Author: News on Shuffle

Movie Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I thought I would celebrate with a list of my favorite Christmas movies and maybe share a memory or two attached to each one. Here it goes:

1) White Christmas – Ironically enough, I used to hate this movie as a kid. Now it is one of my favorites. I remember sitting in my grandparents house and being bored out of my mind as everyone payed more attention to me than the movie. Now I love everything about it and understand why they loved it so much. The music is great as is the story. A holiday classic that everyone should see at least once (and I defy you to only want to watch it once).

2) Next for me would probably be A Christmas Carol, specifically the 1951 version with Alastair Sim. To me this man was Scrooge. There was anther version with Patrick Stewart that I recently saw which is also good, but nothing beats my first experience with the character.

3) I’m going to lump all my favorite childhood ones together, simply because I always watched these as a group when I was younger. This includes A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman. I remember watching these with my Mom while eating Christmas cookies and drinking cocoa. I’m actually watching Rudolph now (minus the cookies and milk).
4) It’s A Wonderful Life is another one of those movies I hated as a kid but absolutely love as I make may way towards adulthood. Some of my favorite lines come from this movie, including the classic “Isn’t it wonderful, I’m going to jail.” This is one of those movies that can make you laugh one minute then cry the next. It really tests your emotions and pushes them to the limit. A classic that everyone should experience at least once (and once may be all you can handle until next year).
Some may think that Miracle on 34th Street should come next but, since I have only ever seen it once many moons ago, I can’t actually add it to my list. I have been meaning to visit this classic again (since I know it really is a classic) but have yet to get the chance. Maybe next year…
Hope you have a wonderful holiday season and are ready to welcome the new year in style. And as Tiny Tim would say, “God bless us, everyone.”

Christmas Releases

For those who celebrate, Merry Christmas Eve. For those who don’t, Happy Holidays. And for those who don’t celebrate anything remotely connected to religion, you’ll get a Happy New Year from me in a week. I think that about covers it. Now on to the good stuff.

Movie releases. There are a couple good ones coming out tomorrow, including one I’ve been waiting for since I found out about it this summer. That would be Sherlock Holmes. I know this isn’t going to be your typically Holmes tale, but I still look forward to what it potentially has to offer me.

Another movie I am excited about is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This was the movie Heath Ledger was working on before he died. The entire cast for this one looks great and the story seems intriguing so I look forward to seeing the finished product here. So far it is only supposed to have a limited release (festivals and LA/NYC), but if it does well to start and enough people show interest then we might be able to get it in more cities across the country.

The only other releases tomorrow are “It’s Complicated”, which hasn’t reached the hole I have been living in quite yet and “Nine”. The cast for “Complicated” looks good but I couldn’t tell you whether or not it is worth checking out just yet. “Nine” also has potential but I am on the fence as to whether or not I actually am going to see it. Might just wait for the DVD and Netflix that one.

Overall, Christmas looks like it’s going to be good to the movie industry this year. Holmes should do fairly well, seeing as how the character already has a decent fanbase. Hopefully Parnassus gets a Christmas miracle and sees great success as well.

Bands Just Wanna Have Fun

I follow a very select few bands on Twitter, but when I do it usually is because they have that extra special something that makes them worth following. I like to call it The Fun Factor. This brings us to the reason we are here tonight. We’re here to have fun. It’s why we follow you all over the state (or country) and it’s why we buy more of your merch than anyone elses and it’s why we give you more of ourselves than other bands. All of this because you are a band that knows how to have fun.

One band that I fell in love with from the first song because of this “Fun Factor” is Jukebox the Ghost. They recently released a cover of the song ‘Temptation” and this video I found of them performing it live reminded me of how fun their music is and how much fun it is watching them perform.

Lilith Fair Returns

Spin Magazine reports that Lilith Fair tour will return in 2010. This is the biggest girl fest the music industry has to offer us, and already there is quite a group of talented ladies lined up for the tour, which is set for summer 2010. Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow and Tegan & Sara are just some of the lovely ladies to get excited about thus far. I know one lady by the name of Alyson Greenfield (who I have mentioned on this blog before) is excited about this announcement and would love the opportunity to play with these talented female artists. She is so excited about this that she even wrote Lilith fair a song to share her enthusiasm. As I listen to my Lilly Allen station on Pandora (which is the ultimate in girl power playlists) I get excited too.

