trailer park

so i got the chance to see some AMAZING trailers at the movie theatre yesterday... here are the ones i'm most excited for!

fantastic four
march of the penguins
must love dogs
serenity (firefly lives!!!!!)
red eye
RENT
charlie and the chocolate factory
wallace and gromit
flightplan
narnia
cars
chicken little
corpse bride
the dukes of hazzard
and finally...
harry potter and the goblet of fire!!!!!!

it's alot i know, but damn do i love movies! :)

an average 3-movie day!

BEWITCHED
i thought that this film would be a lot better than it was. the premise is amazing and the creative cast is top notch! the first hour is great, nicole kidman is adorable in her second witch role and will ferrell is pretty funny doing what it is he normally does, but somewhere in the second half of the film i think the ephron sisters (nora and delia) lost their steam. there are unresolved storylines (michael caine and shirley maclaine) and the film just sort of ends. 3 out of 5 stars.

THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY & LAVAGIRL IN 3-D
i was really excited to see this film for a few reasons...
1) it robert rodriguez
2) it's in 3D!
3) it's a kid film
4) it just looked fun!
but as i was in the theatre watching it, i kept thinking about how long it seemed. the film itself is a great platform for the advocacy of believing in your dreams and the art of dreaming itself. it really makes you feel like a mooch for letting go of some of your most precious childhood dreams... (why didn't i become a toy maker?? i always wanted to be a singer, why don't i sing more??) but the story itself drags just a little and that is a hard thing to do seeing as the film is only 1 hour 45 mins. it might have come from the fact that most of the jokes are for kids and in a day and age where most kid films have a lot of jokes for adults as well (thank you PIXAR) it just made the film seem slow. also, i thought that 3D effects would be better in this day and age... i think the last 3D thing i saw was "bug's life" at disneyland and i remember the colours were so vibrant and real... throughout the film, what should have been a very colourful experience just came across as different shades of grey. 3 out of 5 stars.

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
far and away one of the best animated films i've seen in a long time. i personally think it's better than spirited away and it is right up there with castle in the sky (which is my fave miyazaki) the film is based on the book by diana wynne jones and is a pretty faithful adaptation. if you like animation and miyazaki you won't be disappointed but you'll also love it if you enjoy: adventure, magic, romance, action, sci-fi and family films. VERY GOOD! 5 out of 5 stars!

i'm back!!!!!!!!

hey bloggin' buddies!

so, i'm back from san jose and i am a changed man! :) first off, i know more about PF Changs food, culture and history than i ever thought i'd ever know! :) secondly, i got to see a little corner of california that i probably wouldn't have seen otherwise so i feel travelled! :) thirdly, i made some really good friends there that i think i will have around for a while :) fourthly, i discovered some things about the friends that i had that made me realize that maybe they are NOT the best friends for me.

actually i didn't get to see too much of the actual city of san jose... we were always working, and when we weren't working, we were sleeping :) our ONE day off was father's day and all we did was hang around the hotel and have a barbecue! everyone contributed something to the barbecue so i made jello shots! they were so good! i made black cherry jello with black cherry vodka & strawberry/banana jello with apple vodka! YUM! everyone else contributed meat or chips... i can't believe i was the only one to think of jello shots! :)

one night we were there we went karaoke-ing and i sang lady marmalade with my friends enrique and hayden (our boy band version was something to be rivaled, let me tell you!) and then i sang smooth, and then everyone from PF Changs got up and did a group version of bohemian rhapsody! it was fun! :)

i made a new friend in lindsi with whom i was able to wear rubber bands on my face and not feel like an idiot! i made a friend lacey who bonded with me over our dumb friend hayden :) and i think i may have lost a friend, hayden... we may be able to dave the friendship, but i REALLY don't trust him or care for him as much as i did before the trip.

