Category: All (-ish)

Three sentence movie reviews: Friends With Kids

So the thing about movies with “alternative” plots is that they nearly all of the time end up in the traditional way.*  The trick of such a movie is to be able to bring me along, so I agree with the traditional ending by the time they get there.** This was a very smart, funny movie*** and I can report I was quite happy with the ending so now you are left to figure out if it kept an alternate solution, or if it was just well written enough to charm me into agreeing with the traditional ending.****

Cost:  $1.20 from Redbox (impulse purchase on the way out of the store)
Where watched:  at home.

*I’m not saying this one does, but most of them do.

**the movie He’s Just Not That Into You completely failed with the Aniston/Affleck plot which massively annoyed me.
***Shawn Levy said something to the effect of: “it’s the rare romantic comedy that is both romantic AND a comedy” and I think he hit the nail on the head.
****Or you could just watch it yourself.


ps:  Best DVD extra?  Meagan Fox expertly playing some video game and trying to coach a hapless Adam Scott.

Three sentence movie reviews: William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

The first few minutes of this movie had me wondering if I was going to like it this time around, because I had fond memories from my first viewing when it was originally released, but this time I found the introduction incredibly obnoxious. But once Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes showed up I loved it all over again.  There was a lot of kissing–the poster is quite accurate in its representation.

Cost: Free from Library
Where watched:  At home.

ps:  I almost couldn’t find this in the library catalog because it’s not Romeo & Juliet it’s Romeo plus sign Juliet.  So now I call it that in my mind.  It’s also from the era of movies needing to tell us who their famous authors are, as if we don’t already know.  I recall “Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter” also being a title of the same era.

End of the 6 in Kenton


When I moved to the Kenton neighborhood, I was thrilled that not only was I smack dab in the middle of two Max stops, but that one of the stops was a “Transit Center” meaning a number of bus routes converged at that point.  I was in public transit heaven.  I could take the yellow line downtown. Or I could take the #4 to George Middle School where I volunteered for two years.  I could also take the #4 back toward downtown taking me through Mississippi’s hip neighborhood.  I could take the #75 to the St. John’s Movie theater or the other way to a variety of places: Trader Joe’s in Hollywood, Laurelhurst Park, Hawthorne Blvd.  I could also take the #6 to Jantzen Beach and once they cut the amount of service on Sundays, the #6 was my quickest route to church, depositing me a short three blocks away.  Living near a transit center is awesome.

I still have the Yellow Line,  #4 and #75 at my service.  But beginning September 1, the #6 route changed “to  eliminate duplicate service.”

I understand that Trimet is stretched to capacity, but as someone who doesn’t own a car, some of those duplicate services are important.  Now if I want to go to Jantzen Beach I have to take the #75 to MLK and transfer to the #6.  If I want to go to church I get there way too early or way too late.  I’m disappointed to lose the #6 route through Kenton and I hope service will be restored someday.

Three sentence movie reviews: Burlesque

This movie had promise with the fun dancing and Kristen Bell and all that, but it took a turn for the worse about halfway through and never recovered.  I don’t think Cher is a very good actress (sorry!) and Christina Aguilera seemed to be channelling Cher at times which was incredibly distracting.  Not even the usually saving presence of Stanley Tucchi came to my rescue, this movie was just bad.

Cost:  Free from library.
Where watched:  At home.

Three sentence movie reviews: Sleepwalk with Me

I loved how this movie captured so well that confusing time post-college when so many mistakes are made on the way to becoming a fully functioning adult.  Lauren Ambrose was incredible as usual and Mike Birbiglia was a surprisingly good actor.  The supporting cast was also fabulous and I’m happy to report this was the rare case of a movie about stand-up comedy actually being funny.

Cost: $7.00
Where watched:  The beautiful gem Cinema 21, where not only do you not have to spend time waiting for the movie to begin attempting to ignore assualtive ads for television shows and video games the theater plays (I’m looking at you Regal Cinemas) you also don’t even have to watch a slide show of ads (which I don’t mind, but it was quite restful to just stare at a blank screen before the movie began.)

Also, I saw this with Matt and then the next week saw Mike Birbiglia at Live Wire! on Saturday and then Ira
Glass (who co-wrote) on Sunday!  How cool is that?

