Category Archives: movies

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: Not really a whole lot at the present moment. I checked Just Listen by Sara Dessen and Inkspell by Cornelia Funke out of the school library. I started Inkspell, but didn’t get very far. I’m sure I’ll get around to finishing it, but so far, I’m not as captivated as I was by Inkheart.

I’ve still got a “to read” list a mile long…

Watching: Rand and I have been on a movie binge in the past week…

Reefer Madness–the musical version. The DVD also had the original film on it, so we watched enough of it to get the idea. I adore Kristen Bell, so I was all over this.

Little Shop of Horrors–Rand couldn’t believe I’d never seen this. So now I have. 🙂

Jeffrey–a mid-90s AIDS comedy starring Steven Weber and Michael T. Weiss. Most people would know Steven Weber as the guy from Wings, and Michael T. Weiss as the guy from The Pretender. I did watch both shows…but I remember Michael T. Weiss as Dr. Mike Horton from Days of Our Lives. He was yummy. Anyway…Jeffrey starts out as a total slapstick comedy, very silly, and ends with some serious emotional stuff.

Pittsburgh–a Jeff Goldblum mockumentary. Er, sort of. Jeff Goldblum does a regional theater production of The Music Man in Pittsburgh so his Canadian girlfriend (a musical theater actress) can stay in the country on a work visa. He plays Harold Hill, and his girlfriend plays Marian. He gets Ed Begley Jr. and Ileana Douglas to star in the show as well. The thing is…it all actually happened. I mean, of course they went a little over-the-top for the movie, which is what made it a mocumentary rather than an actual documentary, but it was very funny.

Ed Wood–the topic of Ed Wood and his films came up while having breakfast with Lisa last weekend. Rand saw this when it came out, but I did not, so we decided to get it. (actually, not quite finished with this. more later…)

Also keeping up with my regular TV watching, but I don’t have much to say about that. I’m *loving* 30 Rock. Tina Fey is awesome.

Listening: Been listening to a lot of Soul Coughing lately, because Rand’s been on a kick. That’s okay, because I’m enjoying it. Also, some other stuff that I’ve forgotten.

Of course, this past weekend was a live music extravaganza, but more on that later…

Don’t forget to share your own reading/watching/listening experiences, and make suggestions if you like. Happy Monday!

Tuesday Tidbits

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  • Last night’s episode of Heroes was pretty good, but I must say I am disappointed in Peter. How gullible can he be? Gah. Kristin has the scoop on what’s to come…sort of. (no real spoilers). I SO want Elle (Kristen Bell) to turn against her creepy father and join our Heroes. I heart her. I don’t want her to be bad. 🙁
  • I have just now remembered two things I left out of my last Reading, Watching, Listening post–at school, I watched The Devil’s Arithmetic (based on the book of the same title) with the kids. I thought it was great–very well done, harrowing without being too graphic. Also, 1408. Stephen King! John Cusack! I liked it. I didn’t *love* it, but I liked it.
  • And, some sad news…Lowest of the Low is saying goodbye. I’m planning on being at the show at Club Infinity next weekend (now a farewell show…). Who else is going to be there? In a way, I’ve been a very, very lucky Low fan. I didn’t really become a fan until well after they had already broken up (the first time), and they reunited shortly after I moved to Buffalo. I’ve had lots and lots of opportunities to see them live. Sigh.

That’s it for now…happy Monday, all!

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: I finished the other two books in the Scott Westerfield trilogy, Pretties and Specials. The trilogy was interesting. I didn’t find it earth-shattering or anything, but it did raise some interesting questions. I can see why middle school English teachers would like it.

Watching: Last week, Rand and I watched Hot Fuzz (which I already talked about). There was lots of random TV watching this week…like bits and pieces of VH1’s 100 One-Hit Wonders (or something) hosted by William Shatner.

Thanksgiving night, we watched Christmas Vacation, which never ceases to amuse me. (I giggle every single time they shake the box and it meows.) I just learned that the movie was written by John Hughes–I should have realized the connection between the embarrassing visiting grandparents in this move and in Sixteen Candles.

While I was doing laundry and other random tasks, Rand watched Slime City, a dreadfully, hilariously bad horror movie from 1988. We met the director (who is from Fredonia and now lives in Buffalo) at that comic book/memorabilia show a couple of weeks ago. Rand traded him an Ookla CD for a copy of the movie. I ended up watching about the last third of it with him. I wouldn’t say the movie is *good*, but it was entertaining. One thing that was interesting that we both commented on was that we think Zachary Quinto (Sylar on Heroes) has seen and studied the lead actor from this movie.

Listening: Elliott Smith, Brian Regan (sometimes very funny, sometimes not so much…), Lewis Black at Carnegie Hall (not nearly as funny as I’d hoped it would be), some Christmas music, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t seem to remember right now.

Weekend wrap-up

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This weekend was pretty mellow…which believe me, is fine!

