Phenomenon: What's is Your Brains Untapped Potential

The movie Phenomenon starring John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Forest Whitaker, and Kyra Sedgwick is a movie that if it came out today would have been an instant hit just because of the stars in the film. But at the time of the movie John Travolta and Duvall were the only big names in the flick.

This movie encounters what can be perceived as paranormal. Travolta plays the character of George Malley who receives the special power of learning and knowledge. He reads a book and learns everything from it. He is clearly special, but the members of his town rebel against him. The ending does have an expected twist if you actually pay attention to the film. But the story line and character development are portrayed nicely.

One theme that shines through is that George Malley is an ordinary man. He knows he is just working in an area of brain capacity humans never have experienced.

This made me think. Do we ever use the amount of our brain which we can use? I feel sometimes we can short ourselves with how much we can use our brain. Especially in todays world where we are so media oriented and we don't push ourselves to actually think when a computer does it for us.

So will we actually get to the point when we don't even think anymore? That is something I legitimately fear for our future. I fear we will become like the people in Idiocracy. People who let the computers think and do everything for us. Leading to dust storms and starvation.

I don't wanna be part of the world that doesn't let us use our brain. I don't think any one else would either. I actually wish I could push my self to be like George Malley. Some one who has all the power to move objects and learn Portugese by reading a book.

The Departed: Twists, Turns, and Burns

This movie was classically one of the best Martin Scorsese has ever made. It's only four years old. That alone should tell you it is going to be a classic for movie enthusiast for a long time to come. With a star studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Anthony Anderson. All of which have had lead roles of their own.

Mr. DiCaprio has played the lead role in all of Scorsese's best films including Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and most recently Shutter Island. They have made masterpieces together. With The Departed near the top, only rivaled by the recent release of Shutter Island.

I will not go into the film and tell you about it. To do so would be an injustice to the film. Go watch it. Experience it. The end will blow your mind.

What I will tell you is that this movie has more twists, turns, and burns of it's characters more so than any other film I, or many of my movie buff friends, have ever seen.

So it got me thinking about life, and how like the movie has twists and turns, so does life. We all expect so many things and they never come to being. The way a situation can take a turn right in front of your face is amazing at times. It can be good, or bad, but one thing that's for sure is it is always unexpected.

My Dad always told me that life rarely goes as planned and if you let yourself get into the bad situations you are going to be burned. No one wants to be burned. So I have tried to live my life in avoidance of such situations in which my involvement might burn a friendship or relationship. In the past two years I haven't done the best with involving my self in such situations. Granted everything has mainly worked itself out now. The past two years have sucked.

Why don't we all just expect the unexpected?

If only that worked. It never seems to. Because even when expecting the unexpected sometimes we will get what is expected. That just throws us on another loop in itself.

So in life I find that we just have to accept the twists, go with the turns, and avoid the burns. Then we can save such events for the movies like The Departed. Then we can enjoy them just a little bit more.

Get Him to The Greek: "I don't wanna be selfish anymore."- Live Blog

First let me start by admitting I love any movie with this list of characters in it. Created by Jason Segel these characters have been part Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to The Greek so far while making a short appearance in the back ground of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. The main character has been Aldous Snow, played by Russel Brand. He has so far been the common driving force in all of the films and Brand plays him magnificently.

While this movie is hilarious and seems to just be a comedy. There are inner messages littered in which all of us can take out of the film and apply to life. I am watching the movie right now, and blogging on it. But I was compelled to as well first of all I need to for an assignment. And second of all it hit me this was perfect to do it on. Me and my friend Caleb went to Target today just so he could buy this film so we could watch it. And as we sat in my Campus Housing apartment where I go to school I grabbed my computer and started to blog as I heard Aldous say something almost profound, especially profound for the movie.

"I don't wanna be selfish anymore."

I love that line. He is a rockstar in the film and as he parties his way to the concert that will save his career he realizes something real for the first time in a long time. It's not about him.

