You definitely guessed what I'll be writing about. The premiere of the musical All Shook Up is tonight and I cannot simply sit still on my chair. Even though I am not a fan of the movies they made of those musicals and I have never watched any other live performances of any musical type - I consider myself as one of the biggest fans of the AUBG Musical.
Since my freshmen year when I watched Moulin Rouge performance I was fascinated, simply stunned. I was so excited about the whole musical at that time that I even went to see it for the second time in my home town with my parents - and then again I was amazed.
In my sophomore year the Broadway club performed Grease and even though that Moulin Rouge was better, in my opinion, Grease was simply brilliant and I really regret not seeing it for the second time.
Last year they performed Memphis and even though I never heard of it before after the premiere my expectations were more than exceeded.
And this year we are all trembling with excitement to see All Shook Up!!! Based on the songs of Elvis Presley, this must be a real masterpiece.
It is one of those shows that you do not want to miss!!!
If you sit down and think which one is the better quality camera, which brand is superior or which one is worth the money - well I would have to say that both are the same.
These are the top brands in the DSLR camera business and both brands produce high quality lenses and accessories which if compared would always have the same number of perks at similar price. You cannot explicitly say which one is the superior as the technical quality is the same (I am talking about same rank models).
Both, Nikon and Canon have nearly unlimited information and experience that has been gathered throughout the years of the companions and can now present amazing results in their models.
Now it all comes to design and approach and money that can be spent :) This is up to everyone's decision and opinion.
Here is an interesting video which compares tow of the highest rank cameras of both brands: Nikon 800D and Canon 5D mark 2
Whoever is interested in documentaries and film production should definitely plan on going to a Film Festival. Last weekend a group from university attended the annual Film Fest in Thessaloniki. My experience there with one word - AMAZING!!! Recently, I have been into video and film production a lot and this festival was the cherry on top of the cake. Great organization, great movies and great friends to spend the time with. From the very beginning as we arrived we knew it will be a time very well spent.
If we took dirt and garbage out of the picture, Thessaloniki looks like this amazing chill out place which young people go to to have fun and relax. The are various bars and restaurants all looking appealing and sometime it was difficult to choose as we knew we had limited time to go over all of them.
The 4 days we spent in Greece were full of surprises and great moments. We were able to go the the world premiere of several documentaries and them meet their directors, we managed to go to the cocktail of the opening night and even we managed to create a buzz around a very emotional documentary, by leaving a message to the main characters and spreading the word about it.
Some of the films we watched which will stay in my mind and I would gladly watch again if I have a second chance - Finding Vivian Maier, The Starfish Throwers and the documentary Linar. All of them with great stories, shot amazingly, leaving a very positive message in everyone's mind.
Before going to this Film Fest I never realized that this will be so beneficial to me and my future career. Meeting all the directors, distributors and producers showed us the business part to this more or less creative process.
Here are the trailers of the films I am talking about. Watch them as soon as you can and tell me what do you think:
Last semester I manage to take up a course called Documentary and Film making. In this course the whole group of students managed to create one short documentary in teams of two or alone and in the second part of the semester we managed to create a feature length documentary.
The title was Welcome Home and it is about a pensioners home in Blagoevgrad and about how much the perception of Bulgarians is distorted about what people do after retirement.
In Bulgaria people are used to taking care of their grandparents and parents after a certain age. Living together looking after them entirely. In the United States, for example, many of the retired people go to pensioners homes and are taken care of. They are happy there and in fact they are better off living in such a place due to many reasons.
In Bulgaria is a little different though. Thins movie tells the story of several people who are living in this pensioners home and are satisfied with their lives, contradicting with Bulgarian tradition they plan to spend the rest of their lives in there:
This week I decided to write about a different topic, one that is not closely related to anything that I have written or will write and it is about marijuana.
It is commonly accepted that marijuana is the least dangerous of them all and some even claim that it is harmless and not addictive. Two reasons which completely prove why it may be legal in some places. However, this is not entirely true. According to recent researchers, marijuana is extremely dangerous regarding brain cells, motivation, mentality, emotions and addiction.
It turns out that there are two major sections of the brain that are affected and different abnormalities are recorded. 40 students have been examined, 20 who used cannabis and 20 who did not. Dr. Anne Blood says "These are core, fundamental structures of the brain. They form the basis for how you assess positive and negative features about things in the environment and make decisions about them."
It appears that marijuana alters the way brain perceives pleasure and reward, presenting ordinary activities as less fulfilling. In fact, with more smoking actually the brain start developing different new connections which serves as becoming addicted, which is generally observed with people constantly refusing to stop, but claiming they are not addicted.
Mark Winstanly says "For too long cannabis has been seen as a safe drug, but as this study suggests, it can have a really serious impact on your mental health."
It was also investigated what happens with minors using the drug and it turns out that consumers below or at the age of 15 have a quadrupled chance of developing a mental disease after their teenage years.
40 people are definitely not enought to draw concrete conclusions, but it is a start.
The academy award ceremony was a long-awaited event in the sphere of cinema and movies. It is the most prestigious award any one from the industry can receive. There are various nominations in which actors, directors, cinematographers and many more can compete, but one nomination which deserves special attention would be for Best Motion Picture.
The nominated movies this year were American Hustle, Captain Philips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena and The Wolf of Wall Street. All great movies and all deserve attention for being already in the nomination, but there was another movie not mentioned above which actually won the nomination for Best Motion Picture - 12 Years a Slave.
It is about the years of slavery in the United States, where a free-born African American gets abducted and then sold to slavery. The story of the movie generated huge revenue for the last couple of months almost 150 million dollars and elevated the profits.
It was controversial whether a movie about the brutality of slavery would attract audience from oversea countries, it actually became very successful in many of them. It became very popular in UK, Italy, France and also in many Asian countries. It was a controversial fact why it was promoted with posters featuring white people like Brad Pitt who had a minor role in the movie or Michael Fassbender who not as famous as the star of the movie Chiwetel Ejiofor.
In addition to Best Motion Picture it actually received another Academy Award and it was for Best Adapted Screenplay. With those two awards it definitely prove itself as one of the best movies for 2013.
Here is a trailer to the movie:
What do you think about the movie? Share in the comments below :)
In my sophomore year the Broadway club performed Grease and even though that Moulin Rouge was better, in my opinion, Grease was simply brilliant and I really regret
not seeing it for the second time.
