The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

The classic book is known to millions worldwide. It starts out at a peaceful and happy time in middle-earth, or so many believe until the word that a necromancer is on the rise. This is when a band of 13 dwarves and the all famous Gandalf the Grey come knocking on Bilbo Baggins’ door. They ask this meek, comfort-loving hobbit to leave his peaceful home in the Shire behind and join them on a dangerous quest to reclaim their homeland which was taken from them long ago by a monstrous dragon by the name of Smaug.

I could not believe how amazing the director Peter Jackson did on the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I, of course, had watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies hundreds of times with my brother, dad, and friends and couldn’t get enough of them. But when I heard they would be coming out with a Hobbit movie, I was ecstatic. I had of course read the book and knew what the movie was going to be about, but I was curious on how they would fit that book into one movie because it was so extensive and pretty much every part of the book was important to the plot. That’s when I found out they were making it into a trilogy and I was over the top excited.

The Hobbit movie runs for a full 160 minutes where you would think you might get a slight bit bored at the beginning based on the book for the first hour but surprises you with a whole mix of emotions and scenes that will make you laugh, feel sympathetic, and heroic. The first hour includes an amusing invasion of the dwarves into Bilbo’s home and their song and slapstick dinner. Then makes you feel sympathy for the poor dwarves as they unravel the story of their home being taken.

After long thought, the next morning Bilbo races after the dwarves to join the pack and act as their burglar against mighty Smaug. Once the quest begins, you are thrown into a relentless series of chase and action scenes, from hungry trolls to the magnificent city of Rivendell to the fateful encounter with Gollum to get the ring.

All of these amazing and important scenes add up to a pretty well done movie overall. I was overly thrilled to finally be back in middle earth again and I am eagerly awaiting to see the next two parts of the epic trilogy.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review

He eventually finds himself in an old tomb, rocking out to his rock and roll tapes that his mother used to give him before she died, trying to find a small silver orb to sell for a high price. Suddenly, he soon finds out that everyone who is anyone in the galaxy wants this particular item. It could mean the difference of life and death of every being in space.

I watched the movie Guardians of the Galaxy finally for the first time with my family a couple days ago and I have to say, it was one of the most exciting and hilarious movies from marvel in quite a while that I’ve seen. Making this movie was a pretty risky move by Marvel because unlike Spiderman and Captain America and the Hulk, the “Guardians” a relatively unknown to a lot of people. But, this particular risk paid off big time for them.

The whole movie is basically about Peter Quill, an earthling that was abducted as a child and raised by bandits or scavengers from space and grew up in the stars. He eventually makes a name for himself which people know him as a self-styled outlaw called “Star-Lord” and spends his days raiding areas in the galaxy for precious and valuable trinkets and objects to sell and make a living for himself.

He soon meets Gamora (a green being that was an outlaw of an evil empire that wants to use the orb to destroy everything, Drax (a huge man type giant who’s family were killed by the race that wants the orb, and Rocket and Groot (a genetically altered raccoon who uses big guns to get what he wants, and a interesting being made completely of roots, plants and trees who is just along for the ride). They are all thrown together in a prison out of circumstances and misfortune.

After working together to escape the awful prison, they feel all at once epic and intimate as a team. They try and work out their differences to extreme fights and arguments to eventually forge bonds of amazing friendship.

Not one character in this movie outshines another in this amazing group called the Guardians of the Galaxy. They all share their heroic and somewhat unheroic moments at different times throughout the movie. They fight each other, fight their enemies, and eventually fight for one another to save the galaxy.  

Blog Change

As you all might know, for the last few months now I have been writing all of my log posts on music and songs and different artists that I and you viewers might think to be talented or interesting. I decided now that I am going to switch things up a bit and broaden my topics for my different posts to just culture in general. This will include movies, maybe books, youtube videos, and still include some music.

First off, I just want to say to some of my viewers that I won’t be eliminating the topic of music out completely. It has just been getting harder for me to find artists and songs to write about and keep my posts intriguing and also somewhat lengthy to give you great information even though there are billions and billions of artists and songs out there. 

