"I'd like to think there's more to a person than just one thing."

Last week, the Austin Film Society screened The Spectacular Now at the Marchesa Hall & Theatre followed by a Q&A with Director James Ponsoldt and I was lucky enough to attend.

Based on the book by Tim Tharp, this film is about a troubled, hard-partying high school senior named Sutter that gets dumped by his girlfriend and starts hanging out with Aimee, a quiet, "nice girl" from school. He keeps telling himself that she is just his rebound, but eventually they fall in love and she changes the way he looks at his life and his other relationships. 

While the relationship between Sutter and Aimee is the main focus of the story, it is really about a young man who is not happy and uses alcohol to block his pain. As someone who often projects a happier persona and uses movies and television, as opposed to alcohol, to distract me from my life, I definitely identified with Sutter. In one of my favorite scenes, Sutter is talking to his teacher and he says, "I don't see what's so great about being an adult. Are you happy?" and the teacher has no response. Sutter would rather live in the moment than have to think about his future. He pushes away the people that love him and care about him because he does not want them to see that he is miserable.

2013 Fall Movie Preview

Thanks to arrival of my Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview, I now present you with the list of movies that I am most looking forward to seeing over the next few months. I have provided the trailers for each movie, when there has been one available, but a few have not yet been released.

September
20: RUSH (Chris Hemsworth, Olivia Wilde, Natalie Dormer, Daniel Bruhl)


20: THANKS FOR SHARING (Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Gad)


27: DON JON (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Danza, Julianne Moore)


Other September possibilities include SALINGER (9/6), ENOUGH SAID (9/20) and PARKLAND (9/20).

October
TBA: DIANA (Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews)


Other October possibilities include RUNNER RUNNER (10/4), 12 YEARS A SLAVE (10/18), THE FIFTH ESTATE (10/18)

"I threw my pie for you."

I follow a lot of entertainment-related people on my Twitter account. I also tend to follow people that I agree with so, sometimes my perception of what the majority of people are actually watching and enjoying is a little skewed. From my Facebook feed, it seems like most of my friends have not yet discovered my two new favorite shows so I thought I would try to change that, especially considering those same friends compose the majority of my readers.

Over the past month, my Twitter timeline has been a constant love-fest for new shows Orphan Black on BBC America and Orange Is The New Black on Netflix. I was not initially planning to watch either, but I could not ignore the loud voices telling me how amazing these shows are and I am very glad that I gave into the peer pressure. They were right and you should all be watching them as well.

While it was actually airing, I had only seen a few posts here and there about Orphan Black but again, mostly from entertainment writers and bloggers and mostly from the same few people. However, after hearing about Tatiana Maslany for four days straight at this year's ATX Television Festival, I decided I should probably see what everyone was talking about.

The pilot starts with a woman named Sarah Manning standing on a train platform when she sees another woman who looks exactly like her jump in front of a train. Sarah steals this woman's purse and identity and plans to clean out her bank account before leaving town with her own daughter and foster brother. However, she soon discovers that there is much more to this woman, Beth Childs, and their identical appearance than she first thought and she soon meets Katja, Alison, Cosima and Helena. They are all clones and are trying to figure out where they came from.

Maslany plays all of the clones and is absolutely fantastic. You forget that the same actress is playing all of these characters because they look and act and sound so different. It is rather remarkable. I had only ever seen her in one episode of Flashpoint and she was great in that small role but, after watching this show, it is baffling to me that she has managed to stay under the radar until now.

The rest of the cast is equally fantastic and includes Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Kevin Hanchard, Michael Mando, Skyler Wexler, Inga Cadranel and Matt Frewer.

The second season unfortunately does not come out until April 2014 but, luckily for you, the first season DVDs were just released! That means you have plenty of time to catch up on this amazing show!

"There is nothing to hold onto but reality, to realize the present whatever it may be."

I am very excited to be volunteering for Season Two of the ATX Television Festival here in Austin this weekend! Just like last year, this festival will bring together actors, writers, directors, producers, music supervisors, studio executives and fans to talk about the past, present and future of television. There will be screenings, panels, parties and live music with some of the industry's leading professionals.

Tomorrow's opening night screening and party is presented by Netflix and will feature a few of the new Arrested Development episodes followed by a Q&A with the cast. Other screenings going on throughout the weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz and the State Theater are Scandal, The Riches, Hart of Dixie and The Vampire Diaries, as well as the new season premieres of Falling Skies, Hell on Wheels, Perception and Sullivan & Son. We are also excited to be premiering AMC's new Summer drama Low Winter Sun and Fox's new Fall comedy Enlisted. But that's not all! On top of that awesomeness, there will also be cast reunions for My So-Called Life, Party of Five, Boy Meets World and American Dreams!

This year's panels include Veronica Mars: a TV show...no wait, a movie!, Directing in a Writer's World, Structure of a Sitcom and the Rise of the Anti-Sitcom, Creating the Sound of a Show and Casting Deconstructed. Michael Jacobs will also reflect on his career, which includes shows like My Two Dads, Dinosaurs, Boy Meets World and the new Disney show, Girl Meets World. Panels and screenings are being moderated by Meg Masters from TVLine, Robyn Ross from TV Guide, Ben Blacker from Nerdist, Jarett Wieselman from ET online, Laura Prudom from The Huffington Post, Ryan McGee from the AV Club and a few others.

I can hardly contain my excitement!

"If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder."

In the past month, I have seen Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover Part III and Furious 6 and they were all good. If you liked the previous franchise movies, you will probably like these as well. However, I am not going to review them here because most people have probably already made up their minds about whether or not to see those. Instead, I am going to talk about The Place Beyond the Pines and The Iceman, which were fantastic and I am not sure these films are on most peoples' radar.

To be fair, I mostly saw these two movies because of who is in them (Bradley Cooper, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans), but I am glad that I did and now think you should too!

The trailers for The Place Beyond the Pines made it seem more like an action movie and, while it did have a few fast-paced scenes, I would call it more of a character study. Similar to director Derek Cianfrance's most recent movie, Blue Valentine, it is about the how these peoples' lives intersect and how each action affect those lives.

The movie is split into three acts. The first act focuses on the character of Luke, played by Ryan Gosling, a motorcycle stunt rider who starts robbing banks in order to provide for his son. The second act follows Bradley Cooper's character, Avery, who is a young cop in a small town police department run by corrupt detectives. Avery and Luke's individual stories only overlap once, but that small interaction has huge consequences, which you see fifteen years later in the third act of the movie between their two teenage sons. It is an intense story and very well done.

The acting is great all around, as is to be expected from all involved, but I was especially impressed with Eva Mendes. She is the only actor that is in all three acts of the film and normally I am not a huge fan of hers, but she actually surprised me in this. And, of course, I would get my wish of having Cooper and Gosling in the same movie only to have them be in only one scene together. C'est la vie.