Lindsey Stirling

The name of this blog is Movies, Music, and More, but so far I've only been covering the first of these categories. So today, we're going to change things up a bit.

I first discovered Lindsey Stirling back in April of 2014 and it's really a crime that I haven't blogged about this amazing artist until now.

Lindsey is a violinist, but one that doesn't quite conform to the conventional sense of the word. Back in 2010 she entered America's Got Talent and was described as a "hip hop violinist," which was pretty accurate at the time, but Lindsey has since explored a wide variety of genres with her music. Over the years she has done beautiful covers/medleys of music from various media such as The Lord of the Rings movies, The Phantom of the Opera musical, and games such as Skyrim and Zelda, to name a few. She's also collaborated with a bunch of artists (each with their own unique sound), experimented with dubstep, dabbled in electric music, and many other themes and styles that I cannot begin to name. And of course, she has created many original works as well, which in my opinion are in an entire genre of their own. Nothing that I have listed on here seem to have much to do with a violinist, but Lindsey has not only managed to blend all these sounds with violin music and making it work, she actually excels at it. Oh, and did I mention she does it all while dancing? Though she's never gone through any formal training, Lindsey's dancing alternates between a ballet-esque form to hip-hop depending on the song being played.

Given that she's a violinist at heart, it should be no surprise that most of her pieces are purely instrumental, with only a hint of a chorus in a select few. Now normally I'm not much for listening to pure instrumental music, because I feel like I can identity with a song more if it had lyrics to it. Just something to provide some context as to what the song is about, how it should feel, etc. And also because I love singing along to my favorite songs (I mean, who doesn't?). But with Lindsey I find myself making a big exception. Somehow, it feels natural that her songs remain predominantly instrumental, as if adding too many lyrics would actually ruin them. And while I'm unable to sing along to these songs, I find myself tapping my feet or bobbing my head whenever I play them in the car, and just generally making a fool of myself by dancing to them in the house.

Now even though Lindsey's music is quite enjoyable by itself, I believe that to get the full effect you have to watch the visual accompaniments as well. A lot of work goes into every single one of her music videos to make them unique and to compliment each of their respective songs. The scenic beauty in each are breathtaking, and of course her dancing is ever a delight to see.

Besides being an insanely talented musician, Lindsey is also an all around amazing person. If you were to check out some of her YouTube videos, and I absolutely recommend that you do so, I think you'll agree with me that this lovely young lady is happiness personified.  Every time you see her she is all smiles, not to mention she has this wide-eyed wonder quality about her (not unlike a Disney princess). It's rather hard to describe in words, but you can feel that she is genuinely happy and passionate about her craft, and it really shows. I mean just look at that smile! You can't fake a smile like that. In a sense, her music is very much an extension of her spirit, and it just radiates with infectious joy and positive energy when you listen to it.

As you may have noticed, I have no shortage of praise for this remarkable mistress of music, and I can literally go on and on about how great she is. But no matter what I say, it'll always pale in comparison to the actual experience, so I'll just let her works speak for themselves. Enjoy.

Transfomers: Age of Extinction

"Sigh"...Where do I begin?

This was not a good movie. In fact, it was just plain terrible. As a movie enthusiast it is always my hope that every film I watch will be generally entertaining and leave me with a positive feeling. Unfortunately reality doesn't permit that and once in a while I'll stumble upon a sub-par movie; this is one of them. I'll try not to spend too much time on this, I fear if I go on for too long I'll talk myself into a rage, which is never healthy.

I guess I'll start by talking about the movie franchise itself. When the first Transformers movie came it, it was actually decent, and I still enjoyed it even on repeated viewings. Because of this, I had this expectation that its sequel would be of a similar standard, but that was not to be so. All the Transformers movies that came after the first one were nothing but disappointments, and this latest addition is no different; it may be the worst yet.