i ate a CRAPload of candy and drank a BUNCH of alcohol but counterbalanced it by taking vitamin c everyday and going to jamba juice and taking a 2oz wheatgrass shot every morning! :) i dunno if it really works, but it can't hurt... on the upside, if i ever get stranded on a deserted island with nothing but grass to survive on, i've now gotten acclamated to the taste of it :)

i had fondue for the first time! FUN! there was something very primal about cooking your food yourself yet also something very ritzy about knowing that you were paying $88 a person! ;)

overall, i had an amazing time. i would LOVE to go do another opening, hopefully there will be some spots for thousand oaks, ca or portland, or that i can hop onto! regardless,... i made some really good friends and have some great memories :)

muriel's wedding

yes, i am extremely busy moving all my stuff into the other bedroom and yes, i still have to pack for my three-week buisness trip that i leave for TOMORROW, and yes i have no time to hang out with my friends right now before i leave as i still have tons of errands to run before i go and yes i still have to help my roommate move into his new bedroom..., but i'll be damned if i didn't MAKE time to sit down last night and watch muriel's wedding for the first time last night! (if you are wondering why, then read the comments under the "you tell me" post from a few days ago.)

and tom, karen... it was AMAZING!! i've owned this movie for over 3 years and have never watched it, 1) because when i saw The Wild Party on broadway years ago, i fell in LOVE with toni collete and so snatched up as many films of hers as i could find, 2) i thought i was buying Cosi. Both of thier covers look similiar and i had recently seen Cosi and loved it, but couldn't remember the title, so when i saw Muriel's Wedding i got confused and bought the wrong movie. when i first put it in the dvd player and noticed my mistake, i got mad and took it out, i haven't watched it since then! :)

i should have known that i would have liked it though, with it being by P.J. Hogan who also wrote my fave film in the history of the WORLD, Peter Pan!!!!

i'm really sorry that i waited until now to watch it, and i promise that if there are any other films out there that i need to watch, if you tell them to me, i will watch them! :)

going away

so, pf changs is sending me out to san jose to open up the new store there. no karen, it's no cancun :) (or whatever tropical destination you are off to next) but i'm pretty excited cuz i haven't really seen too much of california yet. i'll be there for 3 weeks... i don't own a computer, so i don't know how often i'll be able to blog, but i'll definatly try... hopefully the hotel they are putting me up in will have a little office area with internet access, regardless,... i'm gonna be taking my diary with me to keep a paper trail of my adventures... when i get back i'll have lots of stories to tell, but in the mean time, have a good 3 weeks without me, i'll miss you all, and keep checking my blog so that you'll know when i get back! :)

love, matt

TONY AWARD WINNERS

i guess what is most interesting is that the show that won the most Tonys (six in all) was not the show that had the most nominations this year (Spamalot with 14 nominations) but The Light in the Piazza, the Lincoln Center Theater adaptation of a novel about an American mother and daughter traveling in Italy. Leading lady Victoria Clark took the Tony as Best Actress in a Musical, and composer Adam Guettel won for Best Score. Guettel also won for Best Orchestrations with Ted Sperling, and Bruce Coughlin. The show scored a triple crown victory in the design category, winning for Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Christopher Ackerlind), Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Michael Yeargan) and Best Costume Design of a Musical (Catherine Zuber). Spamalot only ended up winning in 3 categories, Best Musical, Best Featured Actress and Best Director.

Also interesting is that this is the first time in over 34 years that the winners of Best Musical (Spamalot), Best Music & Lyrics (The Light in the Piazza) and Best Book (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) have all been from different shows. normall the best musical also gets music and lyrics or book, but not this year!

hugh jackman was an amazing host... his opening number was inspired, BUT his duet with aretha franklin at the end of the show of Somewhere from West Side Story (in honour of Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday) was kinda bland and boring. All the musical performances were good... however, jesse martin was VERY flat on his ending note of a musical tribute to fred ebb (composer of cabaret, chicago, steel pier) which is too bad, because the tribute over all was actually very touching. it was a performance of the song "razzle dazzle" from Chicago, with the cast of Fosse.

