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Movies I’ve Seen: 2007

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I’ve never kept track of movies I’ve seen in the past, but this year we saw so few in the theater, and most of our viewing was via Netflix, so I was able to figure most of it out. I think. If you know of some we saw with you in the theater that aren’t on here, let me know. Also, these are not in any particular order other than just as they came to mind, so if they don’t match release dates or whatever, that’s why. Of the 25 movies I can recall seeing, just 6 were in the theater.

I’m going to keep better track of our movie viewing in the future. I enjoy seeing movies in the theater, but Stephanie can take it or leave it. (And at times, she has trouble staying awake.) And since we have a fully stocked Netflix queue all the time, we tend to stay home more than go out. There are quite a few movies I wish I’d seen in the theater this year – The Bourne Ultimatum, Once, and Ocean’s 13 were a few of them, along with Michael Clayton, Juno, Ratatouille, and Into the Wild.

1. The Simpsons Movie (in the theater)
Cute, but I expected more.

2. Volver (in the theater)
Wow. Penelope Cruz is awesome.

3. Sideways (via Netflix)
Sadly, I know someone just like this guy.

4. Swing Kids (via Netflix)
Not nearly as much swing dancing as I remembered, but what little there is in the movie is awesome.

5. The Prestige (via Netflix)
A great mystery, and I didn’t have it figured out.

6. Cars (via Netflix)
We finally rented this after being teased by the entire Route 66 caravan about not having seen it.

7. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (via Netflix)
Eh. Not as good as I’d hoped.

8. The Nightmare Before Christmas (via Netflix)
I saw it when it came out, but Stephanie had never seen it.

9. The Departed (via Netflix)
Wow. Disturbing and compelling.

10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (via Netflix)
Really holds up after all these years.

11. Clerks II (via Netflix)
I loved it, though it was panned. I enjoy Kevin Smith’s movies and can overlook the dumb parts, though.

12. The Muppet Movie – Kermit’s 50th Anniversary Edition (via Netflix)
I’d forgotten how many familiar faces are in this movie. It was pretty packed with celebrity cameos.

13. V for Vendetta (I own the DVD)
I like Alan Moore, and I thought this movie did the graphic novel pretty good justice, although he didn’t believe so. I especially love that there’s a local right wing blog that has adopted the V persona, given that V was a radical lefty. But, ya know, some people have comprehension problems in books and movies both.

14. Idiocracy (via Netflix)
I enjoyed it, and am still trying to figure out why it wasn’t more popular.

15. EXPO – Magic of the White City (via Netflix)
Documentary on the Chicago worlds fair – I wanted to see pictures after having read Devil in the White City. It was pretty slow, but I got what I wanted out of it.

16. Pirates of the Caribbean – The Curse of the Black Pearl (via Netflix)
Fun.

17. Frankie & Annette – Ski Party (via Netflix)
Rented entirely for the short Leslie Gore scene, where she sings “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” and entirely worth it for that, although the rest of the movie sucked.

18. Good Night, and Good Luck (I own the DVD)
Of course I liked it.

19. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (in the theater)
I loved the 3-D at the end, but it gave Stephanie a headache.

20. Blades of Glory (in the theater)
It was a skating movie, so of course we saw it in the theater. Still trying to figure out if this was funny or homophobic. I’m leaning towards the latter.

21. High School Musical (on DVD)
We had to see this at Dan and Doug’s so we’d be prepared for the second one, which was just coming out.

22. High School Musical 2 (on TV)
For a sequel, it didn’t suck much more than the first.

23. Freaky Friday (via DVR)
Lohan before the wheels came off her wagon. Very cute. I thought Jamie Lee Curtis was more over the top, though.

24. Sky High (via DVR)
It has Linda Carter in it. Enough said.

25. Enchanted (in the theater)
It was cute, but the first part was a little too twee for me, and I thought Amy Adams before she wises up was too cloying.

26. Alvin and the Chipmunks (in the theater)
Whatever – I love cute chipmunks, and these are extra cuteness. We were originally going to see The Golden Compass, but one of our Christian friends freaked out at something she read on the Family Research Council website, so that selection was scotched. Believe me, the fact that I know some that reads the Family Research council website gives me pause, too.

Continue ReadingMovies I’ve Seen: 2007

Weekend Update: 2008-01-06

Dunno what my last journal entry covered, so let me start at the top – we rang in 2008 at the traditional party at Dan and Doug’s, which is always fun and pretty low-key, and thankfully a few blocks away so we don’t have to risk life and limb. I got really toasted, but managed to not have a hangover the next day; pretty excellent. I seem to have made a dozen different resolutions lately; I’ll work on them if I remember them all. The books resolution is firmly cemented and I’m sure I’ll do well on it.

I have a new niece as of January 2nd at 3:42 a.m. My sister Stacy had her baby, named Annabelle. I’m suffering from “Twitter is killing my blogging” or I would have mentioned it before now.

Stacy's baby Annabelle

So I’m an aunt, again. Yay! Stephanie and I decided we’d get the kid started right, so we set up an ING savings account and automated it to deposit $20 ever month. After a couple of years, we’ll look at investing it. Stephanie’s Dad invested the money her family gave to her when she was a baby and she has a nice nest egg because of it, so I thought it would be good to do something similar for my niece.

This weekend we had a really full To Do list, and we managed to get a lot of it done. We put away all the Christmas decorations and finally cleaned up after all the Christmas baking and the tons of cooking we’ve done at home lately. We’ve done really well about making meals at home rather than dining out, but it does have a tendency to trash the kitchen. We got other vacuuming and cleaning done, and I managed to finally package up and get ready to mail some gifts we’ve had around the house since this summer. I completely failed to do my crime watch block leader stuff; I’ll have to get to it soon.

