Reviews and More

Now that my son is old enough to follow the basic plots of children’s movies, I find myself watching these things with him more and more. Before, he was content just to have Finding Nemo or whatever on as background noise while he played with his toys in the living room. But now he actually has questions about why the characters do things and what’s going on, so I have to pay attention in order to answer those questions.

Anyway, we just got done watching Stuart Little 2 (he didn’t see the first one, but I did). In this movie, Stuart the talking, driving, clothes-wearing mouse voiced by Michael J. Fox is now a full-blown member of the Little family. He’s referred to as a “son” and a “brother,” which is weird for adults, but my child didn’t even notice.

Stuart is feeling left out because his mom (Geena Davis) is too overprotective and his brother (Jonathan Lipnicki) doesn’t hang out with him as much anymore. But then Stuart finds a new friend, a little bird named Margalo (voiced by Melanie Griffith). It turns out that Margalo isn’t all she’s cracked up to be, and Stuart finds himself in a couple of dangerous situations before the movie ends.

Overall, I thought this was just an ok movie. It’s not something I would ever have sat through on my own, but it seemed to hold my son’s attention just fine. It’s only an hour and 10 minutes long, so he didn’t have much of a chance to get bored by it. I think it would be good choice as a rental, but there’s no need to add Stuart Little 2 to your DVD collection.

Read Roger Ebert’s review of Stuart Little 2.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for awhile knows that I don’t often sing the praises of specific companies. So when I do, you can be sure that there’s a good reason for it! I’ve got some friends who have been looking for a new place in Raleigh for quite some time, but haven’t had any luck finding the right house at the right price. It was getting to be a very frustrating situation for them, so they decided to switch realty firms to see if that would change anything.

They went to a company called ListWise Realty Services and soon were paired up with a fantastic Raleigh real estate agent who really took the time to listen to their wants and needs. In a little over a week, he was able to locate several properties that would suit my friends perfectly. So now the biggest problem they’re facing is trying to decide which of those great new houses to make their next home!

The bottom line here is if you want results, you need the right agents. Check out ListWise Realty Services today!

On the Road by Jack Kerouac largely based on the fact that most people absolutely rave about it. It’s also on this list of the “100 Greatest Novels of All Time” which is certainly high praise.

But for some reason, I think it’s one of the most boring, pointless books I’ve ever read! I always feel a little apprehensive going against the grain because it makes me feel like I maybe just didn’t “get it” or understand the bigger picture. But I can’t even pretend that I liked On the Road. It’s very long, poorly written, and nothing even happens in it.

The narrator, Sal Paradise, takes four cross-country road trips with his drunken drunken friends in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. They don’t do anything except drink, smoke pot, and drive seventy miles per hour. Big deal. This was supposed to be groundbreaking stuff? I don’t think so!

Skip it!!!

I think I’m beginning to get too disillusioned with Prison Break as a whole to view each episode objectively. They all just seem so contrived now.

Anyway, this week’s offering deals mostly with Michael and Linc’s impending transfer back to the Joliet pen in Illinois. Of course, Mahone and Kellerman have a plan in mind and allow the two brothers to escape from the Border Patrol so the feds would have an excuse to kill them. Turns out that one of the two agents is ready to start playing for the other side, though, so the brothers are once again on the run.

In other happenings:

• Bellick is now in Joliet as a prisoner. I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t hear if he pled guilty for a lesser sentence or if he’s just there for holding while awaiting trial. Either way, that stuff happened F.A.S.T. I mean, according to the show’s timeline, the prisoners escaped just 10 days ago, and here Bellick’s already in jail with the other inmates?
• Sara heard that Michael and Linc got picked up, so she’s ready to do some things on her own. She basically said goodbye to her old identity by cutting her hair and dumping her IDs.
• T-Bag is really getting on my nerves now. I can’t stand the way the actor, Robert Knepper, flicks his tongue around all the damn time. It doesn’t add to his character; it’s just annoying. Oh, yeah — he added to his kill total tonight.
• Sucre was in like two scenes. He parachuted to safety somewhere in the Mexican desert.

The show will be on hiatus until 2007, so we won’t see the resolution of the cliffhanger ending until then.

