Movies Schmoovies

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

I subscribe to The Goldberg File - Jonah Goldberg‘s email newsletter, which is hilarious.

In his latest missive, he mentions his appreciation for the vampire ouevre:

I can understand why John Miller wants the culture to move on to werewolves, Frankenstein, mummies, or whatnot, but I don’t think that’s likely. Vampires are better literary devices for, I think, obvious reasons. Werewolves are nice people who turn into mean animals. Mummies are zombies wrapped up in Ace bandages. Frankenstein is a DIY zombie with a slightly better operating system. (Note: Lord knows I’m not dissing Zombies. But two points need to be made on that score. Individual zombies are not particularly scary or interesting. For zombies to work cinematically, pretty much the whole word has to go zombie. Second, even then it’s not like there are a huge number of plot innovations for zombie themed movies). Meanwhile, vampires are smart and wise (thanks to their age) and they can have sex and so on. Oh, and they’re subversive: They live among us.

He then expands on a thought I’ve had myself, which is why I never read the sequels to Twilight (aside from the terrible movie, which is the other reason I won’t be continuing with the stories in either dead tree or celluloid versions).

But I do have a problem with the vampire mania sweeping pop culture. There’s something gross about it.

In Twilight, the romantic lead is Edward Cullen, who’s about 120 years old and falls in love with a 17-year-old girl.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel was born in the 1700s, and he’s in love with Buffy, who’s 16 or so when the relationship starts.

In The Vampire Diaries, Stefan Salvatore is about 160 years old. His girlfriend seems to be about 17.

In True Blood, Bill Compton is roughly a century-and-a-half old, and he seduces a woman in her early twenties.

Anyone see a trend here?

Put True Blood aside, since it’s intended for adults. Imagine if the 17-year-old girls in Twilight, Buffy, or Vampire Diaries were being seduced by 65-year-old guys. That would be gross. But when the teenage girl is seduced by a guy two, three, four times as old, it’s like-totally-OMG-super-romantic. Why?

The explanation, according to the girls, seems to boil down to: Because he’s good looking. Because he’s mature. Because he’s mysterious (“I’ve never met anyone like him!”). And because he’s at war with his urges.

The problem is that if you take away the good-looking part, you’re describing a run-of-the-mill dirty old man. If you keep the good-looking part, you’re describing a slightly younger but really, really sleazy dude who cruises high schools looking for jailbait.

Ick.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Instead of watching the Academy Awards show on Sunday night, we watched The Hurt Locker.

You all know that it won Best Picture, with the director winning as well. In my humble opinion, it totally deserves those awards. And Jeremy Renner deserved his Best Actor nomination.

My only quibble is with the commissary scene - at no point in my experiences of going to the commissary did I ever see one so barren of people. I told Beau that every time I went with my mother the place was over-crowded with people.

Excellent movie that gets 4 stars out of 5.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Went to see my dentist yesterday to get my temporary crown put in and also a filling in another tooth. I was there for over 3 hours. I managed to watch The Wedding Planner 1.5 times. “Watch” meaning it was playing on the screen next to my chair and ran throughout the procedure of drilling and shots and drilling and shots. When I sat down I caught the last 10-15 minutes and the first 5-10 minutes of the movie. And then I was laid back and hung out that way for about 90 minutes of torture - I could hear the movie, but I couldn’t see it. Then, when he was done with the drilling I sat there watching the last 15 minutes and the first 5-10 minutes again while I waited for the temporary crown to be molded prior to insertion into my mouth.

It’s a little disconcerting to hear that drilling sound behind you when you’re at the dentist.

1.5 viewings of The Wedding Planner = way too much J.Lo. But it also = still not enough Matthew McConaghey. So does that make it a wash?

Anyhow, 3+ hours and 3 shots of novocaine later I spent the afternoon trying not to chew off the right side of my lower lip (somehow it got slightly mangled as the day went on). I go back in 2 weeks to get the permanent crown and then I’m done with the dentist for the rest of my life. No, that’s not true. I have been asked to go back in 3 months for a cleaning that didn’t get finished since it had been 8 years since my last trip to a dentist’s torture chamber.

Friday, January 01, 2010

The last movie I saw in the theater was The Dark Knight. Children change things, don’t they?

