CharleeWith2Es

I have been hearing about this book for the past couple of months. It’s called The Seven Rays by Jessica Bendinger who is actually an acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter, love it! She was the one who wrote Bring it On. Remember that movie with Kirsten Dunst. I tend to swim in the popular opinion pool. Don’t get me wrong, I like to dabble my toes in the quirky, weird and independent streams as well, but for the most part if something is hugely accepted by the general population, I’ll most likely accept it too. Prime example, Twilight. The Seven Rays has been getting huge publicity and this is a prime example of media hype and marketing done very well. Advanced copies of the book were sent out to celebrities and other influential people who then were seen photographed with book in hand. Here is the premise of the book as described from The Seven Rays website. The story follows 17 year-old, Beth Michaels, who uncovers elements of the supernatural on her journey of self discovery. The words: ...

Love begins and love ends. Love Actually is all around us. That is the premise to this movie. My god it’s a good movie. It follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England. Almost the entire cast is made up of the greatest British darlings of acting. Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy…the list goes on and on. This movie came out in 2003 and it has become a Christmas tradition for me, much like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, but instead of only making me excited for Christmas it picks me up and takes me away to the land of love and true romance, especially with Colin Firth’s character. If you don’t know what I mean then you seriously must watch this movie. It’s probably mostly a chick flick but dudes can enjoy it as well. It has some wicked British humor, and the placement of certain songs thr...

I basically have been held hostage in my house by the weather outside. It’s -50 degrees Celsius out there with the wind chill. I know, time to move. I decided my iTunes needed a library update so I went to my musical pimp, my source, I also call him my husband, for the goods. This dude has incredible taste in music. All I need to say is, “Hey, I feel like something mellow,” and he’ll ramble off a dozen songs for me to add to my mellow playlist, some hidden gems and some familiar beats but every single one = gold. I did that today and ended up listening to Ben Harper for most of the day. Listening quickly moved into obsessing over, now I can’t stop myself. I always liked Ben Harper. He’s one of those artists that you’ll hear his song in a store or playing the background of a movie and you go, “hey, I know this song. I like this song.” Then you go home and find it in your playlist and put in on repeat. Or at least that’s what I do. One of my most favorite Ben Harper performances to watch...

I needed to run an errand today and the place I was going to was at least 40 kilometers from my house. It’s a snowy, cold day here and I knew the poorly salted roads would result in a longer commute. I decided to take the Paul Potts CD with me to keep me company on my long drive today and I’m so happy I did. Do you remember Paul Potts? He was the guy who won Britain’s got talent a few years back. Great story, amazing singer…this guy has ‘it’. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, then grab a tissue and watch this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA Anyway, since I was feeling in the mood for a little Christmas music, I jumped ahead to the bonus Christmas tracks, the first one being Oh Holy Night. Paul’s performance in this song is hard to beat. You can feel the power in his voice and in the words of the song which represent the true meaning of Christmas which by the way is not the celebration of commercialism. Naturally, the first thing I thought of was church,...

I haven’t seen the movie Precious yet, but I am impatiently waiting to see it. It premiered at the Sundance International Film Festival to rave reviews and early Oscar buzz is predicting possible nods to the lead, newcomer Gabourey (Gabby) Sidibe. Love this girl!!!!! Why can't there be more girls like this in Hollywood? You’ve heard of Precious, right? Well if you haven’t, then here is the lowdown. Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, Claireece Precious Jones played by Gabby is living a horribly neglected life. She is abused by her mother, raped by her father and unnoticed to everyone else in this world. This is the story of adversity, love, hope, strength and courage. This is the story of life. The first interview I saw Gabby give was on Conan O’Brien a few weeks ago. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest but I watched it anyway. Within a minute I was literally peeing myself laughing and I’m sure Conan was too. She was recanting the story of when she first met Oprah, who is an exe...

“And now I walk Into the Wild.” Those were the written words of Christopher McCandless as he walked into the Alaskan wilderness on his great adventure. Into the Wild is a movie based on a book based on the true life story of Christopher McCandless, a twenty something middle class American kid that felt the need to rid his life from every obligation and all possessions to find his ‘true’ existence on this earth. Into the Wild tops the list for me when it comes to best book, movie and soundtrack. I feel like I’m always talking about this story or sending people songs from the soundtrack. I can’t get enough of it myself. Emile Hirsch played the role of Christopher MacCandles (A.K.A. Alexander Supertramp) in this movie and his performance blew me away. Honestly, I’m pissed that he didn’t get more recognition than he did. He put his heart and soul into this performance and you can truly see it in the real life transformation he went through to look like a man dying of starvation. It’s shock...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about the movie Almost Famous ( http://charleewith2es.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-saturday-night-and-im-almost-famous.html ) and in the blog I briefly told you about my almost run in with Leonardo DiCaprio but instead of elaborating on the story I told you it was for another time…well today is that other time. Here it goes. I was on a 10 day high school trip traveling through Europe. It was the cliffs notes version of a European sightseeing trip. We would wake up at 5:30 am, walk until our feet were covered in blisters, saw every major sight you can imagine, went to bed at midnight and did it all over again the next day. We had a blast to say the least. The second night that we were in Paris, another girl on the trip came into mine and my best friends’ hotel room to tell us that Leonardo DiCaprio was at the Ritz doing some promotional stuff for The Man in the Iron Mask. This was the film that came out after Titanic, so as you can imagine Leonardo was t...