I subscribed to ESPN GamePlan for the first time this year. This is a package which allows members to view select college football games online, either live or archived. The first week I tuned in (back in September) everything went smoothly and I raved about what a brilliant idea GamePlan was.

But since then, I’ve had nothing but problems. For example, whenever I try to tune into a game, I get an error saying I can’t connect or that the game is not available yet — even though I know it is. This happened to me for the Ohio St. - Michigan game and again for the USC-Notre Dame game. It really sucks to get myself psyched up to watch a game and then not even be able to access it.

I’m not even going to bother complaining to ESPN because it won’t do any good. But I definitely won’t be subscribing again until I hear that they’ve worked out all these issues. From what I understand, this was their first year offering the package online, so some problems were inevitable. Not excusable, but inevitable.

I don’t know why, but I sometimes deliberately watch movies even though they’ve received pretty much nothing but horrendous reviews. Sweet November, the 2001 production starring Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, is one such movie.

This is a film that deserves all the bad press it has gotten. Keanu Reeves has to be one of the worst actors working in Hollywood today and I simply cannot understand how he continues to get leading roles when there are so many more deserving people out there. Yikes.

The basic story here is that Reeves is a powerful, successful ad exec that doesn’t have time to enjoy life. Theron is a wild, carefree woman who spends her days doing things like running on the beach with dogs. Of course they meet and of course she tries to save him. And of course there’s something wrong with her. Like a terminal illness. Oh, come on! That’s not a spoiler… don’t tell me you didn’t see that coming right from the start.

The acting was awful, the plot was dumb, the characters were unsympathetic. Do yourself a favor and pass this one up.

Check out Roger Ebert’s review of Sweet November right here.

I’m on a quest to view all the Best Picture Oscar winners dating all the way back to when the award was first presented in 1928. Towards that end, I recently watched Rebecca, the 1940 Best Picture winner that was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rebecca, of course, is based on the Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name. The story is about a woman named Mrs. de Winter, the second wife of Maxim de Winter, who must constantly fight against the memory of Maxim’s first wife. That first wife was the lovely Rebecca, whom everyone loved (especially the servant Mrs. Danvers) and whose personal effects still clutter up the sprawling family home known as Manderley.

Not much happens in the film at all. Obviously people will call it a “psychological” thriller or whatever, but it didn’t work for me as a movie. I thought the novel was fantastic, but that’s because I don’t mind a slow, leisurely pace in books.

So despite all the big names attached to this movie (Selznick, Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson) and the awards, I wouldn’t recommend Rebecca for today’s audiences. Again, nothing happens!!

There used to be a time when the only shows on TV on Thanksgiving night (after football) were reruns or cheesy specials. Not anymore, though. Most networks now continue showing new episodes of their regular Thursday night lineup, which meant that viewers were treated to the ninth installment of Grey’s Anatomy this season.

It was a very tense and intense episode that I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I’m glad the whole tremoring hand thing is out in the open now. That plotline was starting to wear thin as a secret, so now let’s deal with the fallout and move on.

On the other hand, I’m not quite sure that I liked the way Burke and Cristina were “outed”. George was being such a whiney ass about the whole thing that I just wanted to smack him. Sure, he’s under stress because of his father’s impending surgery, but he could have been much more professional about the whole thing. Then again, I guess the way he “handled” it was pretty much par for the course for such a passive-aggressive person.

Edited to add: get the TWOP recaplet right here.

Since I have close ties to Japan, I’ve wanted to read the novel Shogun by James Clavell for a long time now. I tried a couple of times, but always put the book aside because it was so boring and because the length just made it seem like an impossible obstacle to overcome.

Then I got the bright idea of trying the audiobook version. That way, “reading” the book would require much less effort and I could soak up the story while driving, cooking, cleaning, etc. Unfortunately, listening to the story doesn’t make it any more interesting. Frankly, I really don’t understand why this book has attracted so much attention and has managed to gain legions of fans from around the world. Obviously there must be some merit to it, but it’s beyond me.

Plus, I just have to say that the reader for this version absolutely sucks! I mean, I don’t want to bag on the guy too much, but that was the most god-awful rendering of the Japanese language that I have ever heard — and I’ve heard plenty of people butcher the language in various ways. I’m not saying that a Japanese expert should have read the book, but geez, you’d think the guy (who is a professional reader, by the way) would have done at least a bit of research into how to pronounce the language since there was so much of it sprinkled throughout the text.

