Sillybean

Mike summed it up: Best superhero movie yet filmed.

Don’t forget to stay until after the credits.

squee.

Big screen first:

Definitely, Maybe — I like Ryan Reynolds quite a bit, but he fell a little flat for me in this, and I’m not sure if he was really bad or if he just didn’t have much to work with. All three of the women he’s involved with are wonderful, and of course Abigail [...]

Once! I tuned in too late to see the song performed, but just in time to see it win. I just sent the DVD back to Netflix. The mini-review I left said something like, “Ho-hum plot and dialogue, transcendent music.” (I’m too lazy to go look it up.) Quite pleased that the song won — [...]

Found Iron Kissed on the shelf at B&N today, a week early, and promptly devoured it. This series just keeps getting better — as far as I’m concerned, it sits at the top of the urban fantasy/paranormal romance heap. Briggs is especially clever about opening up pieces of Mercy’s world without being heavy-handed about it. [...]

So I haven’t posted much lately. Sorry about that. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s going on….

Michael finished his fall classes last week, did OK in both, and starts a minimester tomorrow, unless he can talk his advisor into substituting an old credit for this class. (ETA: He did! Yay!) His physics study partner has [...]

Wow.

For the first twenty minutes or so, I thought this was going to be a brilliant movie. The cinematography was incredible, the James brothers were interestingly broody, the train robbery was clicking right along…

... and then. the. movie.

slowed.

down.

.

OMG slow.

How did I not notice going in that this thing was 2:40??!

My pithy sum-up: Jesse James [...]

So we went to see Shoot ‘Em Up tonight.

Wow.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation afterward:

MICHAEL: Wow.
ME: blinky
[time passes]
ME: Wow.
MICHAEL: blinky
ME: headshake
MICHAEL: Wow.

It’s amazing. All the reviews I’d seen were glowing. You’d‘ve thought this was the best action movie since Bourne rather than the bastard offspring of Crank and The Matrix‘s gloriously extravagant gun battles.

It starts [...]

3:10 to Yuma: Wow. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are outstanding, and so is the plot. (It’s Elmore Leonard, being great the way he does.) Gretchen Mol is still made of cardboard, and I continue to wonder why people keep casting her, but fortunately she doesn’t have all that much to do. This is a [...]

Utterly delightful. Different from the graphic novel in many ways, but delightful.

It turns out that most people I know who’ve read the book at all have read the versions published without the illustrations. People: you have been cheated out of half the story. This is the edition you want. I know, it costs more. Such [...]

Did I really write “end of scene” last night as a reason for stopping? That was not the end of the scene. This is the end of the scene.

New words: 896
Reason for stopping: I fall over now.
Sustenance: Raspberry tea, low-fat Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-fudge something-or-other
Exercise: BodyFlow. Ow.
Tyop du jour: “mumured.” A soft-spoken mumu is talking?
Mean [...]

OMG.

That was….

OMG.

That was horrible.

WTF?

The only thing I can figure is that about 20 or 30 minutes in, there was a shark. I didn’t see it, but I know it was there. Spidey, oblivious idiot that he is, went slinging over the damn thing’s head and never noticed. And for the next two hours, the rest [...]

Just finished watching This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the documentary about the MPAA’s ratings board. It was, shall we say, eye-opening. There are three threads to its narrative: clips, quotes, and interviews with MPAA members; interviews with filmmakers who have had to modify their work to achieve a less restrictive rating; and an investigation [...]

It was everything I dreamed it could be… and more.

[Editor’s note: substantial posting will resume once I get done being sick.]

The current issue of Entertainment Weekly has an amusing story about the court case between Clive Cussler and the studio who made Sahara. Here’s the part that made me fall out of my chair (emphasis mine):

More pointedly, though, the producers also accused the novelist of lying about how many fans he actually has. ‘’Sahara didn’t [...]