What Happened Between Friday and Today
Okay. Not a lot. Friday night Erin and I drove to Salt Lake so Erin could get her hair cut by Kelly. Kelly is a friend of mine that I met when doing Crimes of the Heart, which makes for a fun time when we go for a visit... mostly when Erin is getting her hair cut and done. This time, she was getting color added or removed or highlighted or something.... I actually spent the fist few minutes playing Guitar Hero and then did some homework that I didn't have to do, but allowed my group in eLang to get information we needed to make an educated determination about some modern translations of Beowulf. Wicked fun, I am sure.
After that we went home.
Saturday is exactly what Saturday always is... we get up, putter around the house, clean a bit, run errands, avoid people, and then end up at home together still avoiding people. Sure. It would be cool if people wanted to hang with us... and sometimes we go out of our way to spend time with other people.
There was a bit, earlier in the week, about us going on a road trip, leaving Friday, coming back Sunday... but that didn't pan out. Erin is still feeling ill most days (we are at, about, week 15). As a result, and because of other things, we decided that a long trip (eight hours one way) was not conducive to Erin's current state as a pregnant mom-to-be.
On Saturday we rented three movies, all relatively new releases. First was Dan in Real Life. This was an interesting movie. It stars Steve Carrel and has him as an advice columnist of sorts, a widower, and father of three girls, two of whom are teens. The film doesn't offer more information than is necessary to allow the story to move forward. I am not, exactly, a fan of Steve Carrel, though people like to talk about his TV show The Office. His commedies are... stupid. And yet, this movie comes across more as a drama than a comedy - a dramedy maybe.
Anyway, it was enjoyable... very, very enjoyable.
Yesterday (Sunday) we watched Enchanted a Disney movie. At the time this movie was in theaters, people were raving about it. At different times, I heard people tell me that this was the best movie, coming out of Disney, they'd seen in a while. And then I watched the movie. I didn't like it - I liked the ending, though... kind of surprised we made it that far.
The point, though, is that the movie starts and tries to shove an ENTIRE Disney animated movie into something like ten minutes. And then Amy Adams, Gisselle, gets pushed down a well, enters the real world, and begins to find that Happily Ever After doesn't always happen. The movie was... uncomfortable; the animals (cartoon) were actually rather abusive, closer to the Simpson's internal cartoon series Itchy and Scratchy than a Disney movie. At one point I think I looked at Erin and said, "If this doesn't get better soon I am going to turn it off." By the time we were done, we were done with the movie. This movie just didn't come off as great as everyone thought it would and caused me to want to watch The American President for a blurb toward the end of the movie where the president is telling one of his staff members why people drink sand when they can find water in the desert:
People drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
The movie actually turns the traditional fairy-tale story on its head, with the girl being the rescuer and the guy needing rescuing (in the end), it removes the notion that you can love someone immediately, and it promotes different ideals, such as dating and actually finding out if there is something in common between you and your true love.
Even with the on its head nature of the movie, it wasn't very good and I think people are so desperate for Disney to return to the kinds of movies that made it a household name that they are willing to accept the 2D animation combined with live action and CG (chipmunk) and to accept animals hitting each other, knocking each other around, and more (in the beginning of the movie).... This is sand. The movie is sand and not water. I think it's pretty sad.
Finally, we also watching In the Land of Women. This movie was... odd. Basically, a man (26) who writes adult oriented movies breaks up with is girlfriend, decides to visit his grandmother (who claims she is dying) in Minnesota (north-mid-west), meets a neighbor whose husband is cheating on her, and spends time with her 17 year old daughter, and ends up having a life changing experience all the while talking about John Hughes films and realizing what is right in front of their faces.
This movie had a lot of potential and felt more biopic and poorly directed than anything else. The actors were all top-notch, and yet the acting came across as... BAD. We enjoyed the movie, sort of. And in the end, you know... I don't have a lot to say about this except it wasn't really worth watching and certainly isn't something worth buying. Sometimes, I just wonder how a movie gets greenlit, financed, actors hired, time spent, and then distributed. Sometimes I sit there and think, "I can TOTALLY do better than that."
And yet, school, work, and other things get in the way pretty constantly.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly