Summer Movies...Bring It!

It is 80 plus degrees outside and Memorial Day is behind us. It is now...officially...movie season! What have I seen? What did I like or hate? Keep reading...

Star Trek - Let me begin by saying that I am not a Trekkie. I am a Star Wars fan and did not really care for the Star Trek TV show or the movies it (they if you count all the Star Trek shows) spawned. Having said that, the JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek is really awesome! It begins with a time warp thing that allows Abrams to totally start from scratch on the story line (which will continue in the movies to follow...yes, they are already writting them). We get to see young Kirk and Spock and discover how the entire crew (by that I mean the ones that mattered) ended up on the USS Enterprise. The new cast pulls off their roles brillantly. I would have to say I really was into Spock. He has this cold exterior but under it all is a temper with passion. Not sure what it says about me that I was digging Spock over Kirk and everyone but he was smoking hot....weird haircut, pointy ears and all. I would give this an A and a must see for your summer movie viewing.



Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - I really loved the first installment of this movie series. This time around, it fell a little short because they tried to pack too much of a good thing into the movie. Last time, Larry Daley was worried about all the things coming to life in one museum....now the entire Smithsonian has come to life. It was funny but did drag in parts and it felt rushed. Some of the best parts involved the characters from the first one such as Octavius and Jedidiah. One of my laugh out loud moments came when Octavius, seeing Jedidiah trapped, yelled at him to stay alive and he would find him. Of course, this is a reference to The Last of the Mohicians famous "behind the waterfall" scene where Daniel Day-Lewis tells Madeline Stowe to stay alive no matter what occurs and that he will find her. This has got to be one of the most romantic scenes in a movie ever. He jumps, she is captured and then he races to some great music after her to save her at perhaps the cost of his own life. THAT my dear male friends, is how to treat a woman. But, I digress. Anyway, Night at the Museum is entertaining and my kids loved it. I am scheduled to see it again this Friday at the Drive-In Movie night for work. Maybe I will like it better on a second viewing. For now, I would give it a B and tell you to catch the matinee.

Up - Just saw this one today! Didn't really want to see this one but was invited out by some wonderful people from church to lunch and a movie. Since we have like...well, few friends, we took them up on this offer and tried to be on our best behavior! Lunch was great and the movie was better than I expected! Pixar can almost do no wrong. Storyline was great, animation was amazing as usual and it delighted both the young and young at heart alike. The basic plot of the story is that a man wants to complete the adventure longed for by his now departed wife. Things do not go according to plan but that is where the fun and sweet moments come from...both in this movie and in life. Sometimes accidents or being in the wrong place are just what is needed to open the door to the next exciting adventure. Anyway, I could go on but I will go ahead and give this one an A. It also had a trailer for Toy Story 3...coming next summer. Always love it when they give me something to look forward to!

That is all I have seen (I think) this summer. As for what is going on with me...well, I am currently working on a small indie movie myself at the moment. The budget is...well, I am not sure there is a budget but we are having a lot of fun. The best part...I get to go back a few years in age and play a gypsy. I have only been "on set" for one day but it was great. I think we got some really good stuff. It only took about 20 takes of one scene but it was in your face good at the end and I got to slap someone (you know who you are...and sorry about that and the other real slaps that were suppose to be fake...you took them like a man!). Coming soon, I get to be tied up, knocked out, slapped and punched...I can hardly wait!

See you at the movies...

My Eyeliner Never Looks As Good As Richard's...

No...not my husband Richard, Richard Alpert from LOST! He has some seriously well applied "guyliner" that I, at times, envy. He also has that dark skin and I would like to look like I too have a tan all the time so, again, envy.

As you all know, LOST ended with a bang last night. Now all we have to do is hole up for the next 8 months discussing theories and making YouTube videos about Sawyer and Juliet's love...I can almost hear Gordon Lightfoot or Van Morrison playing in the background. Don't judge my taste in music!

Want my take on LOST? No? My blog...too bad. So, here goes nothing...

