Your one-sentence(ish) catch-up post

So, it was the holiday season, and I read and watched a bunch of stuff without posting anything.  My bad.  Here's my take on it all.

Movies!


Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (I have no idea how to punctuate that)
Super fun!  Saw it in IMAX and was definitely worth the extra $5 or whatever.  I don't have strong opinions about/really remember the other movies, but this one was a really entertaining and nail-bite-worthy sequel.  Catch it in the theater if you're even vaguely interested; I bet it won't be as good at home unless you have a real butt-kicker of a television.

Winter's Bone
Haunting and excellent.  One of those movies I'm glad I saw but never want to see again.  Jennifer Lawrence was as good as everyone says--can't wait for Hunger Games!

Midnight in Paris
Cute and dorky.  It's probably fun for everyone but more fun if you catch all the references to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the like, which I didn't even manage despite my Comp Lit degree.  (shame)

The Descendants
Well-acted and compelling.  A little too "grief-porn" for my tastes (thanks to whoever came up with that phrase in reference to the AMC series The Killing--it fits well here) but I couldn't look away from Clooney and that girl from ABC Family.  And it was funny and sweet at times too, not all sadness.  Certain to generate Oscar buzz.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Unique and brilliant adaptation.  That super long book became a pretty long movie, but the condensation of an incredibly detailed manuscript somehow didn't glaze over much.  Incredibly suspenseful throughout; beautiful cinematography.

Sherlock Holmes (not the new one)
I love Robert Downey, Jr.  The end.





TV seasons!
Dexter, season 6
Thank you, Showtime preview weekend.  Not as good as the other seasons.  Still better than most shows I'm watching on other channels.  And what a cliff hanger!  (Problem--spoiler alert--Deb and Dexter?  for real?  what's up with that?)



Books!

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (Mindy Kaling)
Be my friend on Goodreads for a slightly longer review.  Funny most of the time, rarely hilarious.  Pick it up if you're an Office fan.

Before I Go to Sleep (S.J. Watson)
Also a longer review on Goodreads.  A Memento-style amnesia mystery, beautifully written and suspenseful to the end.

Room (Emma Donoghue)
Another suspense, this time a best-seller.  Narrated by a five-year-old, which is both impressive and obnoxious.  The plot was exciting but the pacing was a little off--the last half of the book was downhill for me.  Still, worth a read if you want something quick.

A very Muppety post

The Muppets
Film, 2011, dir. James Bobin

A totally charming movie that leaves you feeling good.  I don't know that it added anything to the franchise other than a new muppet, but it was endearing and nostalgic and funny and everything else you want it to be.  I dare you not to cry when Kermit plays "The Rainbow Connection."  And who doesn't love Jason Segel?  He and Amy Adams were both cute and appropriately Muppet-y enough to fit in with the puppets themselves.  The comic highlight for me was probably the cameo by Jim Parsons, although I also laughed out loud when James Carville appeared for no particular reason.


Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Nonfiction. Michael Davis, 2008

This is a good book and an interesting book but not the book I wanted it to be.  It would more aptly be subtitled The Complete History of the Origins of Sesame Street and a Glance at the Show Itself.  As you may have seen in an earlier post of mine, it takes about half the book to get to the point when Sesame Street is on the air.  This isn't, in principle, a bad thing; the show's brilliant creators deserve their time in the sun, and Davis tracks the show business beginnings of each.  Along the way, he captures some interesting anecdotes about the shows that influenced Sesame Street, including Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and the puppet-centric show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

It's a pleasant little thrill when the book finally does get to the show being on the air and you start to recognize the stories of beloved characters or songs from episodes you remember.  The book still focuses on the people behind the camera or under the puppets, though, so little time is spent on talking about the various episodes.  Thus entire decades are covered in one chapter.  The book misses out on some of the late history of the show, opting instead to follow its original characters through their retirement from the show, or, in many cases, the ends of their lives (Jim Henson, Joe Raposo, Northern Calloway, Dave Connell, Jon Stone, etc.)  This leaves you with a sort of depressing end to the otherwise triumphant story of one of the most important television shows in history.
I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a nonfiction read that's not too heavy and you have an interest in television production.  If you're just looking for a Muppet story, though, this is not your book.  Go see the aforementioned movie instead.

