Friday, January 30, 2009

Fail!

One of my many resolutions meant to increase my well-being this semester o' craziness is to be in bed by 11 every night (reading, etc. is okay, but I want to be physically in the bed by 11; also, I've already failed at this many times) and to set my alarm for 8am any day that I don't actually have to be up at a specific time. So, imagine my surprise when, after being up for about half an hour this morning, I saw that my computer clock read "7:29am." Apparently, while setting my alarm last night, I also reset the clock. This is why I should not go to bed too late.

This isn't the first time recently I've gotten lost in time, either. The first time was a bit more mysterious, but it also caused me to lose sleep. Why don't these gaps in the space-time continuum allow me to lose an hour of work or class or something? I really like sleep.

The day we left Boston, we set the alarm for 6am and planned to be out the door by 6:30. The alarm on Pat's phone went off, I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, got dressed, finished packing and then looked at my phone. Which said 3:59am. What? Pat's phone, though, said 6:30am. His Blackberry was our tie-breaker, confirming that it was, indeed, 4am. Pat's phone, like mine, gets its time directly from AT&T towers, it's not set manually. So, I have no idea how it ended up 2.5 hours off, but I never really got back to sleep that day. It was awful.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

OMG, Downloaded

Spoilers for BSG Season 2 ahead!

We watched a few more episodes of season 2 Friday night (just two more to go, then on to season 3! I wish I'd caught on to this show earlier so that I'd be caught up to the episodes that are currently airing. I'd probably go a little crazy waiting a week between episodes, but at least I wouldn't have to be so diligent in avoiding any news about BSG. But, clearly, I digress.).

Anyway, the show had been kinda lackluster for me since Black Market, which was horrible. I actually like that BSG addresses the fact that the fact there are only 50,000 humans left doesn't mean that suddenly we can all just get along. When faced with sudden, unexpected genocide, you don't get to hand-pick 50,000 saints to bring with you on a mission for the survival of the species. I just thought this episode addressed the issue in a heavy-handed, awkward way that didn't fit with the flow of the show at all. It was a totally stand-alone episode that did nothing to advance the overall story arcs and mythology of the show. Unless you count the fact that suddenly Lee has a troubled past and a relationship with a prostitute. Because the end of the human race, a dead brother, feelings for the dead brother's fiancée, a difficult relationship with his father, and being used as the rope in tug o' war between the Admiral and the President isn't angsty enough.

The episodes between Black Market and Downloaded were certainly up to par with BSG's usual writing and acting standards, but I just didn't love where the plot was going. Scar was a good episode, but I hate Kat; I hate Lee and Dee (the fact that their names rhyme makes me hate them more!); and I hate that they killed Billy. Mind you, I don't hate Lee and Dee because I loved Dee and Billy (and definitely not because I want Starbuck and Lee to get together, more on that later). I just think that a) it totally came out of nowhere and b) they have no chemistry.

But, with Downloaded, they reeled me back in, hook, line, and sinker. This episode was made of awesomeness. Here are the highlights:
  • The return of The Hotness. Uh, I mean Anders. The return of Anders. While I must admit that after the one episode (or was it two?) they had together, I had a hard time buying the mind-frakking lurve Starbuck has for Anders, there is no denying that they do have boatloads of chemistry. Yum! I'm looking forward to their reunion and I'm guessing that eventually I will buy into the deeper layers of their relationship. (So you see I am not a Lee/Starbuck shipper. In fact, I think a Lee/Starbuck pairing is icky. She was engaged to his brother and his dad clearly thinks of her as a daughter. Furthermore, I like the depiction of their friendship and I appreciate when men and women have non-sexual relationships on television. Because in real life we actually are capable of that, folks.)

  • The return of Caprica as a setting. The return of Anders also means a return to some of the storylines I found most fascinating in the first season regarding life on Caprica after the attacks. I think the human resistance and the Cylon colonization are great stories to tell and add more dimensions to the "Colonial Fleet versus the Cylons" narrative.

  • The revelation that, just as the "good guys" aren't all good, the "bad guys" aren't all bad.

