A Bunch of Quick Reviews

Since it's been so long since I've done any reviews and I prefer to do them immediatly after watching, due to my horrible excuse for a memory (I explain it as a photographic memory, there's just no film in my camera), I figured I do a bunch of really quick reviews on movies that I've seen over the past few months.  This includes a few made for tv movies. . .

 

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Theatre - I really liked this movie!  I excitedly came home from vacation, called my dad to see when we were going to watch it and was horribly dissappointed to learn that he had no interest in seeing it.  This was quite surprising as this is a typical movie that we would go see together.  Anyway, called my friend, went and loved it (I'm still telling my dad he made a bad choice).  If you liked the Harry Potter movies I think you'll like this one too.  If you want details, sorry, it's been too long but just trust me on this one.

 

Sherlock Holmes - Undecided - From what I saw, I was really enjoying it.  Then the film melted and we never got to see the end.  Really disappointing.  If you've seen the end, don't tell me. . . I'll get to it sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

 

Shutter Island - DVD, Maybe Cable - It was an interesting twist and if you like just the idea of suspense thrillers where you're trying to figure out what's going on, then you'll really like it.  Maybe I just put it as low as I do because I'm not that big on that genre of movie, but for what it was, it was pretty decent.  I just wouldn't pay $10 bucks for it.  I'd do a $1 redbox, but there's probably others I'd pick before this one.

 

Legion - Cable or Broadcast Network - I was tricked.  Or my brother was tricked by deceitful ads into thinking it was cooler than it was.  Here's my take on it.  Take "From Dusk Til Dawn" change the setting from a bar in the Mexican desert to a diner in the middle of a US desert (don't remember the state), change the vampires to angels that look more like demons and change the premise of fighting for survival through the night to fighting to protect a baby whose death would mean the apocalypse.  And there you have Legion.

 

Alice In Wonderland - Theatre or DVD - I would only say theatre because some of the images would be better large so you can take it all in, but I didn't even do the 3-D thing and it was still good.  I mean, its Alice in Wonderland meets Tim Burton. . . how can you go wrong?

 

Clash of the Titans - Theatre - Again, I mainly say this because the images are so huge it helps to have the big screen.  I also saw this not in 3-D and thought it was just as good as I would have if it was 3-D.  (I really think 3-D is just another way of making us pay more money for things).  Epic battle scenes, good creation of the legendary creatures that he battles. . . some deviations from the original movie's details (and lacking the delicious cheesiness of the original, which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but overall pretty decent as far as epic ancient battle movies go.

 

Riverworld (Sci-Fi Channel original movie) - Maybe the plane rating. . . or never. . . hard to give a definitive rating on this one, so I'll tell you why and let you decide for yourself.  SPOILER ALERT: In order to tell you why it pissed me off so much, I have to give away the ending.  If you want to give it a shot, I'll recap everything then tell you when I'm about to spoil it so you can stop reading: Decent story (based on a book series) about people throughout time waking up from death on this world of rivers.  Different patches of land divided by rivers on a planet 10x larger than Earth.  You die in Riverworld, you just keep coming back (they call getting out of a difficult situation by choosing to die and come back where ever and when ever you land the "suicide express").  Some blue alien people are in charge of Riverworld and they're divided into 2 factions, 1 wants to destroy it, 1 wants to save it, so they use hapless victims of their experimental planet to play out their desires by pitting 2 guys against each other and using their love of some woman to play them.  Funny characters along the way (Mark Twain was hi-larious) and it kept me interested.  However, it was 4 hours long!!!  Here's where the SPOILER is: If I'm going to watch something for 4 hours, I don't want to finally have the big battle happen, get the partially happy ending then realize that it's just going to keep happening forever and ever and ever.  Remember, they die and keep coming back?  Yeah, well they're still the same people with the same memories every time!!  Lame ending.  And it was just the final scene that pissed me off as much as it did.  Anyway, you decide from here. . .

 

Beauty and the Briefcase (abc family original movie) - Yeah Broadcast Network movies!!! - I love cheesy movies.  Love them!!  This starred Hillary Duff (love her), the guy from Kyle XY, Jaime Pressley and some other guy that I recognize from something else.  The premise is: she's a fashion writer trying to get a piece into Cosmopolitan magazine when they assign her a peice infiltrating the business world of NY finance in order for her to find her "magic man."  I have to admit that the beginning was a bit annoying with the constant comments about "men in suits" but I hung in there and the cheesiness did not disappoint.  I especially liked that she had to be told she was in love before she realized it.  Ridiculous!!  If you like absurd family friendly/pre-teen or teen oriented movies, you'll like this!  Okay, there are not many people that fall into this category, and generally it means you'll watch just about any movie having a love story, but whatever, we all have our vices!!!!