Friday roundup: Breaking Dawn, Matched, and more

Happy Friday, readers!  Here's an update on my reading and viewing life of late.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
Film, 2011, dir. Bill Condon


Ooh steamy! No wait, his skin is icy cold.  Brr!

 Breaking Dawn was just what you would expect if you have seen the other movies and you are familiar with the story.  In case you have managed to avoid the media buzz (good job!), the plot is that Bella and Edward get married, consummate their passionate love, and end up with a vampire baby growing inside still-human Bella.  This makes Jacob (wolfy friend/third corner of love triangle) mad.  I imagine Taylor Lautner's in-character thoughts as something along the lines of "JACOB SMASH! RAWRRRRRRR!" (because he phases into his werewolf form when he gets really mad...)  This led to the most ridiculous scene in the movie--and trust me, that's saying something.  Jacob's pack of wolves can talk to each other mentally when they are in their wolf form, so there's a bunch of CGI-ed giant wolves on the screen growling at one another while the helpful captions let the rest of us in on the conversation.  This is backed by some truly dramatic score--nothing reinforces wolf drama like soaring violins.  Anyway!  Props to whoever did the makeup and CGI on Kristen Stewart, because that girl looked like the living dead for most of the movie (see, her life force is being soaked up by the demon baby because vampires are stronger than humans...leading Bella herself to drink blood...leading everyone in the theater to laugh uncomfortably because it's really gross to watch when her teeth get all red.)  The acting was meh, the writing was meh, the source material was terrible, but I still had fun!  Yayyyy Twilight.

Matched
YA Novel, Ally Condie, 2010

This is a kind of cool cover.
That is the only other nice thing I will say.

Matched is really not very good.  I saw some good reviews of it and I am puzzled.  I will give Ally Condie a little bit of credit for being a pretty good writer.  She puts together some nice images and turns of phrase from time to time.  However, the plot of this book is boring and derivative.  It's like The Giver and 1984 and Twilight all raised a dull child together.  Our heroine Cassia is repressed by her post-some-kind-of-apocalypse overlord government, and has to navigate the troubling waters of her budding rebellious spirit as she debates between the guy the Society "matched" her with (Xander) and the guy she secretly loves because he's dark and mysterious and has pretty eyes (Ky).  I was intensely irritated to find that the "matching ceremony" where people get assigned to their mates seems to be strictly heterosexual, and no other sexual preferences are even mentioned.  Cassia notes that you can opt out of the matching and be "a single" instead, but that doesn't really address the issue.  Anyway, on to other things that bother me. Cassia gets an illegal copy of Dylan Thomas's famous poem "Do not go gentle into that good night."  One thing that really grinds my gears about YA fiction is when a book latches onto a poem, book, symphony, etc. as an example of fine art and then smashes in our faces for the rest of the book (cf. If I Stay's classical music selection.)  That is what happens here, as Cassia adopts "I will not go gentle!" as an obnoxious refrain.  My biggest problem with this book, though, is my own fault--I listened to it on audiobook even though within five seconds I was terrified to find out that chipmunks have acquired the powers of speech and are recording audiobooks.  The girl reading the book just drove me nuts, and every time she used her "voices" for the characters (often) I felt annoyed with her.  Don't ask me why I kept listening--I dunno, I just did.  Actually, I guess it was because I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, before it was entirely clear that it would suck.  Oh well, it was free--did you know you can get audiobooks from the library!  Crazy!

The cover is misleadingly Oscar-centric.

I'm currently in the middle of a second underwhelming book (hard copy this time)--Street Gang by Michael Davis.  The cover promises to be the history of Sesame Street, which it is.  Sadly for me, I didn't read the rest of the summary, which clarifies that it mostly explores the histories of the various writers and producers who brought the show to life and how the idea came to be.  Thus I am about half way through and we haven't even gotten to the first episode being written yet.  I was really looking for more of a behind-the-scenes expose of what went down between Ernie and Elmo, you know?  Oh well.  I'll update again when I finish it. (To clarify, it's not a bad book, just kind of rambly.  I don't do a lot of nonfiction, so maybe I just have a short attention span.)

