| Movies and TV | Films I've seen and ideas they sparked. |
Glen Davis' announcing wasn't good. But the color from Shep was so bad during the ARG-CIV game that Tim flipped us over to Univision. If they weren't talking about the game at least we didn't know. Also, as Tim noted, we had "a better seat" from there since the screen was not as cluttered as on ESPN.
Tim says that Disney (ABC/ESPN) announcing of NBA games is equally horrible and so maybe soccer lovers shouldn't feel singled out.
I got the MLStv package so I could stream Houston Dynamo games to my computer. It's like the DirectKick package with lousier resolution and a whole lot cheaper. Anyway, the broadcasts come from randomly partisan announcers. The ones for the LA Galaxy are pretty bad, the New England Revolution quite decent, and Colorado Rapids leaning just to good of center. Announcers really do affect the viewing experience.
I wonder how much advertising revenue Disney would lose if basketball games were also available on Spanish stations?
With the Rings and Narnia in the theaters over the last few years you may hear more people discussing authors long reserved for the geeky and religious. And as non-technical people, they'll get it wrong.
I overheard a woman in my office telling other people that C.S. Lewis was an orphan who was raised by J.R.R. Tolkien. There was further mysterious disinformation with which she enlightened her hearers, but I'm afraid that my brain's storage areas could not be reworked to fit it.
We took the whole family on Monday night to see Disney's "Chicken Little." Maddie was remarkably good for her first theater experience. She even fussed a little when she realized that we had left the building after the show.
The movie seemed to have all the right elements, but never quite hooked me. I tried to use a reference today while I was talking to our security officer about her presentation to executive management pleading for a corporate anti-spyware solution, but she hadn't seen the show.
We were in Target late last evening and I was weak. I bought the 2 disc Ultimate Definitive Final Special Edition DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. While watching an opening scene a line spoke to me as it never had before.
"I'm not old. I'm thirty-seven."
This movie is only thirty-one years old. I remember a friend of the family, John Jamison, telling us how funny it was. I asked my dad if we could see it, but he told me that it was mocking something sacred and so we would not be going. I'm not sure if it was the Python version or just the legend of the Holy Grail itself which was such a danger to the child of 1970's fundamentalists. Such was the atmosphere in my childhood home that I felt I was dancing with the devil to even look at a picture book of dinosaurs. I just kept repeating the mantra "God made the bones old." I still don't feel right about dinosaurs.
I have no love of Boston. This dates back to the days when I'd listen to the Rockets on the radio. I will never forget hearing Celtics fans chanting "Houston Sucks! Houston Sucks!"
On the other sideline we have Mr McNabb. I have enough respect for my recently departed father-in-law and his love for Rush Limbaugh to cheer any failure by the Campbell's Soup spokeswoman's son.
So, while I'm happy that the Eagles lost, I'm not all that excited that the Patriots won.
One of the slowest movies I've seen since Koyaanisqatsi. But it wasn't billed as an action flick. It is the pathetic lives of some less than perfect folks who all get to have their dreams come true in the end. It's not as painful as American Movie because these flippin' idiots are just actors. But in the sense that it is a fable, it is all the more distressing because the happy endings are transparent and unbelievable. It seems to say that good endings are only make believe. I'm reading too much into my reactions. I'm not going to tell you whether or not to see this movie. Do whatever you want, Gosh!
I have only read the first of these books. I expect that I will have to read them to my kids in the future, so I didn't feel the need to push on with them just now. Lexie, however, has read eight or so of them. So she wanted to see the movie. I thought it might be fun, too. It was.
We watch enough Nickelodeon that the kids were familiar, but I still can't nail down which shows they're on. IMDB is no help. Carrey was at moments absolutely beautiful in his role.
We rented a couple of movies last night. I saw Spiderman 2 this summer, but Lexie and Kevin were in Comanche at the time, so it was new to them. Lex agrees that it is a good rental but understands why I did not insist she see it in the theater.
The Will Farrell Christmas show is very cute. We enjoyed it as much as you can enjoy another show about renewing Christmas spirit and thus ensuring that Santa gets all the toys delivered.
