Media consumption!

I've managed to watch a bit more stuff lately than I normally do, so here's a couple of notes on those things.

1) Tangled: Yes, the Disney movie. It was pretty good, but it's just NOT a Disney movie like the ones that came out when I was a teenager. Songs from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast still stick with me. I think that maybe if I was willing to watch Tangled a few more times, I might get some of those songs stuck in my head more, but I doubt I'd watch the movie again. It wasn't at all bad, it was just not quite what I hoped for. Though it was PRETTY. :)

2) Doctor Who: In anticipation of the newest episode, I went back and watched "A Good Man Goes to War" (which I keep wanting to call "Demons Run") and "The Doctor's Wife." The weird thing about watching these two in that order was that I caught something in "The Doctor's Wife" that I had dismissed the first time I heard it, but that made a whole lot more sense right on the heels of the later episode. This got me thinking that maybe I should watch the first half of season 6 in reverse order to see if there's more of that... because River's timeline is backwards in comparison to the Doctor's... hmmm. :)

Anyway, like I said, this was in anticipation of "Let's Kill Hitler," which turned out to be maddening and lovely all at the same time. Only five more episodes left this season, which seems far too short for my liking! (And yeah, 13 episodes is normal, but it just REALLY seems short this season.)

3) Buffy: We're up to season 3 of Buffy currently, about halfway through. And I've discovered that I can't pick up anything that Joss Whedon has a hand in presently as I will stumble across more spoilers. This time, it was an issue of the Dollhouse comic, which talked about what was going on in terms of Buffy "season 9," which is a forthcoming comic (they already did season 8 as comics). As it turns out, it wasn't a TV show spoiler, but a season 8 spoiler. Nonetheless, ugh.

4) Captain America: We finally made it out to see Captain America last weekend, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It still breaks my brain a little that Johnny Storm is playing Cap now. I might like Cap as much as I disliked Johnny. :) And the trailer for the Avengers movie, though quite vague, still makes me excited to see it! :)

Wow...

Kids take a TON out of you. We picked everyone up at the airport around 11 a.m., and dropped them off at their hotel a touch before 6, and we were beat. Now, granted, I had been to the gym in the morning, and there was a REALLY big flight of steps that Peter begged to be carried up. And since his mom had Lila and his dad had all of their stuff, I carried him up a couple of flights, and Jeremy carried him the rest of the way. My legs are STILL feeling those stairs. :(

But we did have a blast. The light rail train and aquarium were HUGE hits with Peter, and I think Lila enjoyed seeing some of the fish. She's still just at the single word stage of things, so it was a lot of "Look!" and other babbling. The real great hit with her was actually the lavender pillow. It was soft and smelled good, and so she snuggled it immediately. I also like to think that she loved it a lot because it was made from a T-shirt that used to belong to her good buddy Jeremy (or, as my sister's husband dubbed him, "Friend Jeremy," since he isn't their uncle). :)

After that we managed to drag ourselves to a night of fiction reading (by other people, not us) at the Wayward, and then zonked out. We were SO grateful for the lazy Sunday we had planned. We spent a bit of time sifting through some books to ease the strain on a couple of bookcases, and then headed to the Cinebarre for Iron Man II. I am now totally in love with that theater. Mid-afternoon on a Sunday seems to be a great time to go, as it wasn't too crowded. So we got our snacks and drinks delivered to our seats relatively quickly, and got to enjoy the movie in a mostly quiet theater. Plus, I had sangria to drink. Jeremy got a $5 milkshake. :) I love it!

Came home to make somewhat disastrous giant burritos (the structural integrity of Jeremy's collapsed midway through, and mine decided that sour cream was a good addition to my shirt), but then we got to watch two more episodes of Doctor Who. Though they were probably not my favorites of this season (episode 1 is holding that honor at the moment), even though they're all about the Weeping Angels, there were still good moments. And we're caught up in terms of what's available thus far! :)

In other news, Trader Joe's has blue cheese slices! It's technically blue cheese blended with Monterey Jack, but whatever. They're yummy. My sandwich today is ham and blue cheese with tomato and mayo on a big soft baguette thingie. Delicious! :)

Movie review: The Dark Knight

So I've survived my first ever midnight showing of a movie. But when the movie in question was The Dark Knight, I really didn't have a choice in the matter. We were going to see it as soon as was humanly possible. :)

And as it turns out, it was a great decision. It's a wonderful fabulous movie, and I'm not just saying that because I love Christian Bale. It's dark, it's gritty, it's based loosely on comic books--basically I love everything about this movie. :)

I will warn folks that it's violent, a little scary in places, and there are more than a few moments that might leave you going "wait, I thought ..." The last part is only an issue if you've followed the Batman storyline in the comics at all. Though Jerome tells me that they diverge from that storyline even more than I thought they were. :)

And Heath Ledger? Spot on as Joker. He doesn't try to channel Jack Nicholson, he made the Joker his own. And he's MUCH scarier than Jack Nicholson's Joker could have ever been. Remember, dark and gritty. So for everywhere that the Michael Keaton Batman was campy and funny, The Dark Knight is realistic and creepy.

