thoughts and musings: May 2011

Monday, May 30, 2011

movie review: pirates 4

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On stranger tides

It really depends on who you talk to as to whether they think the movie is good or not. Personally I liked the movie, but I also didn't go in with a lot of high expectations. I wasn't a huge fan of pirates 2 or 3, so I didn't expect this one to be spectacular either. Let me be the first to say that I'm so glad Will and Elizabeth weren't in this one. So let me give a basic good, bad, and ugly overview.

The bad:

There wasn't really any character development even with the new characters like Angelica or Blackbeard. That was my biggest complaint with the whole thing, they didn't bother to delve past the surface of most of the characters. But, it didn't really bother me too much because when you go to a Pirates movie you're not going to see amazing character development and complicated relationships, you're going to see Johnny Depp and sword fights (lets be honest, you know that's true). My only other fairly big complaint was the attempted love story between a supporting character and a mermaid. It was kind of weird and awkward and seemed like the director didn't really have an end goal, or a start goal for that matter with the two. If they had been taken out of the movie, nothing would lack.

Aside from that there's only a few other things. One of which was that there were no stand out scenes which made you go "wow that was an awesome and/or really funny scene" which made me kind of sad. Everything was on the same "meh" scale. And even though there were a few sword fights they can never match the one between Norrington/Will/Jack in the second movie.

The good:

Even though there was very little character development I was happy they added new characters, especially Angelica. I've gotta say she's pretty b.a. and basically a female version of Jack. The chemistry between Johnny and Penelope was great. If RUF has another halloween costume party this year, I might grab a cool hat, pirate jacket, boots and go as her cause she's pretty cool. My favorite part of the movie was that it definitely wasn't short of funny one liners. Nothing was overtly "hey we want the audience to laugh at this really funny thing" which made it really nice. I'm always a fan of one liners and subtle humor, but apparently nobody else in the theatre was because I was frequently the only one laughing. I also really appreciated the fact that the plot wasn't insanely overly complicated like the 3rd one. I don't know about you, but I still can't get who betrayed who and for what reason.

Even though the sword fights weren't the most amazing thing I've ever seen, they're still sword fights so therefore they're pretty cool. As with the other movies in the franchise there was plenty of sci-fi stuff like mermaids and a ship that came alive when blackbeard told it to. I also think they kept a good balance of characters from the first 3 and new ones. They kept people like Gibbs, the first lieutenant from the 1st movie ("that's gotta be the best pirate I've ever seen" guy who everybody likes), Barbosa, and even the monkey to keep a sense of familiarity with the audience.

Over all it was pretty good and I'd see it again if somebody asked. But I'd probably see it before 3 when the tickets are only $5.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Amy Poehler grad speaker

who knew Amy Poehler could mix comedy with a legit/serious speech so flawlessly? It's totally worth watching

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

good friends

Saturday night I got back from the annual RUF summer conference in Panama City. It was just as awesome as last year, but instead of having 8 people we had 27. We weren't able to go as many places (mini golf, local donut place etc) as last year, but it was still fun nevertheless. Having everybody there made me realize how great and solid my group of friends are. Everybody genuinely cares about each other and wants to know each other on a deep level. That's what makes RUF amazing. I can't say anything about any of the other campus ministries at Mizzou, but RUF is fairly small and so we all get really close, and know just about everything about each other.

That being said I want every high school senior, or for that matter any college kid who doesn't have a great group of friends, to know how amazing it is to have a group of friends like mine. I was hanging out with a friend of mine who's still in high school last night and listening to the details of Krew (the high school youth group I'm helping out at this summer) and life in general. Hearing about all the social problems and kids in general just being lost as to finding good friends makes me even more appreciative of my friends. I almost want to just look them straight in the eyes and tell them not to waste their time with kids who aren't going to take the time to really get to know them.

But, the reality is that it's nearly impossible to get an upcoming college freshman to listen to what you've got to say about finding good friends. I'll keep reiterating to them, that those college kids that are active in a campus ministry (in my case RUF) are "gold" as my campus minister Ross Dixon would say. The hard part about coming into college and choosing who you wanna be/who you wanna hang out with is the insane amount of options. You've got the dorm friends, extra-curricular friends, in your major/class friends, and campus ministry friends. And it takes a while to figure out that the campus ministry friends are the ones that are going to look out for each other and keep each other in check.

I can't say enough how amazing those RUF people are. They're rooted in God so you know that you can trust any advice they have, that they're not just pulling their opinions from pop culture. It's also especially great because we'll actually go up to each other and say "hey, I want to get to know you more" and you know they're being honest about it. Plus it's your friend that's saying it, not Ross Dixon or some other sort of leader where that's their job. It lets you know that they're genuine about getting to know you.

I've got to say that I probably wouldn't be where I am today without all of them. So basically the moral of this story is: get a good group of campus ministry friends, and hold on to them and you'll never regret it.