Monday, March 10, 2014

Currently Addicted to: These Guys, These Bands, and These TV Series

This should be Midnight Random Thoughts number 5, but then I realize it's not just my random thoughts. I just want to talk about my current celebrity crushes and pleasures, and whatever. So, I decided to include it in Current Addiction post even though it's not specifically talking about one thing (usually TV series).

SO, HELLO, WE MEET AGAIN. Empty February once again. I finally finished my movie marathon post two days ago (even though I finished the marathon some time in January). I'm doing another one now, but I'm not sure the post will be done right after...

Anyway, let's go back again to the 'current crushes and pleasures and whatever'.

I recently got a crush on Luke Evans. You know him right? Let me give you a small info. He's the guy who played Bard in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Still don't recognize him? Okay. He's the guy who played Owen Shaw in Fast & Furious 6. Ha! Finally.
Oh, and NO, he's not related to Captain America a.k.a. Chris Evans.

Luke's gaze is piercing through your flesh and bones and finally hits your heart.

Yes, I don't know I'm just crazy about him lately. Guys with British accent (well, he's actually Welsh) are just perfect (Oh, hey there Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, and Jonny Lee Miller!). but yeah I just love him so much. He may be a little older than Tom, which probably made you like "Gosh what's wrong with you--you're having another crush on a man who is much older than you!" Dude, whatever. It's just a crush.

Anyway, why? Of all actors in the world, why him? Well... The Hobbit made me love him. BUT, I loved him even more after watching his movie No One Lives. I can't give much about the plot, just click the link or go to YouTube and find the trailer.
Back to Luke. Yeah, I love him in that movie--even though it's kind of gore and disgusting but there was Luke Evans damn it, so I kept going. Just so you know, every actor whom I love has ever played an annoying guy, bad guy (ha!), and those kind of characters you will probably hate in the movies. But that's what makes me love them even more! And Luke is also a singer (he was a stage actor) and he has a greaaat voice!
Lucky (unlucky?) you, Mr. Luke Evans. You just made to 'my favorite actor' list.

The second, is Joel Kinnaman. You've probably never heard of this man, so I just go straight away: he's the new RoboCop. Yeah, he's the 21st century Alex Murphy, you guys! And if you've never even heard of RoboCop, you need some serious help.

Joel is absorbing the oxygen supply in the room.

I first knew Charles Joel Nordström (it's his birth name, btw, he's Swedish-American) from TV series The Killing. I love that series so much! Joel played Detective Holder. Hold it right there! Detective. You know I love that kind of thing. Plus the title is THE KILLING--it pretty much got my attention. I'm just starting to watch its season 3, and the 4th and final season is still filmed.

Unlike Luke, I've always got a crush on Joel. Why did I include him in 'current crushes'? Well, it's because I watched RoboCop and he just deserves to be on that list lol. Okay then, move to crush #3 and #4.

Chandler Parsons and Goran Dragic.

Wait, who are they? What movies have they been on? Or which band do they belong to?
Hahaha, the answer is NO. NOPE. NONE. NAAWWWH. They're not actors, nor musicians, nor my friends (?). They are athletes.

Oh, great! Which football club?
Yes, everyone who knows me probably will ask that because apparently the only sport that I fond of is football (soccer, if you're American. I still don't understand--why soccer?). But, once again, NO. Chandler and Goran are not football players. They are basketball players.
Chandler Parsons is in Houston Rockets and Goran Dragic is in Phoenix Suns. (Little fun fact: even though they're not related, Chandler shares the same last name with the actor Jim Parsons--The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper--who is a huge fan of Rockets).

Isn't Chandler just perfect? <3

Goran is so serious. So cool <3

Yeah, I'm a girl who doesn't watch basketball before, so I fall in love with those two because... they are cool and handsome. Thanks to my brother who watches basketball games all the time (on TV, of course). To stop me from complaining, "Why are you always watching this? I want to watch HBO damnit!!!" and such, he immediately introduced me to these two ("Hey, sis. Google Goran Dragic. He's handsome. Look, he's in this match. Why don't we sit together and watch it?") There I was, the weak older sister. So, every time basketball game's on TV, I kept asking whether it had Goran or Chandler. I thought he was getting tired of me asking that, and he was starting to regret his action ("Why the heck did I tell my sister about those two?!").

