My Own Little World

Hillsong UNITED has just released a new album. That sentence alone conjures various reactions, ranging from groaning to scoffing to cheering. Whatever the reaction, a new album from the Aussies is a momentous occassion in worship music. The Hillsong group of bands is arguably the best known and most sung of the major worship artists. Until 2013, most music critics did not want anything to do with any of the Hillsong bands, however, as they typically released what seemed like the same album over and over again. Then came Zion . The release of Zion  changed everything. A formerly complacent band radically challenged the format of the genre which they arguably defined and made for the first time in their career true art. This made it impossible for critics to at least like Zion . It appealed to the hipster crowd musically while still retaining Hillsong's hallmark songwriting. Enter Empires , UNITED's second studio album since transitioning into an indie-ish band. This de...

Today, I got an interesting announcement in my inbox. I subscribe to Phil Joel's email newsletter that updates me on all things in his music. I really like him because of his tenure with the Newsboys (he is best known for singing the verses on "Entertaining Angels"), but I've been curious to know what he's up to as of late. I found out for the first time today that he has started a new worship project called  Zealand Worship . I immediately went to their website and looked for any music they had made available. Upon listening to the four tracks there, I decided to initiate a new section for my blog: New Artist Spotlight. I'll be doing these infrequently to highlight new artists, Christian and otherwise, that I find particularly appealing and intriguing. Zealand Worship fits this bill pretty well. They have a sound rooted in the mid-2000s "we want to sound like U2 but not make it too obvious" worship music but with a slight electronic edge to it. ...

Well, that was exhilarating. Honestly, Mad Max: Fury Road  might be the most fun I've had at the movies in quite some time. I spent the last couple weeks catching myself up on George Miller's action franchise after seeing how well Fury Road  was doing critically. Long story short, the original films are now some of my favorite action movies. Flash forward thirty years, and Miller is back at it again, making the fourth Mad Max film. Without Mel Gibson. Skeptical? Don't be. If there's one thing George Miller knows how to do, it's direct an action film. Save for ten minutes in Beyond Thunderdome , he made three action films that centered around the action. In today's world, most action films try to go for emotional depth and complex scenarios only to drag themselves down with unnecessary clutter. While Fury Road  does add narrative heft and some emotional backstory, it augments the action and doesn't distract from it. The one complaint I have with Mil...

Wow, 2014 has come to a close. I've really enjoyed this year, especially in film. Over the next several posts, I'll be compiling all the films I've seen from this past year that I didn't review in full. As always, to see how I rank these films relative to each other, take a look at  my IMDB list for this year. Transcendence  - Watch it on cable.  I wanted to see this movie so much when I first heard about it. Christopher Nolan's cinematographer of choice Wally Pfister in my opinion made his films perfect visually. However, Transcendence  never really knows what to say about technology, bouncing back and forth between a the-environment-would-be-better-without-it perspective and a people-would-be-more-social-without-it view. It has such a convoluted plot and characters that fail to have a lot of dimension that all of Pfister's visually amazing direction just gets lost. Grade: 40 Edge of Tomorrow  - Buy it.  This is the most underrated film of th...

I'm going to put two of my cards out on the table before starting this review. The first: Into the Woods  is one of my favorite shows from a musical standpoint. The second: I have never seen it performed in its entirety on stage. Now that those two things are out there, let's talk about this film. I knew from the second that Disney picked up this project that it had enormous potential. They, more so than any other studio, have done musical fairy tales right almost every time they make one. When the cast list started rolling out, I became even more excited for Into the Woods . Bringing in heavyweight talents like Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt instantly brought some credibility, while the musical talents of Anna Kendrick and others would bolster the film in that perspective. Then, my school's drama department announced that this would be our spring musical, I knew I had to go see it. From the very first line, I knew that the music would be done justice. The score was wri...

Sometimes, movies can surprise you. Other times, they don't. Strangely, the latest creation of Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, The Interview , does both. On one hand, it definitely had a B-movie feel and was supposed to be campy, overdone, and exaggerated all around. On the other hand, I was surprised at how deftly it delivered blows through its satire. I'll confess that I'm generally not a fan of comedies these days. Most films placed in the genre just seem to be unfunny and stale (I'm looking at you, Adam Sandler). However, The Interview was one of the first films in a long time that I can say was genuinely funny. Granted, there are your lion's share of crude jokes that somewhat repeat throughout the film, but the delivery and timing of James Franco and Seth Rogen is impeccable. From the opening scene, every single viewer can tell that this is going to be a ridiculous movie, and that's exactly what it is. It's exaggerated, improbable, outlandish,...

In all my years of watching movies, I have never waited so long and with such great anticipation for a conclusion to such a mediocre series as I have for The Battle of the Five Armies . To be honest, I didn't love the first two films of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy all that much. They were overly long and quite poorly paced, making the short length of its source material obvious. However, they were good entertainment and definitely deserving of being seen in a theater, and because I loved Tolkien's novel so much I decided to give this final installment a chance. Similar to both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug , The Battle of the Five Armies is well-written and almost replicates Tolkien's novel on screen. However, Peter Jackson has added a lot of material and back story to the original to fill in the two hour running time; but this does not distract from the story as much as the previous films. This is mostly because this inst...