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Jill, Movies

Movie Review: Life As We Know It

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Movie – Life As We Know It

Director: Greg Berlanti (The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy)

Screenwriter: Ian Deitchman, Kristin Rusk Robinson (First movie for both)

Starring: Katharine Heigl (The Ugly Truth, 27 Dresses, Knocked Up), Josh Duhamel (When in Rome, Transformers, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!)

Theater – Carmike Oakdale 20 – Oakdale, Minnesota

Companion – Jill Gorshe

Food – Hell’s Kitchen

Intellectual Honesty

I probably enjoy romantic comedies more than a heterosexual male should. Really enjoyed 27 Dresses, but was disappointed by The Ugly Truth. Have no opinions on Josh Duhamel other than When in Rome was cute enough.

Baggage

Don’t know if I carried any into the theater other than my disappointment with Katherine Heigl’s The Ugly Truth and my complete lack of desire to see her follow up Killers.

Synopsis

Holly and Eric were set up on a blind date by their friends, Peter and Allison who are married. A few years later after Peter and Allison were killed in an accident, they learn that Peter and Allison have named them as the guardians to their daughter, Sophie. So they move into their house and try their best to honor their friends’ wishes. But raising a child puts a crimp on their style and they don’t exactly get along.

Review

There really isn’t much to say about this movie.  It is extremely predictable, but the characters are likable enough and it is well enough done.  This is the character that Heigl seems to plays in all of her other movies, so she isn’t breaking any new ground. Duhamel plays your stereotypical bombastic male love interest.

Although no new ground is broken, the jokes are funny enough that you aren’t overly frustrated that you know every plot turn well before it happens.

One addition to the formula that I did enjoy was Sarah Burns as a social worker that gets a little too emotionally invested in Holly and Eric’s relationship.

One painful moment that should have been rewritten or edited out of the film is when Holly and Eric do hookup, Holly wonders out loud whether or not Peter and Allison “planned” Holly and Eric getting together.  As if their best friends intentionally killed themselves on the off chance that the 1 year old daughter that they would leave behind would unify their best friends in a romantic tryst.  It is a head scratcher why this line of dialogue would have ever been written, let alone made it to the final cut of a movie. It isn’t as if they just left them in charge of their kid for the weekend.  They died.

Predictable.  Jill spent the end of the movie calling out what would happen next.  But well enough done to make it still satisfying when it ended.

Rating

3.0/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Nope, but I will not turn the station if I saw it on TV.

2010 Ranking

I guess it is the best romantic comedy I’ve seen this year.  So  that is something.

Bonus Information

Saw the trailer for For Colored Girls It looks really good, but I’m not sure if that can be possible if Tyler Perry directed it.  I guess I’ll have to give it a chance.

Up Next

Hereafter and Red

Christianity, Mark

Taiwan Times – October 2010

Taiwan Times:
October Newsletter

Hey everyone! I know it has been awhile since I got a newsletter out, and you have my apologies. I will work to do a better job in the coming months. In the meantime, I wanted to give you all a quick update for this month.

The school year has gotten off to a fast and furious start. Some of my new duties have been to help coordinate the application process for the missionaries’ green cards and work permits. I also was able to coordinate the visit of Dr. Christine Ross, who is a professor of Christian Education at Concordia Irvine, and leader of the DCE placement program.

Christine was able to give us a couple of quick refreshers on teaching Bible classes to students, in addition to being able to answer our concerns and questions. On top of that, she is also seeking opportunities for placement of DCE interns. I thought her trip went really well, and I ask you to pray for God to open opportunities to bring Irvine students out to Taiwan for service.

As for teaching, my classes have gone really well so far. I continue to teach 7th grade English and Bible, in addition to 10th and 11th grade Advanced English. I absolutely love teaching my kids and getting to know them and share Christ through word and action. Please pray for my interactions with students and for my preparation and grading of school work. May God be glorified through it all.

The out of class activities have also gotten up and running. On-Campus Student Fellowship, Friday Night Bible Study, and Salvation Youth Group continue to be used to spread the Gospel with teenagers here in Taiwan. At Friday Night Bible Study, we are currently teaching about the book of Acts and God the Holy Spirit’s work as seen through the early church. This week I will be teaching a lesson on the conversion of Saul. Please pray for God to be working through these fellowships and Bible Studies to create faith in the hearts of the people here in Taiwan.

Finally, I would like to share about a special prayer request. One of our missionaries, Noel Schaff, has returned to America for medical treatment. The doctors recently diagnosed her with cancer, so she will remain in the US for surgery and potential treatment. Andrew Schaff, her husband will also be going to the US to accompany his wife during this time.

Please pray for both Noel and Andrew. Pray for God to be with Noel and to heal her according to his will. Please also pray for Andrew as he comforts his wife and faces the trial with her. May God continue to be their source of strength.