As an aside, having lived in Illinois for 9 years, I LOVED what they did with the "Gotham" license plates. You only really see them in the opening scenes, so keep an eye out for them. I couldn't really spot anything that screamed Chicago to me other than the plates, but that may be because I don't like Chicago at all... but I'm like 90% sure they filmed quite a bit there.

No End of the Work Week Wisdom this week. Too many good quotes from the movie, but I can't remember most of the ones that weren't in the previews. :)

(Also, speaking of previews, Terminator Salvation and Watchmen. Christian Bale in the former as an adult John Connor; tons of confusion but prettiness in the latter. :) )

Movie review: Hellboy II

Okay, so when I originally watched the first Hellboy movie, I have to say that I wasn't really all that impressed. I re-watched it recently, in preparation for Hellboy II, and I was more impressed the second time, but just sort of "meh" about it in general. However, the previews for Hellboy II had me pretty excited, because it LOOKED like a Guillermo del Toro movie--lots of crazy freakishness! :)

And, of course, Hellboy II really is all about the crazy freakishness, from the members of the BPRD to the things they're fighting. I mean, c'mon. You've got a demon, a fish man, a girl who is on FIRE, and now a ghost in a really elaborate suit. That's a fine bunch of freaks. :) (And as an aside, my mention yesterday that they use one of my favorite songs in the movie: the song is "Beautiful Freak" by The Eels.)

Anyway, plotwise, it's all about elves who warred with the humans a long time ago, and then went into hiding. Now the elf prince comes back to resume the war against the humans, because they ruin everything (cue environmental message). This all revolves around the Golden Army, which is supposed to be 70 times 70 of these big gold robots. Two issues:

1) There were way more than 490 of those things.
2) Whose wise idea was it to make robots out of gold?! Don't they realize that gold is a really bendy metal? Oh, sorry, apparently the elves know how to make gold so that if a DEMON punches it, it will stay solid. Right.

Anyways, minor quibbles aside, it's a really good movie. There were definitely some slow points, and there's far more love story-ness than you'd expect in a comic book action movie, but that didn't harm it too much. And really, it's all PURE Guillermo del Toro, with even more crazy over-the-top-ness than Pan's Labyrinth. And Doug Jones gets to wear even MORE freakish costumes/makeup. :)

Okay, one more

Last Dr. Seuss post for real. I was informed by a co-worker this morning that today is Dr. Seuss's birthday. So perhaps it was a strange quirk of fate that there's been all of this build-up to the completion of the fish.

Trina has challenged me to make the Cat in the Hat, Sam I Am, and Fox in Socks to go along with the fish. I know I can make the Cat in the Hat's hat very easily... but I'm still pondering the rest of the crowd. I just have this vague recollection of many Dr. Seuss characters (the fish included) being sort of spiky looking, so I think I'm going to have to round out the spikes to actually do this. Maybe amigurumi for all of the animals! :)

In other news, if you have ever read the graphic novel of "30 Days of Night" and are thinking about watching the movie, be prepared for a major letdown. Alternately, if you saw the movie and are thinking about reading the graphic novel, be prepared for a much better storyline. I haven't a clue WHY they made the changes they did. Steve Niles was even involved in the writing of the screenplay, and they couldn't get the story straight?!

Also, Josh Hartnett bothers me. A lot. I know the precise reason for this, but that doesn't seem to help me forget how much he bothers me. Plus, he always plays his character exactly the same... doesn't matter if he's a hitman, a random college guy, or a sheriff.

Hmmm...

I wanted to write a rant yesterday about comic book to movie adaptations, and why no one can seem to get it right. They never can just stick with the plot, always got to diverge either a little or a lot. However, I wasn't feeling ranty enough to do it, and then in light of Heath Ledger's death yesterday afternoon, I definitely wasn't feeling up to the challenge. (For those who don't understand the connection, Heath Ledger will be The Joker in "The Dark Knight" (new Batman movie) which comes out this summer. They had already completed filming, so it will be his final role.)

