Reviews and More

A lot of my friends are suprised when I tell them that Love Actually is one of my favorite movies. I just don’t seem like the kind of person that would like a romantic comedy that much, and Love Actually has taken a lot of heat for being far too hokey and cheesy. While I agree that some scenes (and, indeed, entire storylines) in that movie could have been left out, I thought the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

The movie, directed by Richard Curtis, first came out in 2003, and was pretty much a worldwide success. It features a fantastic ensemble cast made up of huge stars like: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, and Bill Nighy. Plus, there were short appearances by Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean), and Claudia Schiffer. With this much talent available, it would be hard for Love Actually to fail.

The film follows the different love stories that all these characters are involved in, so I was thoroughly confused during the first viewing. It was hard to keep the names straight and to remember who was connected to (or pursuing) whom. Even so, I was able to enjoy the movie on several different levels and wanted to see it again almost immediately — which is something I never feel about movies.

Once I saw it again and was able to keep the storylines in order, my appreciation for the film grew by leaps and bounds. I was able to notice some nuances and connections that slipped past me the first time, and that made the whole film much better.

My favorite love story was the one involving Karen (Thompson) and Harry (Rickman). That seemed to be the most down-to-earth and real one, the one that could happen to any of us. Thompson’s performance was superb — especially in the scene where she opens the Joni Mitchell CD, which confirms her suspicions that Harry is cheating on her.

If you haven’t seen Love Actually yet, I recommend that you do so. Like me, you might be surprised at just how good it is. I give it 8.5 stars out of 10.

Did you ever notice how most states have no problem issuing permits for people to own and carry guns, but the same rights don’t apply to non-lethal products that can be used for self-defense? I’m talking about a Taser or stun gun here. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to carry these things for protection if I want to?

I know some of you would just tell me to “buy a gun,” but there are a couple of reasons why I would never do such a thing. First and foremost, I’m a parent and do not want lethal firearms in my home where my son could potentially find it. I’ve read far too many stories of kids unlocking gun safes and accidentally killing themselves or others with the handguns they find inside. Second, I am simply not comfortable using or carrying a gun — and what’s more, I shouldn’t have to in order to feel safe.

Just out of curiosity, I checked out some non-lethal protection devices over at BrickhouseSecurity.com today and saw that they have several affordable options. For example, this Pocket Guard Mini Stun Gun would be perfect for my needs and costs just $19.95. I would definitely feel safer knowing I had that in my purse!

So what do you think? Why is there so much bias in the U.S. against non-lethal weapons? I’d be interested to hear your take on the subject!

I’ve finally finished the entire first season of Boston Legal after getting the DVD box set for Christmas. It took me a lot longer than anticipated to go through just 17 episodes, but I’ve now arrived at the end and have formed some definite opinions about the show. The last time I wrote about Boston Legal, I had made it up through episode 1×13, so here’s how I felt about the final four installments of Season One. (Rather than give a blow-by-blow account of each ep, I’ll just tell you my general impressions.)

I think Candace Bergen makes a wonderful addition to the cast. She plays Shirley Schmidt, one of the named partners of the firm, and she’s a smart, confident, competent foil to Denny Crane’s imbecility. The only thing I don’t like about the new character is the fact that she has a sexual history with Denny.

And, yeah, I’m still not getting the Denny character at all. He’s not funny to me, although I know that he’s supposed to be. I find him annoying and boring, and he mostly just serves as a major distraction. For example, in episode 1×16, called “Let Sales Ring,” when Milton Bombay (the guy who wants to be cryogenically frozen) comes to the office to tell Denny about the case, all Denny could say was, “What do you mean?” He just kept repeating that over and over again, like the buffoon that he is, and the entire scene was just so dumb. The only time I can stand Denny is during the last minute or so of the episodes when he’s out on the balcony talking to Alan. Let’s just confine him to those scenes, please!

Speaking of Alan, I really liked him at the beginning of the season, but towards the end he just turned way too pissy for my tastes. I don’t know what’s bugging him, but I hope the writers address it soon and move on. I don’t like this Alan at all.

As for the assorted supporting cast, they weren’t featured very much in the final four episodes, which was a good thing in my opinion. The only one I take even the slightest interest in is Tara, and that’s just because of her relationship with Alan. They’re great together, and I hope they remain a couple for the foreseeable future. Lori and Brad are still cardboard cutouts at this point. They have no personalities, are barely involved with the show, and probably don’t need to be there.

Overall, I really enjoyed Boston Legal and am happy that I added it to my TV viewing list. I can’t wait to get the Second Season DVDs to continue the saga!

If you live in the UK and are looking for some good credit card offers, you might want to check this out. Right now, if you sign up for MINT credit cards, you’ll get 0% interest on purchases through December 1, 2007; 0% balance transfers through that same time period; and a 0% bonus offer until August 1, 2008 on any balance transfers made during February 2008. As I said on my site before, the smartest way to use credit cards is to take advantage of these 0% offers, so get moving!

Don’t forget that you can also purchase MINT Gift Cards that range in value from £10 to £250 and can be used at virtually any retailer in the world that accepts Visa Electron. This is the perfect gift for those hard-to-buy-for people on your list and is appropriate for nearly any occasion.

You can apply online, so check out the MINT site today!

I had heard so many good things about Will Smith’s latest film, The Pursuit of Happyness, that I just had to go see it despite the fact that I usually prefer to wait for a film to come out on DVD before watching. Plus, the movie was based on a true story, which is always a big draw for me.

