My Very Own Empire Records

Image: Wikipedia.com

I love the movie Empire Records. If you aren't familiar with this wonderful example of the 90's, it's about a group of people working at a record store. The main conflict is that their store is about to be sold to a major chain, killing the indie vibe and the fun.

This morning I was thinking about how I'd like to watch it again. And then I realized that I had my own Empire Records when I was in college.

My favorite job in college was working at the local movie theater. Most of the time when I worked there, we had the Cinema Four, which obviously had four screens. We also had two one screen theaters downtown - the Ward and the Broadway. I usually worked at the Cinema Four or the Ward. I didn't like working at the Broadway - it was (is?) very haunted with no so nice spirits.

The head manager was an older guy who was a lot like Joe from Empire Records. He loved the theater and he loved movies. We had different people working there and we'd have a lot of time to talk while the movies were playing. It was an easy job and a ton of fun.

There was a Soul Calibur arcade machine along with other games. One of the other managers had rigged it so we could play games for free. My proudest moment at that job was when I actually beat one of the managers. I wasn't great but I had gotten good enough on one character to kick some butt.

Alas, our story didn't have a happy ending. A big 12 screen theater was built and the Cinema Four got knocked down. The last time I knew the Ward was a church and the Broadway was used by the community theater.

I worked at the big theater for a while. It wasn't the same at all and they didn't want to promote me because I was from the old crew. I ended up quitting out of frustration.

Real life is rarely like the movies. But for a short time, I had my own version of Empire Records and I'll always have fond memories of that time.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Image: http://www.thehobbit.com/

Since The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug comes out this week, I thought I'd share my review of the first movie from last year!

-------------

I’ve been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien nearly all my life. One of my earliest memories was my dad reading The Lord of the Rings to me. I would sit on the arm of his old red chair as my father brought to life the story of Frodo and the ring. When I heard that movies were going to be made, I was very excited. While there were parts of the story left out in The Lord of the Rings movies, I loved all three and saw each one several times in the theater.

Peter Jackson did a great job of bringing Middle Earth to life with The Lord of the Rings, so I was psyched to see what he could do with The Hobbit. I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D, in 48 fps and I was not disappointed.

The movie had stunning visuals. With the 48 fps, it almost felt like I was in the movie. The extra frames per second was a bit jumpy in several parts of the movie. But overall, I could tell the difference with the faster frame rate, which made it even more defined than just normal 3D.

With the 3D visuals, the rolling hills of the Shire were immediately striking. The battle scenes put the viewer right into the action. For example, when the wargs were chasing after the party, there were  close-ups on the warg’s face and it made me it feel as if I was the one being chased up a tree. And when the party is captured by the goblins, I felt like I was also there under the mountain surrounded by the hoards.

The Hobbit is a lighter story and has a great deal of humor in it, unlike LotR. The movie is the same, especially centered around Martin Freeman as Bilbo. His expressions alone caused me to roar with laughter as he tries to deal with the invasion of the Dwarves in his hobbit hole.

There are more laughs in the sequence when everyone is captured by the trolls and Bilbo must talk his way out of being eaten. Even during the riddle game with Gollum, the humor remains. Freeman was a perfect choice for Bilbo.

The last time I read The Hobbit was a while back, so I was a little fuzzy on the details of the story. The movie seemed to be very faithful to the book but there were obviously some scenes added to the movie, such as the Rivendell sequences that included both Galadriel and Saruman. As noted in the appendixes of the LotR stories, Saruman tries to put the breaks on Gandalf’s work. And there’s a short original scene between Galadriel and Gandalf where she supports his decisions and encourages him to continue.

There was quite a bit of foreshadowing of the events that will happen in the LotR trilogy, but it also worked well in the course of this movie.

While the journey represents the physical one that the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf take to the Lonely Mountain, we also see Bilbo’s  emotional journey as he finds out who he truly is inside, which is the heart of the story. Even though there are two more movies to go, Bilbo is transformed from a homebody to someone who is willing to risk his own life to save another’s. This is a story of hope and trying to find your way home.

I would highly recommend everyone to see The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. It is a wonderful adaption that I think really captures Tolkien’s story. I would also recommend seeing in 3D with the new 48 fps because it makes the movie so amazingly beautiful, even more so than regular 3D.