Glee

I totally admit I'm a big Glee fan, the story lines are quite interesting and so on, the characters fluctuate between being more and less loveable as time progresses, but the thing I really love is the music. The mash-ups are brilliant, and I really loved the way they were updating old classics in the first series. There have been fewer songs in the second series that I've loved straight away, but then again I've not seen the whole series yet.

My favourite song from the second series so far is 'Teenage Dream' (is it bad that my favourite song isn't sung by New Directions?), anywho, had to share it with you :).



One of my other favourites from this series is 'Lucky' (and aren't they cute!)



I really like Dianna Agron - she has quite a distinct voice which I really like - also, can't wait to see 'I am Number Four' which stars her and Alex Pettyfer (who I think is great too), out next week!

Avalon High Film *SPOILERS*

Today I discovered that there was a TV movie version of 'Avalon High' by Meg Cabot, which happens to be pretty much my favourite Meg Cabot book, so I was quite interested at the prospect of a filmed version. I managed to find it on YouTube and proceeded to watch it. Starting off under the impression that they stayed true to the book, I was quite enjoying it, though noticing some changes which made little sense to me, so I decided to look up what differences there were between book and film (while still watching). I came across the Wikipedia page for it, and expecting to see that there were a few minor changes written there, I was extremely surprised to note that they'd basically completely changed the book. From that point, I was already disappointed but trying to think of it as something completely separate from the book and still enjoy it as a separate piece...

Here's where the major spoilers come in - as copied from Wikipedia:

In the movie, Ellie (Allie in the film) rather than Will is King Arthur. Rather than Marco, Mr. Morton (Mr. Moore in the film) is Mordred, whereas Miles is Merlin as opposed to Mr. Morton. Marco is a member of the Order of the Bear determined to protect Will. The climax battle scene occurs in the ravine in the book, but occurs in the school theater (which magically becomes a beach) in the movie. Presumably, this is to make the film more unpredictable. Also the students are the reincarnations of the actual characters as oppose to merely corresponding to them. "Allie" is an only child, her brother is no longer a character. Will's father is not trying to make him join the navy. Will does not sail and does not have a dog, therefore there are no connections to the names of Arthur's dog and boat. (Will is not Arthur, hence the elimination.) Avalon High's team name is the Knights, not Excalibur. Many scenes were cut out and scene settings were changed to make the movie more appropriate for younger children because the book has violent and some threatening scenes.

So basically, they switched around all of the main characters. I was quite disappointed by this, but I think it could have been pulled off if they had added more threads into the story. The most annoying thing was that since Will wasn't Arthur, all of the little things which made you think he was Arthur seemed pointless, and no extra interesting things were put in to point towards Allie being Arthur so it made everything seem very random instead of destined as was intended.

Thoughts on the characters:

• I liked the portrayal of Allie by Britt Robertson, I thought she held the movie really well. She's actually the reason I came across the movie as I had searched her on imbd after watching some episodes of 'Life Unexpected' (really enjoying it :D). She didn't really have the right look for the character if you're thinking about the book, but with the decision that she was to be King Arthur, I think that her appearance was quite appropriate.
• I loved the character of Miles, despite the fact he wasn't in the book, I really enjoyed the performance and he's quite a loveable character, perhaps the only character aside from Allie that the writers had decided to try and give any depth.
• What can I say about Will... I thought he was ok. The look was fine, I think, but the way the character was played really lacked depth. This was probably mainly down to the writers, and with the decision that he wasn't Arthur - they must have decided not to really focus on his character... To me, he came across as perhaps a little slow and naively happy - kind of reminiscent of James Marsden's portrayal of Prince Edward in 'Enchanted' (which I love btw). He's supposed to be some deep thinker, but I really wasn't seeing it.
• Lance and Jen barely got any screen-time apart from their secret looks and meetings which meant their characters didn't really get a chance to have any depth, and they were clearly there just to provide the love triangle (which didn't really have any significance since Will wasn't Arthur).
• I liked the casting for both Marco and Mr Moore - they would have still fitted the characters if the script stuck to the book. Marco had an unfortunate, very cheesy line towards the end - something like "I was only doing it to keep you safe. Treating you guys like that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."
• I quite liked Allie's parents - they fitted the roles quite well, and fitted well enough with my ideas from the book.

Thoughts on other things:

• The 'flashbacks' were quite interesting, they were a useful way of showing the connections between people, and they fit well with the idea of Allie as Arthur.
• Really disappointed with the destruction of any meaning or depth in the circumstances in comparison to the story of Arthur. E.g. Lance and Jen losing their significance with 'Arthur', all the little things there were about Will in the book that pointed towards him being Arthur (names of boat, dog, etc.), the relationship of 'Arthur' to 'Mordred', well, you get the picture.
• There were some very cheesy lines in there - but hey, it was a Disney film.
• The special effects were interesting, very Disney-ish, e.g. the theatre transforming into a beach with fully armoured knights, the sword becoming Excalibur, Mr Moore becoming Mordred - Arthurian style.
• The removal of the whole 'Lady of the lake' thing was disappointing - I suppose they had a different surprise instead, but I don't think it was half as good...