First of all, they've obviously changed the entire human cast, which can actually be a good thing for a franchise that is in need of changes. But in this case it didn't really help and it definitely wasn't enough to save the movie. I personally like Mark Wahlberg as an actor, especially after I saw him in the movie The Other Guys, but his role in Transformers really wasn't his best performance. In the movie he is supposed to be an overprotective father of a teenage daughter, and we're supposed to believe that because a lot of his dialogue revolves around this issue. But that's all we're given, just dialogue. Throughout the whole movie his actions never screamed "overbearing dad" to me. The end result is a poorly developed character who is all talk but no show. The rest of the cast is similarly shallow in regards to their character depths (or lack thereof), and many of them are quite stereotypical in nature. One final thought on the changed cast: I find it really odd and disappointing that none of the characters in this film make any sort of reference to the original main human characters from the previous trilogy. This may be an attempt on the movie makers' part to try and distance this film from its predecessors, but given that some of the transformers actually had a prominent friendship with the original humans, this conscious ignoring just comes off as lazy. Honestly I would have been happy with just a passing mention in one of their conversations, but they didn't even do that.

Plot wise, the movie is...well, there wasn't much of it. I would like to direct you now to this parodic video on how to make a Michael Bay film (don't worry, it's only 3 mins long). This basically sums up the content of this and all other Michael Bay films, with a very, very thin plot line to tie them all together. The rest of this paragraph will contain some spoilers (not that I think anyone would care but just in case). About one third into the movie, the location is suddenly moved to Beijing, and it's blatantly obvious that this was only done to appeal to the growing Asian market in China. And though the movie has Age of Extinction in its title, the Dinobots that were used as the main advertisement for this movie only appeared in a total of around 15 minutes near the end of this over-2-hour-long movie; and they even managed to screw up that up. We're talking about a fire-breathing mechanical T-rex. How do you even go wrong with that? Well somehow they did. I don't know how bu they did. They made robotic dinosaurs look and feel unimpressive. It's almost like they were a last minute add on to the movie because they couldn't decide what else to do with those 15 minutes. I'm not sure what else I can tell you about the story because I'm not really sure there is one; at least not a logical, cohesive, well thought out one.

Some people who actually enjoyed the movie argue that they didn't come into the theater expecting a deep, meaningful storyline, and that it is intended to be a fun, summer movie where we get to turn our brains off and enjoy the action. Now granted this is not supposed to be an intelligent film, but still there's a limit. No one was expecting this to be some thought provoking masterpiece like the works of Christopher Nolan, but the movie should at least make sense in a general way. I'm not talking about those nitty gritty details that can be overcome with some suspension of disbelief. I'm talking about when the movie decides to throw all its rationale and logic out the window and thinks that giving us some decent cgi scenes would be enough to compensate.

I hate giving negative comments, I really do, but this film was just too disappointing on so many levels. Hopefully this will be the last bad movie review I have to do here.I highly recommend those of you who have not watched this film to never, ever even consider watching it. It'll be 165 minutes of your life that you'll never get back, and trust me, it'll be a terrible 165 minutes.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Welcome back everyone. Today Jeffrey and I will be reviewing another movie sequel from this summer: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Let's get to it.

This movie was, in a word, awesome. Having watched and liked the previous film, we went to the theater with great expectations; and it did not disappoint. This movie has so many good things about it that I'm not sure where to begin. It's got good characters, good graphics, good pacing, and at the heart of it, a great plot.

For starters, I really like that the story didn't take place immediately where the first one left off, but it also wasn't in the distant future. If it had followed directly from the first film, it would feel more like the second half of a two-parter than a proper sequel. If, however, it was too far into the future, then the original protagonist would either be in his old age or dead; thus removing the movie too far from its predecessor. Instead, it struck a balance between the two and took place around 10 years after the events of the first film. Caesar (from Rise of the Planet of the Apes) is still around, but much has changed since we last saw him and his apes disappear into the forest.

Now let's talk characters. There were plenty of interesting and multi-layered characters (both apes and humans) throughout the film. Chiefly among these, of course, is Caesar himself. Now that he has become a leader for some time, his demeanor has become quite different from his younger, less experienced self. However, even though he has taken on a more menacing or hardened appearance, we also get to see his gentler side coming up once in a while throughout the movie. As for antagonists, there were not one, but two troublemakers that caused much of the conflict in the movie. What I really liked about it is that one was human while the other was ape, which was a clear message from the film makers that not all humans or all apes were the bad guys here; the apes were as morally diverse as their human counterparts. One thing I didn't like about the human baddie was that he felt like a one-note character, and that note was "I hate apes". It would have been better if that note had actually made sense, but it doesn't even do that. His hatred for apes was illogical and unwarranted. If he had, say, a tragic backstory which involved apes doing some personal wrong to him, that might work, but the character as he was presented really had nothing going for him motivation wise. Conversely, the ape antagonist was mistreated by humans in the past, so him hating on humans makes perfect sense to the audience, even if they can't condone his actions.

