Fall

               Fall used to be my favorite season of the year. This year however feels a lot different, not more depressing but it just comes as a bad reminder. Fall by far used to be my favorite season of the year because of all of the colors and yes, even the rainy cold days. Another thing to look forward to were the scarves and sweaters, hearing leaves blow around outside, walking into coffee shops and being greeted by the smell of fresh brewed coffee and the warmth that engulfed you once you were inside. This year however, everything just feels heavy and I find myself not being able to enjoy even those rainy cold days that I used to love. Bittersweet would be the perfect word to describe this year, with a larger dose of the bitter half.

                During every fall season that I can ever remember, I’ve been comforted. I used to walk around town every day until I couldn’t feel my toes with all of my friends. We would take the River walk and just enjoy being with friends or in my case the outdoors. I looked forward to all of the goodies and smells that always come along with cold weather, apple pie, my mom’s pumpkin bread and candles in every room of the house. I even looked forward to spending time with myself and being able to look outside and see it, it sounds silly but I swear every other year I slept so good during those few transition months before winter.

                This fall is different. This year isn’t quite as nice as the last couple of years. The weather is still nice, I still look forward to the same things and I still plan on carving pumpkins, going to coffee shops and raking leaves. Even though I still plan on doing all of those things, the feeling that comes combined with all of those things just makes me feel exhausted all of the time. It doesn’t stop me from enjoying things out of my everyday life but it does bring back everything I would really wish never would’ve happened. It reminds me of the things that I have to live without.

                Of all of the horrible things that came out of last fall, there are some good things; I guess you could call it a silver lining. A lot of our distant friends all came together, friends that had gone away to college, friends I had just lost touch with. I started to really realize all that I had. Not only did it help to determine what I had but what those things meant to me and what I meant to them. I’m not angry about what happened, and I don’t regret the last words I said to him but I’ll always wish I had been able to tell him what he meant to me. Travis Charles Born was like an older brother to me, the goofy guy that never did anyone wrong and never deserved to die as young as he did. This fall will be bittersweet, I love this season but miss one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

R.I.P Travis Charles Born 10/17/10

               

Jane Eyre - The Movie, Not The Book

The movie Jane Eyre by director Cari Joji Fukunaga has had many great reviews from a number of prominent publications which I recently read after watching the movie. To be honest, it has become one of my new favorites; but then again that’s not a surprise considering the same thing happened after I read Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice followed by the 2005 version of the film. Maybe it’s just my love for classic literature that always has me falling in love with these kinds of movies, but from start to finish this movie was amazing. I think I might finally dig out my copy of the book from my bookshelf and then re-watch the movie a couple of times; but not before I give a brief overview of the film and my thoughts on it.

            The beginning of the film shows the main character Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) running away from a house while constantly looking behind her. She travels through the rain, over long flat lands right up until you get the impression she’s about to give up when she finds a house. The owner of the house St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) takes her in where she is taken care of by his two sisters. They give her a place to stay and question her about where she came from and who she is. When Jane gives them a fake name and hardly any hint as to where she came from, Rivers and his sisters seem content with the answers Jane gives them. Rivers lets Jane stay while he actively looks to find her work; which he does after finding out her educational background. This is where we begin to find out what happened to her and where she came from.

               If you have read the book then you know what to expect from the film. From what I’ve read of the reviews, it doesn’t vary far from the original version of the book by Charlotte Bronte. However, if you do watch the trailer first, it can be somewhat deceiving. The trailer gives nothing away about the actual storyline and instead shrouds the entire story in a kind of dark mystery. This is somewhat accurate but at the same time should not be looked at as a defining character of the film itself. Without giving this away, it is a love story but in the most non-girly and crazy happy way. It is a dark story, it has it’s troubling moments and certainly a twist I myself did not expect. I would say it is extremely bizarre but very well done and certainly worth a watch. I know that I will be sure to purchase this film for my own collection.
            Although I absolutely love this film, there were things that did confuse me. The twist for instance, I seriously did not see that coming. During the film, the first mention of any kind of mystery is from the ward of the master of the house, a little French girl Adele Varens (Romy Settbon Moore). She tells Jane that her sister has seen a woman with dark hair walk the halls at night. The next strange event to occur is a fire that gets set in Edward Rochester’s (Michael Fassbender) room. Rochester is the master of the house and swears Jane to secrecy when she wakes him to save him from the fire. The next incident is rather blunt. A visitor to the house, whom is not described but treated with extreme importance, gets attacked in the middle of the night and end up with extremely grotesque wounds on his body including a bite mark on his neck. I swear this film has nothing to do with vampires but even that threw me for a loop. Jane is again sworn to secrecy after Rochester asks her to take care of the visitor while he goes to get a doctor. Sometime after this happens is when you finally find out what is going on and GASP we get taken back to the beginning scene of the movie.  I’m not going to say how this movie ends, but honestly I think it’s worth a watch. This movie held my attention from start to finish and by the end of it I was thoroughly surprised; I would say this could arguably be the best movie of the year.