Hi everyone, my name is Elessar, and I'm addicted to books.
My username is from Lord of the Rings (it is Aragorn's name, before they tell him he's Aragorn. It also means star in Elvish) my blog title is a combination of LotR and Harry Potter. I am a hardcore book addict.
I read this book once before, and utterly hated it. I am not a huge fan of Charles Dickens in general, but this story of goings on in Paris and London during the French Revolution just seemed to go on forever.
Since then, I have fallen head over heals in love with the play/book "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo. That gave me a new interest in the French revolution, and now I am finding I can stomach ToTC much easier this second time around. I might even go so far as to say I and quite enjoying it.
This song literally represents the beginning of my tween/teenhood. The Jonas Brothers were my first major obsession, and this is the first time I ever heard them sing.
They wrote "Year 3000" for the soundtrack of the movie "Meet the Robinsons." The movie was so-so, but this song got me hooked. Not long after hearing it, I had every album the JoBros put out, not to mention pictures of them plastered all over my wall. One of the highlights of my life so far was attending a live Jonas Brothers concert.
I have fallen out of love with them as I grew older, but the Jonas Brothers, and this song in particular, will always be a gold star on the map of my childhood.
So, I just found out there is a ten thousand dollar scholarship for college students with quality blogs.
This is happening.
I am going to post once a day, on the following topics:
Monday: Life in My world (observations)
Tuesday: Song of the day
Wednesday: Weekly meeting of book addicts anonymous
Thursday: Politics
Friday: Videos worth watching
Saturday: A movie a day keeps the zombies away*
Sunday: Catch of the day (something random)
There will be a lot more detail than what it sounds like on that list, and I'm really excited. Gunning for this scholarship also means I'm going to try and get some more readers. We'll see how well that goes.
Here goes nothing!
~ Elessar
* Just a note, I did not make that phrase up, I saw a guy on tumblr who had a blog called that, and I liked it.
So, given a number of stressors and other things, I have been feeling a little low lately. Naturally, I turned not to family or friends as most people would, but to books, movies and music. Here is my personal tears of joy/get happy playlist. Some are deep and moving, some are laugh out loud funny, and others... I'm entirely sure why some of these just give an automatic serotonin rush. But they do. And now I share them with you.
Happiest bit: "When all you got is nothing, there's a lot to go around."
Why: Well, first off, the entire movie "Prince of Egypt" is pretty amazing, and certainly gets me happy every time I watch it. This song in particular, is a beautiful and resounding reminder that you can never see how truly important you are to the world. God put you here for a reason, and whether you currently know it or not, you have a purpose, you are worth it.
Miss Congeniality
Best bit :"Man, with all this foil in my hair I'm getting HBO."
Why: This movie is just to darn funny. It's about a rough, tough, very tomboy-ish FBI agent who has to go under cover at a beauty pageant. I can't not laugh my head off every single time I watch this movie.
Lord of the Rings, the Return of the King
Best bit: "But you forgot one of the most important characters! Samwise the brave... Frodo wouldn't have gotten very far without him."
Why: It should be known that I can open any book with the title "Lord of the Rings" on it and be ecstatic in mere moments. The third book in the trilogy is especially wonderful because everything turns out just as it should. Happy endings, joyous but sad partings, and above all else, good triumphing over evil no matter what.
Carpe Diem
Best bit: "There's no such thing as just an ordinary day."
Why: first off, I should hope everyone knows carpe diem stands for "Seize the day." carpe diem was around centuries before that stupid effing phrase "Y.O.L.O." And it sounds cooler too. Phineas and Ferb just happened to put that loverly phrase to music, and it worked.
Amazing Grace
Best bit: "No one our age has ever been in parliament."
"Which is exactly why it must be now! We are to young to realize such things are impossible, so we will do them anyway!"
Why: This is the story of William Wilberforce, the man who gave his entire life in the pursuit of abolishing slavery in England. Wilberforce is played perfectly by Ian Gruffund, and this movie is a perfect example of the triumph of human spirit.
The Avengers
Best bit: "There's only one God ma'am, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."
Why: come on, did you think I would write a post about what makes me happy and not include at least one superhero movie? It's loud it's action packed, it's wild, it's funny, it's the Avengers. 'nuff said.
The River Flows in You
Best bit: the whole song
Why: This is a very peaceful, pleasant tune, and it just makes me feel good.
My Curious Uncle Dudley
Best Bit: everything
Why: Just read it and thank me later.
Jump
Fun, loud, old school rock and roll, it's just a great song to blast.