Not only that, but the reader didn’t have a very wide range of voices for the different characters. He used the same voice for severl recurring characters, which made it hard to distinguish who was talking to whom (especially for the women). Again, this guy is supposed to be a professional book reader/performer. He should be able to do consistent voices, right?

All in all, the whole thing was crap. From the story to the reading to the god-forsaken length… Sorry Shogun fans, I recommend staying as far away from this book as possible!

I just saw a report that famed director Robert Altman has died from cancer at the age of 81. I’ve seen a lot of his movies, including MASH, Popeye, The Player, and Gosford Park, so I am a bit saddened at his passing. At least he lived a long and full life and was with his family at the end.

Here’s the full AP article and the link to his IMDB.com page

*** Spoilers Throughout!!!***

I was totally looking forward to this week’s episode of Prison Break to see what would happen to Sara. I knew she wouldn’t die, but I wanted to see how she would escape from Kellerman. I have to say that I was extremely disappointed by the way the writers handled this scene. A lot of my friends who also watch the show have often complained about how completely unrealistic it is. I agree, but usually can brush those criticisms off because I just want to be entertained here. But the way Sara escaped really pushed my limits.

First, she pulls the drain plug out with her teeth. Ok, I guess I can accept that. But then she somehow manages to work her way out of the duct tape that was binding her hands together? How did she do that, and why couldn’t she do that before Kellerman decided to dunk her?

Then, instead of killing Kellerman after she disabled him with the iron (good move, BTW), why would she jump out the window onto a car windshield? That? Makes no sense.

In other news, Mr. Burrows dies after being shot by Mahone (who is just everywhere he needs to be)…. Bellick is arrested for the murder of Geary…. Sucre gets on the plane to Panama, but it’s being chased by the feds…. Michael and Lincoln are being held at gunpoint by Mahone….

I guess I should be stressing over this latest cliffhanger, but I’m not. I’m still too disappointed in this show to care right now. Come on, like Michael and Linc are going to get killed or taken back to jail midway through the season? No way!

I usually read Roger Ebert’s movie reviews because I end up agreeing with him more often than not. But since Ebert has been sidelined due to health problems, I’ve had to look for other review sources. A friend recommended Rotten Tomatoes to me, and I really like it thus far.

With Rotten Tomatoes, I can read full reviews of movies from critics all across the country all on one site. It’s very convenient and gives me a better overall feel for the movie than reading a single reviewer does.

Check it out now!

I purchased a Hewlett-Packard iPaq rx 1955 a couple months ago. Now that I’ve had sufficient time to set it up and get a feel for the way it works, I’ve reached a preliminary verdict: I absolutely love it so far!!

This is the first PDA I’ve ever owned, and as I stated before, I mainly bought the device in order to be able to read e-books, keep track of tasks, and maybe watch a few videos. I had no idea that PDAs couldn’t do those things right out of the box. I mean, the package states that the iPaq comes with Windows Media Player and the Mobile edition of Word, which I thought would be sufficient for my purposes. But the media player won’t play .avi or .mpeg files, and I couldn’t even get my book (in .doc format) to open on my PDA.

After a bit of online research, I found a couple of great freeware apps that neatly did the trick. First, I found a site called PDA Gold that has a bunch of freeware for Pocket PCs. Although the site itself looks a little iffy (looks like a spam site at first glance), I found this e-book reader on it. I installed it and it works like a charm so far. Now I can import e-books in .txt format and have them nicely formatted in the reader.

I also found this media player called TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player). It was easy to download and install, and now I have no trouble viewing the .avi files that I regularly download.

Overall, I have to say that my iPaq seems like a fantastic little device! I wanted to go with an entry-level unit just to see if I liked it, and so far I definitely do. I probably will never even need a more powerful device; this one does everything I want it to. I know it’s only been one day, but unless something drastic happens to it, I don’t expect to change my mind about my iPaq anytime soon. If you’re thinking about buying a PDA, you can’t go wrong with the iPaq rx 1955!

I’ve been watching the television show 24 for so long that I forgot how Kiefer Sutherland usually played the bad guy before he took on the role of Jack Bauer in the hit series. But today I rented the 1997 flick Truth or Consequences, N.M. and got a quick reminder of how psychotic Kiefer’s characters generally are.