I feel like broadening my topic to include books and videos and movies will not only make this blog even more fun to read, but also show what I really wanted to accomplish by creating this blog which was to show to the world all the different ways we as people express ourselves through our culture.

Movies are a great way that people express themselves and their culture a lot because it just shows how we think about different scenarios and events and how creative the mind can be. There are so many different genres of movies that can have even their own branched out topics from them. There are your basic action movies: hero’s, killers, suspense, fighting, murders, spies, ect. There are your comedies: romantic, action comedies, stupidity/dumb, ect. There is also your horrors, romances, dramas, chick flicks, and cartoons.

Now youtube videos I could go on forever about. New videos go viral every week! Most are stupid and hilarious and I could rant all day long on them and the rest are either surprising or sad that have some story behind it.

Books will be a little had for me to write reviews on because I wouldn’t want to spoil the book for anyone that hasn’t already read it. But I will try my best to give out some good reading ideas for everyone and put in my opinion on some of the things I’ve read.

So as you can see, I won’t be having much more trouble finding ideas to write for you guys anytime soon. I’m pretty much set.

One Republic: Secrets

The first time I heard the song "Secrets" by One Republic was when it literally first came out because my friend was obsessed with the band and would buy every song that they ever came out with. So when this song came out, he cane running to me, telling me this song was going to be the next big thing. At first I didn't believe him and just shrugged it off just like every other time he would tell me about a One Republic song that was supposed to hit fame. But, once I listened to the song, I couldn't help but keep listening to it over and over again. It was addicting and then soon after became my favorite song and hit in the top 100 in itunes.

From the context of the song, it sounds like the person singing is feeling a lot of pressure to tell some juicy story that will have everyone talking about him so that he can be in the spotlight again.

"I need another story, something to get off my chest. My life gets kind of boring, need something that I can confess."


However, he doesn't have an exciting story about a troubled family life or a dark, shameful past; the kind of stories that people love to gossip about.


"Got no reason, got no shame, got no family I can blame."


The first time I listened to the song, I thought he had become so desperate that he had decided to just make up some story or do something dangerous that would attract a lot of attention. But the chorus convinces me that that's not the case. 


"Sick of all the insincere... This time, I don't need another perfect line. I don't care if critics never jump in line."


It sounds like he realizes that if he did that he would get a lot of attention, but he personally feels like it's not worth it. He's doing what he is just because he loves doing it, not because he wants fame and attention. He's realized that he doesn't care about shocking everyone with the perfect, story; he's sick of everyone working so hard to get attention that way and he wishes that people weren't so shallow and insincere.


Finally, I hear a plea for people to pay attention to him for the right reasons - his music, his personality, his dedication to what he does - even though he doesn't have an 'exciting' life that would be on all the magazine covers. He's going to be honest and show us who he really is, and he hopes people will appreciate that.


"Just don't let me disappear. I'm gonna tell you everything... I'm gonna give all my secrets away."

Bastille: Pompeii

"Pompeii" by Bastille is a somewhat newer song that came out this past year and skyrocketed to the top of the music charts. It's hard to categorize this particular song because it is a mixture of so many different genre's and types of music. But if I had to, I would say it's definitely Alternative. The meaning of this song can be taken on many different paths, but I really think my translation hits it right on the sweet spot.

It talks about how both on a large scale (wars, poverty, etc.) and a small scale (hopelessness, poor relationships, etc.), our world falls apart due to our own faults ("vices" in the song — selfishness, greed, general wrongdoings). We look around and recognize that our society and our own personal lives are flawed. 


Over and over in anyone's life, there are problems and difficulties. Yet, when we "close our eyes" (stop thinking about the problems themselves), we realize that despite our recognition of these flaws, we really haven't changed our attitudes at all to help make things better ("nothing's changed at all"). For that reason, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again — we've "been here before," and we're making the same mistakes again, one reason why the metaphor of Pompeii and it's destruction is brilliant for this song. We want to change everything that's going wrong, when maybe we should be looking to change ourselves and our own shortcomings. 