Oh, is Christina Hendricks in this show?

On TV, I've been watching my usual shows that are currently on air (How I Met Your Mother--decent, Glee--meh, The New Girl--hehe she's so awkward!, Community--ridiculous, Parks and Rec--my personal fave) and supplementing with Netflix streaming of Mad Men.  So far I'm about 10 episodes in, and I like it but I'm not sure I get what all the fuss is about.  It seems like a PERIOD PIECE where we are forced to appreciate every time they say "swell" or all light up a cig together.  But I do like well-drawn character dramas, in the end.

I'm going to see The Muppets this weekend, hooray!  I've heard many of you already saw and enjoyed it, but that won't stop me from opining on it at length next week!

Movie opposites: Winnie the Pooh and The Others

Last week I watched two movies that were from opposite ends of the general movie-interest spectrum.

1. Winnie the Pooh, 2011, dir. Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall

Super cute. I mean, what else do you expect from Winnie the Pooh? The plot this time around was that Eeyore lost his tail and everyone was trying to find a new one for him, along with a subplot about a monster called the Backson and our friends' efforts to capture him. You might be slightly thrown off by the fact that all the voices aren't exactly the same as they were when you were a kid, but I thought all the performances were winning. It's also full of my favorite Pooh element, which is the interaction with the text of the book (e.g. letters sliding across the screen as the characters bump into them.) There isn't anything particularly new about this movie or compelling to adults, even, other than that it's a pure, sweet kids' movie, which I suspect was great for parents, and huge doses of nostalgia all around.  Watch it when you want a smile.

2. The Others, 2001, dir. Alejandro Amenabar
I actually remember seeing this in the theater in high school with my friends.  I remember thinking it was both good creepy fun and also just plain strange--my friends and I often quoted the out-of-nowhere ridiculous line from the husband, "Sometimes I bleed."  My teenage assessment still rings true, pretty much.

In this movie, Nicole Kidman plays a mother who lives in a giant spooky house with her two kids who are "photosensitive," meaning that the movie is very dark all the time, which is a great concept.  Her husband is off at war, and she's looking for some domestic help.  A trio of helpers (including the old woman from Lost!) show up on the door and say they used to work at this house in the past.  Thus the scary scene is set, and we start to see the evidence of ghoslty presences around the house and how the two kids are dealing with it all.

Kidman gives a great performance, endowing her character with good doses of hardass, heartbroken, and terrified all at once, and the director does a nice job with the setting and mood.  There are some good startle-scares and other thriller tropes (creepy kids, drop cloths on old furniture, lots of fog), but it's not gory or cheap-feeling like many scary movies.  It does have some bizarre moments (like the aforementioned interaction with the husband) and unravels a little slowly, but overall, it works.  Watch it in the dark and try not to jump.

Trailer review! The Hunger Games

I don't usually enjoy movie trailers. I find their grandiosity that producers must deem necessary to attract audiences repetitive and irritating. So this morning I found myself surprised to be completely captivated by the new (first) Hunger Games trailer. (Check out my take on the books at this post.)

Full disclosure, I'm completely biased by the fact that my friend Sash of http://www.sashandem.com/ is an extra in the movie. But I don't think I'm off-base in saying that this movie looks AWESOME.  Casting fell into place perfectly, world building looks great so far, and they definitely nailed the anticipation for the start of the games without spoiling anything that happens!  I'm impressed that they built in so much tension by showing only things that happen before the games.

I'm going to see Breaking Dawn soon and, even though I am a big fan of the movies generally (don't argue about this with me now, not the point), I'm not even excited about it because that book is so terrible.  So, thank you, Hunger Games, for providing me with a dose of good ol' YA-book-to-film-adaptation happiness.

Bite-sized review catch-up! Tron Legacy, The Misfits, Drive, State of Play, Dune

Someone's been slacking on review writing lately, and that someone is me.  So here is a mini-review of each thing I've taken in recently, things which I may or may not expand upon in a full review later (let's be honest, probably not).