This movie marked Sutherland’s directorial debut and also stars Vincent Gallo, Mykelti Williamson, Kevin Pollak, Kim Dickens, and Grace Phillips. Gallo plays Raymond, a two-bit drug dealer who just got out of prison after serving time for the big shot above him. He thinks the guy owes him a lot, so when all Raymond gets is a job in a warehouse moving boxes around, he comes up with a plan to steal a million dollars worth of heroin from the guy. In on the heist are Raymond’s friends Curtis (Sutherland) and Marcus (Williamson), and his girlfriend Addy (Dickens).

The deal goes terribly wrong right from the start. Raymond was counting on the warehouse to be empty during the robbery, but the drug dealer and another man are in there. Curtis freaks out and shoots both of them, only to discover that the other guy was an undercover cop who also happened to be wearing a wire.

Things just get worse from there as the gang must go on the run. They pick up a couple hostages along the way, the cops pick up their trail, and the movie ends pretty much as you’d expect it to. In other words, no surprises here.

I thought this was just an ok movie. It was clearly trying to be “smart” in the Tarantino sense, but it fell well short of that. Nevertheless, it still had its entertaining moments and is worth a look if you have a chance.

Tonight’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was called Staring at the Sun, and we pick up right where we left off last week with all the characters continuing with the various dramas in their lives. To wit:

Meredith/Derek: They’re openly seeing each other but have decided to take it slow this time around. Meredith also goes to visit her mother and has to tell Ellis that the Chief won’t be able to see her anymore. Meanwhile, Derek actually talks to Addison and basically rubs his happiness right in her face. Ugh.

Alex/Izzie: Izzie’s probation continues, and this time she is assigned to follow Alex around. He’s still working with Sloan, and by “working” I mean picking up Sloan’s dry cleaning and gettin his sandwiches from the deli. Alex and Izzie have a patient who’s in for pec implants. This guy talks about himself in the third person, which Alex and Izzie start doing too (funny). Alex kisses Izzie, but she says she’s not ready to move on yet (boo).

Christina/Burke: Christina is still performing Burke’s surgeries, but now George is totally onto their setup. He wonders why Christina’s not bragging about doing all these cool procedures by herself. Christina struggles with the situation when she learns that George’s dad needs surgery. Otherwise, no other developments here.

George/Callie: George is peeved that Callie seems to be getting on so well with his brothers and his father. They’re broken up and he doesn’t want her to be friendly with his family. Then George discovers that his father has one major health problem after another, and he has to choose the people that he wants to operate on his father. He chooses Christina and Burke, but asks Christina to tell him the truth about what’s going on since his dad’s life is at stake here.

Bailey: She sings a lullaby to her baby over the phone as she realizes she’s not spending enough time with him.

Overall, a decent episode. I can’t wait to see this year’s Thanksgiving version!

I’ve just now finished watching the latest Prison Break episode, called “Bolshoi Booze.” I had to TiVo it Monday night and couldn’t get to it until today because I’ve been so busy with other things. Anyway, all I can say about this episode is… WOW!

It feels like so much happened in that hour, and of course we were left with an unbearable cliffhanger! I hope you’ve already seen the episode if you’re reading this, but just in case you haven’t, you better stop now because there are spoilers ahead.

***Spoiler Warning***

Ok, so deep down, I know that the writers won’t let Sara die. I mean, they can’t, can they??? In my mind, she’s as big a part of the show as Michael himself. After all, she’s the only thing that’s keeping him from going way over the edge at this point. At the same time, though, I have no idea how she’s going to get the best of Kellerman.

The only thing that’s giving me hope is that there were a couple of shots of Sara during the episode that showed A) she knew Kellerman was going to try to kill her; and B) she wasn’t going to just sit there and take it. Plus, Kellerman took his sweet time struggling with the order to kill her, so she may have had a chance to plan something. Otherwise, there’s no chance of someone walking in at the last minute to save her — like Sucre did for Michael.

Speaking of those guys, Linc, Michael, their father, and Sucre are all assembled at Bolshoi Booze waiting for a plane to pick them up and take them to Panama. Mahone is onto them and the coordinates of where they’re at, so it’s not exactly going to be smooth sailing. I’m sure Mahone will intercept them next week, and while he may not catch them, he’ll definitely make it so they can’t get on that plane. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out!

