Reviews and More

Wow, have you heard about Uma Thurman’s movie Motherhood? It’s been in the news recently because of the absolutely horrible box office returns from its first weekend of wide release in the UK. Apparently, just 11 people bought tickets, which resulted in a gross of something like $134. Yikes!!! (The film cost something like $5 million to produce.) Well, maybe all the negative press about how little the movie made will cause people to become a bit curious about it and go see it. Hey, some people like watching crap films just to watch crap films! As for me, I’ll stay as far away from this one as possible!

24 8×14 — 5am – 6am: This episode was rather bland overall. Yes, there was a lot of shoot ‘em up action in the tunnel, but we’ve already had a couple shootouts this season, so everything felt like a rehash. The President stuff was actually kind of interesting — it’s always much more interesting when she’s issuing orders regarding how to respond to a crisis than when she’s negotiating with heads of state — but then the whole treasonous sidetrack felt rather forced. It didn’t take long for objections to her decision to rise up, did it? And what kind of chief of staff caves so damn quickly???

I’m wondering if news that this is the Final Season of 24 will influence writing on the final few episodes. Specifically, I’m wondering if writers will go ahead and kill Jack Bauer. I know there is at least one feature film in the works, so that might not be plausible. Still, it would be the best way to bring closure to the series. And if you think about it, how much more abuse can the guy take?

I love how he has already been tortured and injured so much this season that another couple of bruised ribs don’t faze him at all. When that medic offered him some pain pills, Jack shook him off like the guy was offering vitamins or allergy relief. I mean, come on! If he’s going to keep going and going like the frickin’ Terminator, he should at least show that he’s getting help from painkillers or something!

Has any celebrity been in more car accidents than Lindsay Lohan? I was reading up on her this afternoon because I realize I haven’t been seeing her name in the tabloids recently, so I wanted to see if she’s even working any more. But I got sidetracked in my web explorations, and ended up checking out some old pics of her various crashes, including her most recent one, which happened in January of this year. Admittedly, she wasn’t the driver in the January accident, but still, I doubt she’s getting car insurance cheap these days.

Isn’t it odd how some people seem to be a magnet for all kinds of bad stuff? Maybe it’s karma. (And for those of you wondering, Lohan recently appeared in four episodes of Ugly Betty, played the lead in a massive flop called Labor Pains in 2009, and is in the soon-to-be-released Machete, with Robert DeNiro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, and a bunch of others.)

Here are the weekend box office returns as of 3/28/10:

1. How to Train Your Dragon, $43.3 million
2. Alice in Wonderland, $17.3 million
3. Hot Tub Time Machine, $13.7 million
4. The Bounty Hunter, $12.4 million
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, $10 million
6. She’s Out of My League, $3.53 million
7. Green Zone, $3.35 million
8. Shutter Island, $3.17 million
9. Repo Men, $3.05 million
10. Our Family Wedding, $2.2 million

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Rowena Price (played by Halle Berry) is an investigative journalist who doesn’t mind going after the tough stories. In the opening scene, she uncovers a U.S. senator’s sex scandal with a male staffer, and gets the senator threatening her on tape. The story will definitely derail the man’s career — but it is pulled and buried by the publisher. Another case of rich men protecting rich men, Rowena laments to researcher/co-worker/friend Miles (Giovanni Ribisi). She quits the paper and decides to pursue other stories on her own.

One promising lead drops into her lap when old friend Grace (Nicki Aycox) reveals that she has been having an affair with wealthy, married advertising exec Harrison Hill (Bruce Willis). Hill wants to break off the affair, but Grace isn’t willing to let him off the hook that easily. She encourages Rowena to run with the story, and gives her copies of email and IM exchanges between herself and someone with the screen name AdEx (whom Grace claims is Hill). Rowena reads through the files, and, after Grace is found murdered the next day, decides to spring into action, as she is convinced that Hill did it (or ordered it done).

With Miles’ help, Rowena gets a job at Hill’s agency, H2A, as a temp so she can get to watch Hill in action. Furthermore, Miles sets Rowena up in some chat rooms so she can “encounter” AdEx online and perhaps entice him into an in-person meeting. Miles is also looking for a way to hack into Hill’s H2A email account for concrete proof that the AdEx emails to Grace came from Hill.