The idea that gods' (or mythical figures like Santa who must at least qualify as a demi-urge) power is directly related to the amount of belief which they engender at any time is popular in current stories. This certainly was the case in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods and Neil Gaiman's American Gods. In the old days devotions were increased in order to gain the attention of busy and capricious gods. Writers these days are not as crazy about extra-faith entities with powers beyond our influence.
We rented three movies for the Thanksgiving weekend: Mean Girls, Jersey Girl, and Ladykillers.
Mean Girls was a classic teen morality play.
Jersey Girl suffered some classic Kevin Smith clunkiness which kept it from being a standard charming-child/romantic comedy. George Carlin plays a totally straight role. Stephen Root has the wonderful role of stating the obvious, possibly the funniest part of the show. I caught part of Sweeny Todd a while back on PBS and was captivated, so I gotta give Mr. Smith props for trying to pique the viewers' interest into that show.
Irma P. Hall was almost perfectly believable as Marva Munson in Ladykillers. Unfortunately there wasn't much else there. Tom Hanks was either entirely unable to perform his role or he just phoned in his performance. Whether intentionally or not, he sucked a lot of the life out of this picture. Like Small Time Crooks I think there was a clever idea and the possibility of a decent picture here if the folks involved would have been younger and more desperate. The old hands project "nothing we haven't done before" directly to the audience.
If it had been up to me, I would not have seen any of the debates. Lexie was watching it tonight, though and so I couldn't help but overhear some of it from the next room.
The president takes a lot of flack for his chosen pronunciation of the word nuclear. In the short segment I heard, the Senator said "eye-deer" twice when I believe the word he meant to say was "idea." What a moron. His demeanor and defensiveness declared loudly and with poor pronunciation how untrustworthy he is.
The National Football League starts its season tonight with a rainy day in Boston where the Colts are visiting the Patriots. I'm not sure why I prefer football to other televised sports. It sure doesn't have anything to do with Mr. Madden's commentary.
I came to the game fresh in college in a town without a home team. My roommates and I made picks on all the games. Thus I did not strike up an alignment with a particular team, but learned to just enjoy watching the game. Not being too emotionally invested keeps me from freaking out like I did about the Houston Rockets back in high school.
Cute movie. More fun than A Knights Tale which we watched earlier this week. The jousting scenes in the Heath Ledger vehicle were pretty nifty and so it probably bears up better under repeat viewings. Since I'm not a teenage girl, the Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson buddy flick worked better as a lightweight escape.
Hollywood Video has been running a special. Everything in the store is available to rent for ninety-nine cents for one night. This isn't a Blockbuster night either. If you rent it at ten a.m. on Monday it isn't due back until midnight on Tuesday. So, you really have two nights if you're willing to make a late night trip. While Lexie and the kids were gone I watched Office Space, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Bad Santa, and Kill Bill, Vol I. There's a reason why only one of these movies has a sequel.
I also rented a Showtime series called Dead Like Me. This was on four discs. The first has only the eighty-something minute pilot. The second has five episodes, and the third and fourth have four episodes each. The episodes run about forty minutes. I guess they have commercials on Showtime. Or maybe they made them with syndication in mind.
The premise is that this girl gets killed and after her funeral, her soul does not pass on. She becomes a grim reaper. Reapers are folks who usher souls from their dead bodies to whatever their next destination might be. Reapers have an unspecified number of souls to harvest, but when their quota is filled they get to move on. That last soul takes the departing reaper's place.
The show follows the stories of the girl, the group of reapers she works with, and the family she left behind. Mandy Patinkin plays the foreman of the reaper group. Cynthia Stevenson is marvelous as the alcoholic bereaved mother. Christine Willes is a superb cast as the temp agency supervisor with the plastered on smile.
The show has some real potential. What it has done, it has done pretty well and it is entertaining. I just feel like it has been kind of light weight so far. There are some plot holes. I can forgive those, but I want a little more meat. More philosophy about death and grieving and values, please.