Sherlock Holmes was the pick for our date yesterday. I was a little nervous about it - aside from seeing the trailers, I didn’t know much about it. And then my mother said she wasn’t interested in it because she heard it had a “spirit of wickedness” in it. When asked, she didn’t go into specifics about what that meant.

It became clear what she meant in the opening minutes of the movie - the “bad guy” was involved in occult practices. I’m not giving much away to state that - I won’t say anything more, except to reassure folks that the occult angle was handled more as superstition than as supernatural. It was not glorified at all.

Anyway, we loved the movie. Purists may take issue with Robert Downey’s Holmes, but I liked him. Jude Law as Watson was excellent. And the two men together had great timing. The movie was fast-paced, had an interesting stylized feel (kind of comic book-y, but not in a distracting way), and moved the plot well. I predict a sequel and we will be in the theater to see it when it comes out.

4 stars out of 5.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Nativity Story: I caught this on cable over the weekend. Somehow I hadn’t seen it before now, but I really liked it. 4 stars out of 5.

Julie & Julia: Loved this movie. Streep is freakin’ amazing. I heart Stanley Tucci. 5 stars out of 5.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Excellent. I’m thinking about re-reading the books, but it would have to be the audio versions. I’m also thinking about watching all of the movies together, sort of, we don’t have the time for that with our kids, but some kind of marathon in any case. I may wait to do that before the last movie come out. 4 stars out of 5.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Wow, my last post was on November 30th? That’s just sad. Ye olde blogge is sorely neglected.

Is anyone still checking in?

Here’s a load of random stuff from the past couple of weeks:

1. Watched Night at the Museum 2 - not as good as the first, we laughed in places probably not intended to be funny. Hank Azaria was not funny. 2.5 stars out of 5. Next up: Julie & Julia. Amy Adams, yet again, in all of her perkiness.

2. We have beef. A large quantity of it. It looks very good - nice and lean. We managed to screw up in our order of the cuts wanted, which resulted in a lot of ground beef, but that was our fault. The first to be eaten will be t-bone steaks on Monday or Tuesday.

3. Jesse is entering the challenging 3s. I loved 2. He’s just shy of 3 and there are times when I wonder if he’ll make it to 4. The problem is his insatiable curiosity and intelligence. My fear is that he will figure out how to dismantle the DVD player (or something similar). Yesterday he decided to decorate his room with Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. I won’t go into further details, except that attempts at clean up involved Orange Glo furniture polish. I’ll be breaking out the OxiClean tomorrow. Truthfully, I haven’t had a chance to investigate the whole situation yet because I haven’t been in his room in daylight since it happened.

4. Traffic is killing me this week - it took me 2 hours to get from work to our church last night, which is actually closer than if I had gone home. I had band practice, so I had to be there.  Got no dinner and I didn’t get home until after 10pm. If Beau hadn’t brought the kids to the pot luck lunch at work I wouldn’t have seen either of them at all yesterday. Boo.

5. Why is December so freakin’ busy? I have worship team this weekend. Then next weekend I have a worship arts team Christmas party at our pastor’s house on Saturday night (with the departure of our worship leader in the spring, we’ve been lead by a team of folks in the interim. Supposedly we’re supposed to hear the vision at this party. I have heard bits and pieces from various staff that trouble me.) On Sunday night my small group ladies are having a Christmas pot luck. I’m not sure if we’ll then have our regular Monday night meeting or not, but I know the plan was to be finished with the Meyer book before Christmas, so I think we well.

6. On the Meyer book, I have mixed feelings about it. The general principles are good and the encouragement to go to Scripture is well needed and excellent. However, I have issues with a few of the things she has said - not major theological things, but things that could be taken wrong if out of context.

7. Still no word on a date for my transition to the new job. It’s beyond frustrating. I’m sure my stuff is sitting on some drone’s desk waiting for action, while said drone is out on his/her use-or-lose leave.

Monday, November 30, 2009

We watched a movie this weekend - first time in months. It’s all we can do to keep up with the TV shows I’m recording. I have a backlog of stuff on the DVR that still needs watching, too.

Speaking of TV - V good. But we have to wait until March for more episodes? Ridiculous.

So anyway, we watched Star Trek. I loved it. The casting was nearly perfect (McCoy weirded me out a bit, because I know that guy was Eomer and I couldn’t get used to the McCoy hair over Eomer’s blond locks). The acting was awful. I liked just about everything about it (except for the gratuitous bedroom scene, but even that rang true with Kirk’s womanizing ways).

