We saw the movie RV last night, starring Robin Williams, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, and Kristin Chenoweth. It was considerably better than we expected, after seeing the previews and reading some newspaper reviews. It had standard camp-humor involving toilets and animals (not at the same time), but it managed to bring Robin Williams’ funny side to the table without going over the top as he has so many times recently. Jeff Daniels saved this movie from being crappy, though, with his nice-as-all-get-out character. Overall, I give it a 144 out of 169.
Category: Fiction
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Meat!
“They’re Made out of Meat,” is one of the best short internet videos I’ve seen in a while. Check it out.
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Thank You For Smoking
We saw Thank You For Smoking on Friday.* We enjoyed it immensely.
Originally, we’d seen the previews and thought, “Hey, that looks like a good movie,” but then it came out and didn’t show up in our local theaters. Hmmmm…must not have been that good.
Lo and behold, it’s here this week and it was awesome. I laughed heartily out loud several times during the film. I would see it again.
* Conveniently it was showing at the “good” theater, which means
bothcheaper, more comfortable and with better parking. But it’s the other theater which gets the blockbuster movies. Go figure. -
Scary Robert Jordan News
In the past, the wife and I have joked about how devastating it would be if J. K. Rowling died before finishing the seventh Harry Potter book. I have joked similarly about how world-destroying it would be if Robert Jordan passed on before he completed the Wheel of Time series.
Well, poking around the Tor website I found this:
I have been diagnosed with amyloidosis. That is a rare blood disease which affects only 8 people out of a million each year, and those 8 per million are divided among 22 distinct forms of amyloidosis.
Ahhhh!
Bad Bad Bad BAD!
Thankfully, he is undergoing treatment at the Mayo Clinic and I expect he will be with us for a good while longer. Median* life expectancy is 4 years with treatment, which is heartening.
As mentioned above, we all joke about our Authors and the effect they have on us by meeting, exceeding, or failing our expectations, but we don’t often talk about how their work impacts their lives. If it takes a sabbatical for Mr. Jordan to complete his recovery, I take it on myself to give him my blessing, as a fan, to take as long as he needs.
*Median does not equal average. Median means half the values are above that number and half are below. On a bell-curve, this would equal or be very near the average, but diagnostic-survival curves are not bell-shaped. By definition, you cannot be diagnosed after death and “die before diagnosis”, so the curve will be right-skewed with a long tail. Better explanation here.
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"V for Vendetta"
I find it dissapointing that so many movie reviewers are poo-poohing this movie. I saw it and I liked it!
Of course, given the nature of the previews, you might expect (understandably) that it’s an action film, which it is not. And, you might expect that because of the Wachowski brothers’ involvement that it would be a ground-breaking cinematographic epoch, which it’s not (but neither were Matrices II and III).
But, it is a good tale, with good acting on the part of the main characters. The
obvious parallelsreferences to the War on Terror are a bit overblown, and the Nazi-esque symbolism is way over the top, but if you ignore the backdrop and concentrate on V and Evey (Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman), I think you will be satisfied.Natalie Portman has a cute head, by the way.
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"They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!"
Just in case you needed some song to stick in your head for days on end, you should check out this remixed LOTR video.
Of course, while you’re at that site, you should glance around and see some of the other posts that entertained me:
For example, Random Personal Picture Finder. This one can keep you amused for hours.
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Top Ten Sci-Fi Films Never Made
For everyone’s reading enjoyment we have The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed.
Very Nice.
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"You gave me an evil hand."
[Spoilers]
My wife and I have been watching Angel from the beginning over the last couple months. We’re about two thirds of the way through season two at the moment and we just watched an episode that replaced a previous one as my favorite.
Previously (and you can stop reading this now if you’re not an Angel fan; it will get realllllllly boring), the episode in season one where Angel is at a party in Cordelia’s apartment and there is a quick montage of him imagining himself dancing. That was freaking hilarious! It still is.
[Spoilers]
But now, the episode in season two where Lindsey gets a new hand has taken first prize. His departure from W&H and the end of the episode (“You know you gave an evil hand, don’t you?”) was absolutely classic.Joss Whedon is my master.
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The Worst Movie of 2005
The Worst Movie of the Year (that I saw) was The Family Stone, a steaming pile of crap if I’ve ever stepped in one.
If you saw the previews for this movie, I’m willing to bet you assumed it to be a romantic comedy or a family-dynamic comedy or a holiday comedy. Notice the theme in that last sentence, please.
Do not expect to be entertained by laughter if you see this movie. It is not a comedy.
Well (you ask) if it’s not a comedy, what is it?
Drama? No, too stupid.
Tearjerker? No, too funny.
Chick Flick? No, too awful.They managed to roll into a 100 minute movie almost every comedic, dramatic, or holiday cliche that exists. They put together a film with no theme, no believable plot, and a set of characters that you had no idea what the hell was going on with. It made me angry, it was so bad. I never leave movies halfway through, but if I hadn’t thought my wife would be pissed, I’d have got up and left that one.
BAD movie! No biscuit. See it at your peril.