Reviews and More

Has it really been more than a month since I posted my thoughts on Season 2 episodes of The O.C.? I guess so! I’ve been so busy trying to get through regular movies as well as all the DVD box sets that I’ve purchased recently that I sometimes forget about the shows I had queued up. See, once I finish watching something, I write it down on my To Be Reviewed list, which I keep on my desk. Unfortunately, because of the sheer number of items on the list, it’s impossible for me to keep up with everything in a timely manner. But enough of these excuses; lets get back to Seth, Ryan, Summer, and the rest of the Newport gang!

As usual, since The O.C. isn’t even on the air anymore, this post isn’t going to contain standard recaps of each ep. Instead, I’m just going to list a few thoughts that occurred to me while watching this block of episodes, which included “The SnO.C.,” “”The Chrismukkah That Almost Wasn’t,” “The Family Ties,” and “The Power of Love.”

– This is completely random, but I was watching bits of the series pilot again and saw that they had Ryan smoking while he was waiting outside the Cohen house while Sandy tried to convince Kirsten to let him in. Do you remember that? Well, the writers never addressed his smoking habit again! It was like, one minute he was a cigarette-smoking bad boy (yeah, there’s an original image) and the next he was a clean-cut Cohen all the way around. Ha!

– I don’t get why Caleb was so reluctant to admit the true nature of his involvement with Lindsay’s mom. He would rather have gone to jail than say he had an illegitimate daughter? Caleb said one reason for his silence was that he didn’t want to hurt Kirsten. Give me a break! She’s an adult, not a child. That whole thing didn’t make sense to me, especially since the revelation didn’t turn out to have the earth-shattering effects that Caleb thought it would.

– Ryan and Lindsay are a MUCH better couple than Ryan and Marisa ever were. I know that’s not how a majority of O.C. fans felt, but I can’t help it. Lindsay might be boring and bland, but at least she doesn’t freak out over every little obstacle life tosses her way.

– Marisa, on the other hand, continues to annoy with her incessant “angry teen” act. She comes off as more of a spoiled brat than anything else, and it makes me feel sorry for Julie Cooper — which I don’t think is what the writers intended. She is so tiresome that I usually end up fast forwarding through her scenes now.

– Seth’s whole “bad boy” routine to try to impress Alex was just dumb. A year ago, before Ryan arrived, Seth was a totally anonymous loser who didn’t have any friends at all. Now I guess he’s cool by association because he’s had three hot girlfriends in a row (Anna, Summer, and now Alex). Don’t get me wrong, Seth is my favorite character on the show, but even I feel this is stretching things quite a bit.

– Yes, I did say that Alex is hot, which is a 180-degree turn from what I felt the last time I posted about The O.C. But she fixed her hair between then and now, which made all the difference in the world. I can’t see past bad hair and couldn’t tell that Alex actually looked decent under those bangs and purple highlights. Now I know and I stand corrected.

– The double-date setup between Alex & Ryan and Seth & Lindsay was comical. Can you say awkward?? Yikes.

– I’m really surprised that Zach hasn’t started bothering me yet. I totally want Summer to get back together with Seth ASAP, so usually this would be the point where the fill-in significant others begin grating on my nerves. But Zach seems to be a keeper — especially when he hauled off and punched Seth outside the SnO.C. dance. That move was a long time coming, and Seth totally deserved it.

– What’s up with Sandy forgetting his 20th anniversary? That was way out of character and seems to spell trouble for the once-idyllic Cohen marriage.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this block of eps. I promise my next O.C. post won’t be a month in the making!

Now that schools around the country are back in session, it’s time to start thinking about homework, term papers, and other projects. I remember how much I dreaded having to work on those types of major assignments, mostly because I didn’t have anyone to help me when I got stuck on something. As a result of not having access to timely homework help, I often had to pull all-nighters trying to work through my issues, and I often had to settle for lower grades as well.