Besides having great characters, this movie also delivered when it came to the plot. It's a rather simple one, really, and one that's probably been done more than a few times, but the pacing of it was done just right so that you didn't feel like you've seen it all before or that the movie was dragging on for too long. Jeffrey and I both thought that they did an especially good job in building up tension, in individual scenes as well as generally throughout the movie. The apes and humans were striving to maintain a fragile peace, and any misunderstanding or hostility could very well break it. As the audience, you knew that it was coming, you just didn't know when, and the film did great work in making you stay on the edge of your seat and wonder: Is this it? Would this time do it?

All in all, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was a delightful movie to watch, from beginning to end. There were no stall moments, but there were plenty of interesting characters plus an engaging storyline. We highly recommend it to anyone and everyone who likes movies.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Welcome to the first ever post of Movies, Music, and More! Today I will be talking about and (unofficially) reviewing the movie How to Train Your Dragon 2, which I had the pleasure of seeing a few weeks back. Today I also have a special guest with me, and who will be with us for the remainder of the month; my brother Jeffrey! Our opinions on movies are rather similar, but any differences in our views will be noted here. I suppose it would make more sense to review the first movie first, but I wanted to start with the sequel while it's still relatively fresh in my mind. So without further adieu, let's get started.

Simply put, this movie was everything a sequel should be, and more. It not only built on the universe that the first movie had introduced, but it did so without contradicting or otherwise ruining what came before. And it wasn't just the fictional world that got expanded; in terms of story, graphics, and emotional depth, this movie clearly took everything that was good about its predecessor and improved on them. One of the things I liked most about this film was that it visibly matured, as if alongside the fans and viewers of the first one. Unlike most animated sequels (that I've seen), the characters in this actually aged physically; think about that. Instead of the film makers merely telling us that it's been 5 years later, we actually get to see the evidence that shows us it's been 5 years since the original movie. Besides graphically, the film has also matured in terms of emotional content.

When the first movie came out, it had a fun-and-games kind of atmosphere to it. Of course, there were moments when things got a little serious, but overall it was a happy little story. The second movie kept the same kind of silly funness, but it also added a more mature tone to the franchise. On more occasions than one, I found myself getting teary-eyed during the movie, and let me tell you, I don't tear up easily. And by not easily, I mean it doesn't happen for years at a time, so that's a clue as to how much the sequel has evolved emotionally. Jeffrey doesn't quite agree with me on this, as it didn't draw up a lot of strong emotions from him (though that didn't make it any less enjoyable for him). I suppose some of the 'emotional' scenes were pretty standard stuff, but something about them touched me in ways that most movies haven't in a long while.


One of the things I found the film to be weak in was character development. The main character and a few prominent ones underwent enough change, but most of the supporting cast, including the main character's girlfriend, didn't really have anything going for them aside from the roles they were given in the first film. In their defense, Jeffrey says that the events in the film did not garner character growth from the side characters, so fair enough. I guess when I said character development I also meant character depth; a lot of these characters seem to be a bit one-dimensional, with one or two traits defining their whole identity. The real lack of development though, was actually with the villain. His back-story was vague and his motives were so forgettable that we're already having trouble recalling them. His powers/abilities went largely unexplained in the film (though the film's official website explains some things, that's really not good enough).

The other thing that was a little weak was the final battle. The way that the hero resolved the conflict was so cliché that we saw it coming a mile away. But given that it was cliché, I think the film makers did a good job with the actual execution of that scene.

One last thing deserves mention. The voice acting in this film was as superb as if not more so than the first one. The voices of the actors really brought the characters to life, and it made what could have been a good film into a great one.

So there you have it. How to Train Your Dragon 2 was a fun, enjoyable film that stayed true to its predecessor but also improved from it in quite a few ways. Jeffrey also found this film to be thoroughly entertaining, but doesn't see it as an improvement from the first one. As far as sequels go, this one is probably one of my top ten, and definitely top five for animated sequels.