I had a full-blown cold after Christmas that went away, but left some sort of sinus thing in it’s wake that I can’t seem to shake. Dunno what that’s about. On January 18th, I’m going to be getting laser surgery on my eyes to correct my vision. I’ll take a few days off, but I’m not too worried about it. I have a pretty high pain threshold these days. If it doesn’t involve I giant hole in my chest, I’m not bothered.

I’m going to keep track of the movies we watch in 2008, in addition to the books I read. I’ve never really kept track before, but in reconstructing this past year’s list, it’s apparent movies aren’t really a high priority in our house. I can recall seeing 24 movies, and only 6 of them were in the theater. The bulk of our movie watching was on Netflix. I’ll reconstruct the list in another post.

This weekend we got the movie Madeline from Netflix and watched it. It’s a live-action version of the children’s book that Stephanie adored as a kid, so it’s been in our queue. It was cute but the story didn’t flow well, and we spent the whole movie analyzing what plot points came from the books. However I have had the Carly Simon theme song stuck in my head all morning, so it made some sort of impression.

I’m currently in the middle of reading The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books by J. Peder Zane (a present from Stephanie’s Mom) and The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, which was a present from my friend Jen.

I’ve also been playing several different video games from bigfishgames.com. We had a coupon for free downloads with a Barnes and Noble purchase, and after playing their version of Mahjongg, I started looking at some of their other games, including Madame Fate, Mystery Case Files – Huntsville, and Mystery Case Files – Ravenhurst. They’re basically scavenger hunt-like games, where you poke around rooms and find missing items. I find them a lot more fun than war games and blowing up crap, though.

Continue ReadingWeekend Update: 2008-01-06

J.K. Rowling: Dumbledore was gay.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Harry Potter fans, the rumours are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay.
JK Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series, outed the beloved character today while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall in New York. After reading briefly from the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she took questions from audience members.
She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love”.
“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. “Falling in love can blind us to an extent,” Rowling said of Dumbledore’s feelings, adding that Dumbledore was “horribly, terribly let down”.
Dumbledore’s love, she observed, was his “great tragedy”.
“Oh, my God,” Rowling concluded with a laugh, “the fan fiction.”
Potter readers on fan sites and elsewhere on the internet have speculated on the sexuality of Dumbledore, noting that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past. And explicit scenes with Dumbledore already have appeared in fan fiction.
Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.
Rowling, finishing a brief “Open Book Tour” of the United States, her first tour there since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and urged her fans to “question authority”.
Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Continue ReadingJ.K. Rowling: Dumbledore was gay.

the college professor in modern literature and film

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After reading Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty” for book club, I found this article from the American Scholar on the college professor as portrayed in modern literature and film interesting:

The absentminded professor, that kindly old figure, is long gone. A new image has taken his place, one that bespeaks not only our culture’s hostility to the mind, but also its desperate confusion about the nature of love

Look at recent movies about academics, and a remarkably consistent pattern emerges. In The Squid and the Whale (2005), Jeff Daniels plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In One True Thing (1998), William Hurt plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In Wonder Boys (2000), Michael Douglas plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, has just been left by his third wife, and can’t commit to the child he’s conceived in an adulterous affair with his chancellor. Daniels’s character is vain, selfish, resentful, and immature. Hurt’s is vain, selfish, pompous, and self-pitying. Douglas’s is vain, selfish, resentful, and self-pitying. Hurt’s character drinks. Douglas’s drinks, smokes pot, and takes pills. All three men measure themselves against successful writers (two of them, in Douglas’s case; his own wife, in Daniels’s) whose presence diminishes them further. In We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004), Mark Ruffalo and Peter Krause divide the central role: both are English professors, and both neglect and cheat on their wives, but Krause plays the arrogant, priapic writer who seduces his students, Ruffalo the passive, self-pitying failure. A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) divides the stereotype a different way, with John Travolta as the washed-up, alcoholic English professor, Gabriel Macht as the blocked, alcoholic writer.

Not that these figures always teach English. Kevin Spacey plays a philosophy professor — broken, bitter, dissolute — in The Life of David Gale (2003). Steve Carell plays a self-loathing, suicidal Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Both characters fall for graduate students, with disastrous results. And while the stereotype has gained a new prominence of late, its roots go back at least a few decades. Many of its elements are in place in Oleanna (1994), in Surviving Desire (1991), and, with John Mahoney’s burnt-out communications professor, in Moonstruck (1987). In fact, all of its elements are in place in Terms of Endearment (1983), where Jeff Daniels took his first turn playing a feckless, philandering English professor. And of course, almost two decades before that, there was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

What’s going on here? If the image of the absent-minded professor stood for benevolent unworldliness, what is the meaning of the new academic stereotype? Why are so many of these failed professors also failed writers? Why is professional futility so often connected with sexual impropriety? (In both Terms of Endearment and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, “going to the library” becomes a euphemism for “going to sleep with a student.”) Why are these professors all men, and why are all the ones who are married such miserable husbands?

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Sexed-up Hermione Granger

As Bil points out, for the IMAX promotional poster for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix” movie someone adjusted Hermione’s girl parts somewhat in comparison to the original movie poster, giving her some bigger boobs, a thinner waist and fluffier hair. I grabbed the picture he posted comparing the posters side-by-side, and overlaid one on the other, then animated it so you can see the difference. I was interested in seeing if there were any alterations to other parts of the poster. There’s a slight color change – the IMAX version has shifted some of the purples to greens, and there’s a bit of a lighting change as well; he IMAX seems to have more highlights behind Harry, and on a few of the other faces.

Hermione's IMax Boobs

But there were no other obvious alterations to figures on the original poster, other than the really big changes on Hermione. Hmmm.

Continue ReadingSexed-up Hermione Granger