Fortunately, things are a lot easier for today’s students, thanks in large part to the Internet. Now it’s possible to complete big school projects entirely from home using information that’s available online. In addition, the Internet gives students access to online tutoring services from places like TutorVista.com.

TutorVista.com offers professional tutoring for students in grades K-12, as well as college students in subjects such as English, Chemistry, Geography, Statistics, Economics, History, and Math. Moreover, TutorVista also offers test preparation courses for the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and others. Students who use TutorVista.com will receive personalized attention to ensure that their questions get answered, which is definitely the best way to promote true learning.

I checked out TutorVista.com’s prices and found them to be very low compared to rates I’ve seen on other sites. There are several different tutoring packages to choose from, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something that fits your needs. Best of all, TutorVista.com’s services are available 24×7, which is certainly not the case at other sites.

Don’t get left behind this school year. Start things out right by getting on board with TutorVista.com as soon as possible!

I’m a big fan of Thomas Hardy’s novels, so I’m not sure how I could have missed the film Jude, which came out in 1996. I’d never even heard of this Michael Winterbottom film adaptation of Jude the Obscure until a few weeks ago when I was looking up some of Kate Winslet’s older work. I immediately added the title to my movie queue and finally got to it a couple days ago. Really, I shouldn’t have bothered.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens with a scene of Jude Fawley (played by James Daley) as a small boy. He lives in poverty with his Aunt Drusilla (June Whitfield) in the English countryside and doesn’t seem to have many prospects in front of him. In fact, it’s very likely that he’ll just end up taking over his aunt’s bakery and living a simple life in Wessex.

But then Jude meets a tutor named Mr. Phillotson (Liam Cunningham) who encourages the boy to study hard so that he can eventually enter Christchurch University and become a scholar. From that point forward, Jude devotes all of his free time to the study of Greek and Latin, dreaming of making it to Christchurch someday.

The film then skips several years to show Jude as a young man of university age (now played by Christopher Eccleston). Although Jude still studies the classics, the practical nuisances of life are getting in his way. He has to perform manual labor as a stonemason in order to make ends meet and he keeps putting off his departure for Christminster. It’s also around this time that Jude meets a woman named Arabella Donn (Rachel Griffiths), a pig farmer’s daughter. They have sex, and when she thinks she’s pregnant, Jude marries her.

Things don’t work out between them, especially when Jude comes to the conclusion that Arabella tricked him into marriage. Arabella isn’t happy with Jude either, especially since he hasn’t given up on his Christminster dreams. She leaves for Australia; Jude finally goes to Christminster.

While there, he takes more work as a stonemason and also meets up with his cousin Sue Bridehead (Kate Winslet). Sue is a progressive thinker in a time when women weren’t supposed to have opinions on social issues, and eventually Jude falls in love with her. But there are complications, of course, and Sue somehow ends up marrying Phillotson the tutor. After a while, however, she can’t bear to be with Phillotson anymore, so she and Jude run off together.

The rest of the film then deals with Jude and Sue’s relationship and the hardships they face because they decide to live together “in sin.” Jude gets fired from jobs as soon as his bosses find out about his situation, they get kicked out of their rented rooms, and they have to move around a lot. Their children further complicate the situation, and things get bleaker and bleaker until the tragic end.

My Reaction: I haven’t read Jude the Obscure in years, so I don’t have all of the details at my command as I write this review. But I can say that I distinctly remember feeling sympathetic towards Jude in the novel, whereas I simply couldn’t stand him in this movie. He seemed like such a selfish, weak-willed oaf here; I saw none of the sheer determination to rise above his station that drove Jude in the novel. I’m sorry, but showing a few scenes of him studying Latin was not enough to convey his desires.

The biggest problem I had with the film was the relationship between Jude and Sue. There was absolutely zero chemistry between Eccleston and Winslet, and, forgive me for being so shallow here, but the filmmakers did not cast a handsome enough actor in the role of Jude. This guy was so ugly that it was distracting! Seriously, even as plain as Winslet looked as Sue, they just didn’t look like they belonged together as a couple. It was very hard for me to accept that they were deeply in love or that Sue was “disgusted” by Phillotson but not by Jude.

