This was just a beautiful movie. I know you've probably all seen it already by now but I got it from netflix a week ago and it has been sitting on my nightstand waiting for the perfect moment to be watched and tonight was it. I really expected it to be much more blunt with the themes of a young family struggling to make their life work in New York but it was about so much more than that. I cried at the end. A lot.
Okay, so Corrina does the merchandising for The Decemberists and knows all the gossip and apparently there is some drama behind the scenes, but you know, I still absolutely love them. They have a unique sound and a fairly skewed, dark viewpoint, and listening to their albums just makes me happy. Here are a few songs to try. As usual, if prompted for a username and password, use cpadian and 020276:
Theresa and I watched this the other night and let me just say, it was appalling. The main characters were annoying, the script didn't bother to use logic of any kind, the big plot device was ridiculous, Jerry Seinfeld was incredibly annoying, and when it was all over I totally wanted my money back. Wondering 'who wrote this piece of crap?' at the end, I watched the credits. It turns out, there were four separate (credited) writers. Not a good sign, fellas. Can you see the tag line in the photo over there? "Honey just got funny"? No, no it really didn't. My advice? Skip it.
This is the 3rd book in the series about Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter of Gothenburg, Sweden. The first two are titled "Sun and Shadow" and "Never End". I like how the books are written and that though they are mysteries, they concentrate more on the characters. For example - Winter had problems communicating with his father and his thoughts on that: "Everything could have been resolved if only they'd spoken to each other. The only thing that helps is communication with words. That's the only thing that enables us to make progress. Silence begets more silence, and eventually causes a muteness that is like cement."
There are 12 Erik Winter novels but so far, only 3 of them have been translated from Swedish to English. I'm looking forward to the other 9.
I just finished watching Premonition, the one with Sandra Bullock where her husband dies and she wakes up the next day and he isn't dead and etc etc. My spontaneous utterance at the end of the movie was "oh my god....what a bunch of preachy crappy garbage!"
This was an unusual book, somewhat difficult to classify. Though it is a mystery, it is also a character study with much of the action occuring in the main character's past or her imaginings. I really enjoyed the author's writing and it wasn't until I had the book home from the library and started reading it that I realized she is a Portland author - spending time here and in Miami.
Lena Dawson is not a cop or a detective but a fingerprint examiner. She is also an orphan and this plays a major part in this story.
About 3/4 of the way through, the story begins to lag and the book could have used some more editing. The author does bring the book to a satisfying conclusion though and it is well worth reading - but not for everyone.
I'm looking forward to reading more books by this author!
Oh boy. Hard to know where to begin with this one. The biggest issues were the glaring inconsistencies in logic. I know it's a kids movie, I know children aren't supposed to have the best judgment, but the errors they made just seemed ridiculous. The basic premise (beware of spoilers ahead) is that there is this book that contains all of the secrets to finding magical creatures in the world and the book is inside this old house that this mom and her three kids moves into and one of her sons finds it. The whole point is to keep the book safe from some scary ogre guy because if he had all the secrets then he would destroy the world. So the boy figures out that the house is protected by some magic something or other and the book is safe inside the house. He sees his brother get dragged away into the forest by goblins and so he goes after them, but instead of leaving the book in the magical safety of the house, he takes it with him!! I could understand this if he was going to use the book to figure out how to help his brother or something, but he doesn't open it one time! Then he finally gets his brother back safely to the house and they decide they have to go into town to find the crazy daughter of the guy who wrote the book and ask her for help, and he takes the freaking book with him again!! For NO REASON.
I came across this album on Napster as a recommendation for people who like James Morrison. Anyway, I threw it on my MP3 player with some other stuff and put it on random and John's songs just kind of stood out. Every time I was really digging a song I would look at my MP3 player and it would be one from this album! He has a very nice mellow style.
I enjoyed Zodiac a lot. I tend to be partial to serial killer movies anyway (not sure what that says about me, but I don't think it's good), but this one in particular was paced really well. There were sequences where I was actually on-the-edge-of-my-seat scared, and that doesn't happen to me very often. Plus, it's chock full of Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhaal...how could that be bad??
I just finished watching Pan's Labyrinth on Netflix On Demand. The thing that surprised me the most about it was how bloody it was and how disturbing some of the scenes turned out to be. I expected it to be much more lighthearted than it was, and while technically I suppose it had a happy ending, it was still a little bleak for my taste. Given all that, I'd have to say I can't quite recommend it. Most of you have already seen it anyway, so I don't suppose it matters too much what I thought :)
