This is a little late, I know, but I just wanted to say HAPPY NEW YEAR and Happy 2010 to everyone out there! I hope the turkey was cooked right and you all got awesome gifts and spent some heart-to-heart time with others.
My Phantom of the Opera/Wild Horses video is now the most-watched of all my Youtube videos....WHOA...... and continues to do well, although views have slowed to a crawl recently, which is fine. I may be entering a contest hosted by one of my Youtube friends, but I'm not sure which ones to submit yet. Additionally, the stakes seem to be very high....either that, or my friend is a difficult critic when it comes to truly good videos.
Anyway, I went back to school today, and wasn't too happy about it, just for the record. Coffee helped me get through most of the day, although I started yawning in 7th period (math) and 8th (English). Sorry, Mrs. Ross. You're not a boring teacher. It's just me being exhausted.
I need to do some important stuff right now, so I'll sign off now. Here's to a new decade! *clinks glasses*
So the promised snowstorm has officially started around an hour ago, promising anywhere from four to twenty inches where I am. I'm excited and it really cheers up my mood. It's strange that I'm feeling both a little cranky and nervous, given that Christmas is only a few days away, but:
We'll be seeing a friend (and her family) of my mom's, who has a daughter a year older than me. The last time we saw each other was easily ten years ago and I'm a little antsy that we'll be too different to get along, or that she doesn't remember me.
I admit to being a little too slack about Christmas presents this year. I still have no idea what to give some people.
SAT-season is suddenly much closer than before. I have to check the registration dates. This is making me very on-the-edge.
But I'm trying not to dwell on that too much. The holiday season is officially here and with luck, all the snow falling right now will remain on the ground until at least Christmas morning. ^_^
I think I may officially take credit for being the first Youtuber to combine Phantom of the Opera with a Susan Boyle song. I uploaded a music video to Youtube last week using "Wild Horses" from her debut album and I was pleasantly surprised when it climbed quickly to more than 100 views within three days. Although I have 112 subscribers at the moment, not all of them are active (some of the accounts have actually been deleted, but still makes up the subscriber count) and because I joined Youtube later than some of my fellow PotO fans, I do not, by any means, have a huge following.
Anyway, views were climbing nicely and I'm sitting at home all happy, and then they taper off a little, which is fine by me. Then, all of a sudden, literally overnight, the view count for this video skyrocketed into outer space. It increased from maybe 175 views to more than 700 views. WHOA. Now someone tell me, how on earth did that happen in 24 hours?!? I've experienced surprising increases in views for my earlier videos, but nothing like this....
So part of me is really surprised, but overall I'm extremely flattered.
But wait. I checked it again a while ago and although the view count on my channel and the actual video page are different (800-something vs. 995), the view count for this vid has increased at least a further 100 views. Well, jolly good!
However, one thing that strikes me as strange and a little suspicious is that the number of channel views I've received so far has stayed the same for the past 24 hours. Of course, I'm not going to make any naive assumptions, but every time I've uploaded a new video, my channel views would increase by at least 50 views. Over 24 hours, the view count for this vid has increased by AT LEAST SIX HUNDRED VIEWS and....not a single channel view for me?
I'm not trying to appear shallow or superficial, but I can generally expect a noticable increase in my channel views after uploading something new. All I'm saying is, this breaks the trend, and I'd really like to know why.
Which made me wonder if my account has been hacked somehow and computer trolls or robots are artificially increasing my video view counts for that one video. But I sincerely hope not, because I've poured all my life-spirit into that Youtube channel, and to start over from scratch would be psychological torture for me.
Edit: I went through a rather frustrating process to change my Youtube password, just in case...I've also posted a question asking about this online, and the two people who've answered so far reassured me that it's normal and to be expected. This is definitely strange...but I more positive that nothing seriously wrong is happening.
I mentioned doing my own version of The Twelve Days After Christmas to The Phantom of the Opera...I just uploaded it to Youtube about an hour ago. I was surprised how fast I was able to make it, once I planned it out. Generally because of schoolwork any music video of mine can easily take one or two months, but since a) I was really excited about this and b) I'm under deadline...need to finish before the holidays, I was able to create the whole vid in 2 days. I'm proud of this one ^_^
Feel free to yell at me because it's 12:25 am here and I still have to do English homework for The Scarlet Letter, but I couldn't resist telling someone about this.
For the first time, I'm going to attempt, and hopefully succeed, at making a Christmas-themed Phantom of the Opera video. Backstory: when I was in 8th grade choir, the 7th grade Boy's Choir performed a HILARIOUS parody of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in their holiday concert. Ahh, good times....they got a standing ovation at the end, and I still can't hear the song today without laughing for tears.
