Since I was recommended this show many times, my expectations for it were quite high... I just didn't know HOW much it would exceed them.
This show is addictive and interesting, so be prepared to spend at least five hours watching once you start! I began at 12am (real smart) and couldn't sleep till 7am.
"Orange is the New Black" is about a woman named Piper Chapman who gets sentenced to 12 years in prison after being caught as an accomplice in her ex-girlfriend's cocaine trading business. By the time she is caught, it had been at least eight years, and Piper has already restarted her life with a new male fiancee.
***spoilers ahead*****
In the beginning, we see Piper going to prison with a sense of determination. "I'm going to get ripped in prison", she enthusiastically tells her boyfriend. However, once she actually gets there, she realizes prison isn't bootcamp, it's a seedy microcosm of survival of the fittest which requires being street smart, and looking out for yourself.
I saw a lot of parallels between this show and the musical "Chicago" which won an oscar. "Mama" in Chicago, who did favors for her inmates in return for favors is similar to "Red" in "Orange is the New Black", the chef, who does favors for her inmates in return for something special. You have the women in prison who know how to survive the drama and those who keep out of it. Then you have several crazy women, like "crazy eyes", who stalks Piper and considers her as her "wife".
The show often shows Piper's visitations with her fiancee, her friend and her mom, which depict the dichotomy of opinions, one coming from someone in prison and one from someone living a normal life, which often becomes more distinct as the show goes on. For example, to Piper, food from whole foods becomes a luxury beyond imagination, whereas to her boyfriend out of prison, it's just a grocery store.
"Orange is the New Black" also shows stories of all the women in prison and how they got there. We get to see their personalities, and how some of them, although sharp and smart, are unwise or can be deeply provoked. Others have grown in prison, like the Yogi woman, who teaches her fellow inmates different asanas.
Overall, I would highly recommend watching this show: it is eye-opening, funny and deeply entertaining, oftentimes making me question my first world problems. Plus the acting is great, and the originality is there!
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Love Actually... is Amazing!
I just finished watching my favorite romantic comedy of all time: Love Actually. It is charming in every sense of the word, and epitomizes the cheery essence of the holiday season.
The film is star studded with Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Kiera Knightly, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. It is a joy to watch.
Love Actually is about a group of people, all interconnected, and their own encounters, trials and tribulations with love.
Sounds emotionally draining, but Love Actually is actually a very happy movie.
With the motto, "Love actually is all around", Love Actually succeeds at being heartwarming and relatable.
It is unbelievably sweet and funny in unexpected places.
If you haven't watched this film yet, you are missing out. Especially if you're a sucker for romantic comedies.
This one beats all in my opinion.
The film is star studded with Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Kiera Knightly, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. It is a joy to watch.
Love Actually is about a group of people, all interconnected, and their own encounters, trials and tribulations with love.
Sounds emotionally draining, but Love Actually is actually a very happy movie.
With the motto, "Love actually is all around", Love Actually succeeds at being heartwarming and relatable.
It is unbelievably sweet and funny in unexpected places.
If you haven't watched this film yet, you are missing out. Especially if you're a sucker for romantic comedies.
This one beats all in my opinion.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Disney Short Animated Films: On Netflix
I was blown away by the short animated films I watched last night. My favorites are "Paper Man" and "the Little Match Girl".
"Paper Man" is a pleasure to watch. It starts with a meet-cute and ends with ****Spoiler Alert**** a meet-cute. It shows however, how things like love, friendship and possibilities can bring color into even the most boring life. I would highly recommend watching it!
"The Little Match Girl" is one of the saddest, most profound disney short films I've ever seen. The music pairs perfectly well with the animation, to deliver a narrative that the audience can immediately connect with. It's about a little girl in poverty, who sells matchsticks for a living. She doesn't have the luxury of a family or even a closed space where she can keep warm on wintery nights. Using her imagination, she plays with her matchsticks to create warmth and love. The ending is open to interpretation....
Other Disney short films include "Frozen Fever" and a "Tangled" short film. They are cute, but are more on the fun-side, rather than meaningful side. I would still watch them for entertainment!
Ultimately, be sure to check out this Disney collection on Netflix. You'll be in for a real treat :).
"Paper Man" is a pleasure to watch. It starts with a meet-cute and ends with ****Spoiler Alert**** a meet-cute. It shows however, how things like love, friendship and possibilities can bring color into even the most boring life. I would highly recommend watching it!