Anyway... you can chack out the rest of the winners down below and if you want to check out more info on the shows themselves, i have links to your right ---->

******************
Best Play
Doubt

Best Musical
Monty Python's Spamalot

Best Book of a Musical
Rachel Sheinkin for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
Adam Guettel for The Light in the Piazza

Best Revival of a Play
Glengarry Glen Ross

Best Revival of a Musical
La Cage aux Folles

Best Special Theatrical Event
Billy Crystal 700 Sundays

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
Bill Irwin for Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
Cherry Jones for Doubt

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical
Norbert Leo Butz for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical
Victoria Clark for The Light in the Piazza

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
Liev Schreiber for Glengarry Glen Ross

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play
Adriane Lenox for Doubt

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical
Dan Fogler for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical
Sara Ramirez for Monty Python's Spamalot

Best Scenic Design of a Play
Scott Pask for The Pillowman

Best Scenic Design of a Musical
Michael Yeargan for The Light in the Piazza

Best Costume Design of a Play
Jess Goldstein for The Rivals

Best Costume Design of a Musical
Catherine Zuber for The Light in the Piazza

Best Lighting Design of a Play
Brian MacDevitt for The Pillowman

Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Christopher Akerlind for The Light in the Piazza

Best Direction of a Play
Doug Hughes for Doubt

Best Direction of a Musical
Mike Nichols for Monty Python's Spamalot

Best Choreography
Jerry Mitchell for La Cage aux Folles

Best Orchestrations
Ted Sperling, Adam Guettel and Bruce Coughlin for The Light in the Piazza

Regional Theatre Tony Award®
Theatre de la Jeune Lune
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Special Tony Award® for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Edward Albee

you tell me

i remember when i was in living in DC. the summer after my freshman year at catholic university i got a job working for the national tour of Ragtime: The Musical. i remember so vividly how excited i was to have that job! to actually be working for a REAL broadway show!! to be a part, no matter how small it may be, of something so big! i was a wide eyed youth, taking everything in, learning everything i could. i think it was the things i learned at that job, that gave me the skills to later become the manager of walt disney theatrical merchandise.

one day, i had finsihed working at the theatre and i was in the metro station waiting for the train to take me home. i was able to get student housing for the summer at CUA. it was pleasant and also lonely. while i was standing on the platform i saw one of the wardrobe ladies waiting for the same train. she was michael rupert's personal wardrobe assistant and since michael was fast becoming one of my best friends on the tour, i felt like i had seen her enough to go up and say hello to her. i walked up to her and said:

"hi... how are you? i didn't know you rode this train! which stop do you go to?"
"i'd appriciate it if you didn't talk to me. when i get off work it's my alone time, so please leave."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i didn't really know what to say. suffice it to say, i left her alone... hell!, i didn't even ride in the same car as her! when i told michael about it the next day, he told me that she wasn't just in a bad mood last night, but that was how she ALWAYS was! i didn't know this, but apparently no body liked her and she was always stressing people out. a couple weeks later she got fired and a new girl took her place and she wasn't even missed... a week later, people couldn't even remember her name, and in under 2 weeks she was forgotten completely.

**********

tonight at work i had carlos for my server assistant (busboy with privleges). everyone knows that carlos' mom just passed away... and the first week after he came back i think everybody tipped him a lot more than they needed to, i guess as their way of saying "i'm sorry your mom died... here's some extra money that you wouldn't normally get to help you out a little." but not me. when i found out that his mom died it made me feel terrible... all i could think about was how i would be feeling if my mom died. so i made the decision to talk to him.