• Jacob is Jesus
• Guy in black shirt is the devil
• Jacob and the black shirt guy...let's just call him fake Locke...are locked in a battle that has been going on for a very long time.
• The ship in the distance is The Black Rock...Richard Alpert is on that ship.
• There is a huge end game being played out by both characters. Fake Locke needs his, well, dead Locke and Jacob needs to be a sacrifice. Why? Because he is the one that can save us all...the answer to the "Who lies in the shadow of the statue" riddle. Oooo....I also like Richard because he speaks Latin...just thought I would throw that out.
• 1977 Crew plans and executes the destruction of the "hatch" that will bring down Oceanic Flight 815 in 2004. Are they all dead? I think they are not dead but "reborn" and will arrive back on the island. After all, Jacob did tell fake Locke and Ben that "they" were coming. I think the 1977 Crew are the "they" he was talking about.
• 2007 Crew are matching to the statue...home of Jacob. Ben, tricked by fake Locke, kills Jacob. I think Jacob wanted...no, needed this to happen. Fake Locke thought he won but he just lost the game...although it will need more time to play out to the end...
• Dead Locke, killed off island by Ben, is still dead. Richard is a servant of Jacob...I am going to go as far as to call him an angel...so that is why he remains the same. Of course, I am probably wrong and Richard is the island big guy and we have overlooked it all along!

My questions...well, just some of them...

• Did anyone else get a Ark of the Covenant feel from the way they were carrying that crate? I did...
• How does Jacob know Ilana?
• Was it fake Locke in the cabin that said "Help Me" to Locke?
• Was it fake Locke playing dead Alex to tell Ben to "do whatever Locke says"? (I think yes on this one!)
• Did Sun find Charlie's "DS" DriveShaft ring as a bit of foreshadowing that Charlie will soon return to the show?
• Why didn't Jacob visit Juliet or Miles in the past to give them his magic touch?
• Will Juliet make it out of this mess?
• Who will Kate finally decide on?
• Does anyone else think Jack has become a big goober? Sorry...not really a question about the show...
• Will they all retain their memories. (Again, I think yes to this. The redemption aspect plays out much better if they remember all they have gone through on the island.)
• Is LAX really hell? OK...really not a show question either but worth a thought...
• What is in that guitar case?

OK...I have to stop because my nose started bleeding. Namaste.

And The Oscar Goes To...

I know...the Oscars were months ago. You know who took home the gold bald dudes. Being a Mom, I did not get a chance to go to the local megaplex to see the movies that were up for Oscar. So, I waited for them on DVD. You probably have seen them by this point. In case you haven't...or you just like my reviews...see below.

Disclaimer...not all the Oscar contenders were watched by the blogger. Additionally, the blogger reserves the right to add in other movies she has seen that did not come close to getting even an Oscar nod for best costume design, sound editing or special effects.

Slumdog Millionaire - I really wanted to see this one because it sweeped like every award show in the known universe. The basic plot is that a "slumdog" who has lived a very hard life makes his way onto India's version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He didn't get on the show to win the money. He went on the show so that the woman he loves...has always loved...will see him and find a way to find him. To the chagrin of the show organizers, he does very well. Since he is just a boy from the slums...aka slumdog...they think there is no way he could know all the answers so they have him thrown in jail for cheating. The story unfolds in the jail. He tells the jailer bits and pieces of his life story because those bits and pieces are the reasons he knew the answers. New comers Dev Patel and Freida Pinto are wonderful as the leads...as are the kids that play them in the flashbacks. It is a powerful story and one I would highly recommend. I only have two issues and I will share them because they don't give the story away. First, the director chose to end the movie with what looks a lot like a dance scene from High School Musical. Two hours of bad things happening to people in Mumbai and then jazz hands! Just weird. Second, it makes me really not want to go to India which I thought I would enjoy visiting some day in the future when I am rich. Of course, I probably don't have to worry about the rich part so who cares. All that aside, watch it. It deserved the Oscars it got!

The Reader - Funny bit of trivia before I type about this one. Kate Winslet had been nominated for like 100 Oscars before the nod for The Reader. A couple of years ago she did a skit on a SNL type British show. During her skit she ranted that she guessed she would have to make a movie about the Holocaust because the people that do Holocaust movies have Oscars coming out their arses! Well, she was right! Fast forward a couple of years and good old Kate makes The Reader. It is about a woman in her mid-thirties in post WWII Germany. She meets a teenage boy in a chance encounter and helps him when he becomes ill. After he recovers, he seeks her out to thank her. Well, let's just say that he ends up thanking her on a fairly regular basis. She asks him to read to her and he does...then he usually thanks her again. She ends up leaving and it crushes the boy. A couple of years later, while he is a law student, he sees his love on trial for Nazi war crimes. Seems his love was working for the Nazi as a guard back during the war. There are some parts that I don't want to give away but she ends up in prison. The story is well done and Ralph Fines does a great job as the boy grown up looking back on the effect this older woman had on his life. I would recommend this one too. Just be aware that the love scenes between Kate and the teenager are a bit graphic. Oh...and Kate got her Oscar for this Holocaust movie!