  • The return of Sharon 1. I find Sharon 1 to be a really sympathetic character. Imagine living your whole life as one of the good guys only to find out you don't really have "a whole life" (most of your memories are fake) and you are one of the bad guys. One of the bad guys you actually hate. Talk about inner conflict and self-loathing. I had wondered what happened to her after she got shot, whether she was close enough to download and if the process of downloading triggered a part of her programming that made her go, "sweet, I'm a cylon and I totally shot Adama" or if she woke up like "frak, I'm surrounded by cylons. I frakking hate cylons! Dammit, I am a cylon. This sucks." Thank you BSG showrunners for addressing my concerns!

  • The demonstration that Tricia Helfer can act. Head Six just totally sucks.

  • Head Gaius!!

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Bulleted List

Quick recap of a good week:
  • Received many wonderful things in the mail (and one textbook, not wonderful): necklace for wedding, rehearsal dinner shoes, GAP cardigan (in wild rose), beautiful birthday gift from Pat's mom, and an invitation to Michelle and Ian's wedding!
  • Conducted official Sesame Street business, which made me feel really important.
  • Got exciting loot at Half-Price Books, both in really good condition: a hardcover edition of Avalon High by Meg Cabot, so now I'm ready to stalk her at TLA, and the second book in Van Reid's Moosepath League series. The Van Reid books are hard to track down, so that was especially exciting.
  • Had many good phone conversations with friends.
  • Got lots of wedding stuff done.
  • Had a successful program at work (A New Year, A New You: Get Organized, 16 attendees).
  • Actually made plans for next week's trip to Boston and those plans include seeing a BU/BC hockey game!
  • And best of all, spent lots of QT with friends: Fiesta Bowl victory and frozen custard with Al and O on Monday; Labyrinth and pizza with blue cheese on it that I actually ate at the Mitschkes' on Tuesday; spicy peanut noodles and lots of conversation with Kate on Friday; and then today a very lucrative trip to San Antonio with Al and O (who were exceptionally gracious about me being the third wheel multiple times this week) followed by veggie chili and three episodes of Buffy with the ladies. I'm pleased to announced that I did enjoy Buffy and am now going to try to make it through the series. After I get caught up on BSG, that is.

Friday, January 9, 2009

I am a terrible geek.

Not only did I enjoy the first Star Wars prequel, I'm also really freakin' excited for this: http://movies.yahoo.com/photos/movie-stills/gallery/1360/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-stills.

OMG Cool cars that turn into robots and beat the crap out of each other. People who do not like this movie are a mystery to me. And please spare me the whole "weak plot, bad actors whatever whatever" thing. Cool cars that turn into robots and beat the crap out of each other. Focus, people.

Hopefully my newfound love of BSG will help me out in the eyes of those who think my geek cred has seriously slipped today.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Psych returns!

And to celebrate, EW lists their ten favorite things about Psych. I'd switch out The Adventures of Little Gus & Shawn for the tender, loving bromance between Gus and Shawn. The cartoon just isn't that funny. The bromance is.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Movie Mania

As promised, a few sentences about some of the other movies I watched over the "break." Again, in no particular order.

The King of Kong made me feel incredibly awkward. But, I was also totally caught up in the drama, complete with hating on Billy Whatisface. Tool.

Kit Kittredge was a pretty typical kids movie in that it had about five happy endings. Almost everything that they could wrap up in a pretty little bow, they did. It was atypical in that it did stay true to the one story line that seemed like it would be too false, too forced with a happy ending. It was also atypical in that some of the drama leading up to the happy endings was kinda heavy. The moment where Kit sees her dad in the soup kitchen...crushing. I also thought it was a well-done, age-appropriate depiction of the Depression. Y'know, a good intro to that period in history for an age group that's a bit too young for The Grapes of Wrath. Timely, that. Also, I kind of love Abigail Breslin. I hope she makes it through the whole child actor thing relatively unscathed.

Slumdog Millionaire
was fantastic and I don't feel like I can do it justice in this blog. I keep starting to type something and then furiously clicking backspace. I start to write about how uplifting it is, but then I think that makes it sound cheesy. Or I start to write about all the aspects of this movie that make it wonderful, how you'd never know Dev Patel is new to the big screen or how even the music is great, but effusive praise always sounds kind of hollow. Let's just sum it up this way: director Danny Boyle is truly an amazing storyteller.

Diner didn't really do it for me, but it was fascinating to see Mickey Rourke in his glory days. So much is being made of him right now, his fall from grace and his comeback, but none of the hype over The Wrestler meant anything to me because I was too young to notice him the first time around.