Friday night, Rand and I caught up on some TV watching. Saturday, we intended to catch a showing of The Darjeeling Limited  at the Amherst…however, when we arrived (after lunch at Brodo), we found that the 2 pm showing had been canceled due to a private event. Feh.

Went grocery shopping. We’d intended to feed our little can of change into the Coinstar machine, but found that we would have been waiting a very long time. A couple had made it to the machine ahead of time with several large vats full of change. No kidding. We decided to try again after our shopping was done, but they were still there. After having fed nearly $1000 worth of change into the machine. Mildly annoying.

Later, we watched Hot Fuzz, which we’d gotten from Netflix *months* ago. No kidding. I liked it. Probably not quite as much as I liked Shaun of the Dead, but I liked it quite a bit.

Sunday, we visited with Rand’s family and watched Ghostbusters, which David had rented for his son. Hee.

The only other notable thing about the weekend? I’ve begun having wedding stress dreams. Three nights in a row. This had better not continue until the wedding. I’ll lose my mind. In the first dream, someone had brought me my clothes, but forgot my shoes. In the second dream, we forgot the music. And in the third dream, tons of people just didn’t show up (and not, y’know…third cousins I didn’t really care about. Like my best friends didn’t show up. It was dreadful.).

So yeah. Maybe I need to step up the yoga? Meditate? Hire a wedding planner? 😉 (Kidding about that last one. I’m not hiring a wedding planner.)

Hope you all had a pleasant weekend.

Movie geekery

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On Saturday night, Rand, John and I did a superhero double-feature at the cheap theater. We saw Spider-Man 3 followed by Fantastic 4 2.

In conversation before the movies, I said, “I don’t know anything about the Fantastic 4.”

“Well,” John said, “There’s four of them.”

Har, har…

Ahem.

I had not seen the first Fantastic 4 movie. My major complaint has been that Jessica Alba looks terrible as a blonde. More on that later.*

I had seen the other Spider-Man movies, though. I think Tobey Maguire does a good Peter Parker, and I enjoy Kirsten Dunst.

I enjoyed Spidey 3, but I thought it was a touch on the long side. The whole business with Venom could have been left out and saved for another movie. It had no real consequence and seemed kind of wedged in.

The emotional stuff, though, was fantastic. I cried through the entire third act of the movie. The hits just kept on coming. The resolution of Harry’s story was very well done. (except for one little quibble–why didn’t the butler open his mouth sooner? ah well…)

As for FF…it was fun, but mostly forgettable. The Silver Surfer looked cool. I thought the scene where the team holds up the giant ferris wheel in London was pretty convincingly done. Rand keeps saying the FF would play better as a TV show, and I think I agree. This movie would have been much better suited to the small screen.

Thus ends my movie geekery for this week.

*If you insist that Jessica Alba must play Sue Storm, for crying out loud, find a better shade of blonde for her. It just looks completely artificial and awful.

It’s too hot

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And I’ve been away from my computer a lot, hence the light posting this week…

I had a nice afternoon with Jen and Samantha yesterday.

I got my car inspected, and of course, I didn’t get away without having anything done. I can’t remember the last time my car passed inspection. This time it was the brakes, and I got off fairly cheap. I do think I need an alignment, though, because my brake pads are wearing unevenly…

Other than that, I’ve been running around like a crazy person, between teaching and various appointments and meeting with friends and yoga class…and, uh, you get the picture.

Rand and I saw The Simpsons Movie, which was enjoyable. I didn’t go into it expecting anything earth-shattering. It was funny. I laughed. 😉 I can’t stop singing “Spider-Pig.” (no he can’t, ’cause he’s a pig…)

I went to the movie website (link above) and created this avatar:

simpsons

Limited options, so it doesn’t really look all that much like me.

Anywhoo, hope you’re all managing to keep cool!

Baby fish mouth?

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This is all because of Eden…it’s a sampling of my favorite and most quoted movie quotes. I did not include any from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, because Eden pretty well covered that one.

There are also a number of hilarious exchanges from these movies that I didn’t include, just because they were too long.

So, what does it mean that my most favorite movies were made from 1987-1989? Hmmm…

Say Anything

One question: do you need… someone, or do you need me?… Forget it, I don’t really care.

I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen.

The rain on my car is a baptism, the new me, Ice Man, Power Lloyd, my assault on the world begins now.

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

Joe. She’s written 65 songs… 65. They’re all about you. They’re all about pain.

Why can’t you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?

You invade my soul.

“YOU MUST CHILL!! YOU MUST CHILL!! I HAVE HIDDEN YOUR KEYS!! CHILL!!

555-1342, that’s 5..5..5..1..3..4..2. 555-1342.

I don’t know, I can’t figure it all out tonight sir, right now I’m just gonna hang with your daughter.

I want to get hurt!

When Harry Met Sally

I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

Oh, but “baby fish mouth” is sweeping the nation?

You’re right, you’re right. I know you’re right.

You’re the worst kind. You’re high maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.