I'm Such A Dork!

Okay, so we all know that I'm rarely online.  Well, I've been working outside the office this week and have full internet access!!  Of course, this is the first day that I've actually stayed online for a long time. . . but what mysterious website has caused me to stay on so long??  My book website.  I don't know how many of you have checked out www.shelfari.com but it's a great site for avid readers.  I initially started on the website because I'm a bit OCD and I loved the idea that I could keep track of all the books I've read and have them show up on a virtual wood grained bookshelf (with the actual cover of the book that I read!!).  I know, dorky right?  Well, you can also get recommendations on books and read reviews, find out the rest of the books in a series you've started, and find new books to try.  Sadly it's considered a networking site (you can have "friends" and see what's on their shelf and chat about books) so I can't get to it at work either (which makes me feel very bad that I never get to respond to people's "should I read this book" requests).  But I just discovered a group on the site call Young Adult Books that Adults Should Read.  Some of you may know that I feel that the young adult genre is an undiscovered treasure trove of good books.  I literally just spent a couple of hours looking up new books and writing down what I want to try.  As if I don't have enough books I need to read (yes, need), I just discovered 6 new series that I need to start!  Six!!!  That doesn't even include the Harry Potter series that I've never gotten around to!  Or the 10 individual books that I discovered.  I had to stop before I got too carried away!!  This is clearly a dangerous website for me to be on.  Please heed this warning!!!

I'm going to go finish the book I'm currently on so that I can start the ones that I have pre-ordered from Borders so I can start all of these other new ones. . . I'm such a dork!!

My Justifiable Excuses. . .

Okay, I know it’s been a while, but in my defense the whole premise of this blog ensures that there are going to be long gaps in my entries.  It’s not my fault, I’m just a slacker when it comes to this sort of stuff!  Oh wait, that means it is my fault.  Whatever.  This time I really do have very valid reasons for my long hiatus of entries.  (This may or may not be the best time to mention that I’ve always been naturally gifted with an ability to come up with justifications, some a little convoluted and far fetched, but none-the-less, justifications for almost any ridiculous conclusion I’ve come to)  I notice that my last entry was mid-January. 

I don’t know what happened to the remainder of January, I may just not have had anything interesting to say.  However, starting in February I was house-bound by Snowpocalypse (this is referring to the more than 3 feet of snow that we received in 2 snow storms separated by 3-4 days, and was hence labeled one storm to justify federal funding in clean-up).  I went to work a couple of days, but was obviously quite busy those days, as immediately following Snowpocalypse, I went to Seattle for a week.  I was supposed to leave 5-6 days earlier, but my flight out was scheduled for the 1^st day of the 2^nd wave of the storm.  Bummer, but at least I got out.

Okay, I just thought I should point out that the beginning of this was written on 3/15/10, but I got sidetracked and now I’m trying to continue/finish. . . This is why it was such a bad idea for me to try this thing!!!  Which actually reminds me that I recently came to the conclusion that laziness is sort of a handicap, so I was wondering if I could get handicap tags for that.  You know, so I don’t have to drive around looking for a spot or walking really far?  Sort of like the “expected mother” parking at the grocery store. . . I do expect to be a mother someday.  Shouldn’t that count???

Anyhoo, back to my implausible excuses.  So then I was in Seattle, having ridiculous fun with my bro and his girlfriend (trolls under a bridge, best used book store EVER!, Archie McPhee and their bacon gumballs and mustache mirror clings, asian fish markets and Bananas Foster French Toast w/challah bread that makes you want to never eat anything else ever again).  I could go off on an entire entry about my time there, and maybe I will but may I just add now that we figured out the time by being human sun dials and saw 2 mummies and several shrunken heads.  Pretty cool, right??

After I got back, I’ve been pretty swamped at work and now that Spring is here and the weather is actually nice I’ve been almost giddy with excitement, so I forget things such as this.  My humble apologies.  Although you have to admit, Snowpocalypse, vacay, and lots and lots of actual work are pretty valid excuses!  I didn’t even start making things up!  Well, I guess I should go get ready for my meeting that’s in 20 minutes. . . I promise that I’ll try to be better.  Notice how my promise really holds no guarantees?  Trying to be better?  Than what, 3 month gaps in entries?  2 ½ months would keep me in line with that promise!  No, but I really will.  Besides, the whole premise of this was for movie reviews and I have seen quite a bit, so I have some catching up to do.  I’ll do a very brief catch-ya-up either later today or. . . sometime soon. . . .