Luckily, the song was a bit more popular than I thought. SO, I just got a rendition of it off iTunes and I'm SUPER excited about this. Some parts of it will be difficult, but I think I can pull it off!
Here's the parody, called "The Twelve Days After Christmas"...with some ad-libbing by the Husband in this video. Enjoy!
I've been unable to download purchased items from iTunes for a long time and it's been making me SO frustrated lately like you can't believe. I've looked at all the troubleshooting links in Apple Support, emailed them three times and called them three times. And now I'm starting to realize how often when I or my brother asks my mom a question, she doesn't answer the question itself but says something else. I'm sure she doesn't do it on purpose, but it makes me so mad because it gives me the impression that she's avoiding the question.
Because I'm charging the iTunes purchases to my mom's credit card and paying her back in cash, this has been the source of many intense arguments between me and her. And these are made even worse because I see plainly how she doesn't give a Hoover Dam about my opinion and contorts the argument so that I can't convince her of anything. And for some reason, I have to tell her something 5 times before she even realizes it.
For example, I was about to call iTunes Support for the second time and she said something about how I should email Customer Service instead of Tech Support, and I told her that as far as I was aware, there was no distinction/difference between Customer Service and Tech Support for the Apple Company. I know she heard me. So I called, and when I got no real results and my mom ordered me to call again, she mentioned that I should call Customer Service. I told her for maybe the third or fourth time that there was no difference between Apple's Customer Service and Tech Support, they were one and the same.
And when I was about to call for the third time, she said that as soon as the person on line picked up my call, she wanted to talk to them, presumably about asking for a refund. But I knew that she didn't have as intimate an understanding of the issue, so I explained the issue to the other person, not her. The Apple expert on the other end, like the one before, said that the servers were down at the moment and they were trying to fix it, so just keep trying. I was mad that I hadn't gotten any real results so far, but I kept it cordial and thanked them for their help. When I hung up, my mom was mad, of course. She asked me why I hadn't given the phone to her. I told her that she didn't have as thorough an understanding of my problem as I did (She is not very tech-savvy and had just gotten an iPod as a birthday present from me and my brothers). She ordered me to call AGAIN and ask about a refund.
By that time I was just really sick of her stubbornness and life in general. She knew that I was working on another email to Apple Support explaining the situation. I told her that I would ask about the possibility of a refund in the email, and she said that was different than telling them in person. I became extremely annoyed and I said that IT DOESN'T MATTER. EITHER WAY, THEY KNOW WE ARE ASKING FOR MONEY BACK.
J f-ing Christ. What's wrong with her?
Anyway, I just REALLY WANT MY PURCHASED STUFF.
Seriously, why doesn't iTunes have the capability to rip DVD's to one's iTunes library? Because the thing I want most from the purchased-but-not-downloaded list is V for Vendetta. I already have the physical DVD, but decided to get the movie for my iPod as well, because even though it costs more in the long run, it makes much more sense than packing the DVD with me when I travel, then looking around for a DVD player when I arrive at wherever I travel to. Certainly the average person understands what I'm saying, right? (Because apparently my mother doesn't. Of course, I don't expect her to. She doesn't sympathize with a lot of my viewpoints these days.) I have the DVD and the software to rip it to my computer, but iTunes doesn't want to make it a new addition to my iTunes library. Why on earth did Apple design it like this?
Ah. I remember. So they can benefit the most. Because we can't rip DVD's to iTunes, any movies or videos we want to get on our iPod have to be purchased from iTunes.
Of course.
SCREW THE ENTIRE F-ING WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EDIT: An iTunes expert went into my account and removed the defected file that was clogging up my download queue. So I can successfully download stuff from the iTunes Store again! YAYYYY! And regarding my mom.....well, I guess all moms are like that. =D I love my mom. Really, I do.
A couple of days ago on Youtube, I saw trailers for V for Vendetta on Youtube. I remember the TIME magazine article talking about it when it came out in 2005, and all of a sudden, I got a mad urge to watch it, which has been nagging at me all day until late last night, when I watched it online.
As my history teacher said, "You have to go back into the past in order to understand the present."
So, a bit of background that will make sense later on...
In 1605 in Great Britain, a man named Guy Fawkes was part of the Gunpowder Plot, a group of conspirators planning to start a full-scale revolution by blowing up the House of Parliament. On November 5, before the planned explosion took place, he was found, captured and executed. Britons celebrate Guy Fawkes Day on November 5 to this day. And you can also give Guy Fawkes credit for making "guy" a word in English.