No you didn’t. A Sheldon can do your income taxes. If you need a root canal, Sheldon’s your man… but humpin’ and pumpin’ is not Sheldon’s strong suit. It’s the name. ‘Do it to me Sheldon, you’re an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-don.’ Doesn’t work.

All I’m saying is that somewhere out there is the man you are supposed to marry. And if you don’t get him first, somebody else will, and you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that somebody else is married to your husband.

Is one of us supposed to be a DOG in this scenario?

The fact that you’re not answering leads me to believe you’re either (a) not at home, (b) home but don’t want to talk to me, or (c) home, desperately want to talk to me, but trapped under something heavy. If it’s either (a) or (c), please call me back.

That’s it? Some faceless guy rips off all your clothes, and THAT’S the sex fantasy you’ve been having since you were twelve?

She’s supposed to be his transitional person, she’s not supposed to be the ONE. All this time I thought he didn’t want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me.

And then one day I was taking Alice’s little girl for the afternoon because I’d promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing “I Spy” – I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post – and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, “I spy a family.” And I started to cry

The Princess Bride

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Vizzini: No more rhymes now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha… [thud]

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

I’m not a witch, I’m your wife. But after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that any more.

Have fun stormin’ da castle!

Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togevah tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wiffin a dweam…

Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.

Bull Durham

Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You’ll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes.

Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers?
Skip: Lollygaggers.

Well, fuck this fucking game!

*I also love the exchange when Crash yells at Nuke for getting the words wrong, but I think I’m misquoting it, and I didn’t want to get it wrong. I poked around online a bit, but I couldn’t find it (at least, not with any assurance that it was accurate). If anyone has it at their fingertips, please share!*

Weekend update

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Got my hair cut. I’m going to try and get some decent pictures up later. I went to Samantha’s stylist, and she was wonderful!

I didn’t get anything major done to the length or style–the first thing the stylist said to me was “Oh, I love this cut on you!” So, we just did some shaping and molding, and I really love the way it looks now. She also colored it, and I think the color looks great. Then she offered to do my brows, and since I was planning on getting them done soon anyway, I agreed. She was a pro at this, too–it was a quick and relatively painless experience.

And the best part was that it was very reasonably priced. Yay!

Thanks to everyone who commented and voted in my poll.

We saw Ratatouille over the weekend, which was great fun. The moment when Ego the restaurant critic (voiced by Peter O’Toole) eats the ratatouille takes the movie from “fun” to “brilliant.” Really. I got a little misty…

Speaking of misty, we finished watching Season 5 of Scrubs, and I cried a lot.

We also attended a graduation party for one of Rand’s cousins. It was nice, except that my allergies were in full flare-up. Ick.

So, that’s me. Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Happy Monday!

Reading, watching, listening

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I’m going to try and keep this brief–there’s a lot!

Reading: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. Loved it. My favorite King in a long time. Elsewhere (YA), which I will post on the other blog soon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus vol. 1, My Faith in Frankie, Bloom County collected strips, Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men (not very astonished so far, Joss…). The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi (fun read). The first book in Of Darkness, Light and Fire by Tanya Huff (Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light).

This puts me at about 40 books for the year so far. I’m probably missing stuff, but moving on…

Watching: My Name is Earl, Season 1. I had watched an episode here and there, and found it amusing but didn’t quite “get” it. Watching the entire first season from the beginning, though…yeah, I get it. 🙂

Entourage, Season 1.  Oh, my. I hate these guys so much. But Ari is funny, and Eric seems like a good guy. Even Drama begins to grow on me. (Turtle, however? Needs to be slapped.)

Remember the Titans. One of those movies that teachers are fond of showing in class, so I had seen the same 40 minutes of it several times. I finally sat down and watched the whole thing. I liked it. It’s what you’d expect from a Disney sports movie. Little Hayden Panettiere was great in it!

Knocked Up. Very cute. Very funny. And I admit, I fall into the half of women who would think the empty box proposal was cute rather than lame.

We just started watching season 5 of Scrubs. We’d caught a bunch of the episodes in syndication, and are finding that a lot of really funny scenes were cut. Here’s one that made me laugh:

Carla: …and then he walked away singing Safety Dance.

Elliot: I thought you learned your lesson that time you told him the Kommissar was in town.

Hee. I know there’s more here, but again…moving on…

Listening: Seanan McGuire, Stars Fall Home. As I said, Seanan is a brilliant songwriter. I’ve been enjoying this quite a bit.

Steve Martin, Pure Drivel. If it’s an audiobook, does it count as reading or listening? Hmmm…

Jill Sobule, Pink Pearl.

My “favorites” and “walking” lists on my iPod, and my “Great Big Sea radio” station on Pandora.

I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen

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This is a little long, but it made my Lloyd Dobbler-lovin’ heart smile:

Sigh…is there anyone who didn’t want Lloyd standing outside her window with a boom box?

(Seen at EW Popwatch)