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Weekend Update – Movies

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We managed to add two movies to our viewing list this weekend, along with dinner at Ralph’s Great Divide on Friday and Mama Carolla’s on Saturday, an overly sweet bottle of Reisling, much work on Stephanie’s part, and my reading the Sunday paper, a book and lots of blogs.

Murder By Death (1976)
Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, and Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, David Niven, Maggie Smith
A Neil Simon murder-mystery spoof from 1976 that tacked every funny genre conceit of murder mysteries with an ensemble cast of stars. It was very funny, and I’m not sure how I missed this one before, given my teenage love of Agatha Christie novels. It was clearly the inspiration for another favorite comedy of mine – Clue. Strangely, I don’t own clue, although I remember it being in the $5 bin at Target. Wonder why I never picked that up.

Failure to Launch (2007)
Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew McConaughey
This was a lot funnier than I expected, although I say that with reservations, lest someone think I’m approving of the recent misogynist cinematic trend of “Guys who refuse to grow up and still get the girl.”
Wait a minute here… Matthew McConaughey was born in November 4 1969? He’s younger than me? He looks like he’s in his late forties. I had so much trouble with the idea of him still living at home, because he looked so old.

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links for 2008-01-14

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Movies I’ve Seen: 2007

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.

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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

Mass Avenue Movies Under the Stars

I found this event from the OutWord Bound Bookstore email newsletter interesting:

Mass Avenue Movies Under the Stars
Mass Ave Video Store in partnership with the Indianapolis International Film Festival presents their 2007 Outdoor Summer Film Series: Movies Under the Stars extending through September 27, 2007.
All movies are free and open to the public! So bring your favorites: picnic food, lawn chair, libations, and friends to enjoy a night of movies under the stars.
Mass. Ave. Video Store Outdoor Movie Garden
Mass. Ave. Video Store
922 Massachusetts Avenue
Indianapolis, IN 46202
[ Google Map ]
phone: 317-951-7195
August features “International Animation”
Aug. 2nd – – Grave of the Fireflies (Japan)
Aug. 9th – – Spirited Away (Japan, 2002 Academy award winner)
Aug. 16th – – The Tripletts of Belleville (France, 2003 Academy awrd winner)
Aug. 23rd – – Award-winning Animated Shorts – only the BEST!
Aug. 30th – – The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Germany, 1926, the VERY FIRST animated feature in History!)

Similar to movies on the terrace at the IMA. Sounds like fun, and it’s downtown, so it’s a bit closer to our house. Also, the IMA is popular enough that it can get really crowded. This might be a bit more roomy for those of us who have Demophobia.

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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.

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Clerks II

“Well then, you must be as blind as Anne Frank, ’cause what’s the point in having an internet connection if you’re not using it to look at weird, fucked-up pictures of dirty sex you’ll never have yourself?” – Clerks II

Continue ReadingClerks II