I love when comedy's don't just make you laugh, but they make you think. It is fantastic the way you can realize something you might need to work on in your life while laughing.

Is there a better way? I don't think so.

So don't just watch comedies to laugh. Look for the lines or actions of the film that make you realize something. It might even be profound enough to change your life.

500 Days of Summer: Will Guys Ever Get It?

The movie 500 Days of Summer went from a small indie film to being one of the biggest box office movies of 2009. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom Hansen and Zooey Deschanel as Summer Finn. The pair depict one of the most interesting love stories a movie has ever shown. It begins with the classic story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl goes out with boy. And what happens next includes topsy and turvy twists and turns which none can fully understand until it all becomes clear as the film progresses.

The character of Summer is an interesting one, she is attractive, but strange and at times distant. She seems to fall in love with Tom, but she never goes head over heels for him, at least in the way he does with her. Then she goes and marries a man she knew for a shorter amount of time than she even knew Tom.

This, needless to say leaves Tom heartbroken and lost. So there's a quick synopsis for you, go see the movie. Guys it's okay this is one chick flick that is acceptable to see.

But this movie did more than awe me and make me laugh, and wanna cry. It taught me a valuable lesson. It showed me no matter how we feel about people, we can never make them feel the same way about us. We can't force love or happiness, we can only let it come to us.

Because when we force it, then it's not really true. It's a emotion we feel we are supposed to and must feel. The way Tom loves Summer is so grand and great we should all strive to devout ourselves to the people we love in the same way. But if they don't wanna love us back in the same way we just have to let it go. Tom has a hard time figuring this out in the movie. In the end he does, so we can all go home happy, but it is one of his biggest struggles in the film.

So love your lover strong, take their hand and hold on. Because that's all you can do, so do it well. And if they don't wanna reciprocate the same feelings back to you, accept it because there's definitely nothing you can do.

The Damned United: A Man Before His Time

The Damned United starring Michael Sheen as famous English coach Brian Clough. Clough was as put in the film, "the best English manager that England never had." He took teams from the bottom and rose them to new heights and glories they never dreamed of.

In the film Sheen portrays the confident and loud aura Clough brought to his teams, and the discontent he felt during his brief stay at Leeds United (hence the Damned in The Damned United). At all of his other teams the team saw improvement under him.

The movie shows the stress it is to be a manager, and also a good friend. Clough gave up his and his partners job because he was so thick headed he didn't want to be pushed around.

Clough was an amazing coach but some of his styles were criticized at the time, but wouldn't ever be put into back in the timeline of the film. He was ahead of his time in how he coached the game.

I highly recommend this movie, especially if you like football (soccer in America) and good stories on and about football.

I know this is the second English based movie I have done lately but bear with me, I promise it will be my last for awhile. It's just I ordered it and it finally came, I couldn't help myself.

The main thing I got out of this movie though was the way a friendship can be pushed to the very edge, and people can still be friends with an apology, or in the case of the movie a grovel.

I feel like we all close ourselves of to the possibility of an apology to another person. We don't let ourselves forgive. I know we all think why should we? In most cases we got screwed over. But I believe strongly in one thing, we all need to forgive people for their mistakes towards us because then we become more like God and more like Jesus. God doesn't hold grudges towards us, but one of our favorite things to do is hold a grudge over somebody elses head.

In the film Clough is forgiven by his long time assistant coach Peter Taylor, played by Timothy Spall, because he ruined the happiness of his career. While the pair are basically showed as brothers, sometimes those are the hardest type of people to forgive.

Trust me it was a very small theme in the film to notice, but sometimes it's best to realize things when their not flashing right in front of us and we have to think.

How do you forgive, or do you even forgive? I know I struggle with this maybe that's why I realized it.

The Social Network: What Have You Done Lately?

In the new movie The Social Network, starring Jessie Eisenburg as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, the world gets to see a dramatic look at the creation of the biggest social connecting facet of all time, Facebook.