Moreover, I didn’t like the early portrayal of Jude and Sue’s relationship, the part right after she left Phillotson and the cousins are free to be with each other. Winterbottom decided to show their happiness by having them romp on the beach, ride bicycles, and play drinking games together. Those scenes seemed so out of place that I almost forgot what movie I was watching. Plus, this depiction strengthened the impression that Sue and Jude were more like brother and sister than lovers, which gave their relationship more of an incestuous feel than it had in the novel.

I know a lot of other viewers have complained about the horribly depressing events depicted in the film, specifically, of the murder-suicide carried out by little Jude. But this didn’t bother me because that was part of the story Hardy wanted to convey. Hey, in the book, Jude dies all alone, so at least the film didn’t go that far, right?

Overall, I thought Jude was a far cry from the novel, not so much in content as in interpretation and feel. I couldn’t get over the looks of the actor cast in the lead role, and that pretty much ruined the movie for me. I give it 4.0 stars out of 10 and urge Hardy fans to pass this one up.

I grabbed the Fifth Season of Friends from my brother last week and have been watching those shows for the past couple of days. I haven’t really watched any Friends episodes in syndication since the series went off the air a few years ago, so it’s been nice to check in with the gang. I’m surprised at how well this show has held up over time. Most of the stuff is still funny all these years later… in fact, I think Friends and Seinfeld are the only sitcoms I can watch over and over again like this.

One criticism I remember about the show is how people said it would be impossible for Monica (a self-employed caterer) and Rachel (an entry-level buyer) to afford their apartment. I totally agree with that! First of all, the apartment is HUGE! I mean, I’ve never had an apartment that big, even when I was paying $1500/mo. for a place in the suburbs with an attached garage. Second, they’ve got expensive furnishings in there. Monica and Rachel didn’t choose affordable Studio RTA furniture for their place; it looks like they went all out with the most expensive stuff they could find. Again, this is not something you’d expect from young single women who are just renting.

But those are just nitpicks, really, and don’t detract from my enjoyment of the show at all. Man, I wish this series was still on!

The 2006 independent film Half Nelson is not the kind of thing that I would ordinarily go out of my way to see, which is probably why I’ve waited so long to watch it. But there was just so much buzz about Ryan Gosling’s performance as a drug-addicted school teacher that I finally broke down and decided to rent it last weekend. Unfortunately, like most movies that generate a lot of media attention, Half Nelson failed to live up to the hype — at least in my opinion.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Gosling stars as Dan Dunne, a history teacher at an inner-city junior high school. The film opens with a short scene at Dan’s rundown apartment in which he wakes up from an obvious drug-induced stupor just in time to clean himself up a bit and get to work. However, he still looks like crap when he enters the classroom: greasy, disheveled hair, wrinkled clothes, the whole works. None of his students seem to care about this, which makes it apparent that this is how Dan usually appears to them.

Dan is what some people might call a “functioning coke addict.” He uses drugs on a daily basis, yet manages to hold down a job and coach the girls basketball team. But some days are better than others for him. When he’s thinking clearly, he can discourse eloquently about dialectics and the ability of opposing forces to butt heads and eventually effect change. This is not part of the curriculum, but the students seem interested in what Dan has to say.

When Dan isn’t thinking clearly, he does stupid things like smoke crack in the girls locker room after a basketball game. Then he passes out, only to be discovered by Drey (played by Shareeka Epps), a student whose deadbeat father forgot to pick her up. Instead of freaking out and looking for another adult in the building (or simply running away), Drey decides to help Dan. Once Dan sobers up, he realizes that his job could be in jeopardy, so he stays clean for a few days and watches Drey anxiously. When nothing happens, he goes back to his old ways.

