Testament of Youth

The first thing you need to know about the film Testament of Youth is that it stars my boyfriend Kit Harington (you may know him better as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones).  I could listen to that boy recite poetry all day!  The second thing you need to know is that it is a coming of age story about an unconventional young woman set against the backdrop of World War I, which is a particular interest of mine.  I tell you this because you may want to take my gushing review with a grain of salt!  I literally couldn't help but love this film and love it I most certainly did!  It is 1914 and Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander from Ex Machina) wants nothing more than to be allowed to study at Oxford like her younger brother, Edward (Taron Egerton), and his friends who are spending their break with her family.  A romance develops between Vera and Roland (Harington), one of her brother's friends, and when she is accepted to Oxford she is equally excited about the possibility of becoming a writer and about being near Roland.  When England enters the war, Edward and his friends, including Roland, enlist in high spirits longing for adventure and eager to do their duty for King and country.  When Roland comes back from France on leave, he tells Vera of the horrors of trench warfare so she decides to leave school and become a volunteer nurse.  As Roland, Edward, and all of their friends are eventually killed, Vera begins speaking out about the futility of war.  This film portrays both the dreamlike world of pre-war England with beautiful scenes in the countryside and the brutality of war with stark images of the trenches and bloody close-ups of the row upon row of wounded.  Vikander is in practically every scene and she is brilliant at portraying so many different emotions:  giddiness as she falls in love with Roland (he writes her poetry!), determination to succeed at Oxford, despair as she nurses the wounded, overwhelming grief when she learns of Roland's death, and passion as she speaks out against war.  Harington is also amazing, particularly when he tells Vera that he has lost all of the poetry inside him at the front.  There are so many scenes that stand out in my mind but one is especially poignant.  Vera learns that her brother has been brought to the field hospital but she can't find him.  She eventually locates him among the dead lying on the ground.  In her grief, she embraces him and realizes that he is still alive.  My great-grandfather was wounded and presumed dead in the battle of Ypres.  When his brother went back to the battlefield to look for his body, he discovered that he was still alive and saved him!  I cried during that scene.  On a lighter note, I laughed during a scene when Vera and Roland elude her chaperon to steal a kiss.  It is based on Vera Brittain's best-selling memoir of the same name so, not only do I want to see this film again, but I also want to read the book (I am currently reading Stefan Zweig's memoir of World War I called The World of Yesterday).

Note:  I accidentally met my dear friends Scott and Toni at this film.  Actually, I am surprised I haven't run into them before because we are all film aficionados and night owls who end up at the Broadway Theatre at least once a week!

Ant-Man

Late last night (early this morning?) I saw the movie Ant-Man.  It has been a rough week and I just wanted to do something to take my mind off things but, honestly, I really liked the movie, much more than I thought I would.  To be sure, having ant-like powers sounds like a silly premise for a superhero movie but I thought it was hilarious and I really enjoyed all of the miniaturized effects.  In 1989 Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the original ant-man, resigns from S.H.I.E.L.D. because he doesn't want them to unleash the power to shrink organic material on the world (and he is mourning the death of his wife from this technology which he created).  In present day, Pym learns that his former protege and current CEO of Pym Technologies, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), is on the verge of replicating his formula and intends to sell it to Hydra.  He enlists the help of his estranged daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who still works at Pym Technologies, to spy on Cross but he doesn't want her to wear the ant-man suit because he doesn't want to lose her like he lost her mother.  To that end, he recruits Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who has recently been released from San Quentin for grand larceny and is trying to get his life back together despite the attempts of his former cell-mate Luis (Michael Pena) to get him to join his gang.  Wanting to be a hero to his daughter, Lang learns to use the suit and harness the power of various ants.  He eventually recruits Luis' gang (the aforementioned Pena, rapper T.I., and David Dastmalchian) to help infiltrate Pym Technologies and battle Cross, who has created his own suit called the Yellowjacket.  Instead of epic battle scenes involving the destruction of cities like other Avenger movies, these battle scenes are in miniature amidst giant items, such as life savers, cell phones, and a Thomas the Train toy.  What saves this movie from being a formulaic origin story are the scenes with Luis' gang.  Rudd, while not as endearingly snarky as Robert Downey, Jr., is a master of the funny one-liner and Pena nearly steals the show with his over-the-top portrayal of Luis.  I was laughing out loud and so was everyone in my screening.  I also really enjoyed the scenes where Lang puts the suit on for the first time and falls into a bathtub full of water and then through the floor boards to the apartment below to land on a turntable.  I'm sure the critics are going to rip this movie to shreds but I enjoyed it and it did exactly what every superhero movie should do: it provided a necessary diversion!

