New Year's Eve is going to be, like, SO much fun!

I have been blogging a lot of movie reviews lately, but not much about my shining golden nuggets of opinions that I know you have all come to know and love. If, that is, there is anyone out there in the abyss of the internet that is still reading this.

I think the two girls waiting on their "skinny, sugar-free vanilla lattes" here at my beloved Starbucks have just made my decision not to go out tomorrow night official. Side note- in all I honesty, I have recently taken a liking to just those lattes, so maybe I should not rag on them for that reason. However, I have never heard so many "likes", "OMGs" and mentions of nail polish in a single stream of words. They loudly announced to all the world their plans of suiting up in tight dresses and stilettos taller than the Empire State Building in order to go to multiple happy hours and then a couple, ya know, like, clubs or whatever. I forsee multiple drinks spilled down their fancy new dresses and skeezy old men (who will certainly be out on the prowl for New Years) hitting on them like there is no tomorrow.

I will stick to my quiet gathering among friends, thank you. Personally, I do not want to ring in the new year with creepy old men trying to grind up on me. Maybe I am crazy.

I guess you can't take the "young" out of the Young Adult?

Well, the moral of the film "Young Adult" was.... nothing? That's what I got out of it anyways. And yet, I am not sure if I have a problem with that aspect of it. That fact that the drunken, self-absorbed, unbelievably vain protagonist (Cherleze Theron) did not learn her lesson seems all too realistic to me. I almost saw this film as revolutionary, though not on a major scale, for NOT teaching its audience a lesson. Isn't it true that a lot of people in life just can't seem to change?

Theron plays the girl from highschool that you loved to hate: the prom queen, self-absorbed girl that all the guys want. Mavis is that girl, though 37 years later as a washed up writer still completely living in the past. She got out of the small town of Mercury, MN where she grew up and fled to Minneapolis only to return later to attempt to rekindle an old flame with her highschool boyfriend. Only problem is, he is now married and the reason she even thought of him so many years later is because of the birth announcement which pops up in her e-mail inbox one random day.

So, she returns to Mercury and sparks up an unlikely "friendship" with one of the nerds from highschool (I am skeptical to call it this, they only really spend time together because she does not have any other old friends). Eventually, though many hilarous incidents, Mavis fails completely in her attempt to steal her ex from his wife, and, for a fleeting moment, it seems as though she is going to see the faults in her character and change for the better. However, instead, she just leaves Mercury seemingly the exact same as before. Well, I suppose she did change in one way- she decided not to dwell on the past anymore. Good for her.

Chicago- why can I only think of gangsters?

I love to travel, in case you have not noticed. Esentially, everything about it. I feel like the possibilities are unlimited when one steps onto the plane. On Wednesday, I was doing just that again, stepping from gate onto plane, and thus filled with the familiar aforementioned emotion. Now, of course I was minorly discouraged at the realization that I was once again surrounded by babies on a flight. However, this time it was a little bit different. The parents behind us had a  baby that was only slightly fussy, and the dad was desperately trying to calm his/her nerves by whisting at an extremely high volume in his/her ear. I am still torn on which was a greater annoyance- the father whistling or the baby crying. I have never actually been annoyed by the parent before.

Anyways, the flight was more or less pleasant, my headphones did their job perfectly, and I made it in one piece to Chicago. My excitement renewed at being somewhere away from home, I stepped off the plane and prepared myself for another adventure. I instantly realized, however, that the constant kind feelings felt in Boulder, CO are not a constant in places like Chicago. I think I knew this before, however my optimisitic attitude trumped my common sense reminding me that not everyone is open to positivity. I tried to be friendly to the lady at the salad bar and she blew me off, but I still would not let that get me down. What I did let get me down was the unimaginably evil cab driver.

I should have been able to tell from the get-go that this guy was not going to make for a pleasant ride, despite it being a very short one. I alerted him to it being a short trip, of course, before even getting into the car to avoid any anger from his side. This did not work at all.

I gave him the address I needed to get to along with a chipper smile, helped him load my bags into the trunk, and we were off. Now, of course, I do not know anything about the street layout of Chicaho whatsoever. So, tell me please, how this man expected me to notice when he was making the wrong turn, as he had "misheard" my directions. The answer is there is no way I would have ever known. So he tried to drop me off at the wrong location and essentially lost his mind when I alerted him that it was not the right spot. He goes "oh my GOD, why you say nothing!?" in his broken english and began swearing to himself. At this point, I wanted this cab ride to be over more than anything in the world. He finally got me to the right location, got mad again because it "took me too long to point to the house", dropped me off across the street and let me get my own bags out of the car. Needless to say, I called to complain about him.

Hugo

I wanted to write about this film which surpasses any type of adjectival description while it was still fresh in my mind. However, I attended the 10 o' clock showing and was not out of the theater until well after midnight, so doing so was simply out of the question.

So now, here I am, two days later, and still floored, practically speechless, by the viewing experience provided by Hugo. What a spectacular film! I went in with essentially no preconcieved notions regarding the film or its subject matter. All I knew is that it was bound to be spellbinding, based on the reviews that I had revieved from some friends. Their rave reviews could not have been any more spot-on. Hugo is everything that a film should ever be. The casting could not have been more wonderful, the 3D actually added value, the plot lines were interwoven to perfection and the length was not a minute too long or too short.

The one negative thing that I heard about Hugo was that the "slapstick humor did not work to its advantage." I found this inaccurate, however, as I would not call the comedy in Hugo "slapstick" nor would I say that the humor in the plot was a distraction or any sort of disatvantage. I was led on a, not to sound horribly cliche, roller coaster of emotion, laughing hysterically at scenes with Sacha Baron Cohen (the guy from Borat) to feeling overwhelming sadness for Ben Kingsley's character.

Hugo shows filmgoers an unentered world and allows them to believe in the unbelievable. I strongly believe its success comes from the perfect intermingling of its elements to form something just short of magic.