Runnin' With the Devil
See explanation for Jump
The Dark Knight Rises
Best bit: Anyone can be a hero
Why: I have talked about this movie before. It just hits me. And it's actually a rather depressing movie at times, but every time I watched it I just come out satisfied and happy... and crying. Always crying.
Miracles
Best bit: "“Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.” "
Why: I love Lewis's scientific, logical approach to talking the case for miracles. It's refreshing.
So I have decided when I move out of the house eventually and into my own apartment I'm not gonna worry about cable for a while. I have a list of movies to long to copy here, and a handful of television series on DVD to get. Angel Firefly Supernatural True blood Mad men Vampire diaries Alias Oz Once upon a time (all though this isn't on DVD yet)
So yeah, even though odds are I will get to a couple of these before I move out, cable will not be needed. For some time. I just need to make friends with the library.
I'm going to try to write a post about how I feel about "The Dark Knight Rises." It's going to be hard, because this movie really impacted me. Odds are I'm going to stray a bit, because this post is also about the "hero" cliche. First, a few disclaimers.
1. I am going to talk about movies very seriously, to the point where most normal people would say "Yeah, your a dumbass."
2. I have always loved and will always love the cliched, stereotypical hero, so that's part of what fueled the post.
3. I am a Marvel girl through and through, but My favorite Super Hero ever has always been Batman.
So, I'm going to start with the basic reasons I liked the movie so much. And seeing as the listsseem to be helping me organize my thoughts, we're just going to stick with the format.
1. Hans Zimmer's score I certainly think is worthy of, at the very least, and Oscar nomination, if not the award.
2. I think Michael Caine deserves a supporting actor nomination for Alfred, he kinda stole the show in every scene he was in. Tom Hardy was pretty intense as well, his eyes were all you needed to see to understand the malice in his character.
3. Christian Bale... Ok, I love this dude period because he's a great guy, but I sincerely think he might very well have been made for this role. He has done such wonderful justice to the characters Batman and Bruce Wayne over the past three films, and his coup de gras was this film. He just owned it.
Ok, no for the hard part. This is probably just going to sound like rambling nonsense, but I have to get it out of me. Oh, and major spoiler alerts, if you haven't seen the movie you may not want to read on.
I have a problem with movies. I watch them all the time, I can watch a movie once and be able to quote nearly the entire movie. Because of this, I gravitate toward movies that have memorable quotes. My favorite quote from this movie is "Anyone can be a hero, even the man who puts his coat around a little boy's shoulders and telling him everything is going to be alright." Part of the reason I have always loved Batman is this principle. Batman always made sure no one could tell who he was, so he could be anyone. Batman was a symbol, not a person, and I love that. I also really loved the prison sequence, although I saw the whole "need to fear death, don't use a rope" thing coming as soon as they flashed back to the kid. I still loved that the prisoners chant "rise" whenever someone climbs, and Bruce hearing his father was beautiful. "Why do we fall? So we can get back up." I live by this phrase. For real. I literally bawled my eyes out the last twenty minutes of the movie. One place I nearly squealed with Joy and sadness was when Kyle was telling Batman that he'd given Gotham everything, and he simply said "Not yet." It was then you knew he was going to die. Now granted, if you are paying attention to how the story arc was going in the other two movies, you kinda knew Batman was going to die, but it was still a very intense moment when he flew out over the water. Then the end with Alfred in Europe, "I would look at you, and you would look at me, and we wouldn't say anything, but I would know you were happy." I could barely stand it. I think part of the reason I loved this movie so much is Batman is just the ultimate hero for me. He takes the fall for Dent's murder, because he knows that Gotham needs someone to love (Dent) and someone to hate (him) to feel right. The Dark Knight never gets any credit for all the good he has done for the city, and that just tugs at my heartstrings. I love Batman, everything about him. Because he's so humble. I just... My eyes are tearing up just writing this.
" imagine you are writing an auto-biography, what would the title, and table of contents be?" Then I realized, God was probably laughing at me. Table of contents
1. My kind of town, Chicago is.
2. Time for a little bro.
3. Off to Wisconsin, or somewhere thereabouts
4. Friends,homeschoolers, Wisconsonians, lend me your ear.
5. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was highschool.
6. I start getting political, theatrical, historical
7. Then I realized, God was Probably laughing at me.
8. What next?
I suppose the name bears some explanation. When I was younger, I used to play pretend all the time. I mean all. the. time. I would be everything from a medieval knight to a teacher/ student at Hogwarts. I was an elf who had fallen in love with Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. I did all kinds of stuff. I even do a lot of fantasizing these days, just coming up with ideas in my head to put myself into stories I like. Every once in a while I wonder if something I'm doing is bad, or blasphemous. I wonder if God might not like what I'm thinking.