I assume there will be sequels. I’m hoping there will be and I’m looking forward to them.

4 stars out of 5.

Monday, August 10, 2009

We watched two movies in the last week:

Miracle at St. Anna - this one we liked. It took us four evenings to get it watched because of the way our evenings go with getting dinner eaten, the kids to bed, and then Molly Ann’s feedings and our own bedtime. There’s some rough language, especially from one character in particular, but it was pretty tame for a Spike Lee movie. It’s not great, but we liked it. 2.5 stars out of 5.

Doubt - please, someone explain to me why you liked this movie? We hated it. 1 star for stellar acting alone.

Monday, July 27, 2009

I managed to watch the Masterpiece Theater version of Wuthering Heights over the weekend.

I have never read the novel or seen any other production of the story so beyond knowing the character’s names and the setting in the British moors, I had no clue what to expect. I thought it was very good and I should have expected the ending, but I didn’t. I thought this particular production was well done, but I have nothing to compare it to. 3.5 stars out of 5.

For the women who love Heathcliff, I don’t get that. He’s no Darcy.

Side note: the dude who plays Heathcliff looked really familiar so I looked him up on IMDb.com - no surprise why I recognized him - he was in Band of Brothers and also Colditz.

Friday, July 10, 2009

I hated it and concur with most of the Rotten Tomatoes reviews. With the exception of Ebert, who is nuts.

I’ve posted my specific complaint behind the link, but it’s a huge spoiler, so if you want to waste your time watching the movie don’t click over.

I gave it 2 stars at Netflix. However, I may revise that to 1 star. The first hour was pretty good - it was the ending that killed it for me.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Billy Mays, too?

Movies: Blood Work was OK.

Books: Shadow of Power by Stever Martini was pretty good, although I figured out the major mystery about halfway through the first chapter.

Food: Judging from the Roasted Mango-Chipotle sauce we had on our chicken last night, Bronco Bob’s sauces are awesome. I have a sample jar of the Raspberry-Chipotle sauce as well that I’m saving for some salmon in our future.

I’m on worship team this weekend. Our church is only having services on Sunday morning since July 4th is on Saturday. That will make things easier for our family. I have mixed feelings about it since it will be my first time back since having Molly Ann and also since our worship leader left. That is a whole long story about which I still feel weird. His leaving was a surprise and under odd circumstances. I miss him a ton as a worshipper and I know that I’m going to miss him more as our team leader. I’m very curious about what kind of person will come in to replace him - it’s hard to imagine anyone else, really.

I’ve posted a bunch of new items at Ticklish Giggles recently and there’s a new theme as well.

Happy Monday.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Beau’s Mom is here from California for a week-long visit with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She’s spending the first leg of her east coast trip with the Speaks’ clan. She arrived on Saturday afternoon. Beau and Jesse met her at the airport and then took her on a quick foray to Wegmans to pick up the few ingredients we needed for our chicken fajitas dinner. After dinner she crashed and Jesse went to bed so Beau, Molly Ann, and I had a pretty normal Saturday evening hanging out in our bedroom watching TV.

Oh, and Saturday was my sister‘s 40th birthday - I never made it to the computer all day to post birthday wishes here on the blog, but I did call to sing the Birthday Song to her. Happy belated birthday, my sistah. And it was also Granny‘s birthday, so happy belated birthday to you, too, my friend!

Yesterday morning was family dedication day at church. We were dedicating Molly Ann to the Lord at the 9:30 service so we headed out early. Jesse, Beau, and Molly Ann all developed colds throughout the weekend, with MA being at her worst yesterday. So I kept MA out of the service all together since she needed to be fed anyway. Marmie hung out with Jesse in order to keep him out of the nursery and so that Beau could be in church with his mom. At the end of the service we stood at the front with my folks, Beau’s Mom, and several ladies from my small group who stood with us to dedicate our baby girl to God. We are grateful that the Lord entrusted our two children to us and we pray to be the Godly parents He wants for them and to grow them up as He desires. We pray that they each become fully devoted followers of Jesus with deep faiths in the One who created them, loves them, and died for them so that they may live.

After church we headed to Artie’s for our Father’s Day brunch, which was delicious. We love that local chain of restaurants. They are top notch.

From there we headed home and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and evening. Once Jesse was in bed, we adults played Flinch for a couple of hours. That’s a fun game - slower paced than Nerts/Pounce, but still fun in its own way. We plan to play again tonight unless we feel more like Scrabble.