I highly recommend going to see this movie, it pertains to most of the world today just by what the movie is about. But it goes deeper in making the characters and the story behind Facebook come to life. The movie on a technical and content level are so well made I've seen it twice while in theaters, something I haven't done since the last of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's a serious yet seriously funny movie which if you do not like, you either are a fascist or just plain crazy.

But besides this movie being possibly the best of the year, it also has many moral themes which pop up and teach us all to become better people.

In the end of the movie Eisenburg as Zuckerbergs character says to one of his lawyers, "I'm not a bad person ya know."

And it is clear, but what is also clear is when people my age (19) and a little bit older get all the power and money, and just don't know what to do with it.

Zuckerberg ends up cutting his best friend out of the company, and then is hit with the realization that he messed up. He ends the movie "adding" the girl who broke his heart and started all of his projects because of his need to impress her.

We all think we are right about whatever we are dead set on being right about. But when we only focus on being right we can hurt the only people who mean anything to us in life. The movie banner says it best. Hence the picture I used for this post. Thats one thing I learned from the movie.

But the biggest thing I took away from the movie was what am I doing lately? Zuckerberg does all of this when he was in college, busy with class but yet so focused on this project that made him who he is today. So what have I done lately? What have you done lately? Are we living our life to the fullest of our abilities? You or me might even be the next "punk genius millionaire."

Green Street Hooligans 2: Stand Your Ground

I loved the first movie, Green Street Hooligans so much that despite hearing the negative reviews and hype for the second movie I bought it anyways. I was a little saddened because it was nothing near the epic-ness of the first of the first movie. But I was surprised at how much I liked the movie.

While the movie had a cheesey story line and corny moments, it did follow the story line of the original flick, which I found refreshing. The movie also had at least two of the original characters and mentioned others. There was definitely the same feel to the movie in most aspects. And the most important theme was even included in the title, stand your ground.

The movie is all about standing your ground, in the movie its for your brothers and your football (soccer for us ignorant Americans) team. But I feel you can take this mentality into any aspect of life. The movie uses fighting and even killing at times to get this point across, and of course I'm not saying to go and punch somebody. But I do believe we all need to stand up to the problems we face everyday.

I feel like in general we all back down to people to easily to keep the peace, and there's times where we all need to ruffle some feathers in our surroundings. I don't think we should do it to the extremes of the movie. But in the realms of what is acceptable in society we should stand our ground when we are getting screwed over.

This isn't just about standing your ground, its about doing it honorably.

What do you think standing your ground is, what would standing up for what is right mean to you?

A Knights Tale: Classical Twist With the James Dean of his era

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Heath Ledger is the James Dean of his time, an amazing actor who died too young. He made movies out of the roles he played. The movies didn't make him. He made the movies. He was amazing and A Knights Tale started it all for him.

The basic plot is about a peasant squire who poses as a knight to joust in tournaments. He falls in love with the forbidden girl, he forges his papers, and he becomes the best. He does all of this by being more noble than the real knights that surround him, and in the end he is rewarded for his actions.

But this blog isn't reviewing movies, it's taking something from a movie and about how we can apply it to our lives. This movie has possibly my favorite quote of all time. "A man can change his stars." This is so symbolic in the most basic sense that we can be whoever we want to be. Life and its challenges may hold us back, but its not impossible to live out our dreams, whatever those dreams may be. Wherever those dreams may lead us. It doesn't matter we can all change our stars.

I may over think this statement. It may be that I like it so much because Heath Ledger says it. But what it has done for my life is shown me that while the I may think events, incidents or anything for that matter are insurmountable, they're not. I can change my life to make it how ever I want to make it. I want to be a journalist, I want to be a writer or a novelist. And while a million other people may want to be the same thing, it doesn't matter. They don't matter. Its like this because I believe in the power the line from the movie has. It doesn't say "we all can," it says " A man can." (or a women for that matter) It uses the singular form. It gives the individual the power and not the world.

The world already has so much power over how we talk, how we act, what we wear, and what we think. So why should the world factor in in our decision of what we want to do with our lives. I don't think it should.

Do You?