So now the focus of my rant has shifted a little bit. There were some very early reports that this was a suicide, brought on by having played such a disturbing character (namely, The Joker). So the comic book genre suddenly is blamed for someone's death. Later reports seem to suggest that a) it may not have been a suicide, and b) that it wasn't just the role of The Joker that may have been preying on his mind. Heath Ledger also recently finished making a movie about Bob Dylan, and he was quoted as saying that the Dylan role had also been rough on him, to the point where he wasn't sleeping well.

I REALLY wish people would not try to blame things like this on comic books, however. That goes for any mass media, really. Movies, video games, music, whatever the case may be, generally speaking aren't going to make a normal average person do something crazy. Generally speaking, if someone does something crazy, they were probably not entirely stable to begin with. The influence of the mass media is not likely to have been the tipping point. Seriously.

I know this isn't the case for everything, but too often mass media becomes the scapegoat. While there are definitely portions of mass media that bother me, even those parts don't necessarily deserve the bad rap that they so often receive.

All this being said, I think that Heath Ledger's death, whatever the cause/impetus, is a tragic event, just as the death of any person would be a tragic event. We just see the tragedy up close and personal when it's a celebrity, whereas when a random person dies, we don't see it as much.

(*steps off soapbox*)

Stuff and things

Well, I finally got to watch Spider-Man 3 last night. Rather than geek out on you all again, I'll just say that if you want to read my (negative) review of it, click here. Otherwise, carry on. :)

The good news was that having it on made me sit down and crochet for a few hours, so I got some new stuff done for my shop. Since Jerome isn't a big Spider-Man fan (and saw the movie when it came out, and hated it also), he worked on some homework while I crocheted. Interestingly, the scraps from one of his projects are turning into something really neat that I'm working on. I'm not quite sure exactly what the end result will be, but I've got a number of possibilities... so maybe it will end up being all of them! :)

I think that's one of the things I love most about having another artist around. Sure, we may be temperamental and silly, but it's fun when one of us can pick up the scraps from the other one's project, and turn it into something else. Jerome and I both wear bracelets made from scraps of my yarn that he picked up and started tying to each other and around our wrists. Silly, yes, but I like silly. :)

Gah, it's my lunch break, and I'm still getting calls and other craziness!

Too many movies!

Jerome worked an extra long shift yesterday, so I spent most of my day watching movies. I started out on a steampunk movie kick, which undoubtedly affected my brain for the rest of the day. It also reminded me that I really need to write an article about steampunk movies, among other things. :)

The first movie I watched was "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," which is not necessarily steampunk in its entirety, but has some nice steampunk-y bits. In particular, all of the clockwork stuff on the moon really makes me classify this as a steampunk-y movie. (I am also always amused that the little girl in this movie is Sarah Polley, who later went on to be in the new version of "Dawn of the Dead" and also had a really bad accent in "Beowulf & Grendel".)

After that, I watched "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which I think is just about the epitome of steampunk movies. It's very pulp comic action as well, but to me, that's a lot of what steampunk is--late Victorian era or early twentieth century, but with crazy technological advances that are historically inaccurate. :)

Finally, I finished out the evening with "X-Men," which, of course, diverges from the steampunk theme. This was mainly because the only other steampunk movie I really own is "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," and I had watched that one pretty recently. So "X-Men" instead, and mainly because Jerome doesn't usually like watching that movie. :) It was mostly background noise anyway, as I worked on cutting out paper snowflakes from magazines. :)

Speaking of paper snowflakes, I really need to find out how to fold paper so that I can make 6 pointed snowflakes. I made some really interesting five pointed snowflakes, somehow, and eight pointed are really easy to make. :)

I'm not sure if I'm simply that unobservant, or what, but I've noticed that I can watch a movie several times, and still notice something new every time I watch it.

I suspect that I just overlook some of the details in movies that I don't watch intently and regularly. The movie that brought this to my attention was "V for Vendetta," which I ranted mightily about when it came out. Any rate, I got over my rant (sorta) and bought it on DVD, and we watch it occasionally.

Last night, I noticed that in the scene where V takes Evey up to the roof in the rain, it's interspersed with scenes of V coming out of the fire--so the moment of true freedom for both characters. Of course, what's also interesting about this is that he was freed by fire (both literally and metaphorically), while Evey was metaphorically released by the rain.

But the point is that I really didn't remember the scenes of V in the fire being interlaced into that scene. So it was really odd, and I sat there wondering if the scenes had just "appeared" (highly doubtful), or I had really missed them. I think I've settled on that I had forgotten they were there, because I didn't really find that scene all that interesting previously. Now, of course, I see the connections that the filmmakers were trying to draw in that scene, and I'm mildly impressed.