i had been working with this guy for almost 4 months and i realized that i knew NOTHING about him! all i knew was that his name was carlos, he was a busboy at pf changs china bistro and his mom recently died. not much. that day, i took every opportunity to talk to him... it never amounted to more than 5 mins at a time, but i found out so much more than anyone else knew about him... like for instance, he and his mom had been living together in a one bedroom apt and he was supporting both of them on his minimum wage paycheck and tips because she couldn't work and so he was also taking care of her because they couldn't afford a nurse. she was the only family he had out here in LA. after she died he couldn't stay in the apartment by himself and so he moved to a studio apartment a little closer to work. the death hit him pretty hard and so he is on 4 different anti-depressants. he doesn't own a car, so he takes the bus to work... since he works he works evening shifts at work, he doesn't get off until after midnight most nights and cuz it's so late, he usually sits by himself on a bench for at least 30 mins waiting for a bus to come take him home. i got to know so much about him that day, and afterwards he told me that i was the only server at work who actually "talked" to him. the only server who actually made him feel like a person instead of just a busboy. at the end of that particular night, he thanked me for talking to him, i tipped him a little more than i needed to, and went our seperate ways, him to the bus stop and me to my car. as i was driving home that night, i felt really good about myself. like, maybe in some small way, i had helped him out, made a difference. that was about 2 weeks ago.

tonight, i had to stop at the gas station on my way home. as i was pumping my gas i saw carlos walk up to the guy in the booth and buy a soda and cigarettes. i turned my back to him. he never saw me. he got his drink and smokes and walked back to the bus stop and i never said hi to him. the thing is, if he had seen me, i KNOW that he would have said hi to me. it's not that i don't like him, it's just that i didn't want to talk to anyone right then. but in retrospect, what would have been so difficult about saying hi to him... maybe even giving him a ride to his apt which is only 15 mins driving time away from where we were so that he wouldn't have to wait on a cold hard bench for 30 mins to take a 30 minute bus ride home.

have i become that bitch from ragtime?? that bitch that everyone forgot about, but me. maybe i'm the only one who remembers her for a reason... maybe we are all destined to remember and become one person in this world that society and time have forgotten. i don't know... it's late, i'm tired and maybe this is all just rambling stream of consciousness, but all i know is that i DO NOT want to become that wardrobe lady from ragtime... yet at the same time, i can't stop thinking about her. what would have been so hard about talking to carlos? what would have been so hard...?

a good 3-movie day!

on sunday i decided that i had nothing better to do, and so went and caught up on my cinema viewing! i went to AMC, i picked 3 movies that looked really good to me, paid my $27, handed over my moviewatcher card, bought my nachos and large sprite/fruit punch mix and settled in for movie #1!

MADAGASCAR
this movie was really well executed... i was worried after the debaucle that was Shark Tale but dreamworks saved themselves with this really funny film about a zebra who escapes central park zoo with dreams of living in the wild and his 3 friends who end up going along for the journey with him. it's essentially an old fashioned buddy movie with funny references to other films such as "planet of the apes" and "cast away". the penguins and the lemurs provide most of the fun! with a great new rendition of Reel 2 Reel's i like to move it! 4 stars out of 5.

CRASH
the best written, best directed, most well acted film i've seen this year! living in LA, i TOTALLY related with the film's defining statement: "everyday we are faced with reactions. how we interpret a situation colours our perceptions of daily life." if you only see one movie this year, go see this one. 5 stars out of 5.

THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
i love sci-fi, i love british, i love singing and dancing dolphins, i love big splashy opening production numbers, i love mos def, alan rickman, sam rockwell, martin freeman and zooey deschanel, i love the books, i love the number 42, i love this movie. 4 stars out of 5.

i'd never be lonely with a lampshade tattoo

i don't know if i want to get a tattoo. people usually get tattoos to say something about themselves "on themselves"... you know... to show something unique about them, to stand out. girls will typically get something like an angel or a fairy, and boys usually get something "manly" like chinese symbols or a dragon. in a nutshell, tattoos are usually people just wanting to show their uniqueness. SO, i came to the conclusion that if I ever get a tattoo it'd have to be something like an alligator wearing slippers and holding a lollypop or something totally meaningless and random like a lampshade or something. this is basically for the purpose of conversation because when you think about it, how many people are going to ask you about your barb-wire tattoo when they could ask about your stellar looking lampshade, eh? so if your going to mark your body and you want to be original i think you should get a lampshade tattoo because when it comes down to it, you'd never be lonely with a lampshade tattoo.