Day 5: Rising stars, the art of blogging, Xperimental Theater

Rising Stars

So I truly am a cinefile. I love movies. love Love LOVE them. I am also studying to be an actor and so I really follow actor's careers a lot. If there is an actor I like I will seek out their entire filmography.

This section is about four actors. Two females and two males. Within the last years their careers have started to take off. I will set up a poll question for each pairing. A deathmatch if you will. I want you to choose the actor you think is going places. We cane revisit this post in say... five years and see who is right.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence exploded onto the scene right away. In 2010 the world was introduced to her for pretty much the first time (other than some really small movies parts and some minor television). 2010's Winter's Bone was horrifying, intense, and Jennifer Lawrence gave an Oscar-deserving performance. Now she has had a few other movies (Judi Foster's The Beaver **shudders**), but the next film people will know and recognize her for is of coarse The Hunger Games. I didn't like that movie as a whole but Lawrence brought another brilliant performance to that role.


                                                           VS.


Emma Stone

Emma Stone is a stone cold fox. She doesn't even need that going for her though because she is funny. Incredibly funny.  2010 and 2011 were very good to Stone. She starred in Easy A  the Scarlet Letter themed John Hugh homage where the world truly discovered and appreciated her talents. Next year it was  Crazy Stupid Love and The Help. She is going to the be in the Spiderman reboot, which if I see this movie she is the reason I am going.

Criticism

An interesting critique of both Lawrence and Stone is so far they have pretty much played one-note characters. In Both Winter's Bone and Hunger Games Lawrence has played a bad-ass rebel who puts on a face of fearlessness but inside is terrified. Stone on the other hand has played to awkward pretty girl who is insecure even though she is like the prettiest one on screen. In the coming years it will be interesting to see these actors break out of their shells and really see who grows more.

Don't forget to vote in the poll!


Men, men, men, men, manly, men, men (I hate the show, love the theme song guilty pleasure)

Chris Hemsworth

You might remember him as Captain Kirk's father in Abbrams' Star Trek but you better remember him as the lovable oaf in Thor. I don't know if Thor is enough to say that Hemsworth has taken off, but then I looked at his IMDB page and was amazed. Not only is Hemsworth going to be in Joss Whedon's The Avengers, arguably the biggest action movie event of all time. He is also in Cabin in the Woods (another Whedon horror), The remake of Red Dawn, and Snow White and the Huntsman. if 2011 was the year of Michael Fassbender (It was but we will get to him tomorrow!) than 2012 is the Year of Chris Hemsworth.


                                                             VS.

Andrew Garfield

I am very conflicted about this one. On the one hand I loved The Social Network. In my opinion Social Network defined our generation the same way The Graduate defined my parents generation. On the other hand... He is Spiderman and as a admitted fanboy that annoys me to no end. Andrew Garfield is so not Peter Parker. There is no doubt in my mind that Garfield's career is on the rise but I have serious reservations about his choice in film projects.


So those are the deathmatch Lawrence vs. Stone and Hemsworth vs. Garfield. Please vote in my polls!


Art of Blogging

So in my opinion blogging is not a very defined art form. There is a lot of variance. On the one hand you have college professors at MIT and the experts in their field blogging on their research. On the other end of the spectrum you can have a fat kid in the basement writing fan-fic about Twilight. In this form both of these things are legitimate. That is both fascinating and confusing to me. I've realized now that I have blogged for about a week that it is A) very hard B) it takes a lot of commitment C) needs to be clearly defined.

I did have a mission statement-y thing on my first post. If you are new you can read that here (read the introductions section or all of it if you want). I do think I need to go back and maybe more clearly define the mission of this blog.

What the goal of this blog is:

• A way to force me to write every day without fail (which is really hard)
• An artistic journey I am sharing with the world. I am not fully-developed in this world as a writer, artist, or critic
• A place for me to vent and rage from time to time to keep my sanity
• A place where I can start to form and articulate my ideas about things

What this blog isn't

• Journalism- in my opinion at least there is a certain level craftsmanship and professionalism that Journalism is held to. I am also writing for an Internet newspaper and in college. Professional fully form papers already exist in my life, This blog is an attempt to break free from those conventions and try something different.
• grammerifical- I am going to level with the Internet. I hate grammar. I am really bad at it. I thought I was going to be an English major and then I realized I just do not have a firm understanding in linguistics to complete that task.  Like I said above, this blog is not intended to be a final product or a fully-realized idea on issues. It is more a starting point, a mind-dump, the beginning of a conversation. Do I try to edit this blog and make things as coherent and grammerifical as possible? Yes. Do I fail? YES. I plead you accept me for my short-comings and join in on the conversation.

That was really all I wanted to say on that topic. As more issues or criticism arise I will attempt to address and correct them. I hold my audience in the very highest regard and I truly respect you opinions. I hope to grow and change from this experience. I hope in three years looking back at these posts I will be embarrassed because I have improved. So join me on this journey of growth and experience.

Xperimental Theater. 

So there has been a very terrible and tragic death in my family: the student-run theater organization that had a strong legacy at my University has been killed. I am not here to dwell on what has happened but instead look to the future. What Socialist Alternative has taught me is when you go into this process of building something new you have to clearly define what you demands are. If you do not know what your demands are then you will never fully realize or be satisfied with you end product. So here is me taking a crack at my list of demands. I want others to challenge my demands and fight for their demands. This is a collaborative process. 

My Demands

• We need the money. The $3000 budget has to be there and available for students to create art. It is not a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination, but that money does three things
• It provides freedom to fail. It grants students working on projects the freedom to not worry about how ticket sales will work or with they will "Break even"
• It gives the organization legitimacy. I can put the Xperimental Theatre on a resume and it means something. A place wanting to hire me can look into the X and see that is a legitimate organization and funded by the U. While spontaneous art is important and has a place too it will not be viewed on a resume the same way. 
• It teaches student how a real theater company can work. Directors have to answer to a board who have to manage a finite amount of funds. Yes in the idealistic world you can make art out of nothing, but we live and work in the real world. A world where money, structures, and boards exist. This student organization should teach a theater student the good and bad behind a structure and how to deal with it
• We need a place where students can practically experiment with designing, stage managing, acting, directing, ect. I have been interested in directing for awhile, but I have never been really able to give it a shot. In the real world if I were to try and fail it could have very negative implications on my life.  College is a time to experiment and fail. I want to be able have a student organization where I can direct and fail and have that be ok. this doesn't just apply to directing, but all aspect of the theater. 
• This organization needs to have upperclassmen and underclassmen involvement. One of the best parts of the X was it introduced me to people. When i joined this program last fall I felt very much like an outsider who didn't belong. Doing a show in the X helped get to know some upperclassmen of the department and start to feel like part of the theater community here at the U. I love the way that almost the entire department went to every X show to support each other's art. The sense of community as well and breaking down barriers between upperclassmen and underclassmen need to continue. 

These are really all my demand for the new student organization. I look forward to working with our wonderful theater community in building a new student organization. It will be great whenever this process ends to know that we create this thing with our own blood sweat and tears and that it is ours and we truly own it.

That's all for Day 5 (no it is NOT a day late and I am NOT cheating....)

Peace and love,

Will