Smith stars as a San Francisco-based salesman named Chris Garndner. Chris is married, and he and his wife Linda have a five-year-old son named Christopher. The Gardners are barely able to make ends meet, and always seem to be behind on one payment or another.

Chris has a dream of being something more than a bone scanner salesman, and one day he resolves to try for a coveted internship at Dean Witter. The Dean Witter program only takes 20 people, and of those 20, only one will be offered a job at the end of six months. Getting a foot in the door proves very difficult, and it’s just about all Chris can do to get invited to the program.

Meanwhile, Linda doesn’t think that Chris should be wasting time chasing down dreams of being a stock broker when they are three months behind in the rent. She finally gets fed up and decides to leave, but Chris insists that Christopher remain with him.

After Chris learns that he was accepted as an intern, he also discovers that the position comes with no pay. He almost backs out of the job at that point because he has no money in the bank and was basically evicted from his apartment. But for some reason, he thought it would be smart to stick with it, which meant that he and his son ended up living first in a motel then in a homeless shelter.

The rest of the movie deals with all the trials and tribulations that Chris goes through as he tries to keep his life together and get the job of his dreams. You know they wouldn’t make a movie about ths guy if he didn’t come through in the end, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when he received the offer from Dean Witter.

I have to say that the movie wasn’t quite what I expected. Chris starts out in a pretty bad position, and things just keep getting worse and worse for him. Just when you think that nothing else could possibly go wrong in his life, something else does. It got to the point where it was almost comical to watch these misfortunes piling up on the guy…. it was scarcely believable. And to top it all off, it was boring. There was no suspense along the way, no buildup to an incredible climax. I mean, half the time I didn’t even know why I was watching the film to begin with.

Speaking of the climax: what a letdown! After all that Chris had been through, all we get in the end is a scene of him walking away with his son?? That’s it?! No flash-forward shots of a mansion and the Ferrari that he always wanted? No king size bed to compensate for the nights spent sleeping on the floor in public restrooms? Nothing to show what a success he became? Bah, what a waste of time.

I give The Pursuit of Happyness 5.0 stars out of 10, and that’s only because I thought Will Smith did a good job with the material he had to work with. Wait for the DVD.

My son has accumulated so many toys over the last few years that it’s getting to be a bit ridiculous. His current toy chests are overflowing, but he refuses to part with any of his playthings, no matter how old they are. So I’m now shopping for kids furniture in the hopes of finding some way to reduce clutter and make his room look somewhat organized.

I’ve seriously been debating whether or not I should start up a couple of ecommerce websites to sell some products that I think would do very well. Right now I do run three websites, but they’re just blogs and don’t require very much maintenance. I don’t know if I’d be up to the task of keeping up a commercial website, especially since I don’t know anything about shopping cart software, which is of course critical to an online store’s success.

Today I found a site called ashop.com that offers a free 10-day trial on their shopping cart software. Now that’s something I would defiinitely take advantage of if the time comes. I wouldn’t want to fork over a bunch of money for software only to discover that I can’t even figure out how to use it. I think 10 days would be long enough for me to evaluate the shopping cart and see if it would work for me.

I’ve bookmarked the site and will go back if I ever get my ecommerce ideas off the ground.

I’ve had a couple of emails from readers asking me to review a service called UseNeXT. I don’t use the service myself, but have several friends who are UseNext memers. In order to prepare for this review, I spent a few days familiarizing myself with the Usenext setup and gathering info from my friends’ experiences. Here’s what I’ve concluded.

First, let me explain what UseNeXT is. It’s a service provider that allows members to gain access to files on Usenet. These files may or may not be copyrighted; both types exist and are available for download. UseNeXT has three different membership levels that grant you either 10GB, 20GB, or 50GB of high-speed downloads per month. There is also a “Free Download” mode that allows you to download an unlimited amount of data — at an annoyingly slow speed.

As I mentioned, I played around with UseNeXT via a friend’s membership. The first thing I checked out was the search function. I wanted to see how easy it would be to find a particular file. I looked for a few popular television shows that I was pretty confident would be available, and they were. It was easy to get to them and easy to identify specific files by the names. However, one thing that threw me for a loop was the fact that a single TV show could be broken up into 20 or more files. But apparently, there’s a Download Wizard that automatically splices the files together so that you get a single .avi or .mpeg when everything’s done.

I downloaded some NON-COPYRIGHTED files to test out UseNeXT’s speed. It was incredibly fast, and in speaking to my friends, I discovered that, on average, it takes them less than 10 minutes to download an entire 1-hour television episode. I’ve heard of people taking hours to do that with other sites, so UseNext does indeed seem to compare favorably in this regard.

I asked my friends about any negative aspects they’ve uncovered in their experience with the software, and one of them told me that sometimes it’s impossible to find a particular file because it gets bundled or grouped with completely different files. For example (and again, this is just hypothetical, files for an episode of, say, Smallville will inexplicably be bundled with files from, say, Battlestar Galactica. But if you search for Smallville, you won’t see the files turn up in the results because they’re with the Battlestar Galactica filegroup. The search will eventually pick out the right files, but it could be days before that happens.

I’ve heard that some UseNeXT members have complained that their computers were infected with adware or spyware from the UseNeXT software, but my friends haven’t had any problems of that sort.

Overall, based on the little bit that I saw firsthand and my friends’ testimonials, I’d say that UseNeXT sounds like a pretty good deal for those who are into this sort of scene.