Note:  There is a mid-credits scene where Pym shows Hope the Wasp suit worn by her mother and there is a post-credits scene setting up the next Captain America movie so stay put!

Rush at the Maverik Center

I think there are two kinds of people in the world:  those who are absolutely fanatical about the band Rush and know every word to every song and see them play live every chance they get and then there are those who just don't get it. I am definitely one of the former but we are a select group.  During some down time at a debate meet when I was in high school, a guy on my team who I didn't know very well mentioned that he had tickets to an upcoming Rush concert but didn't have anyone to go with.  I immediately begged asked him to take me.  He was surprised to learn that I liked Rush and we spent the rest of the debate meet talking about our favorite songs while everyone else on the team looked at us like we were crazy.  He took me to the concert and we were inseparable for the rest of the year.  (Tom Irvin if you are out there, that was one of the best concerts of my life!)  That was the first time I saw them live and I have since seen them every time they've come to Salt Lake City.  When I learned that the R40 Tour, celebrating forty years of performing with the same line-up of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart, would most likely be their last major tour, I definitely had to be there.  I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale which was during one of my classes.  None of my students even knew who Rush was except for one of the coolest kids in the class who practically begged me to buy him a ticket (for the record, I didn't because that would be weird).  He and I spent a fair amount of class time talking about our favorite songs while the rest of the students shook their heads.  A select group, indeed.  Last night's show was amazing!  They began in reverse chronological order with some of their newest songs from Clockwork Angels and continued through their eponymous first album.  My favorite section was the middle when they played "Distant Early Warning," "Subdivisions," "Tom Sawyer," "Red Barchetta," and "The Spirit of Radio."  I also really loved the phantasmagorical light and sound show during several sections of "Cygnus X-1" and "2112 Overture/The Temples of Syrinx," which are some of their more atmospheric and narrative compositions.  All I can say is that it was amazing with an incredible laser show in syncopation with the music and at times I felt like I was floating in space.  Some other fun moments included celebrity rappers on a giant screen during "Roll the Bones" and two double neck guitars on "Xanadu."  The end of the concert was really nostalgic with "Closer to the Heart" and their traditional encore, "Working Man."  I loved how the stage configuration changed from set to set to represent their history.  At first it was a spectacular arena show with all of the bells and whistles, including jets of fire.  Then stage hands dressed in jumpsuits began removing amplifiers and other set pieces as the show progressed.  The second set looked more like a theater and by the encore it was just the three of them with a drum kit.  I loved every minute of it!

Note:  I really missed Tony when they played "One Little Victory" because it was one of his favorite songs.  Tony and I went to a lot of Rush concerts together; in fact, that was how he got me to go out with him!  He had asked me several times but I didn't want to go out with him because we worked together.  When he mentioned going to a Rush concert, I couldn't resist (it also made Tony seem a lot more appealing knowing he belonged to the select few).  He would have loved this concert!

Leadership Conference 2015

 This week I went with the HHS Student Body Officers and Class Officers to a leadership conference at Dixie State University in St. George.  I was so happy to leave the chaos of my life behind and I had so much fun with them!