Currently, Beau, Grandma C, Jesse, and Molly Ann are at Clemyjontri while I work here at home. Then later this afternoon, we gals (Grandma C, Molly Ann, and I) are going to have tea with Marmie.

Tomorrow we head north to meet up with Beau’s Sis and her daughter and boys for a picnic. I’m looking forward to meeting baby Caleb (our great-nephew), who was born just 3 weeks before Molly Ann. We will leave Grandma C with Beau’s Sis, where she’ll spend the next leg of her visit.

All in all it has been a fabulous time and I’m sad it is almost over already. Grandma C just got here!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Gran Torino - loved it, although curmudgeonly Clint Eastwood’s character was tough to listen to at times. 4 stars out of 5.

Did you see the story about a 2 year old girl who scored the same IQ as Stephen Hawking? The article doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but when I read it my thoughts were along the lines of, “So? Jesse does all that, too.” Not that I’m saying that he’s a genius - he is smart for his age, but I’m reserving the genius label until he’s in school and it can be better assessed. She’s probably just a super inquisitive little girl with parents who encourage her curiosity.

I was wasting time on Facebook yesterday and noticed on a friend’s page that she was friends with a mutual friend from junior high school days. So I Friend Requested him and this morning I had a message asking me to remind him who I am. I’m awaiting his response. I admit to feeling a bit hurt that he didn’t remember me, although it’s ridiculous to feel that way - it has been almost 30 years since we last had meaningful contact with each other and he lives in a tiny Navy town whose population changes annually in a significant manner.

I’ve started Tweeting a bit, although I still don’t quite get that one so much. It’s harder to follow conversations.

That said, I am following on Twitter a TV reviewer that my sister told me about. He’s rewatching Band of Brothers and reviewing it on his blog.  That is my all-time favorite TV miniseries, so to know that there others who love it as much is cool. And reading his thoughts on each episode is fascinating - his thoughts match mine almost exactly, but every once in a while he notes something that I missed or didn’t see the same way.

[ADDED LATER]: I’ve been meaning to post a BoB-related thing from work. We have a manager who reminds me of Lt Dike. He’s the useless officer from the Battle of the Bulge episodes who was always heading off the line to “check in” but he was really just trying to protect himself. Anyway, this manager totally reminds me of Dike - he comes across as gung ho, but when push comes to shove he steps out of it with regularity.

Beau’s mother is coming to visit and we’re looking forward to that. She arrives just in time for Father’s Day, which also happens to be the weekend of baby dedications at our church. We’re so happy that she’ll be here to share that day with us. After church on that Sunday morning, we’ll take the Dads (mine and Beau) out for brunch and then it’ll be an afternoon of naps.

And that’s about it for now.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

We’ve turned into movie watchers for the summer since the regular TV season is over. We’re making the most of our Netflix account, but I added an account with Redbox this week when Taken was still showing as Very Long Wait with Netflix. I was tired of waiting.

So here’s what our DVD player has handled recently:

Defiance - I posted about the Bielski brothers three years ago (!?) after Beau and I saw a documentary about them on the History channel. The story is amazing and the movie version is pretty good. What I most enjoyed from the DVD was the extras with the children and grandchildren of the brothers. Fascinating and inspiring, it was also well acted. 4 stars out of 5.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Ben Stein took on conventional science by asking who created the universe. And then he found other scientists asking the same questions who have run into a bit of trouble as a result. Illuminating, exasperating, and hilarious. He makes what should be pedantic most entertaining. 5 stars out of 5.

New in Town - I got this one from Redbox yesterday and watched it while nursing Molly Ann in the afternoon. It was completely predictable and annoying with the cliched regional stereotypes, but it helped pass the time and was cute enough. 2.5 stars out of 5.

Taken - pretty good, but I was distracted the whole time by the thought of Liam Neeson’s recent heartbreak. Worth the long wait? I’m not sure, but I’ll give it 3 stars out of 5.

Next up: Gran Torino, which I got from Redbox this morning when I returned the other two.

Friday, May 29, 2009

I watched Twilight while Beau was at his small group last night. I have a two word review…

Don’t. Bother.

It was terrible - bad acting, bad make-up, bad special effects. The book adaptation was pretty faithful, but that’s not enough to make it even marginal.

1 star out of 5.