Anywho, on the whole, I think that as a Disney film, it's quite a fun one to watch, a little cheesy, some entertaining special effects and a completely unrealistic appearance, all pretty good. However, in comparison to the book I thought it was quite a disappointment. As long as you don't start watching it with the impression that it's actually going to be the fantastic story you've read with interesting detail and back-story links, then I think it's still quite an enjoyable movie.

A little music for you

I recently started listening to some Ellie Goulding music and I quite like it. I also became obsessed with the song 'Heart Attack' by Jack McManus for quite a while. So I thought I'd share a little with you :).



I like the video for 'Your Song', it's really sweet and lovely :).



I also really like this music video - I think it's rather inventive and shows off the song's metaphor :).

Sara Bareilles - Kaleidoscope Heart

I've been listening to Sara Bareilles' new album 'Kaleidoscope Heart' on Spotify for the past week and I'm completely in love with it! I just happened to see an ad about it on the sidebar of Facebook so decided to look it up and it's brilliant.

I'm rather disappointed that I can't embed the official music video for 'King of Anything' as it's pretty amazing, but you can see it by clicking here.
However I am able to embed a Live version of it that I also came across, so I shall put that here:


It really made me want to try and do a completely vocal cover of it - but then I came across one by the wonderful Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider who I am a big fan of - see their version below:


I'm quite in love with the whole album, but some of my particular favourites are 'Uncharted' and 'The Light'. 'The Light', 'Hold My Heart' and 'Breathe Again' are really beautiful songs, while 'Gonna Get Over You' and 'Say You're Sorry' are more upbeat songs that I really enjoy :).

And if you say, it'll be alright
I'm gonna trust you, babe
I'm gonna look in your eyes
And if you say it'll be alright
I'll follow you into the light

Exhibition stuff

In general things have been going fairly well, as mentioned in my brief post earlier I've been quite stressed as we had an exhibition opening yesterday and I've been frantically trying to figure out what to do and then get it done - there were various problems with our exhibition space (including that some members couldn't drill into surfaces due to asbestos!) but in the end we got everything sorted in time. I initially planned to show a video (possibly one that I had spent weeks creating for my second module in semester 1) but due to power restrictions in our exhibition space I decided not to do that but to create separate work for the exhibition.

I was trying to respond to the space - I ended up having two enclosed box areas created by desks a row of desks next to each other with a board over the top. There were also a number of lockers lying around that I decided to make use of.

As it is right at the beginning of semester, I hadn't begun to work on anything in particular for my general art practice. So I was a bit at a loss for what to actually create in these spaces. In the end I decided to work with doodle drawings - I've been doodling in A5 books throughout the last semester - not hugely as part of my practice but as a way of coming up with new ideas or just for a bit of fun. I decided that I wanted to paper the whole inside of one of the spaces with these doodles - I measured it out and figured out how many pieces of A4 paper it would take (I considered using rolls of paper but decided to with A4 pieces instead). The pieces ended up taking longer than I first anticipated - the photo below on the left shows my quick test with some of the drawings to see how it would look.

It took me rather a long time but I managed to make 58 A4 drawings, which covered the 4 sides (around and base), unfortunately I didn't have the time to make the other 16 I needed to cover the top. I was fairly happy with how everything turned out in the end.

For the other space I decided to work with origami. I had already created some origami butterflies and so on for an installation last semester, so decided to use some of what I already had. I didn't actually end up using that much of what I had as I limited my colours to just pink, blue and green. In the first photo below it shows the origami I brought up from my studio space with the lockers and a light that I was trying out inside one of the lockers.

Below are photos of my finished origami installation - I am quite happy with how it looked finished - I played around with the whole 'making process' - showing different stages of making. I also really liked how the lighting turned out, with the shadows of the glass - though it's not best shown in these photos as I only managed to get photos while it was still quite light out.

So that's my finished pieces. I really don't feel like it's my best work, but I made it all for the exhibition at quite short notice so I'm not too bothered about that. It feels quite amateurish, and I certainly felt like my pieces were not as impressive or interesting as many of the others that I saw that evening. I'm hoping that the next exhibition I take part in will show better work!

Lots of blogging today...

Well, that's the plan anyway. There are loads of things where I've kept thinking 'Oh, I should blog about that' but never got around to doing. I've not been taking care of myself properly as I've been really stressed so today I'm ill and in bed, only thing I've done is had a driving lesson this morning and then got straight back into PJs and back into bed when I got home!

So I'm planning to catch up on some blogging I've been wanting to do, write lots of lists about what I need to get done that I've been putting off until after yesterday, do some proper planning for uni stuff and try to rest and recover a bit.