Speeding to the Rose Bowl

Had a really good weekend. I went back to Penn State and was able to get some student tickets thanks to Michelle. Using my old ID, I was able to sneak into the student section for the football game vs MSU. I was determined to get there early and get good seats since this was my only game and Michelle paid good money for the tickets. This meant we were out in the freezing cold for more hours than we needed to be. Thanks to my pleading, we went to the stadium three hours early and waited until after the game until we left. We were all frozen solid with all extremities completely numb. That being said, it was soooo much fun. I just love screaming my heart out with 110,000 fans. We easily handed the Spartans a 49-18 loss which means we should be heading to the Rose Bowl. I probably won't follow the crowd there as tickets are going to be way to expensive to justify for one football game. I saw some going foe over $1,000 for one ticket. I'll gladly watch it at home or at the bar. I hope we don't have to play a rematch again though. I wish they could at least shuffle the teams if that were to happen as it would benefit all.

A real quick thought: Today I discovered the newest Linkin Park album, Minutes to Midnight from 2007. I really liked it and thought nearly every song was put together well. I was also surprised at how many songs I immediately recognized. There were 6-7 tracks I knew without ever fully playing the CD before. This CD must of had quite the exposure for me to know that many.

Lastly, my late thoughts on the Speed Racer movie that I watched through Netflix. Coming into this movie was expecting total crap to a mediocre film. Every trailer I saw over the summer looked like complete crap with just an orgy of color and absolute rubbish. I heard some mixed reviews saying that some liked and others hated the movie. For some reason, I decided to give it a shot. To my surprise, I really liked this movie. It was a total blast of a film. The races were actually very exciting and fun to watch. I was literally anticipating what would happen next and how it would be shown. The art style and visual direction were very effective and I fell in love with. The quick shots in the trailers made me hate it, but when watched as a full movie, I thought it worked extremely well. Seeing it all in High Def definitely helped, as the colors of the movie was incredible. I know everything was so hyper real, but I think that added to it. Some of the other art direction payed homage to the original anime styles and features. I thought it was a nice touch when I noticed it, and may have helped contribute to why I liked it. The movie's biggest downfall is its plot. It is very simplistic and is so formulaic. You know that Speed is going to win nearly every race as soon as you put the disk in, but I think that only deterred the movie slightly. Considering I was still anticipating every move in the actual race, knowing the final outcome mattered little. The movie was a pleasant surprise and I'm glad I enjoyed it so much. After watching the making of special feature on the disc, it made me think if there were any other major anime to movie transitions, after they were explaining some of their art choices. I'm having a very hard time coming up with one, and believe that this may be one of the first majorly successful ones.