Three sentence movie reviews: 2 Fast 2 Furious


I heard this was a pretty bad movie, and I don’t deny that is does not rank high on any measure of a movie, mostly because there is no Vin Diesel to perk up any scenes. However, it is not the worst movie I’ve seen this year—at least, I don’t think so–and there are some memorable scenes like the great car scramble. Though Tyrese Gibson’s Roman Pearce’s character is not super developed, he has some amusing lines and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is always entertaining, so there are worse ways to spend two hours of your life.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2003/two_fast_two_furious_ver6.html

Three sentence movie reviews: The Fast and the Furious


The fact that I remembered absolutely nothing from the first time I saw this 10 years ago indicates that there isn’t much to this movie. However, that doesn’t make it an enjoyable wad of cotton-candy-viewing the second time around. Paul Walker is less wooden than Keanu Reeves in Point Break (another favorite) and Vin Diesel is Vin Diesel, which means that despite the fact I don’t have any interest in cars in general and illegal street racing in particular, I greatly enjoyed this movie.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2001/fast_and_the_furious.html

Infill, is there another way?

I’m a fan of infill. As someone who was not born and raised in this great city, but happily live here, I support people who love Portland moving to Portland. Projections are that roughly one zillion people will be living her by 2050 and I want my compact urban environment to be maintained for all those newcomers. I’m not a fan of sprawl. I don’t really care that the infill houses don’t match the existing ones in the neighborhood or that infill houses look alike. After all, a lot of neighborhoods don’t have “matching” houses and most neighborhoods have banks of houses that were clearly built by some developer of the past as a row of them will be strikingly similar.

Infill in Portland mostly looks like variations of this:

Houses are 1500-2500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths with a garage and a tiny front and back yard. My problem with infill is that this standard 3 bedroom/2.5 bath doesn’t really make sense for a lot of Portlanders. For a family of four, 3 bedroom houses are great. But there are an awful lot of Portlanders who are not a family of four. There are also an awful lot of Portlanders who would rather have less house and more yard. I’m wondering if we can’t look to a different model of infill for them.

One of my favorite things about North Portland is that it has a lot of very small houses on big lots. What worries me is that these are not seen as being worth preserving. Often, when they go on the market, they are bought by someone who tears them down and replaces them with the standard infill house.

But what if the tiny house, large lot became an infill choice? Tiny houses are much easier to maintain, heat and cool. If placed on a standard sized lot, they leave room for a large garden. They are all about sustainable. And they are cute. Take a look of some of these:

The Sebastarosa is 750-847 square feet:
The Enesti is 746-843 square feet:
The B-53 is 777-874 square feet:
All of the above tiny houses can be found on the Tumbleweed Tiny House website, which is also where the pictures came from. Somewhere in Portland there must be an infill developer who wants to focus on tiny house infill for the rest of us.

Three sentence movie reviews: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban


Due to the fact that there is that whole time travel thing going on, this movie is also overly long. However, the dementors are suitably scary and they did an excellent job with the hippogriff. It struck me, as I was watching Hermione explain everything to Harry, that this may be one of the few places in the Hollywood cannon when the female character saves the day and makes no excuses for her smarts and also is not punished by the shunning of the male characters, drug use or eating disorder.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2004/harry_potter_and_the_prisoner_of_azkaban_ver3.html

20MPDC 5/17/11

Well, I reported something this week, but blogger chose to roll back things to Wednesday, thus erasing the hours of work on the blog I did on Thursday. I am not at all happy with blogger at this moment.

Thursday 5/12/11
I did work today but blogger erased it.

Friday 5/13/11
Nothing

Saturday 5/14/11
Nothing

Sunday 5/15/11
Nothing.

Monday 5/16/11
I spent half of the time choosing a photo for the “about” page on the harvest helper site. Then I spent the rest of the time unsuccessfully loading the photo onto the site. Why did I think doing this in wordpress would be a good idea? I do not find wordpress user friendly AT ALL. I will try again tomorrow.

Tuesday 5/17/11
Nothing

Three sentence movie reviews: Going the Distance


I had low expectations for this film, which it easily met and exceeded. There were a few “so funny I’m gasping for air” moments and the chemistry between all the cast was very good. Drew Barrymore’s character Erin was particularly foul-mouthed for a romantic comedy heroine, which I found refreshing, and at one point, one of my movie going companions remarked that the romantic couple were acting like real people, which was also refreshing.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2010/going_the_distance.html

Three sentence movie reviews: Thor

The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is that Thor looks like he came straight from the 1980s. The hair, the facial hair, the awful costume all point to evidence that Thor was James Hetfield’s younger brother who worked out a lot instead of playing the guitar.* There are nice effects to this movie and good acting (by people other than Thor) but ultimately, I couldn’t get over the fact that the hero of the movie had the look that so many guys I went to high school with were striving to obtain.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/thor_ver3.html

*see evidence below:

picture from: http://www.celebrityzine.net/name/james-hetfield#1slideshow-60-field_pictures
magazine cover from: http://www.allposters.com/-st/Metallica-Posters_c451_.htm

Flash Mob

A sunny day at Pioneer square with not much going on.

Except zombies.

Suddenly, children cluster and point at, what are they pointing at?

People in Pioneer square wonder what they are pointing at, as do the zombies.

The zombies try pointing at the children

Random passers-by record the scene.

More pointing, more confusion.

Suddenly the group of children break into spontaneous laughter.
Then they separate and drift away, leaving the zombies in a cluster.

Jo’s 4/5 class has been studying humor this spring and they planned a flash mob as part of their studies. The zombies weren’t part of the plan, they were a marketing effort by Ron Tonkin, who wants you to buy cars. It was a fun mob and I’m glad I got to chaperone.

20MPDC 5/10/11

Tuesday 5/10/11

You would probably guess by the lack of posts this week, but I’ve been very conflicted about the 20MPDC. I haven’t been doing anything, as the lack of reporting (none this week) attests. Should I throw in the towel? Switch my focus? Pretend I never embarked on this journey?

Here’s what I’ve decided to do:
Knife sharpening. On hold until I save up enough money to get some equipment.

Craigslist posting. I’ve been holding steady at $8.00 worth of sales for a month now. I’m going to set this aside and then come back to it at the end of May. Then things will be priced to go. I’ve also been contemplating having a garage sale instead of posting each item for very cheap individually.

Harvest Helper. This is what I’m putting my main effort into. I want to have the blog done by the end of this month and start handing out the flyers in early June.

20 minutes. I set my timer for 20 minutes, then it goes off and then I still have to post, making this an event longer than 20 minutes. I will set my timer for 15 minutes, then spend five minutes reporting the day’s efforts.

Three sentence movie reviews: Fast Five


This movie is awesome in its incredibly unbelievable plot, its fabulous (and also unbelievable) special effects, its over-the-top, well, everything. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it, far beyond its actual worthiness. Could my great love for this film have to do with Vin Diesel, a man who looks like he was an incredible nerd all through his formative years*, yet bulked up and became a hunky star, despite his lack of official good looks, so-so acting skills and odd voice?

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/fast_five_ver5.html


*Hah! IMDB reports that he is a D&D fan! I knew it!