Oh well, they got renewed and will begin broadcasting a second season in a few weeks. I guess that means that about this time next year I can rent 'em. Of course it may cost me more than four bucks.
Went to see the new Spiderman movie today. I enjoyed the film.
You know what struck me as cheap was the title. I mean even most comic books have titles to the stories. I just pulled one at random from my shelf. Teen Titans issue number eleven is entitled "Raven Rising." The second X-Men film had a subtitle, even if it did sound like they'd started a football club.
I just felt a little shorted. But I did go to the matinee, so I guess you get what you pay for.
I took a half-day of personal leave so Lexie and I could go see the movie on opening day today. We got there about 70 minutes before showtime and were second in line for the showing. Ours was the first of the second round on four screens (in other words, the fifth of the day at Live Oak Cinema).
This was the longest of the books yet filmed and the shortest of the movies so far. This was the first one that they had to leave a lot out of. There was plenty of action, but little time spent on things like explaining what the heck was going on. I heard the six-year-old behind me ask his mom what was happening a couple of times.
I enjoyed the movie in the same way as the last installment: as illustrations to accompany the book. I think it was a pretty good movie, but it's always hard to judge when you know the story. I haven't read HP(3)tPoA since the last movie hit the theaters. Lexie just reread it in the last couple weeks. She was a bit more disappointed than I was.
I liked a lot of the effects. The Knight Bus was fun, and the dementors managed to look not exactly like the ringwraiths from LotR. Best of all was Buckbeak. Much better looking than Fluffy. Possibly the best part of the movie.
I'm sure we will buy the movie when it becomes available. We didn't tell Kevin what we went to see, since we didn't want him to bug us for the movie that we couldn't buy for another eight months.
Last week we rented the live-action movie version of Peter Pan. Lexie and I really enjoyed it for reasons we hadn't expected.
The kid who played Peter was fine. Watching the bonus featurettes on the DVD I learned that he had spent months working on swordfighting and months learning to fly. He did those things well and convincingly. I wish he could have spent a few months with a vocal coach. I found his lack of a British accent disturbing.
Jason Isaacs was wonderful as Captain Hook. You would not be surprised by this if you've seen the second Harry Potter movie and remember how he dominated each scene in which he appeared as Lucius Malfoy.
However, most important to this interpretation was the part of Wendy. Pan's romantic interest was absolutely captivating. The girl was right in every way.
The movie made the story compelling for us by bringing the theme back to the fore. The pirates and indians and flying and swordfighting were well executed and entertaining, but the conflict was all about Peter and Wendy.
Peter -- Eternal Youth -- flirts with the love of a woman, Wendy. This love might seem an infatuation, but the participants are on the cusp of growing up. Wendy's aunt has just this day declared that Wendy is a young woman and should no longer sleep in the same room with her younger brothers. This love, then, is not a mere fancy, or testosterone driven desire, but rather the sort which can only lead to maturity in familial bliss.
By pursuing this temptation toward maturity, Peter makes himself vulnerable. He is only "the best there ever was" while he remains unassailed by the responsibilities of adulthood.
Sure enough, Hook, his greatest foe, finds his weakness and defeats Peter. At the last moment Peter is revived by a gift from Wendy. She gives up her childish notions of romance, placing them irretrievably with Peter, while she chooses to grow up. With this one act she seals herself off from endless childhood and cuts off Peter from her adulthood. Thus is Pan made "whole" and set free.
Despite Peter's vocal stylings, the too tiny to appreciate fairy dancers, and the cheesy portions of the soundtrack (the music at the point of the great victory put me in mind of Ladyhawke), I thought that this was a really good film. I'd give it four out of five [your symbol here]s.
I had just finished reading all 800+ pages and I wanted to share the story. So I rented the Academy Award winning movie adaptation and excitedly took it to Drew and Sarah's to watch with them. It sucked. Really really sucked. Please do yourself the favor of never trying to watch the Albert Finney version of "Tom Jones." It is unwatchable crap. Get the A&E version from 1997. Much more faithful. Much more enjoyable.