We had time to plan for the 2015-2016 school year (but I think they are just plotting against me here).

We participated in an amazing activity called "Break Through" where the students literally broke a one-inch thick board with their bare hands.  We did this activity last year and those officers were very affected by it so I was really looking forward to having this group go through the experience.  It was amazing!  This year they made the advisors do it, too!  I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to break it but we are all more powerful than we can even imagine and we can channel that power if we choose to!

Yeah.  They all have more personality than they know what to do with!  They were singing, chanting, and playing games everywhere we went which made them extremely popular with the other schools (you should have seen all of the other schools saying goodbye to them yesterday!)  They kept me laughing all week!  Also, aren't those shirts fabulous?  My friend made them for us!

There was a really fun poster making workshop where they learned some cool chalk techniques!  I thought their poster turned out amazing!

We got to see Beauty and the Beast at the Tuacahn Amphitheater.  The majority of them had never been to a live theatre performance before and it was beyond thrilling for me to watch their reaction to this show!  It was a magical production and the two lead actors were incredible!

We had the opportunity to perform some community service at the Utah Food Bank in St. George.  It was a great experience.

Our assistant principal took us all to dinner at Chili's and it was delicious!

We also had some great keynote speakers, round table discussions, and workshops and we got to participate in a spirit bowl, a black light dance, Dixie Idol (a talent show), and a swim party.  It was a really fun week!  Thank you Dixie State University for showing us such a great time!

Of course we had to make a stop at Swig on the way out of town!

Terminator

Another obscure movie (see here and here) that seemed to be on cable all the time, especially late at night, when I was a teenager was The Terminator.  I loved this movie and watched it over and over.  Once again I had my friend Michael, who worked at Blockbuster, special order me a copy (he was a great friend to have in the days before Amazon).  It became a cult classic which spawned three sequels that I vaguely remember liking at the time.  Terminator: Genisys  (why must words be intentionally misspelled for effect?), the fifth installment, is not so much a sequel as it is a reboot with an alternate reality made possible by the quirks of time travel much like J.J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise.  Because someone (who?) sent a reprogrammed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) through time to save her as a nine-year-old, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) is no longer the frightened waitress in need of Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) to protect her in 1984.  She is not only ready to fight the T-800 and T-1000 (if Skynet had the T-1000, why was the T-800 still sent?), but she has also constructed a makeshift time machine (how?) to travel to 1997 to stop Skynet from becoming self-aware.  However, these events trigger a change in the timeline postponing Judgement Day until 2017 when a global operating system called Genisys goes online.  Reese persuades Sarah to travel to 2017 where they are rescued from police custody by John Connor (Jason Clarke) and then must simultaneously battle a T-3000  and destroy Genisys in some epic action scenes.  The events in 1984 are extremely clever and I loved seeing the scenes from the original film meticulously recreated.  I literally giggled out loud when Sarah said the iconic line, "Come with me if you want to live," instead of Reese.  The explanation of why the T-800 looks old is also absolutely genius.  While I certainly prefer Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn as Sarah and Reese, respectively, Clarke and Courtney hold their own and having Schwarzenegger, who will always and forever be "The Terminator," reprise his role is perfect.  Even my unanswered questions didn't detract from my enjoyment because it is just so fun.  Having said that, the events in 2017 infuriated me!  Without going into detail, a cornerstone of the entire mythology is completely (and unnecessarily, in my opinion) shattered!  I could hardly bear to watch the second half of the film, although, as I mentioned, the action scenes are intense and I did like the resolution between Sarah and Reese at the end.  So, in some ways, I quite enjoyed the new timeline but...

Note:  In the battle of the 1980s movie sequels, Mad Max: Fury Road is definitely winning, in my opinion.  It will be interesting to see how Star Wars: The Force Awakens is received.  Also, in an attempt to downsize, I recently donated all of my VHS tapes to a thrift store.  Sorry, Michael!