In addition, pray for the teachers who are pitching in to help with classes. May God give us energy, focus, and may he be our strength.

Finally, pray also for a former Taiwan missionary, James Rush. He is considering the possibility of returning to Taiwan for a semester to help fill in with the teaching responsibilities. Details are still being worked out, but we hope and anticipate his arrival. Pray that God would work in that process, as James seeks to serve again here in Taiwan.

Thanks for all of your prayers and your financial support. As I shared in August, I am fully funded for this year of service, so praise God!. I know that I still have many “thanks yous” to write from this summer. I will not forget to write personal notes of thanks. But in the meantime, you are all greatly appreciated, and I thank God for you!

In Christ,
Mark

Dawn, Flowers, Shannon, Vest, WPC - Submissions, Writing

RWPE #41 – Dry

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Here are this week’s submissions for DRY:


WEEK 41 - DRY - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

WEEK 41 - DRY - MIKE VEST
Mike Vest

WEEK 41 - DRY - SHANNON BARDOLE
Shannon Bardole

WEEK 41 - DRY - DAWN KRAUSE
Dawn Krause

Dawn’s poetry submission:

Dry

The wind blows through the Sahara of my mind
I’m reaching out but now your love’s gone blind
It took so long to reach my heart’s turning point
Now it lies in your hands not to disappoint

My garden is ready now to grow and bloom
The weeds have died and my heart has made room
Please don’t say your love is withered and dry
Let’s tend our flowers and let our love grow high

So I’ve been to the treehouse where the Random Theme Generator or RTG as his friends call him where he spends his sabbaticals. I put a coin in the slot. Pulled the handle. RTG spit out the following excellent theme for this week:

SHADOWS

I’m very excited for this theme. I think there should be many good exceptions. After all, everybody has a shadow.

History, Jesse, Movies, Nader

Movie Review: Secretariat

Movie – Secretariat

Director: Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers, The Man in the Iron Mask)

Screenwriter:  Mike Rich (The Nativity Story, Radio, The Rookie, Finding Forrester)

Starring:  Diane Lane (The Perfect Storm, Unfaithful, Jumper); John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, Being John Malkovich, Con Air) and Dylan Walsh (Congo, The Lake House, The Stepfather)

Theater – Cinemark Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion – Nader Parsaei

Food – King Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I am an absolute sucker for a horse movie.  I’m not sure Hollywood could make a horse movie I wouldn’t love.  That includes you Hot to Trot!

Baggage

I don’t think that Randall Wallace can direct a movie that is above average.  I don’t think Disney makes very good live action movies.  Yes, Old Yeller is the first movie to make me cry and I still cry every time I see it, but in the last 20 years the only Disney live action movie that is watchable is The Rookie.

Synopsis

Housewife and mother Penny Chenery (Lane) takes over her ailing father’s Virginia bases Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery – with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (Malkovich) – and while putting her marriage at risk – manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in twenty-five years.

Review

I often heard the following indictment of the movie Titanic: “I don’t need to see the movie. I already know the ship sinks.”  It is a statement of ignorance and is hardly a decent indictment of 2nd highest grossing movie of all-time.  It isn’t a legitimate criticism because the setting of Titanic sinking is just that, the setting. You know the ship sinks, but you don’t know what is going to happen to the fictional characters Jack and Rose.  So while you watch the movie knowing that eventually the big ship is going to run into an iceberg and end up on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, you don’t know if Jack and Rose will end up on the sea floor with the mighty ship or if they will be part of the few hundreds of people that managed to survive that freezing April night.

If somebody was to say to me, “I don’t need to see Secretariat, I already know that he wins.”  I actually would agree with them that knowing that Secretariat wins does take something out of seeing this movie.  The way the screenplay is written, the entire payoff of the movie is the Belmont Stakes.  A race that even people who know nothing about horse racing know Secretariat won by over 30 lengths. Perhaps the single most dominant performance in any sport in sporting history.

However, even knowing how the movie is going to end, I’m not sure that the story of Secretariat would make a great movie without considerable creative license taken by the filmmakers.

Let’s face it, Secretariat is the greatest racehorse to ever live.  The only other horse that can ever be entered into the conversation is Man o’ War.  A horse that was so dominant that the 1 and only time he lost a race, it popularized the term upset for a description of a surprising outcome in a sporting event.  The horse that defeated Man o’ War was named Upset.

However, Secretariat was at least as dominating as Man o’ War. He won the Triple Crown while setting records in 2 of the 3 races.  Winning the third jewel of the Triple Crown by an incredible 31 lengths.  His time of 2:24 broke the stakes record by more than 2 seconds!

An absolutely amazing animal, but great sports movies aren’t about dominant athletes.  They are about underdogs.  Nobody would watch a movie following my training for a 1 on 1 basketball game against Jesse Howard with a climax of me beating him yet again.  No! People would want to see a movie following his training to play me.  Then he would have lots of unorthodox training methods and in the game he would make some improbable shots and upset me barely.  On a last second shot.