One of the most powerful lines of the song conveys this message — "Where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?" In other words, do we just clean up and hide our messes, or do we dig for the root of the problem first? It seems to suggest that the first option will lead to continued failure and an endless cycle of destruction.


There's definitely more here, but I think that's part of it. And like many songs, there are multiple valid interpretations, but I think this idea of our cyclical flaws is definitely in there. Fantastic song, even better lyrics.

Pearl Jam: Jeremy

The song "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam is just another one of those songs that brings me back to those relaxing car rides with my father when I was younger. And it's another song that we would sit through in absolute silence just taking the rawness of the song in.

The song is really meaningful, and you can really fell for the kids pain through the lyrics. In the first verse "At home, drawing pictures of mountain tops with him on top. Lemon yellow sun, arms raised in a V, dead lay in pools of maroon below" it shows that the kid, Jeremy, draws what he would like to feel in the drawing, like he conquered something in life and that people would actually respect him.

In the next couple lines "Daddy didn't give him attention, Oh, to the fact that mommy didn't care" you can really see that he was neglected all throughout his childhood, and that he didn't feel loved by anyone, or that he was even significant. The next two lines "King Jeremy the wicked, Oh, ruled his world" shows that he felt control for the first when shooting himself at the school, and that was the only way he could of ever felt any control.

The chorus of the song "Jeremy spoke in class today", means that he finally spoke out for himself and showed everyone how he felt, but that was by committing suicide in front of the class. The next verse describes what Jeremy Wade Delle actually did and what lead him to commit suicide. The following verse, " He hit me with a surprise left, my jaw left hurting. Dropped wide open, Just like the I heard" basically says how his mouth dropped wide open when being hit, just as wide when he heard about the shooting. The one line in the verse before the chorus, "And the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear" just shows again how his mother would not love care for him or show him any attention.

This song just show me how fortunate I am to have a family that cares for me and loves me. This song was written in 1991, and since then dozens of school shootings have cluttered the news. It is so tragic and it's something that needs to be stopped.

Bruno Mars: Grenade

Bruno Mars is probably one of the most talented current male singers out there. He is right up next to Sam Smith, Hozier, and Fall Out Boy. One of my favorite songs by him was put out a couple years ago, called "Grenade" and it was an instant hit.

When I first listened to this song, I also took it to mean that he's singing about a girl he's in love with and she just takes him for granted and abuses him in so many ways, and yet he can't let her go.

However, after listening to it a few times and really thinking about what the lyrics could actually mean, I believe it's not so much about a man who loves, in his words, a "bad woman," but instead about a man who is completely obsessed with this woman.

You can see this right in the very beginning when he says he should have known she was this way because she had her eyes open during their first kiss. He asks why were her eyes open, but the only way he would know hers were open is if his were also open. Him saying that should have been the signal she was bad seems a little obsessive and almost threatening. I can almost hear the persona from the song cornering this woman and aggressively asking "why were your eyes open?? why didn't you close your eyes??"


Next he says that all he ever wanted was for her to give him ALL of her love, and that's it. "I just wanted you to love me unconditionally. Why couldn't you do that for me??" 


The chorus goes on to say he would do all of these things for this woman (intercepting a grenade, jumping in front of a train, getting shot in the head) and it's a little too obsessive. Imagine if you were to just start seeing someone and after two weeks s/he was already saying they would die for you and they don't want to live unless it's with you. Granted, we don't know exactly how long the characters have been together, but it's still a very unhealthy way to look at a relationship.

So really, to me, it sounds like this man came on too strong to this girl in the early part of the relationship and she felt uneasy and maybe that she was in danger, so she decided to stop seeing him. As a result, we hear the story of an extremely sick and obsessive man wondering why she couldn't feel the same way about him as he did about her.