And this is the collage of them that I made in black and white. Got any favorite? :))

Move on again. Since Jason Mraz is still working on his new album and has not recently released new music (other than the songs he's featured on), I find other music to listen.

I'm crazy about these 2 bands: Imagine Dragons and Bastille. My current pleasures. They're basically rock bands, but not 'too rock' (if you know what I mean), and they have easy-listening songs. From sunrise til sunrise again, I keep listening to these bands alternatively. They have almost similar music, their vocalists' names share the same first name (Dan; Reynolds for ID, Smith for Bastille), and they consist of 4 members each. We absolutely can notice the difference between the two by the voice of the Dans--Reynolds is American, Smith is British. That's easy.
I really recommend these bands to you, even though you're almost never fond of rock bands.

Imagine Dragons. Dan Reynolds is the second on the left.
 
Bastille. Dan Smith is the second on the right.

 (Oh, and can someone tell me why do I think that Dan Reynolds somehow looks like Luke Evans? I just can't find why, but every time I see Dan Reynolds I automatically think of Luke Evans hahaha)

Another pleasures: True Detective, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Elementary, Perception, Hannibal, The Killing, Arrow, Intelligence, Almost Human, and Bates Motel.
If you want a good series to watch, I recommend them :) (especially True Detective--there's a reason why I put it first, but the rest is just randomly put)

So, hmm, that's the end of this post. And I just realized that I'm basically just talking about boys. Sigh.

All the pics were taken from Google.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Movie Marathon: Jeremy Renner

(Note that this post was written right after the movie marathon was done, but I just finished it now because it's school's days off and I rarely touched my laptop. Like usual, I don't do blog on holidays)

Yeah, I know I just did a movie marathon very recently, but I just couldn't help to do another one. And yes, I did it in my exams week. Well, not exactly "exam", because it was just basically the deadline week. No particular exam, just assignments and assignments. And I did a movie marathon because I'm just that cool.

Who is the "lucky" actor?


Jeremy Lee Renner is (yeah, come on) one of my favorite actors of all time. Let me ask you: who has never heard of this man? You've got to be kidding me. Even though you're not a movie buff, you must have heard his name, at least once. Okay. Some of you might know him from the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, but he's mostly known from his work as Hawkeye in Marvel's The Avengers - as my little 'survey' said.

Before getting involved in the big movies like I've mentioned above, Jeremy was starring in the TV series The Unusuals (too bad, the series was cancelled after 10 episodes) and smaller movies. In fact, his portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in Dahmer was the reason Kathryn Bigelow chose him for the lead role in The Hurt Locker. He got his first Oscar nomination ever, and got the second one for his involvement in Ben Affleck's The Town. And after that, he got more famous by co-starring with Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol), Rachel Weisz (The Bourne Legacy), Gemma Arteton (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters), as well as the blockbuster movie The Avengers and the critically acclaimed American Hustle.
Wait, that's not it. Jeremy is a good singer too! He was singing in one scene in Love Comes to the Executioner. I've also heard him singing in Saturday Night Live where he was hosting for the first time.

So, what makes you decided to do Jeremy Renner movie marathon?
It started right on Jeremy's birthday, on January 7th. I watched The Hurt Locker that time, and suddenly decided to do Jeremy Renner movie marathon because he was one of the 'candidates' for my movie marathon (who did not get picked before because of my changing mood). So, happy belated birthday, Mr. Renner! And thank you for being a distraction from my goddamn tasks :p

Here's the list of his movies, according to the time I watched them:
1. Thor (cameo; and I watched this long before the movie marathon started to refresh my brain that was tired of thinking about house designs)
2. The Hurt Locker
3. North Country
4. Love Comes to the Excecutioner
5. Ingenious
6. Neo Ned
7. 12 and Holding
8. A Little Trip to Heaven
9. 28 Weeks Later
10. Dahmer
11. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
12. S.W.A.T.
13. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
14. The Town
15. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
16. The Bourne Legacy
17. Marvel's The Avengers
18. Take
19. American Hustle

After watching all of them, do you have any specific movies that you've been into?
Of course. In fact, I loved all of them--it showed us that Jeremy could play such different characters without sticking to one of them. Really cool. Here is it.