The Mistress of Spices and Marigold were both just fluffy brain candy. Mistress of Spices is based on a book that I may pick up at some point. It has that whole magical realism thing I tend to enjoy in novels, but which felt kind of awkward and weird on film. Marigold has kind of a "meta" thing going on; it's about an American actress being cast in a Bollywood film. A love story and some interesting dance scenes ensue.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

New Year's Resolutions

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of the movies and TV I watch and the books I read. Someone I used to work with told me he wrote down all of the movies he saw and the books he read along with a short review because it helped him to remember them, his initial reactions, and what he liked or disliked. That stuck with me because I've read so many books that years later I can barely recall the plot of. Anyway, going back to tracking that stuff is one of my resolutions for this year, along with posting in this blog more regularly. No time like the present to get started!

Now, technically, I watched most of the movies I'll mention in this post last year, but Pat and I have watched a lot of movies in the last two weeks as part of our holiday vacation and they seem like a good starting point. Now that we're past our BU days, we did have to work between Christmas and NYE, so it wasn't technically a "vacation," but we did more relaxing than we've done since I started grad school. I didn't even realize how much we both needed it, but it's been really nice. On to our holiday viewing! (In no particular order.)

WALL-E I wasn't even interested in seeing WALL-E. I'd heard that it was unsubtle in its message and that it had long, dialog-free stretches. I usually read a magazine or play around online while watching a movie, so I doubted my ability to pay attention well enough to follow something with little dialog. After hearing from several co-workers that it is really cute, though, I decided to bring it home from the Pflug and give it a try. It is so frickin' enjoyable, I can't stand it. I'm sure you've read a zillion positive reviews (96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, an addiction I formed in 2008), so I'm just going to mention a couple of things I liked about it that I haven't seen mentioned in a million other places.

I loved the relationship between WALL-E and EVE. Okay, sure, that part you've read everywhere, but maybe not for my reasons. I liked that WALL-E and EVE were equals, partners. They rescued each other. Often, when you have a super tough-girl heroine (and EVE is super tough; at first, in fact, I thought she was a little scary and off-putting and said to Pat, "wait, he's going to fall in love with her? But she's scary, with the shooting-first, asking-never), either she ends up being a huge mess on the inside that really just needs a man to fix her or the guy is a super-dolt who has to be rescued from himself every five minutes. EVE's a tough girl, but WALL-E can stand on his own two feet, too. I also liked that in the end, mankind participated in its own salvation. A lot is made of this movie's indictment of mankind, our laziness, our wastefulness, etc. But, in the end, the captain of the Axiom stands on his own two jello-y legs, and decides its time for humans to go back to Earth and clean up their mess. It's hopeful. We're not a totally lost cause. I like that.

Daredevil I picked this up from Sam and Julia's when they giving away DVDs. I'd heard it was bad, but thought it might be nice for one of those nights when I just want to watch a totally mindless movie. Besides, I though, how bad could it be? It's a movie based on comic books, it's not as if those are ever Oscar-fodder (of course, that's changing in recent years, but you get the gist of my train of thought). As long as I'm not expecting Schindler's List, I'll be fine. But, no, this movie really is pretty bad. I know I'm about to make some enemies, but honestly, Jennifer Garner just doesn't do it for me at all. I don't think she's a very good actress. I almost want to say I'm annoyed every time she's on the screen, but she's got that "All-American, nice-to-people-who-cut-her-off-in-traffic" thing going on that makes her seem so likable so I don't really feel annoyed. Just...I don't know. I wish she wouldn't be in things I'm watching. Not to single her out. She was better than Colin Farrell, whose Bullseye is possibly the cheesiest villian of all time. Even Jon Favreau couldn't save this one. I made it all the way through and I didn't actively hate anything about it...it just isn't a particularly well-constructed or well-acted movie and it didn't have that pure-entertainment factor that can sometimes make up for those things.

Oh, and if you're wondering to yourself why Jennifer Garner and Colin Farrell both get skewered but Ben Affleck gets off scott-free, I'll tell you: Ben's got a lifetime pass from me for starring in my favorite Kevin Smith movie, Chasing Amy. He was also in Armageddon, which I've recently rediscovered my totally irrational love for.

Okay, gotta go play Wii with Paddy, but still to come: Slumdog Millionaire, Marigold, Mistress of Spices, King of Kong, and Kit Kittredge and Diner.