The only other storyline we got last night was the continuing saga of the money. T-Bag left his hand tied to the radiator and made his escape without it. He was also smart enough to put a tracking device in the backpack containing the $5 million, so he knew exactly where to go to get it back from Geary. The only thing is, Bellick knows that Geary’s dead and will probably hear where the body was found (outside the hotel). He’ll go there looking for T-Bag. If T-Bag is still around, I hope they settle the score once and for all. I don’t like either of these characters, so losing them wouldn’t bother me at all.

Anyway, you can be sure that I’m tuning in on time next Monday night. I have to see what happens to Sara!!!

One thing I remember from my college days is how tedious it was to format bibliographies. After spending days (or even weeks, in some cases) writing 20-page term papers, the last thing I wanted to do was have to spend a couple hours formatting my Works Cited page. That’s why I think this site, called EasyBib, is such a great idea.

EasyBib is a free resource that makes it easy for students and others to compile properly-formatted bibliographies. The free service will give you a bibliography in the MLA style, which is perfectly acceptable for most profs. If you need to have APA style, that will cost you just $7.99 per year — a bargain, in my mind.

I’ve used EasyBib on several occasions, and it’s very easy. You just copy, paste, or type in the required information for each of your sources, hit “format citation,” and you get a nice and neat citation in a matter of seconds. You can save your list directly to your computer or have it emailed to you.

Free and easy, so check it out!

I’ve been wanting to see The Break-Up for quite some time now, especially after it was confirmed that stars Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston were indeed a couple. I managed to miss it while it was in the theaters, so I had to wait until it came out on DVD, which finally happened a few weeks ago. But now that I’ve seen it, I don’t know why I was in such a hurry in the first place. It definitely wasn’t worth it!

As you can guess from the title, Vaughn and Aniston play a couple who are going through a break-up. Since they own a condo together, they have to live with each other until the place sells. This leads to all the kinds of situations you would expect from exes that have to watch each other go on with their lives. Brooke (Aniston’s character) brings different men home and Gary (Vaughn) tries to pretend like he doesn’t care.

***Spoiler Alert***

Anyway, the way the movie ended made it seem like the whole thing was pointless. I mean, why did we have to spend an hour and a half getting to know these people if they weren’t going to get back together in the end? Sometimes it’s better for filmmakers to avoid the “Hollywood” ending, but this wasn’t one of those times.

***End Spoiler***

Here’s a link to Roger Ebert’s review. I completely agree with everything he said about the movie.

I recently bought an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (model VN-240PC) because I do a lot of interviewing for my various writing gigs. So far, I have to say that this gadget has been performing very well, especially for the price I paid (less than $100). Here are the pros and cons, as far as I can tell after a couple months of usage:

Pros:

• Easy-to-operate buttons
• No external microphone needed
• Decent sound quality
• Seamless uploads to my PC
• “Hold” button
• Pen clip for pocket

Cons:

• A little on the bulky side compared to other products
• File transfers go a bit slowly

That’s all! As you can see, there are only a couple things that I’ve had a problem with. All in all though, I would definitely recommend this product for everyday recording needs.

The latest episode of CSI was called “Post Mortem,” and I have to say that it was a very solid offering from writers Dustin Lee Abraham and David Rambo. The show opened with a depressing scene of an old woman smoking and drinking by herself as she carefully cut coupons out of sales circulars. That’s definitely not how I want to end up! Anyway, she soon ends up crashing through one of the windows of her home where she dies. We can’t see if she was pushed or what.

We go through the usual investigation of the crime scene, gathering of evidence, and interviewing of witnesses. Nothing out of the ordinary happened until the woman’s nephew drops by the police station with a package that he said someone left on his porch. It happens to contain a perfect miniature re-creation of the crime scene — the same kind of thing that Grissom and Sara found back in episode two of this season. It seems that there’s a serial killer on the loose.

While all this is going on, Greg is going through some kind of inquest to see if he should be held liable for the death of the young guy he ran over in the “Fannysmackin’” episode.

Like I said, I felt this was one of the better CSI episodes that viewers have been treated to in a while. I hope the writers keep it up!