Since it's my favorite movie, Marvel's The Avengers is on the top of the list. You obviously know Avengers (and I already talked about it in RDJ movie marathon), so I won't talk much about this. Jeremy played a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clint Barton who went by the name Hawkeye when he joined The Avengers. It was the 2nd time he played Barton after being an almost-unnoticeable cameo (blame the darkness--I almost lost it too) in Thor.

Second is The Bourne Legacy. Oh, I LOVE Bourne movies! I was kind of disappointed when Matt Damon decided not to do more Bourne. And I was like, "What?! They will replace Damon as Bourne? Nooooooooo!". But, it turned out that they wouldn't make Bourne as the main character. Instead, Aaron Cross, who was played by Jeremy, took his place. Taking place around the same time as the events in The Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne's action affected other ops, including Cross, whose life now at stake because the men behind those ops tried to make everyone involved disappeared. Many people didn't like this movie and said that it was like forcing itself to get a connection to previous Bourne movies (my aunt said this lol). But, no. I love Bourne movies. I love Jeremy Renner. Of course I'd watch this even though Matt Damon didn't come back.

Third is Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. In this 4th movie of the franchise, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on an impossible mission once again, but this time he gets to team up with Benji (Simon Pegg), fellow agent Jane Carter (Paula Patton), and... Jeremy Renner! I mean, William Brandt, the IMF Secretary's chief analyst. Together, they try to track down a dangerous terrorist who has access to Russian nuclear launch codes--and apparently, plans to use it against US. It's so fun to see Jeremy kicking-ass in this (before The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy of course). This movie receives mostly positive reviews, both from audiences and critics.

Next, The Hurt Locker, which led Jeremy to get his first Oscar nomination. When the previous team leader got killed by an explosive device, SFC William James (Renner) took over a highly trained bomb disposal team in Iraq. Yep, as you guessed, James loved what he did, but sometimes he didn't think about his team's safety--even his own. The movie is 2 hours long, and you won't find music score that much. But I love this movie. Every time James got to dispose a bomb, it's so intense. My favorite scene is when James and the team was facing an Iraqi man with bombs all over his body. Damn, I got teary eyes when watching it.

Fifth is The Town. I talked about this previously on Ben Affleck movie marathon, so you just have to click it. Jeremy played James 'Jem' Coughlin, one of the robbers and Doug's (Affleck) best friend. He was a hot-headed man who didn't give a damn about anything else but to accomplish their mission. Jeremy earned another Oscar nomination (this time was Best Supporting Actor) for his portrayal of Jem. This was also the first Jeremy Renner movie I've ever watched, but that time I was focusing on Ben Affleck (yeah, another favorite actor of mine) so I just forgot about him haha.

Sixth is S.W.A.T. Seriously, when I first watched this, I didn't recognize Jeremy at all. I mean, I was too focused to Colin Farrell to recognize the unrecognized actor who played Brian Gamble. Sorry. But that's the truth ._. Then when I got to know Jeremy more, I finally could realize him in this movie (and apparently the other movies he'd been on). Gamble was first a partner and best bud of Jim Street (Farrell) in S.W.A.T. before he got kicked out and went rogue.

Seventh is Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Ok, before I continue, you should know that the only reason I put this movie in this list is because Jeremy Renner was in it. Yes, I'm biased. Care much? Lol, sorry. Anyway, Hansel is played by Jeremy, and Gretel is played by the beautiful Gemma Arteton. Of course you know the story of Hansel and Gretel. This movie is set years after the siblings killed the witch who kidnapped them. And, yes, that witch (and her even uglier witch friends) struck again!

Honorable mention: A Little Trip to Heaven

Well, that's it. This doesn't mean the movies that I don't short-review are bad. He's a great actor, you know. He knows what kind of roles that are perfect for him (almost every role I guess haha).
Anyway, in the future we can see Jeremy Renner in The Immigrant, Kill the Messenger, the fifth Bourne movie, and of course, The Avengers: Age of Ultron!
And I believe someday he'll get that golden statue :)


"I like to stay busy, I like to stay focused, and I like to stay creative. Without being creative I'd be dead."
- Jeremy Renner

See you in the next movie marathon post!
(Yep I've just finished another movie marathon. Who's the actor? Just wait and see!)

Pics were taken from Google, then were made into a collage by me.
I like to stay busy, I like to stay focused, and I like to stay creative. Without being creative I'd be dead.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeremy_renner.html#ikv6ATLbrU81YboJ.9