Living your best career not merely implies if you are lucky enough to have a job or not, but it does make you think about how you choose to spend your time in what you love vs what you do.  Making a living is vital to most all of us.  But how we manage our time and focus our attention on what we have to do as opposed to what we love to do separates you from living your best career from just working.

Sometimes you find yourself in situations where the choices are limited and you have to do what you have to do to survive.  But finding something you love in what you do, even if it’s not your primary choice, helps to guide you towards living a meaningful and fulfilling career no matter what your job title is. How you find your drive, passion, potential no matter what your job is today is key to living and finding your best career.

We all get caught up in questioning the reasons why we choose to work.  Some of us think it’s the only way to build a career and follow your life’s dream.  Others see it as a means to pay the bills, one paycheck at a time.  And others still, have the attitude, “Well, what else would I do with my time if I didn’t work!”  Do you ever stop and wonder why we “work?”  The concept of “work” is a bi-product of the Industrial Revolution where you needed to produce in order to survive.  But today, work has taken on a whole new meaning or has it?  Have we just bought into the notion that we are living in a material world and it’s the only thing we need to focus on in order to move through this lifetime?

You may think you’ve done this enough times to know what you know and how best to interview for your dream job.  Sure, practice is everything.  But sometimes you get so comfortable in our habits of how you dress or show up for a meeting, or how you prepare by maybe even carrying a lucky talisman around, that you might appear a bit “auto-tron” in your delivery.  It’s not that you are getting set in your ways, but changing it up is never a bad thing especially when you are out to impress.

When you think about the past year what are you most grateful for?  Are you grateful for the job you have or the one you expect will come?  Are you still wishing for something big and wonderful to come into your life?  Opportunities abound and the future lay bright and sunny but do you ever stop and give thanks to what you have today?

 

 

I was invited to the red carpet premiere of MARMADUKE at the annual surf dog beach party held at San Diego’s Imperial Beach on May 22, 2010, and interviewed director Tom Dey and voice talents Owen Wilson (Marmaduke) and George Lopez (Carlos the cat).  Dey directed “Shanghai Noon” and “Failure to Launch.”  I asked Dey why he chose Marmaduke from the cartoon to make a movie.  “That’s a good question,” said Dey, “I love the character of Marmaduke.  That’s what I look for when thinking about my next film.  I want to find a character that I will want to spend a year and half of my life working with.  This is a great script and a great story.” I give Marmaduke 3.5 starfish.  It is packed with humor, romance, and action. 

 

 

I thought this film had stunning visual effects. The backgrounds look like watercolor paintings and the scenes of the garden and the assortment of wildflowers in the yard were beautiful. The film could use some improvements though.

Henry Selick's children's film is dark in both its tone and look. That is translated over into the new 1080p release from Disney. The color palette is muted, so one doesn't get the pop that animation often brings to Blu-ray. The images don't have the same depth as other animated films on Blu-ray do as well. I believe this is certainly more to do with the source than the transfer. Just looking at the standard definition trailer you can see a huge improvement. The picture is much clearer than the murky DVD transfer. There is noise throughout, especially in the live-action sequences, but no artifacting or banding. I'm not convinced this is the best the film could look, but it's the best available for home viewing to date by far.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 provides for a nice immersive experience. The scene where the peach rolls away stood out for me. The LFE channel boomed as the giant fruit broke free and started to move. As James and the bugs are flung around inside the peach, the audio gave a good sense of forward movement as objects crash in the foreground and roll toward the back speakers. The dialogue is clear and balanced well with the Randy Newman score.

The special features, however, are no improvement over the DVD. The DVD making of doc really puts the promotional in promotional featurette. It only provides basic information about the production. Very weak sauce… and it's too short too. Additionally from the DVD is the awful looking "Good News" music video and a standard-def trailer. The only new feature to the Blu-ray is a "Spike the Aunts" Interactive Game. It's entertaining for about one play at best and the design looks slapped together.

Darren Aronofsky has made a darker version of THE RED SHOES. From a screenplay by Andres Heinz, Mark Heyman and John McLaughlin, he takes the basic premise of the famed ballet Swan Lake and brings it to this psychological thriller. In trying to become the White Swan, a ballerina becomes the Black Swan.

That ballerina is Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman, CLOSER), a naive and insecure dancer who dances with perfection, but lacks that passionate spark. Her company's impresario Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel, READ MY LIPS) is casting a new version of Swan Lake and is looking to replace the aging prima ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS). Nina desperately wants the role, but Thomas doesn't think she has what it takes to play the sensual side of the Black Swan. Could that be the new tattooed tough girl Lily (Mila Kunis, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL)?

This is one first rate Blu-ray. The MPEG-4 AVC 1080p picture captures Tony Scott's unique visual style wonderfully. The deeply saturated colors just pop. The red of the runaway train. The blue of the "good" locomotive. The yellow of Will's jacket. The inky blacks that dominated the highly contrasted image. Details are rich in closeups where pores stand out to wide shots where the fall foliage is defined even when the camera is racing by. Grain levels are not consistent, but I chalked that up to the varying cameras used. To find anything like aliasing or shaky edge definition, one has to be looking for it.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is one to show off the sound system with. The LFE track shakes the floor, literally, as the trains roar by. The directionality is perfect as trains, helicopters and trucks race across the entire entire soundscape. In the midst of the chaos, the dialogue is always crisp. There is a reason this film was nominated for an Oscar for Sound Editing.

Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE filled me with joy. It’s an affirmation of life and a reminder that film is still an artform. When so many films today seem to be done by people who do not even understand the basics of the filmic language, here is a film that reminds us how elegant and transformative it can be when spoken so fluently. Malick communicates so much in a single image where some films would only dare to convey something so deep in their entirety. Malick isn’t shy to take on the big issues and here he takes on the biggest issue of all – life. And I’m talking about life on a cosmic level.

Malick begins his film about life with the revelation of a death. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt, 12 MONKEYS) and Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain, THE DEBT) receive word that their son has died. They struggle with the news and go through the stages of grief as everyone does. Malick intercuts this with how the death has affected their oldest son Jack (Sean Penn, DEAD MAN WALKING), who is now a successful businessman, but is lost in his life.