Thoughts on A Quiet Place Part 2 – maybe some spoilers?

I was excited to find A Quiet Place Part 2 at Redbox recently because I really enjoyed the first installment. Here’s the trailer for part 2…

A couple things I liked… The sound design for this one was stellar! My favorite part of the sound was how they used silence (surprise, surprise) from the perspective of the deaf daughter. The thriller/horror genre of movies uses all kinds of sound effects to frighten audiences. Think of animals growling, monsters screaming, orchestra songs building… but taking the sound away completely was actually more frightening. I guess I didn’t realize how much I, as an audience member, rely on the sense of hearing as it relates to thrill of a movie. Without that, and just relying on sight… a whole different experience. So this part of the movie was pretty awesome.

Another compliment was the editing/storytelling. Instead of showing a scene to its completion, then moving on to the next one, at times we were presented with groups of scenes in which they cut back and forth between multiple scenes and storylines. I didn’t know what to expect when I first noticed this style of editing, but by the end of the movie I was impressed.

The dislikes… But speaking of the ending of the movie… NOT impressed. This is one of my two complaints. Some movies end with a cliffhanger, some with a bad wrap-up. Of course, there are movies that have the perfect ending (like Never Been Kissed, my favorite movie ending of all time). This one though, it just sort of stopped. There didn’t seem to be an ultimate resolution, a big win, nor did it set itself up well for a part 3. There was no cliffhanger and barely any payoff.

That was disappointing. As was the lack of screen time for star, John Krasinski. It was weird in that he was front and center for the first 10 or 15 minutes, then poof he was gone, never to be seen again. I even had to rewind the movie to make sure I didn’t miss something because it quickly went from a neighborhood Little League baseball game to escaping an alien… and John Krasinski was just gone with no explanation.

Perhaps his disappearance will be addressed more thoroughly in part 3, along with a quick reappearance.

But overall this movie was good and worth watching.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

Zoa Energy Drink commercial is one of my new favorites! Plus, who sings the song??

Dwayne Johnson backs a new energy drink brand called Zoa, and while I can’t vouch for the flavor or the safety of drinking it, I CAN say the ad might stick in your mind for a while. Take a look. 

It’s 100% the music that keeps this ad fresh on my mind. If you’re struggling to connect the melody, you may remember it from traditional Christian church services. The song is “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” written in 1907 by Henry van Dyke. It’s official title is “The Hymn of Joy” and uses the melody of Beethoven’s (the musician/composer, not the dog) Symphony No. 9, written in the 1820s. Here are videos of each of those. 

The track for the Zoa ad features a singer close to Dwayne Johnson’s heart… his wife! According to Access Online…

“…song written and performed by Dwayne’s wife, singer/songwriter Lauren Hashian, along with Naz Tokio.”

How do you feel about this ad? Does the music keep playing in your mind, like it does mine?

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

You won’t believe who I sold my mattress to…

In the tiny personal purge that’s going on in my home here in Nashville, I have sold things I wanted to, things I didn’t want to, trashed things I should’ve years ago, and tossed things I hadn’t looked at in over a decade. Lots of things I’ve given away, too, to a local thrift store. Like I’ve said before (in this post), minimizing my possessions has been an unexpected joy that feels so freeing.

And then there’s the mattress. Ok, so I have 2 beds in my house. One is my bed. The other is the dog bed. The story for their bed is that I stumbled upon a great deal for a king size mattress so I scooped it up and have since been using it for their bed. It was such a nice mattress that I slept there too, most nights. It was huge.

Time came for me to sell it (because, like I said, I’m getting rid of basically everything in my house, more on that later!) so I listed it and waited. A few nibbles from potential buyers and then it sold.

The person came to get it and I wanted to make sure it was known that the mattress was used as a dog bed, although it was in great shape because I had a water resistant cover on it.

This person was fine with that and after I inquired if it would be used as a dog bed in the future, this person informed that it was going to be used by humans. Totally cool. More conversation revealed that this mattress…

is going…….

to be used……

in a…………

swingers club.

Well, OK then! Off it went and for the rest of my life I’ll be able to share the story of this mattress.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

An old “love” letter I never sent

The word love is in quotes because the letter is hardly about love. I’m referring to a letter I wrote to a woman (or rather I letter I wrote in my journal, addressed to a woman) I was dating at the time. At the time, I thought I would transcribe it to a loose sheet of paper and give it to her, but that never happened. So the thoughts and frustrations and joys I had in my life coming from my relationship with her are all contained in this 2-page journal entry.

Why am I telling you this? Well, yesterday I began the process of typing the letter into a blog post. I got about halfway through and thought, “What’s the point?” I don’t know if anyone out there needs to read this, much less wants to read it. Not only that, as I read it over, I was kind of a jerk! I’m not saying some of my frustration wasn’t valid, but it was NOT a love letter. More of a break-up letter, if anything.

To sum up our relationship, it was really good. But she didn’t want to date me. I know that happens every day but the frustrating part was that she had recently dated a guy that didn’t treat her well, and she broke up with him multiple times. I didn’t understand why he got so many chances, and she wouldn’t give me even a single chance.

Here I go getting frazzled again!! If you want to find out what was in the letter I never sent, comment below and I’ll write it out, and post it in a future blog. I am willing to put myself out there because surely I come across as a little bit of a jerk. But now you can’t say that because I already did 🙂

Do you have any letters you never sent to a former significant other? Comment below and also let me know if you want to know more about my letter.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Out of the Wilderness

Chevy’s Funny Cat Commercial – The Music, The Blowfish, and More!

During the Olympics coverage recently I saw a great Chevy advertisement. It wasn’t so much the Sliverado that made it great, it was man’s best friend that took gold in this ad.

*For the new Silverado Trail Boss ad featuring Walter the cat, click here*

Wait, a cat is man’s best friend!? That’s up for debate, but what isn’t in question is that this ad is pretty adorable and funny. Walter the cat outshines the multi-flex tailgate and, after launching himself in the lake chasing a stick, Walter draws the attention and admiration of a nearby fisherman.

The background music in this ad is “Big Rock Candy Mountain” by Harry McClintock from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Check out the full song below.

This song is almost 100 years old, recorded in 1928. Since then, there have been many renditions by many artists. The song was also used in a Burger King commercial, with customized lyrics performed by Darius Rucker, lead singer for the 90s band Hootie and the Blowfish.

For the minute-long Chevy ad, director Jim Jenkins shot on a private 100,000-acre ranch in Utah, with 9 trained cats on set, according to this Muse by Clio article. You can also scroll down in that article to get all the credits from the ad.

What do you think of this ad? If you have a cat, would they perform these tasks as well as the trained cats did? Would your dog!? I know mine would need much training to do as well as the feline actors!

Thanks for stopping by…

-Out of the Wilderness