From that point on, the film shows how Dan and Drey grow to understand each other and even form a real friendship. Even as a basehead, Dan is the most positive male influence in Drey’s life, while Drey serves to remind Dan that he still has the ability to connect with people. The movie ends on an ambiguous note, leaving viewers to decide for themselves how Dan and Drey’s lives turn out.

My Reaction: I thought the beginning of Half Nelson was really strong. The characters were interesting enough to hold my attention and keep me watching, but then after about 30 minutes things fizzled out. I read that Half Nelson was originally an award-winning short that the filmmakers decided to turn into a full-length piece, and it definitely felt that way. There simply wasn’t enough genuine material to fill out a more robust running time, and the overall story suffered because of this. They repeated the party-wake up hung over-go to work looking like crap cycle too many times for my tastes.

Yeah, I understood his lifestyle after 10 minutes. Could we move on, please?

And what’s the deal with inner-city schools anyway? Are they so hard up for teachers that even an obvious crackhead can make the cut? Not to mention one who thinks nothing of grinding up against an underage student in the middle of a school dance??? As long as the students like the guy, I guess there’s no harm. Yeah, right.

I couldn’t help but think of what would have happened if the same scenes had played out at a suburban school with a black Dan Dunne and a white student. Uh huh, the cops would have been involved in no time. But again, apparently anything goes in the city.

As for Gosling’s performance, I know he was nominated for an Oscar and everything, but frankly, I didn’t think it was anything mind-blowing. Was he good? Sure. Was he you-have-to-see-this-film-because-of-him great? No, not really. In all honesty, all he seemed to do was walk around in a daze and rub his face with his hands. It didn’t strike me as anything truly special. But hey, what do I know about acting?

And once again we had filmmakers who decided that tripods are for hacks. What is up with all this handheld camera work crap? I had to watch this film in small doses because of the constant shaking. I think it took at least six sittings to get through the whole thing, which is obviously a lot. When will filmmakers learn that the old handheld technique doesn’t make your movie “edgy” or “gritty” or “real.” It’s nauseating and vomit-inducing, thank you very much.

Overall, I was supremely disappointed with Half Nelson and give it just 5.0 stars out of 10. I know I’m in the minority with this sentiment, but I think the film should have just remained a short. There was very little substance here, and despite all the talk of the supposed realism of the subject matter, I found most of the scenes (as well as the basic premise) hard to believe.

After studying Latin for a total of six years in high school and college, I wanted nothing more than to visit Rome and see all the historical sites that had become familiar to me through the pictures in my textbooks. I eventually did make it to Rome in the year 2000, and it was the best vacation I’ve ever had! Unfortunately, we were only able to stay in the city for five days, which wasn’t nearly enough time to see all the famous Rome tourist attractions. I guess the only way to remedy the situation is to go back again someday!

The first time we went to the Eternal City, my husband and I were not yet seasoned travelers. As a result, we didn’t know where to go to find the best discount Rome hotels. We trusted a local travel agent to set things up for us, and we ended up staying in a dump that cost us an arm and a leg. Plus, it wasn’t even near the center of the city, so we had to commute quite a ways just to get to the interesting stuff.

Needless to say, the next time we go, we’re going to reserve our Rome hotel through a reputable travel website like EasytoBook.com. The prices I’ve seen on that site are amazing considering the kinds of rooms we can get and the general location of the hotels. We could be right in the middle of all the action for even less than we paid all those years ago!

Going back to Rome is high on our list of things to do in the near future, so hopefully we’ll be able to make the trip within the next couple of years. I can’t wait!

I’m not really big on “chick flicks” (despite being a woman), but every once in a while, I’ll break down and watch a few. Last weekend was one of those times, and I ended up watching the 1999 film Anywhere But Here starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. I generally like Sarandon’s work (as long as I remember to overlook her political views) and I’d seen Portman in a couple of things before, so I figured I’d enjoy this movie. How wrong I was!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Sarandon plays a woman named Adele August who seems to be going through a midlife crisis. She packs up her belongings and her daughter Ann (Portman) into their old Mercedes, and makes a cross-country trip from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills — even though she doesn’t have money, a place to stay, or a job lined up.

