Reviews and More

I used to read Stephen King novels and short stories all the time when I was younger. I have always liked his writing style, his characters, and of course, the supernatural elements that usually play a prominent role in his work. All of King’s books attain “bestseller” status, so it’s no wonder that many of them eventually get turned into films as well. There have been some outstanding King movies over the years, but the three that stand out most in my mind are The Shining, The Green Mile, and Misery.

Do I really need to explain why I like The Shining? Jack Nicholson does “crazy” better than just about any other actor out there, and I’ll never forget his turn as a writer who ends up suffering from a bit of cabin fever. “Redrum,” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” and “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” are lines that every movie fan knows. What a classic!

I liked The Green Mile and Misery mostly for the acting performances. Tom Hanks, Kathy Bates, and James Caan were all fantastic in their respective roles, and make it possible for me to enjoy those movies again and again.

I just saw the trailer for the latest Stephen King film adaptation, one that comes from a short story called “1408″. I haven’t read the story, but this 1408 Movie looks incredibly scary. John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a writer who takes pleasure in debunking ghost stories and proving that there’s a logical explanation for so-called supernatural occurrences. His latest mission involves spending a night in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, a room where 56 people have died — each one in under an hour. Some of the things Mike has to go through look positively freaky! I think this one’s going to be even scarier than The Shining!

I like crime movies and really enjoyed L.A. Confidential, which was of course based on the James Ellroy novel of the same name. So when I heard that the 2006 film The Black Dahlia was also based on a James Ellroy novel, I just knew I couldn’t pass it up. Plus, the film was directed by Brian De Palma, whose lengthy resumé includes The Untouchables, Carrie, and Scarface — all of which I thought were very good. In other words, The Black Dahlia seemed like a sure thing for me.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The movie is set in the 1940’s and is based on the death of Elizabeth Short (played by Mia Kirshner). Short was a young girl from Nebraska who moved to LA in the hopes of making it big in Hollywood. She gets mixed up with the wrong people, however, and ends up in pornographic films more or less against her will. She’s then brutally murdered, her body dumped in a field on the outskirts of the city. Her throat was slashed from ear to ear, and she was disemboweled.

The gruesome nature of the murder makes it the talk of the town. One police officer in particular, Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), becomes positively obsessed by the case. He holes himself up in an apartment surrounded by all the files from the case and works around the clock in order to try to find out what happened to this girl.

The case has a profound effect on Blanchard, which worries both his partner Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and his girlfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). The rest of the film then deals with the investigation of the so-called Black-Dahlia case and the personal ramifications for Lee, Bucky, and Kay Lake.

My reaction: I liked the premise of this movie and thought it had all the makings of a compelling crime drama. However, I simply couldn’t get into it for some reason. It just seemed like the script wasn’t as focused as it could have been, which affected the impact of the story as a whole. For example, I thought the whole boxing angle was unnecessary. It didn’t really help me understand the characters at all, and aside from making Lee and Bucky somewhat famous in the area, didn’t do anything to advance the plot.

I also didn’t like the love triangle between Lee, Bucky, and Kay. The first time I saw the three of them hanging out together, I knew Bucky and Kay would end up with each other. Come on — these types of “friendships” with a couple and a third wheel never work out, especially in the movies!!

I thought the murder plot was intriguing, and felt that this would have been a much better movie if it had this singular focus.

Overall, I give The Black Dahlia 6.0 stars out of 10. It’s watchable, but not something that I will remember a couple months from now.

Like most people, I made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. My diet and exercise program started off great, but I have recently hit a plateau where I simply am not able to make progress any more progress no matter what I do. This has been going on for a couple months now, and is extremely frustrating.

One of my friends told me that the biggest reason I’m not losing weight these days is the fact that I’m not counting calories on a regular basis. I have always viewed calorie counting as a completely tedious chore and usually just skip it altogether, preferring to make rough estimates instead. But I guess I can see how important it is to keep an accurate food diary with calorie tallies, so I’m going to give it a try.

Since I’m always on the computer anyway, I figure that an online calorie counter would be the easiest for me to use. I ran some quick searches just before writing up this post and found a completely free calorie counter at MyFitnessPal.com that looks like it could really be helpful in my dieting efforts. The site features a searchable database with over 6,000 foods listed, plus I can create my own food database to make retrieving calorie information even easier.

Hopefully, all the free diet tools available at MyFitnessPal.com can help get me past this hump and back on track with my weight loss goals. I still have six months left in the year to lose six more pounds… I can do it!

I have never liked movies that are considered “cult classics,” so I never really had the desire to watch 1993’s Dazed and Confused. But so many people talk about it in a love-it-or-hate-it kind of way and there are so many well known actors in the movie (before they really became famous) that I finally agreed to watch it with a friend of mine the other night. Let’s just say that my streak of not “getting” cult classics continues. I didn’t like Dazed and Confused at all.

Plot summary: This is going to be the easiest movie plot summary I’ve ever written! A bunch of high school kids hang out together on the last day of school. They drink beer, smoke pot, drive around in their cars, run into each other at various places around town, and then finally converge at the same big party later that night.

My reaction: What can I say, I just don’t like films in which nothing happens. This movie didn’t remind me of my own high school days because not many of the kids smoked pot. Those that did were in the “burnout” clique that Judd Nelson represented in The Breakfast Club — a fringe element, really, and not part of the mainstream student population.

We did have the drinking, the parties, and the aimless driving around, but not to the extent portrayed in Dazed and Confused. Plus, all the students from all cliques and grades hanging out together? Didn’t ring true at all. Not at my school, at any rate.

Overall, I give Dazed and Confused 6.0 stars out of 10. It has some entertainment value in seeing all these familiar faces when they were young and mostly unknown, but beyond that I found very little to like.