The rest of the film then follows Grace’s attempts to get close to Harrison Hill, as she and Miles try to accumulate enough evidence to pin Grace’s murder on him. There is a major plot twist at the end, which I won’t reveal here, but will discuss with spoiler bars below. Read at your own risk!

Liked:

• The surprise ending has been panned by most critics and audiences, but after thinking about it for a bit, it didn’t bother me that much. I even liked it — to a certain extent. For one thing, I knew Harrison Hill wasn’t the killer, but I thought it would turn out to be Miles. When it was revealed that Rowena was the killer, I was shocked and thought, “Oh, come on!” but after reviewing some of the details, there were clues along the way. The clues don’t exactly let you guess that she was the killer, but they add up in the end. For instance, when Rowena found Miles’ porn stash, pictures of Grace, and shrine to her, she should have been scared. Anyone in her position would have thought Miles was the killer. But of course, since she was the killer, she simply reacted with anger and disgust.
• For as long a film as this was, there were very few slow spots. I was involved and at least mildly interested at what was going on most of the way.

Disliked:

• The part of the ending I didn’t like was the neighbor watching Rowena murder Miles. I was rooting for her by then and wanted her to get away with it.
• The motive for the killing was pretty thin. Rowena’s mother was in a nursing home, so I doubt the prosecutors would have gone after her very hard. Ro herself was just a kid at the time of the murder, so what could the authorities really do to her? That kind of blackmail wouldn’t hold up for that long, if you ask me.
• The way that Rowena and Miles were discussing how the killing unfolded at the end was laughable. Every few seconds they were in a different part of the apartment, posed in a different, totally casual manner. Yeah, that’s how I would react if a friend of mine were telling me that he knew how I killed someone!

Rating:

At the outset I was a bit worried about the ultra-negative reviews Perfect Stranger received, but I didn’t think it turned out to be that bad. It was watchable, and though there were some plot holes and a somewhat contrived ending, I thought it was sufficiently entertaining. Let’s just put it this way: I’ve seen worse. I give this film 3 stars out of 5.

Everyone knows that having a garage sale is a great way to get rid of excess clutter in your home and earn a bit of cash in the process. It’s far easier to sell everything off at a single event than to list the items on an auction site piece by piece. In addition, when you host a garage or yard sale, you can personally interact with prospective buyers to put your sales skills to work or engage in some haggling. It’s a far better experience for everyone involved.

But in order for your garage sale to succeed, you have to get the word out to as many people as possible. In the past, this meant putting an ad in the classified section of the newspaper and/or posting little signs around the neighborhood. But no one reads newspapers anymore, and those signs have a very limited reach. This is where a website like GarageSalesTracker.com can come in handy.

At GarageSalesTracker.com, you can advertise a garage sale or yard sale for FREE up to two months in advance of the actual sale date. This gives you plenty of time to attract buyers and build up buzz for the big event. You can also post detailed descriptions as well as images for all the items you plan on selling, and also provide contact information for prospective buyers to reach you with questions or comments. Plus, if your sale happens to get rained out, you can simply change the sale date in your ad and leave it up for a bit longer. This is clearly a far more effective approach than those old newspaper classifieds!

Buyers can benefit from using GarageSalesTracker.com as well. The easy-to-use search function lets you filter upcoming sales by location or item, and each sale listing comes with convenient driving directions that you can print out. And since most sellers leave their phone numbers or other contact info, you can call ahead to make sure the item you want is still available before you waste your time driving all the way out to the sale.

If you’re planning on having a garage or yard sale soon, why not advertise it over at GarageSalesTracker.com? Chances are you’ll reach a far larger audience by posting your ad online than in a local newspaper, so give it a try!

