Inceptionally Salty

So, I have been neglecting my blog a lot. Typical. But, actually, the past two weeks were very eventful, so I have at least some small excuse. Within the last two weeks, I got a job, saw four movies, including the best movie of the summer (three times), changed my Twitter name, and much more. My little brother visited again two weekends ago, but didn’t get to come back. I guess I will now try to recap everything exciting that has been happening.

First, the job. I found out a couple weeks ago that I got a job as a Film Crew member at the AMC Main Street 6 theater. That is a picture of it to the left. Yes, I really work there. And, if you have ever been to a movie at an AMC theater, yes, that is the theater that they show in the AMC advertisement. I hadn’t even been down to it before I interviewed that Sunday, and it wasn’t until training that I got a full look at it. It is the “flagship” theater in the AMC company. If you didn’t know, AMC was started in Kansas City and their “Home Office,” basically their corporate headquarters, is 4 blocks down from where I work. My aunt actually works in the treasury department at the Home Office (and no, she didn’t get me the job, my manager had no idea). Being the “flagship” theater is just their cool way of saying this is our theater that has a bunch of cool stuff, so we’re going to use it in advertisements and stuff. One of the guys I worked with said that we have a lot of extra features that not many other theaters do, and they are going to begin to switch their theaters over to ones like ours. As for working there, being a “Film Crew” member is a fancy way of saying you’re just one of the people that works at the theater. I can do up to 4 jobs: Box Office, Usher, Concessions, and Cinema Suites. Screens 4, 5 and 6 are the “Cinema Suites,” and offer a dine while you eat movie experience. There is a team of servers from the restaurant that serves you, and you sit in big leather recliners with a movable tray-table for your meal. It really is very cool. The other jobs are pretty much self-explanatory. The Main Street theater is different than most theaters, because they have a more adult atmosphere. You have to be 21 years old to see a movie in the Cinema Suites, and on the main floor, if you are under 18, you must be accompanied by an adult. This is great for me, because this prevents parents from dropping off their kids to be a pain in the ass and make messes. Training was a little boring, and all we did was sat in a room and watched videos about nonsense. I have worked 3 times, and I work again tomorrow from 12-6. I have done two jobs — concessions and usher. I enjoy doing both, but I really like working concessions. Either job is nice, because you get to talk to pretty much everyone that comes into the theater, but I like working the register in the concession stand and it’s just a fun job to do. Tomorrow, I usher, however. What ushering basically means is you help take tickets at all times, and when movies get out, you wait until everyone is out and then go in and clean the theaters. It’s really pretty simple and very easy, so it’s cool.

Also, within the last two weeks, I have seen Inception three times. Ho. Ly. God. I can’t believe how good it is. I first saw it a couple Thursdays ago in IMAX, and I knew that if I got the chance, I wanted to try to see it again. My cousin Sean, his wife and his two daughters came through on the next Sunday on their way down to my grandma’s at the Lake of the Ozarks, and they stayed the night. Sean and I decided that when all the girls went to bed, we were going to see the 10:30 IMAX showing. I told him that out of the 7 movies I had seen this summer, it was by far the best. He definitely agreed with me after we got out of it. I saw it again on Tuesday with my buddy Justin, and he hadn’t seen it before, so it was fun to talk about all of the fun plot twists with someone who had just seen it for the first time. Just in general, I like the kind of movie that Inception is. The concept of Inception centers around the idea of dreaming, and that it is possible to manipulate dreams with careful sedation and the right training. You can steal information from people through their dreams and can even plant ideas into their head without them knowing, a concept the movie calls “inception.” I love movies that do things like that — create a whole new world or idea with its own rules and concepts. That’s why I love Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings and other movies like that. It is easy for me to get caught up in the story when I get to see a whole new world that doesn’t follow the same rules we do. But, really my favorite thing about the movie was its music. I’ve said before that I don’t want to try to act like I am a huge movie buff and Oscar expert, but I know that if I had a vote in the Academy, I would definitely be voting for Inception for Best Sound. Hans Zimmer did the sound for the movie, and his notable works include Rain Man, The Lion King, Gladiator, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the Da Vinci Code, and The Dark Knight. I thought the music was a little similar to The Dark Knight, but I loved his use of deep bass tones at the big climaxes. I don’t know why, but it just made the movie that much more intriguing and dramatic. I could probably talk on and on abourt different things about Inception, but I just don’t feel like it. SPOILER ALERT I will say that after seeing it 3 times, I am firmly convinced that he is not dreaming at the end and the top was about to tip over before it cuts to black at the end. Anyone who would like to challenge that, I welcome them to. I could write an entire blog post about why, but I will leave that for another day…..or never.