Jerome has a copy of the graphic novel checked out from the library right now, because he hasn't read it yet. It's due back to the library on Thursday, so I told him he should read it today, if he was going to read it. I think he will soon share in my general disdain for the adaptation of that graphic novel into movie format.

However, I think he'll still like the movie for what it is, and I have to admit that I have grown to appreciate the movie for what it is. But I maintain that it should have been called "Loosely Inspired by the Events Surrounding Alan Moore's V for Vendetta." That's a much more accurate title. :)
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Happy New Year! :)

First off, let's catch up on some articles from last year:

Me:
Guide to 2007 Comic Book Movies

I may have left out one or two, like 300, which I knew nothing about until after this article was published, but basically this covers the big name comic book movies and a few lesser known ones. :)

The Crow: Four Movies, Only One Great One

After finally seeing the fourth Crow movie, I had to say something about it. :)

Cindy:

A Last Minute Primer in Gift-Giving: It's the Thought that Counts

From the Peace Corps to Christmas Tree Farming, Elaine Seymour Does it All

What You Need to Know Before Choosing or Switching Medicare Part D Programs

And then three for Cindy, all from last year. Both of us have been relatively busy with other writing, other projects, and Christmas, so neither of us have written a whole lot for AC for a while. I'm thinking I will probably get back in the swing of things in a few days. Maybe. :)

In the meantime, though, I've been selling my crafty stuff online! :) I have a store at Etsy, Scary White Girl Designs, with a little bit of stuff up now, and more to come. BTW, if you are local and want to order something, just do it. I can send an invoice without the shipping charges, and we can arrange how you can get your stuff. So don't let the shipping scare you. :)

I just bought a new digicam and a printer/scanner yesterday, so I will actually be able to take photos of the rest of my hats, and scan in some greeting cards and Valentines that I've made. So expect to see more stuff on the site, by early next week at the latest.

Oh, and I'll still do custom work. :) I'm working on one project now, but it's got a long deadline, so I have plenty of time to make stuff for people. :)

And I think that's about it. Christmas was good, New Years was tame, and I'm back at work. Speaking of, perhaps I should do some of that. ;)
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Playing catch-up today, both with work and with articles.

Cindy has five new articles:

Cut and Run Policy in Iraq Would Make it Another Vietnam

Abortion Opponents Should Stop Name-Calling, Tackle the Real Issue, Our Rights

Hate Mongers Like Fred Phelps Should Not Be Protected from Prosecution Under Hate Crime Laws

Ignoring Differing Viewpoints Not a Great Idea

Illinois Election Guide: Choosing the Wrong Governor, Again

And only two from me:

How to Make Coordinating Christmas Stocking for Your Family

V for Vendetta: What Graphic Novel Did They Read?

Gonna be a drought from me for a while, as I submitting NOTHING at all last week. I am a slacker. :)

::..::

In other news, I hate Chicago more now than ever before. Perhaps I can get an article out of that. :) Seriously, though, the list of problems we ran into was HUGE. Traffic, not enough time, getting stuck on a bus forever, and it taking 2 1/2 hours to get back to our hotel after the show. Oi.

If I get my way, I will never again set foot in that city.
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Upcoming movie:

"The Punisher"... set to be released in 2004 (I'm guessing early 2004, as the theatre already has a poster up for it)...

Starring Thomas Jane... who, despite the fact that I've seen several of the movies he has been in, don't really recognize...

Ah well... I'm not AS thrilled about this one as my friends are, but that's probably because I don't read comics, and have no clue about the Punisher... at least I had a small clue about the X-Men, and Spider Man, which is why I was able to like those movies so much... I'm planning to watch "Daredevil" after it comes out on video (July 29th), though that's only after realizing that Elektra (who I use often when playing HeroClix) is in it...

I'm just not a comics geek, in the traditional sense of the phrase... I just love me some Sandman... but, as anyone who reads Sandman can attest, Sandman is just different... Neil Gaiman is a genius... :)

When boredom strikes, answer it with comic book movies! :)

We rented "Spider Man" and "X-Men" last night, and already watched both of them... :) And of course, they were just as good as they've always been...

The only thing I'm annoyed about is that we had to get "X-Men 1.5"... which, as best as I was able to determine, doesn't have the same "easter eggs" as the original DVD release had... in particular, I really wanted Gabe to get to see the "running down a hall" easter egg (which I am calling that because I don't wanna ruin the surprise about it... though I already told him what happens!)... DVD Easter Eggs only seems to list how to get to it on the original DVD, but nothing about "1.5"... *sigh*...

Ah well... back at work for another fun-filled and exciting week... it's gonna be a busy one... *sigh*...