Friday Favorites #2

Chillhop Fall 2018

It seems that music has really been doing it for me this week. Chillhop is back at it again with a beautiful list of songs. My favorite one they have made was from spring 2018, but this is probably going to tie with it. If you need some laid back beats that give you a chll ambience as the season settles into fall, I highly recommend this.

Forgive You – Leon Bridges

Twitter shot me an email saying that Leon Bridges would be live streaming a concert and so I followed suit. I had the concert on while I was doing schoolwork in the background. The whole concert was really compelling and everyone had a unique smooth, charm about them. Old favorites were sung like “Coming Home,” but one song has been stuck in my head and I keep replaying it on Spotify and that is “Forgive You.” The song goes through Bridges’ inner dialogue of forgiving a girl that he loves, but seems to leave him in the dust and hide him away. Even though the intent of the song is pretty clear, my creator brain looks at the wider scope of the notion of forgiving someone, including yourself. The notion of forgiveness has been finding it’s way into some recent poetry I’ve been writing as well. Even if you don’t want to dive that deep, it is still a beautiful, compelling song, just as the other songs on the album are.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to see this film, but it was a bit of an awakening experience. The performances given in this film were stellar, particularly that of Leonardo DiCaprio. He gave a very accurate depiction of what I assume is a disorder on the Autism Spectrum. Johnny Depp also gave a stirring performance as Gilbert Grape

and it speaks to those who can empathize and sympathize with the notion of having so much weight on your shoulders, but still feeling like you’re not going anywhere. As a storyteller, when I pressed play and listened to the backdrop of what was going on from Gilbert’s perspective, I was steeling myself because I just knew this movie was going to break my heart somehow…and it did, but it also helps puts the heart back together and gives it some form of hope.

The Night Manager

I’m going to be honest and say that I just wanted to see a Hiddleston performance. I’ve mostly seen his work in the context of playing Loki in the Marvel Universe, but I wanted to get an idea of what other types of characters he could assume. So, this popped up on Amazon Prime and I decided to start watching. This is a really compelling crime drama about a former soldier named Johnathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) who is caught in the middle of the shady arms dealings of a man named Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie). It’s the type of story where Pine has left the combative life behind, but is basically sucked back into it. If suspense and assuming various identities is your game, I would give this one a look.