We soon see that Adele is one of those people who can’t tell a straight story. No matter what the situation, she has to embellish the truth or tell outright lies, either about herself, Ann, or their motives. The lies range from Ann wanting to be an actress (she doesn’t) to Adele being married to a doctor (she isn’t), and nearly everything between. This tendency of Adele’s exasperates Ann to no end, although Ann isn’t exactly consistent with how she deals with the lies. Sometimes she goes along with the stories; at others, she calls Adele out right in front of the person Adele is lying to.

At any rate, the two manage to get an apartment outside of Beverly Hills (but in the school district) and Ann secures a teaching job. But if you think that means Adele and Ann’s lives are settled, you’re dead wrong. What follows is a series of events designed to show just how frustrated Ann is by her relationship with Adele. Most of the time, Ann wants nothing more than to leave Adele behind and go to college back east, but Adele pretends not to even notice this animosity.

The film continues in this manner throughout, showing us bits and pieces of the lives of these two women and how they manage to deal with circumstances — and with each other. We see Adele failing to pay the bills, going off the deep end over a guy who viewed her as a one-night stand, and wanting to solve every problem with ice cream or a restaurant meal. We see Ann vacillating in her feelings for Adele, while being a moody, angry teenager at nearly every turn. The women finally grow to understand each other a little bit at the end of the film, just before Ann goes off to Brown.

My reaction: I thought this was a terribly boring movie. I am not the kind of person who needs things exploding on screen every five minutes to be entertained, but I do need to see something happen. Instead, we just witness very slow-moving character arcs for both Ann and Adele, and frankly, the payoff simply wasn’t worth the wait.

One of the biggest problems I had with this movie was the Natalie Portman character. I couldn’t stand Ann and thought she was just a big brat. Yes, she needed a true mother figure, not a flighty manic-depressive older sister wannabe who can’t face reality, but I hardly think that excuses Ann’s actions. She was a downright bitch to her mother on numerous occasions, even when Adele’s mistakes didn’t warrant that kind of treatment. No matter what Adele did, I got the feeling that she loved Ann; I didn’t get that same feeling from Ann about Adele. Ann was just… tiresome.

Oh, and what was the point of having the cousin die in an accident? I didn’t understand the need for that.

It took a great deal of willpower to watch this entire movie without turning it off or fast forwarding through Portman’s pouting. I wouldn’t do it again, though, and urge you not to put yourself through the same torture. I give Anywhere But Here just 4.0 stars out of 10. Avoid it!

Since I’ve been complaining about Michael Connelly so much lately, a couple of readers have taken pity on me and have sent in some book recommendations. I’d never heard of these titles before, so the only thing I have to go by is what these people are saying. I guess it won’t hurt to put them on my list for now. I can always bump them off if something better comes along!

Anyway, one of the recommendations is Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. It’s apparently about a retired mortgage life insurance salesman who develops a late friendship with his nephew and a young girl just when he had resigned himself to living out the rest of his years in quiet solitude. Could be interesting, I suppose.

Another recommendation was for Home Land by Sam Lipsyte. It’s about a bitter man who writes tons of letters to his school’s alumni magazine complaining how everyone from that alma mater is a total loser. This book sounds like it could be funny.

And a third recommendation was for Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s about a poor girl who gets a scholarship to an exclusive prep school. That seems like a subject that’s been done to death (the kid from the wrong side of the tracks), but this recommendation comes from someone whose judgment I trust, so who knows.

If you’ve read any of these, let me know if you think they’re worthwhile!