"The Little Match Girl" is one of the saddest, most profound disney short films I've ever seen. The music pairs perfectly well with the animation, to deliver a narrative that the audience can immediately connect with. It's about a little girl in poverty, who sells matchsticks for a living. She doesn't have the luxury of a family or even a closed space where she can keep warm on wintery nights. Using her imagination, she plays with her matchsticks to create warmth and love. The ending is open to interpretation....
Other Disney short films include "Frozen Fever" and a "Tangled" short film. They are cute, but are more on the fun-side, rather than meaningful side. I would still watch them for entertainment!
Ultimately, be sure to check out this Disney collection on Netflix. You'll be in for a real treat :).
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
The Martian
How often do you watch a movie, and leave the theater thinking, "wow, I'm inspired?"
"The Martian" blew me away.
It's about a botanist Mark Whitney (Matt Damon), on an outer space mission who gets stranded on Mars after a sand storm. His team evacuates to avoid any potential danger, and leaves him behind in frantic agitation. They are sure he is dead when they leave.
Now it is up to Whitney to use his scientific skills to survive, based on the limited supplies of his spaceship. How he does that is truly engaging to watch. I can safely say that I could understand his experiments, despite having flaky chemistry knowledge.
The movie also addresses NASA and how it must deal with one of its astronauts being left on Mars. The marketing director of NASA calls it a "shitstorm for NASA's reputation".
*****Spoiler Alert******
Eventually the director of NASA commissions a survival package (with food and other supplies) to sustain Whitney until he can be rescued, and Whitney's team comes to know that he's alive.
The movie is funny, adventurous and packed with great action and fantastic acting. Matt Damon should get an oscar for his performance.
The movie succeeds at not only being funny, but inspiring, much like "Remember the Titans", except with better special effects (and a cooler story line in my opinion...).
One of my favorite parts of the movie is the end, when Whitney says, "many people ask me whether I thought I was going to die. Of course I thought I was going to die. But at that point, I had two choices: I could either accept that, or get to work. And I got to work. Any questions?"
And every student raises their hand....
I feel like if I were there, I would be one of them.
The Martian is a film that raises a lot of questions, and goes above and beyond to show that as human beings, we have a LOT of potential for growth and survival.
"The Martian" blew me away.
It's about a botanist Mark Whitney (Matt Damon), on an outer space mission who gets stranded on Mars after a sand storm. His team evacuates to avoid any potential danger, and leaves him behind in frantic agitation. They are sure he is dead when they leave.
Now it is up to Whitney to use his scientific skills to survive, based on the limited supplies of his spaceship. How he does that is truly engaging to watch. I can safely say that I could understand his experiments, despite having flaky chemistry knowledge.
The movie also addresses NASA and how it must deal with one of its astronauts being left on Mars. The marketing director of NASA calls it a "shitstorm for NASA's reputation".
*****Spoiler Alert******
Eventually the director of NASA commissions a survival package (with food and other supplies) to sustain Whitney until he can be rescued, and Whitney's team comes to know that he's alive.
The movie is funny, adventurous and packed with great action and fantastic acting. Matt Damon should get an oscar for his performance.
The movie succeeds at not only being funny, but inspiring, much like "Remember the Titans", except with better special effects (and a cooler story line in my opinion...).
One of my favorite parts of the movie is the end, when Whitney says, "many people ask me whether I thought I was going to die. Of course I thought I was going to die. But at that point, I had two choices: I could either accept that, or get to work. And I got to work. Any questions?"
And every student raises their hand....
I feel like if I were there, I would be one of them.
The Martian is a film that raises a lot of questions, and goes above and beyond to show that as human beings, we have a LOT of potential for growth and survival.
Steve Jobs
"Steve Jobs" is a highly intriguing film about the psyche of Steve Jobs, creator of Apple.
It shows how he is successful as the CEO of apple, but unsuccessful as a friend, and even a father.
Steve Wozniac, one of his only true friends, tells him, "You can be a winner and a decent human being at the same time. It doesn't have to be binary." But Jobs then points out that Wozniac and his Apple 2 buddies are B-grade players, and he wants to surround himself with A-grade players.
This raises the million dollar question: Did Steve Jobs have to be an anti-social neurotic prick to become so successful?
Although the movie doesn't answer this question, it shows Jobs' journey from being nonchalant and "controlled" about relationships, to becoming more aware about the power certain relationships have over him, such as the one between him and his daughter. He gets extremely upset for example, when he finds out that one of his junior engineers pays for her semester at Harvard.
I took away from this film that Jobs is selfish and highly goal oriented, but he realizes that he has to pay attention to certain relationships in order to be happy and at peace.
