Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Oh, my poor forgotten blog.... Why have I forsaken thee?

The answer is....."eh, I don't know". I've been lazy or busy or whatever. I'm not going to make a bunch of excuses. Besides, I've been fairly active on my family's blog http://www.thekidswereallwright.blogspot.com/ so I didn't entirely disappear. I decided I needed to pay more attention to my personal blog because when you are on my family's blog, it lists my blog to the right and says the last update was a year ago. Which isn't true, it was more than a year ago. But, for some strange reason, 666 people checked my blog in June 2011. The month before and the month after were like 6 and 10. Why the bip did 666 people check it in June? I find it strange and intriguing and think it's funny that it's 666. Today is the first time I've ever checked the stats on my blog, and I am taking it as a sign that I must start contributing to this blog more often.

I can't think of any interesting or funny things that have happened to me or my husband or animals. So, I decided I am going to talk about some movies. I love movies and I love to read, so I've decided a good way to get back into the swing of things is to do a post every time I watch a movie or finish a book. A year or more ago I attempted to do top 10 movies from past years, I did a couple of them, but I think it became more of a chore and I ended up not enjoying it that much. I might do that again, who knows. I will of course, do postings about other things too, like cats peeing in outlets, but this is a good start.

I'm going to try and post as soon as I watch or finish the book so it is fresh on my mind. And I'd like to somehow incorporate my cat, Pedro, into how I rate the book like 3 out of 5 Pedro's or something like that. For this post I am going to talk about 3 movies I've watched in the past couple of weeks. I think I've seen a couple more than these 3 recently, but I can't remember which ones. If I think of them, I'll do another post. Okay, here we go:

Cam and I watched this last Sunday, (our 7th wedding anniversary by the way). I didn't know much about Thor going in. I knew he was a god, not a man turned super hero, and I knew he had some sort of powerful hammer. And I had heard of his Dad, Odin. (I have a cat named Onan, and a few times people have thought I said his name was Odin.) I liked the movie okay, it had some fun action, but I had a little problem with parts of it. I'm not going to do a plot summary, I'll just do a sentence or two. Thor, his brother, Loki, and his dad, Odin live on a planet called Asgard, where Odin is king. Thor does something that starts a war with some ancient enemies and King Odin gets angry and banishes Thor to live on earth. This happens fairly early in the movie, so most of the movie Thor is living on Earth. The movie goes back and forth showing Thor on Earth and what is happening back at Asgard.

Natalie Portman and her team of astronomers or physicists or whatever they were, are the first people to come into contact with Thor. The biggest problem I had with this movie is the Natalie Portman character. She falls in love with Thor like the second she meets him and then acts really stupid around him every time they are together. I remember hearing someone on one of the movie podcasts I listen to mention this. I had forgotten about that until I was watching the movie myself. Anyway, I also found some plot points kind of confusing like how did those government people find out so quickly about the hammer? Did I miss something? And it seems like everyone just seemed to believe him almost right away when he said he was a god from another planet. And why did Thor have to break the rainbow bridge on Asgard? Maybe I'm dense and it was obvious, but I was very clear headed and paying attention when I watched this, and I ended up kind of confused.

Anyway, there is some fun action and all in all it was pretty good. I wouldn't pay to watch it again, but if it ends up streaming on Netflix, I'll give it a second watch and I'll watch the sequels. I'd say it's 2 out 5 Pedro's. Okay on to the next one....





Cedar Rapids was hilarious. How can you not watch this movie after seeing the DVD cover? I warn some of you that it is rated R and it is pretty raunchy, but in a really funny way. Ed Helms plays an insurance salesman named Tim Lippe, from a small town in Wisconsin. He is asked to reprensent the small insurance agency he works for at the annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Tim has never been outside his little town, so going to Cedar Rapids is a big deal. Tim's boss tells him to have a good time, but to watch out for Dean Ziegler (played by John C. Reilly). When Tim gets to Cedar Rapids he finds out he is sharing a room with Dean. The two of them have some adventures together with a couple other convention attendees. One thing I really liked about this movie is how well they captured the convention atmosphere. I have worked in the hotel industry for many years and I have dealt with these people and they got it spot on.

Ed Helms is the best in this movie. His character is a lot like Andy from The Office, so Ed has had a lot of practice playing this guy. John C. Reilly plays his usual kind of over the top goofy guy that needs to grow up, but I like him so I was very amused by him in this movie. Anne Heche has a big role in this movie, and she didn't bug me as much as I thought she was going to. She was actually pretty good. So I do recommend this to those who can handle a funny, yet kind of raunchy comedy. Haley, if you read this, stay away. And Bronwyn, I think you and Matt would like it, but there is a bathroom scene that will scar you for life. I'm going to give this one 4 out of 5 Pedro's.




Okay, yeah, I finally watched True Grit. This is a movie I've been wanting to see since I found out the Coen Brothers were going to make it. I think I first heard about it like 4 years ago. And I FINALLY watched it about a week ago. Why did it take me so long? I don't know. I rented it from Blockbuster when it first came out. Something came up and Cam and I didn't get a chance to watch it before it was due back. I always knew I was going to buy it, so I didn't want to rent it again and I didn't want to get it through Netflix, but I never just went and bought it. Seems like every time I thought about it I was already spending a lot of money and didn't want to add another $25 for the Blu-Ray. Guess it wasn't that high of a priority. Cam would ask me every once in a while why we didn't own True Grit, and I didn't have a good answer. Finally, when I was thinking of what to get Cam for our anniversary it hit me that I should get him this movie. We watched it and loved it, like I knew we would. I'm not going to say much about the movie. Jeff Bridges was fantastic as always, the little girl was incredible and Matt Damon was great too. I have seen the original True Grit with John Wayne a few times. In fact Cam and I watched it on AMC while this True Grit was in the theaters. This one is better. That's all I'm going to say because I am probably the last person in the world who saw this. Oh, except for 5 out of 5 Pedro's.


Okay, well that's all I got for this post. I'm going to be watching Kevin Smith's Red State in the next day or two, so I'll do a post about that.












2 comments:

Cat said...

I liked Cedar Rapids as well. Travis not so much. It's just kind of a subtle movie. You know, not over-the-top humor. It was fun to watch, I thought. I love True Grit too! It was one that I also took forever to get to it. I just saw it for the first time this year! I remember when it first came out I tried to get it from Redbox, but I accidentally got the old John Wayne one. They didn't have the new one and I totally didn't notice! Classic Cat, I must admit. I was so mad! I refused to watch that one because I'm such a huge Coen Bros. fan.

Emily said...

Glad you're back. I must admit that the news that you aren't planning to bring back the top ten movies per year thing-- I really enjoyed that. But those things are indeed time consuming, so I understand. I haven't seen any of the movies you posted about. I plan on getting around to the bottom two, but have no plans to watch Thor any time soon.
So weird about all the hits in June. That is really strange. I used to get weird traffic flow through my blog from blogger for a while at the beginning. That has stopped, but I get a pretty steady flow of traffic now referred from google. I wonder if someone with a semi popular blog linked one of your posts on his site for some reason. Who knows. Weird though.