Music Review: Joni Mitchell: Blue 1971

This is on You Tube.  Joni Mitchell put out this album in 1971 when she was 27.  She wrote most of the music as she traveled through France after leaving a relationship.  She starts with the song "All I Want."  I like this sentiment from the song. 
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you

Isn't that what we should focus on in relations, making each other better.  

California starts out as peace anthem, but is more Joni singing about coming home to California.  It was in California where she recorded this album.

Sitting in a park in Paris France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won't give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had
Still a lot of lands to see
But I wouldn't want to stay here
It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here
Oh but California

California I'm coming home
I'm going to see the folks I dig
I'll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I'm coming home

However the highlight of this album is "River."

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

This theme is repeated several times throughout the album.  In referring to baby, it appears to be talking about a love, but may be a veiled reference to her own baby who was adopted by others when Joni was young.

Movie Review: ***^The Village

This movie is directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  Again this movie has twists.  What makes this movie eerie is the use of colors--yellow for the Villagers and red for the monsters.  The community is manipulated into red areas and yellow areas.  It is very isolated.  The villagers are not to go into the red area.  However, some of the young people are wanting to challenge this tradition.  Ivy Walker, who is blind, (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) have a love interest.  However this leaves out a third friend, Noah Percy (Adrien Brody) who becomes jealous, and stabs Lucius with a knife.  It falls upon Ivy to save him by going for medicine.  It is a long journey for a blind girl, especially with monsters around.  Sigourney Weaver plays Lucius' mother, and William Hurt Ivy's father.
I enjoyed this movie very much.  It does not keep its scariness on subsequent viewings, but the first watch is very creepy.  This is not geared as a children's movie, and the red blood is a bit graphic for children.