So in Secretariat they make a game effort to make Penny Chenery (Lane) an underdog, but it falls short.  She is a woman in a man’s world, sort of.  She is never the victim of any discrimination. She isn’t supported by her husband and she borderline abandons her family, but the only thing that ever happens in that world are a couple of terse conversations with her husband and her eldest daughter almost becomes a hippie.  That being said, her hippie daughter and her hippie friends are the cleanest hippies I’ve ever seen.  They look more like the cast of the Partridge Family than real hippies, but I guess that is still a threat to conservative Southern family values. The only real conflict she faces in the entire movie is she has to raise 6 million dollars to pay her inheritance tax or risk having to sell Secretariat.  As intriguing as that sounds on the surface, when was the last “underdog” you knew that had to struggle to pay 6 million in inheritance taxes?  Boo-frigging-hoo!

There are aspects of the story that are undeniably interesting.  Secretariat was won on a losing coin toss.  The richest man in the world flipped a coin with Penny Chenery and won the coin toss.  Then he picked the other horse.  Chenery won Secretariat by default.

Secretariat lost his last race before the Kentucky Derby because he has an abscess and wasn’t able to train much before the Kentucky Derby.

But an abscess and 6 million dollars in inheritance taxes do not much of a story make.

In addition to not taking you on much of a roller coaster ride, the script is riddled with some pretty bad dialogue. I don’t think anybody could have given a great performance, considering the type of stuff they were forced to say. Malkovich’s character Lucien Laurin plays more like a caricature than a character.  That being said, it is still awful fun watching him play the cheeseball to the hilt.  Secretariat’s great rival’s (Sham) owner is way over the top.

I’d read a couple of reviews of this movie that claim that Secretariat is a form of Tea Party propaganda.  Certainly some of the politics in the movie are right wing (who else would use inheritance taxes as a plot conflict? Even though it is true.) but it isn’t propaganda.  At least it isn’t decently made propaganda.

The horse racing action sequence are well done, but boring when compared to what is still the greatest horse movie ever made Seabiscuit.

Secretariat might have been the better horse, but Seabiscuit is a way better movie.

Rating: 2.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD: Nope, but I’ll watch it again when it is on ABC Family.

2010 Ranking: Unranked at this time.

Bonus Information: There weren’t really any trailers that rang my bell.  I saw a longer trailer for Tangled, the Rapunzel movie and it looks even dumber than the teaser trailer I had seen a few months ago.  I remain intrigued by Megamind. I am bothered by the fact that the trailer for Unstoppable makes it look like a really good movie, but it is directed by Tony Scott, therefore it will suck.

Next Week:

Next week I will actually see 2 movies.  Red on Tuesday and Hereafter on Sunday.  I will also be on vacation, so I’m not sure when stuff will get published, but we’ll see how that cookie crumbles when I get my hands on it.

Dawn, Flowers, Julie, Shannon, Vest, WPC - Submissions

RWPE #40 – Odd Camera Angle

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Last week’s theme ODD CAMERA ANGLE worked up the creative juices of more people than I was expecting. That makes me even more pumped for next week!


WEEL 40 - SHANNON BARDOLE - ODD CAMERA ANGLE
Shannon Bardole

WEEK 40 - ODD CAMERA ANGLE - MIKE VEST
Mike Vest

WEEK 40 - JULIE JOHNSON - ODD CAMERA ANGLE
Julie Johnson

WEEK 40 - DAWN KRAUSE - ODD CAMERA ANGLE
Dawn Krause

WEEK 40 - ODD CAMERA ANGLE - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

Dawn’s poetry submission:

Odd Angle

You may say that I’m a cynic
that I should visit a clinic
or maybe that I judge too much
but sadly life has made it such

Maybe I’m a little jaded
Personality has faded
But it’s what’s hidden deep inside
that I can’t continue to hide

Perhaps I’m more aware these days
overly cautious with my ways
To watch a world falling apart
It’s time now for a brand new start

Only 12 weeks left in this humble experiment. Only 12 Themes left. It is probably time to consider whether or not this little project will return for another 52 weeks. Leave your feedback on this quandary in the comments section of this entry.

If you are pro RWPE Year 2, feel free to also leave suggestions for possible Themes for next year.

I’ve been out to the woods where the log cabin that protects the Random Theme Generator is protected from the elements. I adjusted its solar panels. It caught a glimpse of the sunlight, powered on and spit out the following theme for this week:

DRY

An interesting theme. I hope this is a theme that continues to fire the imaginations of those that entered in the past and those that wish to enter for the first time in the future.

