Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Deets on Canada Day & Movie Screening of Savages!

Hi all!

As promised, here's some details on the 'Canada's Birthday Bash ft. The Great Canadian Songbook!' event at Joe's PubThis event celebrated Canada's 145th birthday, produced and emcee'd by Jeff BreithauptMusical Director, Peter Kiesewalter (Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata, East Village Opera Company) and the all-star “Workin’ for the Weekend House Band" really created a fun and hype atmosphere as the audience swayed, stood, clapped, and sung along to their Canadian favorites. The evening featured a whole line of great artists, like Tyley Ross (East Village Opera Company), Shannon Conley (Lez Zeppelin), Jamie Leonhart (The Truth About Suffering), Greg Naughton (The Sweet Remains), Shelley McPherson (Beneath the Hush, A Whisper), Alyson Palmer (BETTY), Victoria Cave (Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata), Amy CerviniMelissa Stylianou, and a special appearance by NY1 morning anchor, Pat Kiernan. All of whom, whether Canadians themselves or friends of Canada, put on a great show and sang their hearts out as their respect to Canada. The evening ended with a great colab of all the artists on stage. Happy Canada Day weekend to my Canadian friends!

On to the screening of 'Savages'! I went to watch it at Lincoln Square's AMC. Along with 'Savages', 'The Amazing Spiderman' and 'Katy Perry's Part of Me' were screening on the same evening, so the theater was quite packed. It was quite funny to see the lobby filled with lines of people, but no one on the ticket lines. 

 Well, let me start with.. it was a good movie. A great movie, in fact. However, for me, I probably wouldn't have chose to go see it on my own (as a personal preference). Having said that, I still thought the movie was awesome. It was jam-packed with action and the violent scenes were so amazingly graphic, I partially covered my face for some of them. (I'm such a big baby, I know! lol) 

This intense thriller is based on Don Winslow's best-selling crime novel that was names NY Time's Top 10 in 2010. Chon, played by Taylor Kitsch, and Ben, played by Aaron Johnson are best of friends and entrepreneurs. Their business? Dope. Apart of the action, the story is narrated by the one shared love of their lives, Ophelia aka O, played by Blake Lively. The story begins with these three and slowly, but twistedly turns, much to their fear, into something they cannot control or escape. Chon and Ben run into trouble when they face off against the Mexican drug cartel. They find themselves in multiple life or death situations as they sacrifice everything to get O back. 

Maybe it's because I only watched one trailer, but the movie was very different from what I understood of the trailer I watched. When I search for the movie summary, it gives a pretty accurate portrayal of the movie, so maybe the trailer was of a different perspective. I feel that 'Savages', is more than just a movie. I feel it can be seen as a message. It's scary to think such terror happens in real life, but that is reality. This movie can encourage people, especially young people to be more attentive to the things that happen around us and be more careful of the choices we make and the situations we get ourselves into

The acting in this movie was pretty incredible. That is what I love about the movies. While watching any good movie, you should feel sucked into that character's perspective, environment, feelings. Something about Lively felt a little off, but throughout the movie, I couldn't stop thinking how incredibly strong O was because in her situation, most girls would have broken down or given up hope. Kitsch and Johnson were great. At first Chon and Ben seemed so relaxed and kind of gave off an "I do what I want. Whatever." type of attitude, but they became when it came to saving O, it was so intense I could feel their strong desire and will power. Dennis (John Travolta) was the middle person between the two groups. His acting was great, as usual;  I gave up trying to figure out which side he was actually on and which side he was playing (lol). Lado (Benicio Del Toro) was such a "good" bad guy that I was wishing him dead by the end of the movie and even though she was the root of the Mexican drug cartel, I couldn't help but feel bad for Elena (Salma Hayek). At one point in the movie though, I did think about the fact that if she was a man, they may not have made her character weaken. It was such an intense movie that even after it ended, I was still fuming about the injustice of the final events. I would definitely recommend it to thriller and action-movie lovers! If you're afraid of blood or torture scenes, I suggest you not watch it in theaters (you'll probably have nightmares or end up covering your face for half the movie..lol). It was definitely a R-rated movie. Overall, I think I'll give this it a 4/5!

That's all for today! Thanks for reading^^



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