The 2010 Edition of "THE BEST OF"

just a list of my favorite music/tv/movies of the year!

Music:

Once upon a time I listened to music. All I have this year is a list of my favorites (most of them discovered via movies/tv shows):

A Life Less Ordinary- Motion City Soundtrack

Just Say Yes- Snow Patrol

Tik Tok- Ke$ha

Good Morning Charlie – Oceanic Six

Cousins- Vampire Weekend

Telephone- Lady Gaga

Something Good Can Work- Two Door Cinema Club

Rolex Sweep- Skepta

Echoes- The Rapture

XXXO- M.I.A.

The Dog Days Are Over- Florence + The Machine

Spotlight FT. Tanya Lacey- Tinchy Stryder

Bulletproof- La Roux

Pretty Young Things- Bodyrox

Change of Seasons- Sweet Thing

Sigh no More- Mumford and Sons

Teenage Dream- Darren Criss

Hometown Glory (High Contrast Remix)- Adele

Spanish Sahara- Foals

Out At the Pictures- Hot Chip

Until We Bleed (with Lykke Li)- Kleerup

Paradise Circus- Massive attack

TV:

It was all MERLIN, DOCTOR WHO and Misfits with me, and of course marathoning TNG, DS9 all the time.

Recurring favorites: Bones, Psych, Lost, How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Glee

British Favs: New Series of Skins, Merlin, Doctor who, and Misfits

New loves: Big Bang Theory

MOVIES:

This year I watched 215 films. I didn’t actually have a goal of how many I was planning on watching, but I’m setting a goal for the next year (250). This year I watched a lot of British Cinema, and managed to find a few random Bollywood and other foreign films in the mix (thanks to a cinema class I took in the spring). I didn’t really go the theaters much, and I’m going to use the poor college excuse. Plus, you can find mostly anything on the internet.

Favorite 2010 releases: Leap Year, Letters to Juliet, Toy Story 3, Cemetery Junction, Charlie St. Cloud, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, Wild Target, Easy A, 4.3.2.1, Chatroom, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Tangled, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

Older Releases: Whip It, Gran Torino, In Bruges, Hot Fuzz, Dil Bole Hadippa!, Cherrybomb, Heartless, Cashback, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Ondine, 3 Idiots, Let the Right One In.

(post below of my favorites seen this year)

Movies I wished I had a Chance to see/haven’t tracked down yet: The oxford Murders, Cairo Time, Morning Glory, London Boulevard, Tamara Drewe, It’s kind of a Funny Story

Favorite Films seen in 2010

A Tad Bit of Christmas Cheer

Evolution of Thanksgiving Leftovers

Day One after Thanksgiving:

Day Two after Thanksgiving: Turkey & Rice

Day Three After Thanksgiving: Open Face Turkey Sandwich

Philly Trip

I went to Philly yesterday on a school trip.

Chinatown

Reading Terminal Market ^v

Large Scale Photograms

This was my third project of the semester in my photo class. I'm not really happy with it completely- but it came out better than I thought it would. I knew that I wanted to do something with large cutout spaces, and while I was trying to think of a concept the idea of symbols came into my mind:

While I was researching different symbols from different places I came across hobo symbols, that where used during the 20's and 30's. I wasn't sure If just using the symbols would be enough, so I added text and pictures. I took a couple quotes from the Grapes of Wrath & used photography from the FSA by photographers such as Dorothea Lange. Part of my reasoning for this was that I don't really do a lot of mixed media with my work, and it's something I felt like I needed to try. I do like how they look- but I could have done this smaller and it would have looked the same. It didn't translate into "photograms" the way I wanted them too.

(click on them for larger versions & to read the text).

The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Bulter Yeats

Pinhole Self Portraits

This was my second photo project for the semester. We had to do self portraits with a pinhole camera, so I decided to explore a sort of depression and uneasiness I was feeling. Most of these were two to five minute exposures. 

I Creep on Your House Pt. One

It may seem odd but I'm generally interested in peoples homes. Today I went to a bridal shower in Jersey and had to take photos of my mom's cousin's house.

these cupcakes really have little to do with the house, but they were yummy and oprah loves them, so there they are.

The Fear

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don't care about clever I don't care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them

And I'll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
'Cuz everyone knows that's how you get famous
I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track, yeah I'm on to a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

Life's about film stars and less about mothers
It's all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn't matter cause I'm packing plastic
And that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And its not my fault it's how I'm programmed to function
I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror
I'm on the right track, yeah we're on to a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
'Cuz I'm killing them all on my own little mission
Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner
Now everything is cool as long as I'm getting thinner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore
And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

- Lily Allen

Glow Sticks & Painting with Light

There was no reason for this besides fun.

Why J.K. Rowling is Amazing

Nearly all myths can be broken done into the same elements. The idea of a supernatural figure like Jesus, a god that has died and come back to save the world, can be found in dozens of myths across the globe. These types of figures are called archetypes. The wise old man, the mother figure, the hero… In the 1940’s Joseph Campbell wrote a book, called The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he discusses the hero archetype found through many different myths throughout the world.

The hero starts his journey with a call into a “world of strange powers”. While at first he fights it, soon he accepts and is encouraged and supported by the “wise man” figure. He then passes his first challenge and begins a journey of quests and is guided on this path by helpers. At one point he reaches his very end, and in most cases our hero dies, and comes back again. Now he conquers his finial task and is able to return as a hero. While this is just a brief overview, hopefully this starting to sound familiar. This is the story of our hero, Harry Potter. Although J.K. Rowling has never confirmed this, it is obvious that the “Harry Potter” novels go beyond just a simple children’s story.

She hasn’t come up with this story without backup. She’s done her research. If you analyze some of the creatures she’s created, you’ll come to notice, they aren’t all made up. She adapted them from myths from all over the world. Dragons are common in Norwegian and Asian myths. Hippogriffs? You’ll find them in stories throughout history. There are a million more examples but I’m not going to bore you.

You may be saying at this point, she’s hasn’t done any thing original, she’s just borrowed it all. Well, that is completely wrong. This shows you how bloody brilliant this woman is. Great literature throughout history always manages to reference to past, an homage to that before us.

Sure as a young child, none of this mattered to me at all, but now that I’m adult, I can recognize the deeper themes just beyond the words on the pages. This is why I have so much respect for J.K. Rowling. Call me a nerd, dork, geeky, whatever you want, but you’re the one missing out in the end.

The Family Album

My first photo project of the semester. I’m hoping one day to find the perfect album to put these photos in, the current album was a quick buy topresent the project for class. The assignmentwas appropriation using the cyanotype or Van Dyke Brown process. I felt kind of uncomfortable with not using any of my own images, so I combined my photography with family pictures. Material is watercolor paper.