Movies, Nader

Movie Review: The Social Network

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I might make an attempt to do add movie reviews to this website again.  This has failed on several occasions, but no reason to give up now.  What is that definition of insanity I love so much?

Movie

The Social Network

Director: David Fincher
Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield

Theater

Movies 12 – Ames, Iowa

Companion

Nader Parsaei

Food?

Mongolian Buffet

Intellectual Honesty

I love David Fincher.  He is one of my favorite living directors.  He is certainly in the Top 2 or 3.

Baggage

Fincher has some amends to make for the terminally boring Zodiac.

Synopsis

The Social Network follows the testimony in two separate lawsuits surrounding the founding of Facebook. 

The movie opens with a scene where Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend.  He goes home an gets drunk and blogs about his ex-girlfriend.  Then he hacks into all of the the Facebooks of all of the Harvard residence hall and builds a website called Facesmash where people can log on and vote between 2 Harvard girls to determine which one is hotter.

There is so much activity on the website that it crashes Harvard’s network.

This event makes Zuckerberg a campus celebrity and he is approached by 3 other guys to help them make a Harvard dating website.

Instead of helping them with the website, Zuckerberg gets financial backing from his best friend and designs his own website “The Facebook”.

Zuckerberg and his best friend meet up with one of the founders of Napster.  This eventually leads to the removal of Zuckerberg’s best friend from Facebook.

After Zuckerberg becomes the youngest billionaire in history he is sued by the 3 guys that wanted him to help them with their dating website for stealing their idea.  He is also sued by his best friend who is railroaded out of the company.

Review

There was much hype about Justin Timberlake’s performance as Sean Parker, one of the creators of Napster.  He is decent.  I’d even say he is good, but the hype around this performance is quite a bit overblown.  However, Eisenberg’s portrayal of Zuckerberg is phenomenal.  As is Jesse Garfield’s portrayal of Zuckerberg’s best friend and initial CFO of Facebook Eduardo.

But what really keeps this movie humming is a great script by Aaron Sorkin.  What could be a convoluted movie following two lawsuits and 3 sides of a story all at the same time is handled masterfully.

There is a certain amount of hype about how poorly the female characters are portrayed in this movie.  With the obvious exception of the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg in the opening scene, most of the female characters are scene as little more than prizes to be won.  However, I think this is actually the way these characters see women and since the movie is from their perspectives, I don’t really have a problem with it.

Easily the most likable character in the movie is the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg.  She only appears in 1 other scene in the movie, but she is phenomenal and she is the only character that completely handles Zuckerberg.

I can’t point out enough how great the first scene in the movie is enough.  The dialogue is crisp and clever.  It sets up a perfect bookend with the last scene in the movie, which is also a favorite of mine.

The scene ends with the girlfriend telling Zuckerberg:

“You’re going to be successful, and rich. But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.”It is perhaps my favorite line in the movie besides when Zuckerberg tells the lawyer for the 3 men suing him for “stealing” the Facebook idea:

“I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try – but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention – you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.
(pause)
 Did I adequately answer your condescending question?”

There is also a certain amount of hype about how negatively Zuckerberg is portrayed in the movie.  So much so that he donated 100 million dollars to charity recently to help offset the bad publicity from this movie. In my mind I don’t think that he was portrayed that badly.  He is a dick at times, but I think that there isn’t much in this movie that isn’t characteristic of anybody that isn’t driven at the same level as he clearly is.  He suffers from the same social retardation most geniuses suffer from.  At least the geniuses that they make movies about. I’m a Lone Wolf, but I’m not socially retarded. He is victimized by hero worship and unfortunately that leads to him betraying his best friend.  But I don’t think it is portrayed without a certain amount of sympathy. I think alot of people might have done what he did if they were manipulated by their hero.

The score by Trent Reznor is also a bonus to the movie.  When I heard that Trent Reznor was doing the score I thought that the music would end up being a distraction, but it isn’t.  It fits in perfectly with David Fincher’s directing style.

As a bonus, I believe that there is a rowing race scene that owes quite a bit to the work of Stanley Kubrick.  I think you know how that pushes my buttons.

Finally, I loved the way this movie ended. I think it was a perfect way to end the movie and was a perfect bookend with the opening scene of the movie.

Rating

4.5/5 Caramels

Buy on DVD

Definitely

2010 Ranking

I’m torn, but I’m going to go ahead and rank this as my new #1, sliding Inception down to #2.

Bonus information

I saw the trailer for the remake of True Grit for the 1st time.  I’m big time pumped for this movie now and not just because they used a Johnny Cash song as the background music.

Also saw the preview again for Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter.  This is the movie I want to see the most that is left this year.  The Fighter is no. 2.

Next Week

Probably Secretariat – Directed by Randall Wallace – Starring Diane Lane

I have to confess to having a huge weakness for horse movies.

Small possibility that if we don’t see Secretariat it will be Life As We Know It.