rotwang dies. Feder brings his father to the leader of the work city, the shake hands and everything is good with the world. Oh, and robo-Maria is burned at the stake.

I know this review is fairly lengthy, but I just wanted to cover all bases. I did some connection between Metropolis in other movies. Any specific ones are crude and hard to point out. The closest one I could think of, and this is odd, but The Dark Knight Rises flood scene and the flood scene in Metropolis seem kind of crudely similar. Insane robots could be linked to I,Robot, Transformers and Surrogates. Other than that, if I was Ebert and Robert, one of my thumbs would be up for playing with what technology they had at the time and one thumb would be down, just because it was so lengthy and time consuming, I actually fell asleep at times.

Painting and Writing

Hey...........I know no one reads these things and if they do..they don't comment, but might as well update in hopes that someone will. I've been painting a panda that's spitting black clouds and writing a futuristic zombie story, inspired by My Chemical Romance's "Planetary (GO!)".
Anyways, I've also posted a new vlog on my youtube (MustacheSharks90". View it, leave comments.
I will have a picture of the panda painting up soon. Thanks for reading! :)

Discoverying Art on Central Avenue

One moment I'm handing in an application to Dairy Queen, in high hopes of finally being hired by someone so I make some money and then the next moment, I'm in an old photography shop, staring surrealism in the face. Recently I have signed up to be a docent (I hope I spelled that right) at a North Dakota Art Exhibition. The location is at CDS Photographie's old location on Central Avenue, in my hometown of Valley City, North Dakota. All this art is so interesting...I wish I would've done some of this.

Secretly, I'm a ninja >_<

I just wanted to share that with all of you.......I'll see you later, but you won't see me!!! >:)

Chaos...Pure Chaos

Here I am in the art department of my college, waiting for a photo op of my still life collection to go down. Never have I felt like a normal artist until now. Compostion, contrast and perspective are killing me! I don't do still lifes! I'm a surrealist! Never have I felt so relieved to set a pencil down and walk away from the spotlight before. No offense to Armando..dude's a great teacher...but Damn! I hated drawing real shit.....texture can go die hahaha. But, I can't say I didn't enjoy being humbled, critiqued and actually learning a thing or two about my talent. PEACE!

Comics

Superheroes, vigilantes, villains and mutants, oh my! I totally forgot to add aliens, my bad. I totally want to draw my own comic someday! I lack the ability to draw characters in action, but I have came up to two characters that I would love to make a comic for!
I'm sure if you've read my intro, then you already know the name Atticus Fly. This name was made up while thinking of a superhero name. The idea of Atticus is that he's like...Superman off of Smallville in a way. He's a jock, who rocks glasses as if to resemble Atticus Finch in a way, pants (der) and red high tops (hence "Fly"). He's very full of himself, flirtatious and sarcastic. When he finds out he has powers, he quickly goes onto the Superman "black and white" kick. Black and white meaning he thinks there's a bold line between good and evil and that both act a certain way. He thinks if he throws the bad guy in jail that that bad guy will stop and that bad guys don't kill. Herp, derp, he learns the hard way that this idea is very much untrue. Atticus' powers include super speed, super strength, flying, and the ability to absorb the Sun's energy in order to create huge blasts of plasma out of his hands, mouth or eyes. And you thought he'd be exactly like his inspiring counter-part! Yeah, right. Atticus was made in order to express life's challenges and how he overcomes him. At sometimes Atticus almost goes completely evil and other times he's the coolest dude on the planet...it all depends on how is morality is affected.
Molotov, yes that name either screams vigilante or villain all over it. Vigilante! Molotov is a homeless teenager who slowly taught himself survivalist techniques and how to rig anything around him. He uses all of his surroundings to his own advantage, making him very deadly. Molotov does kill if he has to..but doesn't like to. His aggression is always aimed at street gangs and mob bosses and very little at actual villains. Molotov does know Atticus and they get along in a very dysfunctional way. Their ideals and values always clash, but Molotov is always there when Atticus seems like he's gonna crack or crossover to the "darkside".

I really wanna see these two come to life....and not under someone else's penicl >.<