SFL 358 Blog Entry #12 - The Oscars

If you can't tell, I love movies! So naturally, I'm pretty interested in the Oscars. I haven't always been, but this year, I decided to see many of the films up for awards, including all the films up for Best Picture. It was neat to actually be interested in who won because I was familiar with all the nominees! I'll write more about this later and give a better post about my Oscars experience this year!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #11 - Marriage Counseling Ad

For my class, my group and I had an assignment to produce an ad promoting something about the family. Chantel Jarrett, Stephanie Lyon, Jacqueline Kiewra, and I came up with the following commercial promoting marriage counseling at the BYU Comprehensive Clinic. I'd also like to give credit to Adrienne for her awesome acting skills! Enjoy!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #10 - The Lord of the Rings (the books)

My current favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. I know what you're thinking: "Hey, I thought that was three books!" Well, you're right, but I love the trilogy as a whole and I can't pick only one of them that I like the most. I actually hadn’t heard of The Lord of the Rings before the first movie came out, but after I saw it, I instantly fell in love with the series and read each book as quickly as I could. It is about a hobbit who, after chancing upon an evil ring of great power, must rely on new friends to journey into the heart of the evil land and destroy the ring. Not bad for one sentence, eh?

The books are packed with so much detail concerning all the numerous cultures of the imaginary place called Middle Earth. When one reads the trilogy, he gets just a small glimpse of the entire world Tolkien created. That’s one of the things I love about it. He created entire cultures, languages, and histories for his books, and though these three books make only references to this world, the thoroughness of the author’s work truly shines through. The story itself is great, too, as the heroes rely on friends and undergo many personal sacrifices as they seek to do what is right. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it yet!

For those of you who have read it, I recommend The Silmarillion. It is basically the history of Middle Earth from very beginning up until The Hobbit. It's only for die-hard Tolkien fans, but it's great!

SFL 358 Blog Entry #9 - The Hatchet

My favorite book as a child was The Hatchet. It is about a boy named Brian whose small plane crashes in the middle of a Canadian forest because the pilot suffers a heart attack. Left alone with no means of communicating with the outside world, Brian can depend only on himself to survive and somehow make it out of there. He learns to live off the land and eventually finds a way to get rescued.

What I loved about The Hatchet as a boy was reading how Brian creatively uses his wits and everything around him in order to survive. I particularly enjoyed the level of detail the author used in describing all the hunting and other survival skills, as well as the many instances of intense suspense as Brian came across some dangerous animals. The book really excited my imagination and I often pictured myself in Brian’s place and tried to figure out what I would do to survive. It was my favorite book for a long time.

SFL 358 Blog Entry #8 - Moneyball

Moneyball is one of the nominees for Best Picture this year in the Oscars. It's about the General Manager of the MLB Oakland Athletes (Brad Pitt) who, with an extremely limited budget and the help of a young mathematical genius (Jonah Hill), comes up with a new strategy for building the perfect team. They use statistics alone to figure out who should be on the team, thus totally disregarding talent scouts and basically the whole way the MLB has been run for decades.

I really enjoyed the movie. All the actors did a great job and they even used real footage from the 2002 games, which I thought was really cool. And though I'm not by any means a fan of baseball, the story really pulled me in. I was very much invested in the Athletes and was hoping they would win the whole time. That being said, however, I wouldn't exactly call it Best Picture material. I do highly recommend it, but I don't think it will win the award.

SFL 358 Blog Entry #7 - Clocks

I usually write about movies, but this time, we were asked to write about music. I'm writing about my favorite song, Clocks, by Coldplay. This has been my favorite song since I first heard it 6 or 7 years ago on ER (yes, I used to watch ER)! I loved it right away, but it was a while until I found out what it's called or who Coldplay is. Since then, however, I've probably listened to it hundreds of times! It has such a soothing effect on me. I can be in any mood and as soon as I hear it, all is good! I'm not sure what it is about it, but no other song has quite the same effect. So, there it is! Listen to it!