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.
  

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Very Merry Christmas, Part 3: Things I Forgot

Two quick highlights of my holiday I left out before:

1. On Christmas Day, I saw my first preview for Notorious. Merry Christmas, me!
2. Pat's parents sent us 10 pints of frozen custard from Kopp's in Milwaukee. I freaking love that place. I also love that this gift was so creative and audience-aware. Coming home to a FedEx box full of dry ice and frozen custard was an excellent surprise on Christmas Eve!

A Very Merry Christmas, Part 2

Christmas Day!

Christmas morning, Pat and I had a nice breakfast and opened gifts. Pretty standard Christmas stuff. Then, I made trifle for the first time ever. It's a good thing my trifle dish was free so I don't feel too guilty that I've only used it once in the two or three years I've had it. Anyway, the trifle had chocolate cake, butterscotch pudding, whipped cream (homemade, of course!), and heath bar bits and was topped with a little green and red sugar. I am pretty pleased with how it came out; I definitely should've taken a picture.

The trifle was for dinner at my friend and co-worker Julia's parents' house, which was wonderful. Some highlights include Left, Right, Center and Colorado Bulldogs. Both sound kind of suspect when you describe them, but L, R, C is actually really fun and Colorado Bulldogs are delicious. And a little dangerous, since they don't really taste alcoholic. I also have to give a shout out to Julia's family. They were incredibly nice and they were so welcoming you'd hardly have known we were strangers. It was really nice of them to invite us into their home on Christmas and give us a place to go while we're so far away from our own families.

After dinner, Pat and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire (more on that and the six other movies we've seen in the last week later) and then headed to 37th Street to look at the Christmas lights. I always love looking at Christmas lights, but being able to walk down the street in a light sweatshirt on Christmas night to do it was especially nice. Boy, was I in for a surprise when we actually saw the lights, though. Folks from not-Austin, let me tell you, this isn't your usual Candy Cane Lane or whatever neighborhood you have in your town where people go nuts decorating their houses and lawns with winter wonderland scenes. These were, in true Austin style, weird. One house had the Flying Spaghetti Monster depicted in Christmas lights; another had a giant shark made of tinfoil; one had a chandelier made of the top halves of nude Barbies; one depicted the economic and political landscape of the U.S. in the last year, complete with cardboard Obama cutout; and one had a display in which a plastic dragon was fornicating with a plastic armadillo. I'm actually not kidding. It was delightful! Traditionalist that I am, I do have to say that from a purely aesthetic standpoint my favorite was the house with the Austin skyline in lights, but they were all great. I'm still kicking myself for not bringing my camera, but this will give you an idea.