Tron: Legacy
Film, 2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski

This is a pretty awesome-looking movie that has few other redeeming qualities.  You don't really need to know what it was about beyond seeing the preview.  It probably was sweet in IMAX.  See it for the nifty new motorbike-thingies, see it for the Matrix-y fight scenes, see it for the aging technology on Jeff Bridges.  See it if it's free on your Netflix and you feel like a no-thinking kind of night.  Otherwise, don't bother.  The story doesn't make any sense and the dialogue is stupid.  Oh, I should mention I never saw the original Tron, so maybe that makes a difference in how much you appreciate the story, but I kind of doubt it.

The Misfits
Novel, James Howe, 2003

A good YA (that's young adult, my friends) book, one that I would have recommended to some of my former students.  It's about a group of outcast friends in middle school who decide to try to shake things up by running for student government on the platform of stopping the name-calling all around them.  It's got a very heavy "everyone is special and you can change the world" theme going, a theme that became too obstructive of some interesting character potential for this adult reader.  (For example, the main character is an overweight boy who works in a department store with a cold, lonely boss so that he can bring home a few extra dollars for his reformed drunk widower father.  So much potential that gets sidetracked for the quick resolution!)  But it's quickly digestible and lots of fun, so if you run across it, recommend it to your young teenage relatives.

Drive
Film, 2011, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

Here's another rare gem for this blog--something you can still see in the theaters!  But honestly, don't.  Well, maybe do.  But not before you read this warning: it's gross.  Horribly gory violently gross.  The thing is, it was a totally normal movie for the first half an hour or so, and I was thinking, hey, I'm glad Jamie wanted to see this even though I didn't know anything about it.  Then someone's (I won't spoil whose) head gets blown off by a point-blank shotgun.  And there's more where that came from.  Ok, warning over.  Horrifying violence aside, this was a really interesting piece of art, which is I think why reviewers seem to love it.  Ryan Gosling plays "The Driver," who gets mixed up in driving a getaway car for the wrong crowd.  It's a unique story and avoids cliche at every turn.  Gosling pulls off his character surprisingly well, and there are some nice performances by the supporting cast as well--Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and Albert Brooks, to name a few.

State of Play
Film, 2009, dir. Kevin Macdonald

This movie won't be one of my all-time favorites, but I liked it, and I'd see it again.  Ben Affleck plays a politician whose staffer died in suspicious circumstances on the Metro tracks here in DC.  Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams are the journalists digging around in it, and Robin Wright Penn is Affleck's pretty if mostly plot-irrelevant wife.  Oh and Helen Mirren's in there too, also in a non-interesting role.  That cast list is mostly why I Netflixed this one, and because I like movies about politics.  The mystery was interesting if not totally groundbreaking and the script and acting were good.  The thing I enjoyed most, though, was identifying each scene as "I've been there, that's totally DC!" or, "NO WAY that is totally NOT DC!"  Side note for those who also live here: You see the soon-to-become-a-metro-delay staffer walking through Adams Morgan before she gets to the Metro, but all of a sudden she's on the platform in...Rosslyn!  Amazing!  (Non-DCers, that's a jump all the way across town--in fact, into Virginia.)

Last but certainly not least...
Dune
Novel, Frank Herbert, 1965

I'm running out of steam here, and out of the five mini-reviews here, this one is most likely to make it into a longer review later, so to keep it extra short: A science fiction classic that didn't disappoint.  I found the writing to be a little opaque at times, but the story was exciting and complex, and I was left wanting to read the sequels even though I already decided I wouldn't since I've heard they're not worth it.





And that's it for now!  I'll try not to be a slacker in the future (that's what I always say...), and I promise to consider giving Dune the attention it's worth.

How to handle spoilers: one guy's treatise

I ran across this post on the blog Book Riot, about when you are allowed to talk about the details of something and perhaps spoil it for others and when you're not.  Fun for me to ponder as your blog author, and perhaps you will enjoy it too if you like giving your opinions about stuff all the time, like me.

If I spoil the blog post right now, how meta is that?  The post includes two sections of different spoiling situations and subcategories of each section!  Bwahahaha, has the world exploded with my meta-ness?