I can’t call myself a Wesley Snipes fan, but I have enjoyed several of his movies over the years, including Major League, White Men Can’t Jump, New Jack City, and Mo’ Better Blues. Heck, even Passenger 57 was an okay action movie for something made 15 years ago. I haven’t been paying much attention to Snipes’ career recently, but I just took a peek at his IMDB.com page and saw that almost all of his recent movies are straight-to-video (or DVD, I guess) efforts, including 2005’s The Marksman (which I didn’t know was STV before I rented it). What happened to Snipes? What did he do to piss off the powers that be in Hollywood?

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Snipes stars as a military marksman known only as The Painter. He works with a Special Forces unit that’s deployed to Chechnya in order to stop terrorist Egor Zaysan (played by Dan Badarau) from setting off a live reactor and causing mass destruction in the area. The military unit also has a secondary objective of rescuing a few hostages, American scientists who for some reason were helping with “research” for the reactor.

It doesn’t take much effort for the team to secure the hostages, which leads the Painter to believe that something else is going down. His hunch is correct, as one of the hostages turns a gun on her rescuers and starts shooting members of Painter’s team. The ones that aren’t killed are themselves taken hostage, leaving the Painter to fend for himself for a while.

The Painter eventually does figure out the truth, and he manages to take out the terrorists and rescue his team before being safely extracted from the region.

My Reaction: The first thing I noticed about The Marksman is that it totally felt like the straight-to-video production that it was. By that I mean, it was clearly a low-budget effort, and the overall viewer experience suffered because of that. For one thing, this was supposed to be an action movie, but there are very few real action sequences, particularly in the first hour or so of the film. Second, it seemed as though the filmmakers used stock footage for some of the establishing shots (like of the aircraft carrier out on the ocean). You don’t have to be watching in hi-def to see that these patched-in pieces are far grainier than the rest of the movie, which of course was totally distracting. And finally, it was painfully obvious that the production team couldn’t afford the services of a script doctor to help flesh the film out a bit.

Furthermore, I had a hard time getting into this movie because there was zero character development along the way. We only learned bits and pieces about the Painter, like how he screwed up an operation in Bosnia and how he had an affair with government official Amanda Jacks (Emma Samms), and both of those points were glossed over very quickly. As a result, I didn’t care if he succeeded or was killed, captured, tortured, etc. I suppose the argument could be made that Painter was supposed to be a mysterious person, but I think that’s pretty lame. Why risk alienating your audience like that?

The Marksman wasn’t a good movie, but it wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, either. I give it 3.5 stars out of 10, and assure you that there’s no reason to rush right out to rent it!

My husband works very long days and hardly gets any vacation time during the year, so the last thing he wants to do is attend company functions on the weekends. While we can skip the summer picnics and trips to Great America, we absolutely cannot avoid the Christmas party or the annual awards banquet. These are stuffy events where the men sport tuxedos and the women wear elegant formal dresses, which is not our type of scene at all.

Nevertheless, since we have to go, there’s nothing to do but try to make the most of it. I actually don’t mind the parties very much once we’re there; it’s the preparation part that really gets to me. I hate combing through rack after rack of dresses at the department stores in search of the perfect evening gown. I hardly ever find one that I like in my size, and when I do, the price is usually far more than I can afford to pay.

So this year, I’m going to try something different: I’m going to shop for my dress online. I’ve heard some very good things about a website called ElegantMart.com. I checked the site out for myself today and was very impressed by what I saw. Elegant Mart has an amazing selection of beautiful evening dresses in a wide variety of styles and colors, from standard black to sexy red, glamorous gold, and many more.

In addition to this great selection, I was won over by Elegant Mart’s discount pricing policy. The prices I saw on the site were much lower than anything I could get at the local mall. Plus, Elegant Mart offers free shipping and doesn’t charge sales tax to anyone outside of California — two more reasons to shop there!

I’m all for convenience when I shop, so I’m anxious to try Elegant Mart the next time I need a new evening gown. If you’re looking for a formal dress for prom, graduation, work functions, museum galas, or any other black-tie affair, I recommend checking out ElegantMart.com. I think you’ll be surprised at how many fabulous dresses are available right there at your fingertips!