Movie Night at Grant's Pad, End of the World Edition: 2012

Uh oh, the weather here in central Florida dropped below the 70s this morning! It had seemed like an awfully warm winter up to this point! That can only mean one thing... THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END! And, to commemorate, what better than the 2009 action thriller, 2012 - The End of the World?

Again, the mere presence of this full length feature film on YouTube is rather surprising to me, as this movie was released just three years ago! That said, considering large portions of the film are set, you know, TODAY, it's interesting to see some of the anachronistic elements that pop up here and there, such as the dearth of Apple products (and other smart mobile computing devices)! I can understand Back to the Future, Part II getting some of its vision of the future wrong, but that was predicting almost thirty years into the future, where as this movie was looking, at the time, less than three. You'd think they'd have gotten it more right! Of course, considering the super realistic depiction of our main characters fleeing various portions of the apocalypse, the smaller details are perhaps a little easier to overlook.

Until tomorrow! (See what I did there?)

Movie Night at Grant's Pad: Classic Musical 'My Fair Lady'

Ahhh, the classic musicals of yesteryear, when Hollywood was arguably at its most glamorous! Today's feature can be considered one of the many, many highlights of the late, great Audrey Hepburn.

Fun Fact: As with many musicals, My Fair Lady was adapted from a Broadway show which actually featured another actress by the name of Julie Andrews. However, Audrey Hepburn was selected to play Eliza for the film adaptation due to Andrews' lack of film experience at the time, and the film's producers wanted a "big name" for the lead role. As a consequence, Eliza's singing parts were actually dubbed since Audrey did not have much singing experience! Of course, Julie Andrews later on found her own fabulous success in hits such as The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins.

Enjoy!

Movie Night at Grant's Pad Kickoff: My Sassy Girl

Once upon a time, I held a weekly movie viewing at my apartment in college, taking advantage of Blockbuster's (R.I.P) rent-one-get-one free program while simultaneously providing an opportunity for exchange students to get together and socialize. This tradition went on for a few years, and now, I would like to revive it once again, in virtual form (although probably not as regular as the original Movie Night), thanks in no small part to recent developments in YouTube!

Back when YouTube first appeared in the Interwebz, it was limited to tiny clips (typically 10 minutes or less), and the video quality was horrendously shoddy, approximately 240p, which looks awful even on cellphone-sized screens. Nevertheless, it was video, that you could watch ONLINE, for FREE, without downloading anything at all! TEH AMAZNG!!one!1!

Over the years, the service has made several improvements, especially as competition from other sites, such as DailyMotion, emerged and offered different (and in some cases, better) content at higher playback quality. Notably, Google added HD playback resolution, which is quite impressive, integration with what is quickly becoming my favorite social network, Google+, playlists (making it possible to essentially replace the defunct music engine imeem as users could now string music videos together and set it up to play it back automatically), various automatic enhancement tools to take jitter out or improve the lighting of your uploaded videos, and, last but not least, the ability to upload videos of virtually any length, which of course, provided users the opportunity to... wait for it...

Upload full length feature films!

Now, this isn't really that new of a feature on YouTube. Previously, I exploited this feature primarily to find more obscure foreign films that don't usually get released in any form here in the U.S., such as Hong Kong comedy flicks or obscure documentaries. But recently, I've noticed more and more mainstream films are becoming available. I'm not sure why these videos don't always get removed, but I figured that I would take advantage while they lasted. And so, without further adieu, I present to you the first Movie Night at Grant's Pad with one of my favorite, yet still somewhat obscure to American audiences, film of all time, the film that introduced me to the so-called "Korean Wave", My Sassy Girl!

This romantic comedy features high production values, slapstick comedy, and a touching love story that is typical of modern Korean drama. It holds a special place in my heart, and I'm pleased to be able to share it with my readers today!