That's all historical fact. Now THIS movie takes place in a dystopian, totalitarianist Great Britain in the future. You have the secret police, news anchors that actively lie to civilians, propaganda, all those things. If you've ever read 1894 or studied dictator-run regimes like Nazi Germany, it's pretty much the same thing. About 400 years after Guy Fawkes's failed attempt to bring order to Britain, a man, fresh with fury about his torture at a detention center for "untouchables" many years ago, swears vengeance against his torturers and promises to, once and for all, defeat the corrupted government by finishing what Guy Fawkes started.
That would be when you toss in the pretty lady. *laughs* And no, she generally does not look like that in real life.
Natalie Portman (Padme Amidala from Star Wars) plays Evey Hammond, a young woman from a family of activists who, having broken curfew, is about to be assaulted by Britain's secret police. V happens to come across her, and he saves her. From this point unravels an chain of events and deception that threatens to pull apart a nation.
My opinion? Not quite as fantastic as The Phantom of the Opera (indeed, I don't think anything can be better than PotO in my opinion), but still all-around awesome and a force to be reckoned with. Hugo Weaving (who also played Elrond, Arwen's father, in Lord of the Rings) does a GREAT job as V. Because he wears his full-face Guy Fawkes mask 99% of the time in the movie (he goes unmasked for, literally, about 7 seconds total out of his screen time), Hugo Weaving had to rely on his voice and body movements to express what V was saying. And even though V does go unmasked for a while, the audience never sees his face, so facial expressions are out of the question......and as much as I hate to bring the somewhat obnoxious and shallow fangirl perspective into it, he has a sexy voice. I just kind of melted at some of his lines.
Which brings me back to the screenplay. This is one of those films where you can find an answer to pretty much all of life's questions. V is, in a way, God. Subtle wisdom rolls off his tongue like it's nothing. Some of his lines zip by the audience, but five seconds later come back to their ears with so much truth in them that they start nodding in agreement. Here's two of them:
"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."
"...A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world."
Plus, although this is more of a futuristic thriller than a romance, there are several very dramatic scenes between V and Evey. I'm a pure romantic at heart, so I swooned during the sweeter moments.
They also managed to slip some very cool scenes into this movie. One of my favorites is when Inspector Finch, the man overseeing the investigation into V's scheme, explores the ruin of Larkhill and finds the connection that ties together all the events of the movie that take place over centuries. This scene is intercut with shots of V setting up thousands of dominoes (22,000 of them) into his personal symbol, then knocking all of them down with a flick of his finger. (As a side note, these extensive domino structures and their falling-downs can be seen on Youtube. It will probably blow your mind.) Even though I had already seen several videos of this kind of huge domino-setup, this was the first movie I'd seen with this included, and it was beyond cool.
I was skimming through the Wikipedia article on this movie at the same time and I read that many movie critics noticed many similarities to The Phantom of the Opera, both the novel and the movie. Both the Phantom and V are disfigured and wear masks to hide it. They are motivated by revenge and didn't expect love would come their way. They both have a thing for black, sword/knife fights and swishy capes. And Evey is Christine: Both women get a glimpse (or two) of V and Erik's home, which are both underground, and are forced to stay there for a period of time. In addition, Evey calls V a "mask-wearing genius", which is similar to what Christine says to Erik in the novel.
I also love the references to the number 5 and the letter V. Watch this movie closely, and you will see dozens. A lot of these are presumably details from the original comic book V for Vendetta is based off of, but it's still pretty cool. When V introduces himself to Evey for the first time, he performs a monologue that is saturated with the letter V. He holds two of his knives up in a "V" position before throwing them in one scene, and at one point, leaves an either accidental or intentional "V" mark on the walls of the subway after a fight takes place. In addition, V is the fifth-from-last letter of the alphabet, and E (for Evey) is the fifth letter of the alphabet. When V was held and tortured in the institution, he was held in Jail Cell 5. Because they used roman numerals for numbering cells, He was therefore in Cell V. _________________________________________________
Sorry about that, I know it was long! Anyway, a great movie, well-liked by critics and casual filmviewers alike, and well worth watching.
4.V OUT OF 5 STARS
Some more pictures for your viewing pleasure...
(a random promo shot I found...It's cute that Natalie Portman is around 5' 3" while Hugo Weaving is a whole head taller than her...no wonder he got picked to play Elrond in LotR.)
Random, spazzy and fun-loving. Very artsy and a PotO fan until the world comes crashing down. Here on earth to have a good time. Thanks for dropping by!