And! Plus!  Who knew all those years ago when I first heard this story on This American Life, that I would then read a book and see a movie about the same topic?

Books read in August 2012

Yes!  A mere six books finished this month!  And with three weeks off from work!  Good job me!

Read
Are You My Mother
Alison Bechdel
This was beautifully drawn and pretty hard to slog through.  Alison Bechdel has done a lot of therapy and thinking about herself.  Her story is sort of interesting, sort of annoying.  Parts are rather funny, but the whole thing is very cerebral, in a distancing way.

The World of Downton Abbey
Jessica Fellowes
This was a “companion book” to the TV series which I totally grabbed from the “Lucky Day” shelf at the library and enjoyed.  Aside from insights about the actors, the book also examined different facets of society and related them to the characters we saw in the series.  It was the kind of “history-lite” learning I enjoy.

Why We Broke Up
Daniel Handler
Matt and I read aloud.
Reading this out loud is a perfect way to capture Handler’s fabulous prose.  I liked it the second time just as much as the first.

Specials
Scott Westerfield
It may have been the wait between the last book and this one or it may be that it took me too long to read it, but I found this book to be less compelling than the first two.  The elements were there, but they had grown stale.

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
Read for Kenton Book Group.
By the time I got to the end of this book, I loved it.  This book has everything!  And I mean everything!  At one point I challenged Matt to tell me any fiction plot point that didn’t involve guns or sci/fi and that it would be in Jane Eyre.  And it was!  We played that game for 45 minutes and every plot point he mentioned was in the book which was doubly interesting because he was mostly recounting plots from comic books.  I realized that the book had everything in it when Jane Eyre goes on what would now be termed as a “shopping spree” near the end of the book.

That said, I had trouble getting in to the book. The dense prose and archaic vocabulary was off-putting before I realized that I love dense prose in modern books, why not love it in this one.  Still, I think if I hadn’t been on vacation, I might not have finished this.   And wouldn’t I have missed out?

The Marriage Plot
Jeffrey Eugenides
While I adored Middlesex I found this to be incredibly “eh.”  None of the characters caught my attention which is often the kiss of death for me and a book.  There were some amusing observations here and there, so that was nice, but overall, I was not a fan.

Started and did not finish.
Prince Caspian
C.S. Lewis.
Yep.  I’m throwing in the towel on this series. I just don’t care enough.

Moneyball.
Maybe if I had not already seen the movie I would be more interested in this book?  But the movie so nicely sums things up, I just let this book go after a bit.

New clothes.


Thanks to a coupon I had a great time at Macy’s.  I bought:
Two pairs of PANTS THAT FIT!!!!
One green t-shirt, with polka dots and a cute ruffle on the neck.
One absolutely flattering black dress with cute buckle at waist.
One absolutely gorgeous crochet dress which was originally $139.00 and I paid $19.00
One very flattering black t-shirt dress.
One skinny black belt to go with the crochet dress.

Three sentence movie reviews: Moonrise Kingdom

Viewing two of this movie was just as delightful as the first, perhaps more so as I didn’t have to pay attention to plot and could just immerse myself in what was happening on the screen.  I think my favorite line was the simultaneous “that was the girl!” spoken by Bruce Willis & Edward Norton.  And it’s interesting to look at both Bruce Willis and Edward Norton, who have both played action heroes and compare them in these roles.

Cost:  $6.25 (plus $5.00 in ATM fees because I didn’t think to bring cash)
Where:  Cinemagic, which is a lovely theater I’ve only been to one other time.

Three sentence movie reviews: Red Dawn

I hadn’t seen this since I was fifteen or so and though the opening scenes were awesome, it slowly but surely rolled down into mediocre territory from there.  I think one of the problems was that all the boys looked alike which made it hard for me to feel sad when something happened to one of them because I couldn’t tell which one it was.  Also, the many gratuitous shots of the various characters shooting their guns made me realize we used to see that all the time in movies and now we never see that, probably due to advances in computer animation; before showing us what happened after the bullets were fired was an expensive endeavor and we had to use our imaginations, now it’s just computer generated and we can see what the gunfire does.

Cost:  free from library
Watched: at home.