That being said, I would highly recommend watching this film. The acting is incredible (especially by Kate Winslet who plays the head of marketing for Apple, and Jobs' main confidante).
I would highly recommend this movie to those who want a psychological sketch of Steve Jobs, but not to those who are interested in learning about Apple as a company.
It shows how he is successful as the CEO of apple, but unsuccessful as a friend, and even a father.
Steve Wozniac, one of his only true friends, tells him, "You can be a winner and a decent human being at the same time. It doesn't have to be binary." But Jobs then points out that Wozniac and his Apple 2 buddies are B-grade players, and he wants to surround himself with A-grade players.
This raises the million dollar question: Did Steve Jobs have to be an anti-social neurotic prick to become so successful?
Although the movie doesn't answer this question, it shows Jobs' journey from being nonchalant and "controlled" about relationships, to becoming more aware about the power certain relationships have over him, such as the one between him and his daughter. He gets extremely upset for example, when he finds out that one of his junior engineers pays for her semester at Harvard.
I took away from this film that Jobs is selfish and highly goal oriented, but he realizes that he has to pay attention to certain relationships in order to be happy and at peace.
That being said, I would highly recommend watching this film. The acting is incredible (especially by Kate Winslet who plays the head of marketing for Apple, and Jobs' main confidante).
I would highly recommend this movie to those who want a psychological sketch of Steve Jobs, but not to those who are interested in learning about Apple as a company.
Parenthood
It's been a while since I've indulged in my dosage of useless TV drama. Parenthood fit the bill for non-brain cell usage after a day of relative productivity.
It has characters that cry over everything, big or small, and people who consistently make decisions based on their emotions, even though one character explicitly says "I need to stop making decisions based on my emotions."
So what is Parenthood about? It's about this huge dysfunctional family that tries to maintain their relationship despite constant struggles in their lives.
Some of the struggles I feel are moving. For example, the stable couple of the family (Adam Braverman and his wife, Sarah), have a child named Max with Aspergers who needs a lot of care, but seems nonchalant to the love and concern that his family has for him. His sister once yells at him after he wanders off trying to look for the dinosaur museum, "You have to think about other people around you! We were worried sick!" I would consider that a sometimes frustrating situation to deal with, and I think the show did a good job depicting that.
Something I find unnecessary about the show: teen PDA. The adults clearly steal the show, and teenage romance seems like a drag.
Something I find unrealistic: The lawyer daughter and her husband opting for a "sky baby" for adoption (a child whose family is about to place him/her into an orphanage), and then getting this cute little brown-skinned child. It just seems weird that someone as pragmatic as Julie (the lawyer), would spontaneously opt for having a child with a completely different background to be her son, furthermore with no introduction or no time to think! And the child looks like a model. The show clearly needed to add more drama.
Overall, would I recommend this program? It has its moments, but I don't think overall it helps to better society or widen anyone's insight on anything, etc. I do like however, how it shows parents and their struggles with disciplining their children or explaining to them about a broken relationship, etc.
It's a program that has potential for getting its actors some emmys. Watch it if you like family drama.
It has characters that cry over everything, big or small, and people who consistently make decisions based on their emotions, even though one character explicitly says "I need to stop making decisions based on my emotions."
So what is Parenthood about? It's about this huge dysfunctional family that tries to maintain their relationship despite constant struggles in their lives.
Some of the struggles I feel are moving. For example, the stable couple of the family (Adam Braverman and his wife, Sarah), have a child named Max with Aspergers who needs a lot of care, but seems nonchalant to the love and concern that his family has for him. His sister once yells at him after he wanders off trying to look for the dinosaur museum, "You have to think about other people around you! We were worried sick!" I would consider that a sometimes frustrating situation to deal with, and I think the show did a good job depicting that.
Something I find unnecessary about the show: teen PDA. The adults clearly steal the show, and teenage romance seems like a drag.
Something I find unrealistic: The lawyer daughter and her husband opting for a "sky baby" for adoption (a child whose family is about to place him/her into an orphanage), and then getting this cute little brown-skinned child. It just seems weird that someone as pragmatic as Julie (the lawyer), would spontaneously opt for having a child with a completely different background to be her son, furthermore with no introduction or no time to think! And the child looks like a model. The show clearly needed to add more drama.
Overall, would I recommend this program? It has its moments, but I don't think overall it helps to better society or widen anyone's insight on anything, etc. I do like however, how it shows parents and their struggles with disciplining their children or explaining to them about a broken relationship, etc.
It's a program that has potential for getting its actors some emmys. Watch it if you like family drama.
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