Another really good movie I have seen is Salt, and I have to say, it was definitely a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting anything from the movie when I went to see it, but it really was a great film. I had planned to see it eventually, but I ended up going with my aunt and a couple people she always goes to movies with on Sunday and everyone in the group enjoyed it. My aunt talked before about how much she hated Angelina Jolie and hated to admit that the movie was actually good because of her. I had heard mixed opinions about the movie beforehand. Some guests coming out of the movie at work had said it was great when they watched it, and then some of the people I worked with are big movie buffs and said it would be horrible. So, for some reason I was going with that, and I just wasn’t expecting anything from it. Angelina Jolie plays a naturalized citizen from Russia who now works for the CIA. She is accused of being a Russian spy, who is planning to kill the Russian president when he is in the country for the American Vice President’s funeral. I won’t give away the ending or details or anything, but it did a great job with good plot advancement and keeping the story going throughout the movie, and had a great plot twist at the end. I don’t think anything is going to come close to Inception in my book for a while, but this is definitely in the top 3 or 4 of my summer movies list, maybe only behind Toy Story 3. If I was going for ratings, I’d give it a 6.5 out of 8, just for fun.

The other two movies I have seen since my last post are The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and The Karate Kid. I was a little late on the new remake of The Karate Kid (I just saw it today), but it was very entertaining. Definitely a little cliché, and you could see the ending from about 3 or 4 miles away, but it was good, and if I was about 6 or 7 years younger, I would have thought it was completely awesome. The movie stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s son Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan as his mentor/teacher. The movie was a little slow at first, and definitely picked up at the end. I really liked Jackie Chan’s role, as the troubled middle-aged man with the bad past. The fighting in the movie was a little over the top instead of a more natural feel, because most of the stunts being pulled at the karate competition were physically impossible even for the most gifted of athletes. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was just okay. I actually saw it with my cousin Sean and my brother, while the kids and the girls saw Despicable Me. I had already seen it, and Sean wanted to see something a little more grown up. He and my brother both thought it was really good, but I wasn’t as convinced. It was pretty entertaining, and funny at times, but Nicholas Cage was completely wrong for the role he was in. Him being Merlin’s original apprentice and a powerful wizard who had searched for centuries trying to find Merlin’s heir was just completely ridiculous. Jay Baruchel (She’s Out of My League, Knocked Up) fits his role much better than Cage does. Baruchel plays a goofy 19 year old college physics nerd who is Balthazaar’s (Cage) new apprentice and his task is to kill the most evil witch the world has ever seen. Now that I type this out, the movie actually isn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds, but you get the point. I felt that the movie was really trying to play off of Baruchel’s nerdy appeal, which he did fine, but with Cage, it just felt unnatural and forced. There are certain things that are funny because of their natural nerdy feel, like The Big Bang Theory, but it felt like they were trying to hard to go for nerdy and it just didn’t work. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice definitely is in the bottom 3 of movies I’ve seen this summer.

I also did mention that I changed my Twitter name. Not that big of a deal, I just thought it was time for a change, and the new name I came up with, I liked better. So now, for those of you twitterers who follow me, I am @BrentJ25 instead of @guyphibrent. I guess, I will still be guyphibrent on the blog, but I am looking into ways of changing that, since I know you can’t simply just change the url of your blog’s address with WordPress. If anyone knows anything about this, I would greatly appreciate any knowledge/help/tips. Much thanks.

Well, it is late…past 4:00 a.m. I mean, this is typical for my blogging, but I need to sleep because I am working tomorrow, I mean, today, I guess. Incidentally, my cousin and his daughters will be in town again today. I know my aunt wants to take the girls to Ramona and Beezus, something I want nothing to do with. So, hopefully Sean and I can go to the movie later on. I’m hoping it will work out so that we can go downtown to my theater and see a movie there, since it really is just a sweet place to see and I’ll get to show him where I work. I’m hoping he hasn’t seen Salt yet, because there’s nothing else I want to see until Dinner For Schmucks comes out this weekend. Until next time, take care and God bless.

guyphibrent

Now playing: Nothing on You ft. Bruno Mars – B.o.B