Castle 2×17 — “Tick, Tick, Tick…”: This was an awesome episode!! It was suspenseful, funny, and had an amazing ending. I am not at all worried about Beckett surviving, of course, but still… it was quite a shock to see her entire apartment building go up in flames! I was also surprised by Dana Delany’s performance here. I got to know her from Desperate Housewives and couldn’t stand her on that show, but now i know it’s just the character and writing rather than the actress herself. She was PERFECT as Agent Shaw! She was competent, but not a know-it-all. She took charge, but was not bitchy. It was fantastic! I really hope they make her a recurring character, because that would make this show even better.

Lost 6×09 — “Ab Aeterno”: Ugh, I thought this was the worst Lost episode ever — but apparently I’m in the minority. Richard has never interested me one bit, so an entire episode devoted to his past probably wasn’t going to sit well with me no matter what it contained. But that if featured a long, drawn-out story with freakin’ subtitles practically the whole way through didn’t help in the least. And what was the point here? To find out that he lost his wife? To get more speculation about the island being hell or purgatory? To get more “proof” that it’s all about good vs. evil, free choice vs. fate, whatever biblical notion vs. its opposite? BFD. This show has been lame all season, and this ep was no exception.

24 8×13 — 4am – 5am: This episode didn’t get interesting until the very end with the Dana Walsh reveal. I know the “mole at CTU” ruse has been done to death, so this probably rubbed a lot of viewers the wrong way. But because it’s been done so much, I consider it a necessary feature of the show. It’s part of the formula, it’s expected. The only “surprise” is trying to figure out which CTU staffer is going to turn out to be working with the terrorists. Actually I didn’t even think they were going to do it this year, because the only people we got to know at CTU were Hastings, Dana, and Arlo, and none of them seemed likely. But here we are. I loved the way Dana was revealed too. As soon as she started strangling that parole officer, I was like, “Ok wtf are you gonna do with the body, dumbass?” Turns out there’s a reason she’s not concerned about it at all. Ha!

Yes, I know the stuff with her redneck friends doesn’t make sense in light of her new position as the mole (why not just kill them in her apartment and be done with them quickly?), nor does her engagement to Cole (why get involved at all?), but when has 24 ever made complete sense?

I was glad to see Renee back, and enjoyed Chloe’s turn at being a badass with a gun, but other than that, this episode kind of dragged. That shootout between Jack’s team and the bad guys lasted forever and wasn’t very exciting. Oh, well. Maybe next week will be better!

HIMYM 5×18 — “Say Cheese”: I thought this was a cute episode for the most part. I liked seeing the group at these big events throughout the year (even if the photos were retconned) and loved how Barney never takes a bad picture. The Marshall thing with his eyes closed in every shot just reminded me of My Name Is Earl, so I didn’t think that was particularly funny or original, but whatever. Also, I thought it was weird that they brought in Anne Dudek for a very short scene on the couch with Marshall, so I looked her up on IMDb, and it turns out she appeared in a 2005 episode as Natalie, which means — awesome continuity there!!

Ted was wrong to bring someone new to Lily’s birthday party without prior warning, but Marshall was a complete ass to go off on the girl like he did. I felt bad for her. It wasn’t her fault Ted is clueless and selfish and that she didn’t know Lily well enough to get the name/age right.

I thought at the end they were hinting that the girl from the birthday party could wind up being the mother, but I guess they cleared that up pretty quickly. Oh, well.

I used to be a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan when I was a kid. I subscribed to the mystery magazine bearing his name, I bought any book with his name on it, and scanned the TV guide each and every week to see when Alfred Hitchcock Presents would be on (it seemed to change days and time quite frequently).

I haven’t seen too many of his movies, though, which is why I’m thinking of buying this To Catch a Thief DVD. This 1955 film features Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, two of the biggest stars of their generation, and is widely regarded as one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces — albeit a “lighter” one than some of his other stuff. Since I also love Grace Kelly, I definitely want to see this one.

This product comes with two discs that contain the full-length movie, as well as some bonus features like an interactive travelogue, commentary from a Hitchcock film historian, photo galleries, the original trailer, and some behind-the-scenes stuff with Grant, Kelly, and Hitchcock.

To Catch A Thief is on sale for $14.33, and though that doesn’t represent huge savings, it’s still a good price. I’ve been meaning to buy and watch more movies instead of TV shows, so this would be a step in the right direction!