Milk - Didn't see it...don't plan to. Why? Mostly Sean Penn...

Bride Wars - I know, this one had no chance at Oscar but I saw it so I am going to type about it! Two best friends. One shared dream. A wedding at The Plaza. As fate (or movie magic) would have it, they both end up engaged and begin planning their dream weddings at the same time. They book the most exclusive wedding planner in NYC and both get dates for The Plaza. Not long after, the wedding planner calls them in to inform them of a terrible mistake. The bookings got mixed up and they are booked for the same day at The Plaza. What to do? Well, one of them will just have to cancel her dream Plaza wedding and find a new venue. Not so much. These two friends end up fighting almost to the death over these weddings. They do some really horrible things to each other...OK, they are funny to us watching but are terrible if they happened to you sorta thing. I will not spoil the ending for you but it has some unexpected twists. This movie should be a warning to all men. If we, as women, would treat our best friend like this over a wedding, imagine what terrors we can inflict upon you! Something to think about...

More later...LOST is coming on tonight and I have to go unpack my action figures so I can act out the show. KIDDING! I wouldn't dare take those action figures out of their boxes. It would ruin their value!

Fairy Tales In 2009...

OK...so I have seriously slacked on my blogging duties. I am really only doing it now to avoid ironing clothes so you all should feel really sorry for me and my sad life.

Anyway, I am here to weave a fairy tale about Miss California, Perez Hilton and how Donald Trump got to be the moral compass of our fair land. So, here we go...

A long time (like a month) ago in a strange land far away (California) lived a beautiful princess with a crown and everything. One day this beautiful princess was asked a question by the wicked Queen (yep, Perez). The beautiful princess looked deep in her heart and answered the question truthfully (as all good princesses in fairy tales do). Her answer angered the wicked Queen and the Queen threw a black cloud of hate across the land. The Queen went on Larry King and tweeted terrible things. The princess had told the truth but it wasn't what the Queen wanted to hear so the Queen wanted the princess to give back her crown. Even those who lived in her strange land far away began to turn against her...well, at least those in the highly liberal areas like Hollywood and San Francisco. The fate of the beautiful princess was then laid in the hands of the Combover King (you guessed it...Trump). The Combover King had the power to take her crown so she could no longer be a princess. What would the Combover King do? Would he side with the wicked Queen and the liberals from the land of the Govenator or would he grant her safe passage to a kinder land...maybe Tennessee because we don't care for the wicked Queen round these parts. That part of the tale, my dear friends, has yet to be written. If I were to write it, I would have the Combover King just slap the heck out of the wicked Queen and remove the Queen's website, twitter and Facebook priveledges for life....and the princess would live happily ever after as the wife of a SEC football coach where she would be appreciated for her beauty and candor. But, I fear, not all stories are fairy tales...

So kids, what can we learn from the fairy tale? That Perez Hilton is a nasty little fellow? Yes. That our country has become a place where people who speak their mind but don't give the PC answer are scorned and labeled as haters, bigots, homophobes? In some places, yes...but not all places. I am proud to live in a place where believing that marriage should only be between a man and a woman is truth...no further discussion needed.

How did we get here? We, the Christians of this fair land, stood by and said nothing. We allowed the few to get their way simply because they cried about their "rights". This isn't like the civil rights movement where people of color had to fight against racism...although the Queen and court would like you to believe that is the case. This is a fight over what this country really stands on...the foundation laid long ago by those who wrote "In God We Trust" or this minority who screams that the rest of us are just close minded haters who don't get it.

What shall we do? What our ancestors have done for thousands of years...look to the words written by divine inspiration and take our lead from there. Those ancient words hold just as true today as they did two thousand years ago....what was a sin in God's eyes then is still a sin. So, it is sin and they...Queen and court...are sinners. What do we do for them. What we were told from days of old...pray for them that their eyes might not be clouded and they would see The Light!

I know...this was a heavy one. I promise to write about movies next time!