Hello Hurricane is a Perfect Storm

Hello Hurricane is Switchfoot’s seventh studio album and their most recent to date. The album is louder and more energized than previous albums by the band, but still remains true to their Christian Rock roots. There is simply more emphasis on the “rock” aspect here. The title track is a perfect example of this. The music is upbeat and perfect to dance to, but the words provide the typical positive and hopeful message that the band is known for. The words “Hello hurricane, you’re not enough. Hello hurricane, you can’t silence my love,” share the message that the speaker is not going to let the storms of life get them down or silence their belief. Switchfoot is one of the few bands I can think of that always seem to have positive and uplifting music that doesn’t fall into the trap of being dull. With the new album they have been able to amplify this ability to captivate their audience to the next degree. The band has been around for 13 years now with no signs of slowing down any time soon. It gives me hope for the music world to see this band flourish. In a time when everything else seems to be about negativity and what can go wrong, Switchfoot gives the listener something to feel good about.

Switchfoot Hello Hurricane Tour

I just got back from seeing Switchfoot play Irving Plaza in NYC, and boy do I have some positive feedback to share. The show was part of their Hello Hurricane tour, which coincides with the release of their new album by the same name. I have to admit I have not listened to the album in its entirety before tonight (although this will change ASAP). Having said that, it was still an enjoyable performance to say the least. They played the new album in order from first song to last as the first half of their set. The second half consisted of fan favorites from the past three albums. The set list for the second half was as follows:

Meant To Live
Stars
Shadow Proves The Sunshine
Oh Gravity
Lucky Man (Verve cover)
24
Dare you To Move
Encore:
This Is Your Life
Awakening
Pictures should go up before New Years. I apologize to those who think I am a liar when I said I would post Amanda Palmer photos, but life happened that day and continued happening for the next few weeks. Once this poor college student wraps up the semester things should go back to their regularly scheduled happenings.

Muse Tours America

Muse has announced 6 shows of what will be their 2010 tour. For those who have been reading this blog since it’s conception, you may recall I have mentioned this band before. When they released their latest album (The Resistance), toured with U2, and had a special performance at the VMAs, I predicted they would slowly gain more exposure from this that would hopefully create enough buzz to bring them to the U.S. and it would seem I was right. The date for New York City is March 5th at Madison Square Garden. I hoped they would get big enough to play this venue, but I never imagined it would happen this quickly. Silversun Pickups is set to open for them. The show is brought to us by RXP and Bowery Presents. Thank you both for making the dreams of American Muse fans come true.

2010 World Cup

For anyone who is interested, here is a quick post announcing the draw for the 2010 World Cup. My predictions/hopefuls are as follows:

Group A: South Africa
Group B: Argentina (Second choice, Greece)
Group C: If not the U.S. then England
Group D: Germany
Group E: Denmark (or maybe the Netherlands, not sure about this one)
Group F: Italy
Group G: Brazil
Group H: Spain (although Switzerland would make me happy if they proved me wrong here)

Who do you think is going to come out on top? Or maybe the better question is who you WANT to end up the winner.

Party Crashers

Many of the posts on this blog are inspired by either a link or news story I find that intrigues me enough that I want to comment on it. Today’s link is one of the many pieces in response to the party crashers at President Obama’s State Dinner. It is a letter to the president from Tom Foreman, a correspondent with CNN who can be seen occasionally on Anderson Copper 360. In his letter he points out that we are lucky these people were only trying to climb the social ladder and weren’t actually dangerous. While this is true I have to ask: Why are we giving them so much press time then? It seems to me that we could report how serious this is without giving them the recognition they were obviously looking for. This just gives them validation. Where’s the punishment? If these people have gotten everything they wanted out of this experience, then what tells them it was wrong and they shouldn’t do it again or else? Obviously this story is still ongoing so punishment of some kind could still be in the works. If not, I may have to put America on notice, Colbert style.

My Black Friday Experience

Traditionally Black Friday marks the start of the Christmas season and is the day most stores finally start to see a profit after a year of being “in the red”. Yesterday I ventured out into the scary world of shopping to purchase a new computer (MacBook Pro, for those who are curious). It was early afternoon, but already many people had gone back into their secure bubbles of non-spending. After hearing stories of people camping overnight for the best early bird specials, it seems most of these did their shopping early in the morning while I was still fast asleep and were now safely back home. Don’t get me wrong, the Apple store was still crowded, but then again it usually is. It wasn’t the scary level of crowded I had expected though. It would seem many are still scared to open their wallets for anything that is not a necessity just yet. We will have to wait and see if this continues through the Christmas season. Will we see a rise on homemade gifts this year? Only time will tell…