Oh So Geeky

"If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" When I first heard actress Amy Adams answer  "Green" quite blondily in the film Drop Dread Gorgeous (1999) I was in love. Years later, and this actress became a four time Academy Award nominee. And her career has never slowed down. She kicks ass and takes names in every film, photoshoot, red carpet event - you name it. You just can't merely call her an actress. She's a super one. From her early start as the bimbo classmate trying out for Miss Mount Rose American Teen Princess in Drop Dead Gorgeous and playing inexplicably adorable Daddy's girl in Catch Me If You Can , she's incomprehensibly able to fit every single role. Her supporting role in the 2005 film Junebug  confirms how easily she's able to capture then break our hearts. Not appearing in the film for more than a few scenes as pregnant Ashley, she earned the Academy's attention with a heartbreaking scene where she grie...

Each Walt Disney World theme park celebrates something unique; for Animal Kingdom it's nature, at Magic Kingdom you see all of your favorite characters, and so on. Disney's Hollywood Studios, once upon a time named MGM Studios, celebrates the worlds of film, television, and music with attraction rides, shows, and restaurants inspired by icons from Hollywood and beyond. If you've been to Disney's Hollywood Studios in the past ten or fifteen years, you may have come the  Studio Backlot Tour . After a vehicle ride of movie props showcased on the theme park grounds, guests are taken to a brief walk-through museum of film props like costumes, photos with information, and old film cameras. For almost several years the exhibit showcased famous film villains like Daniel Plainview from  There Will Be Blood , Darth Vader and storm troopers from  Star Wars , and Aliens from the  Alien series . Recently on a visit to Hollywood Studios, I was pleased to see that the museum...

Photo Credit: Se7en / New Line Cinema Whispers of intense disappointment or adoration follow  Se7en  everywhere. The story could be described as a typical crime drama, but how an iconic director sets up its setting and characters is why this 1995 film is a cut above the rest. Somber and soon-to-be retired Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is getting replaced with a younger idealistic Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). In an unidentified decaying city, the pair investigates a bloody and gruesome set of crimes 'inspired' by the seven sins; gluttony, greed, pride, sloth, lust, wrath, and envy. Director David Fincher is known for his dark auteur style. His films' color and landscape are bleak and the characters rarely find happy endings. Right from the start of Se7en , the plot is relentless in its threat of danger and hopelessness. Crime and inhumanity over-runs every street corner. A never-ending downpour keeps the city wet, cold, and harsh. The faces of Mil...

John over at Hitchcock's World began a marathon earlier this summer about Women in Film; a challenge for bloggers to spotlight a female character from any film genre or time period and explain the various qualities that make them a strong character in the masculine entertainment industry. There were a lot of interesting choices. As a big Harry Potter fan I thought I'd write about J.K. Rowling's range complex witches like Hermione Granger or Professor McGonagall, or George Lucas's Princess Leia. However, Elizabeth Swann in the  Pirates of the Caribbean franchise caught my attention and held it more strongly. Growing up, I remember seeing the first three films in theaters, and of course, was overjoyed by Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow - as most of the world was at that time. But also Keira Knightley as the governor's daughter turned pirate, wife, and mother was an interesting evolution I didn't notice as the films rolled out. The adventurous Pirat...

Photo Credit: The Fault in Our Stars / 20th Century Fox Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley)'s thyroid cancer has progressively grown into lung cancer. For the time being her condition is stable when she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort) at a support group. Accepting her limited lifespan which has no specific expiration date, Grace tries to limit the relationships she's involved in by not wanting to hurt the people she loves. As she and Gus become friends, her will to avoid his attempts at wooing fail. The typical young adult genre of "love worth dying for" transforms into a story of love worth living for. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green was originally published in 2012 and has managed to stay atop bestseller's list for the past two years. The story of teenagers falling in love despite facing the inevitability of oblivion has become a cultural phenomenon. Millions of readers dote on how the novel captures a voice of a generation, a relationship centered a...

Photo Credit: The Matrix/ Warner Bros Directed and written by The Wachowski Sisters, this 1999 sci-fi flick takes us into a new reality called The Matrix. The world as we know has utterly collapsed from mankind's egotrip known as artificial intelligence. Sentient machines we created betrayed us and scorched the Earth. In doing so, they subdued humans into a simulated reality and use our natural bodies heat and electrical activity as their main energy source. The Chosen One Neo (Keanu Reeves) is a computer hacker who is shown the truth. A group of human resistance fighters led by Morpheus (Laurence Fishbourne) guides our hero to realize his potential to save the rest of the human race and end the war. Before watching The Matrix , expectations from the film's hype since my teenage years weighed on my mind. Mostly, my thoughts stemmed from the film's glory days when it was a huge hit in the late 90s / early 2000s. Fans' fervent love made me excited but also anxious...

With the help of admirer Alex Prud Homme, six-footer Julia Child recounts the several years she and her husband, Paul Child, spent together in France where her cooking ambitions began in her autobiography My Life In France . What began as a passion towards the French cuisine grew into a cooking empire, and still one of the most influential and iconic cookbooks  Mastering the Art of French Cooking . Every chapter is simple and easy to breeze through. Once in a while, I'll come across an autobiography where the content is so detailed it seems the author is suffering from the classic celebrity syndrome of an unbearably huge ego. None of that can be found here. The Californian-native is detailed about her relationships with fellow Gourmettes and her ventures into the publishing and television world without long-winded stories that finish in a dead-end. Child's descriptions of the scrumptious foods she made are absolutely mouth-watering. The deeply devoted Democrat leads us t...