Reviews and More

Since I’ve been working out regularly, I find that I’m getting through books and movies at a much faster clip than I usually do. That’s probably because I listen to audiobooks or watch movies on my husband’s video iPod while I’m walking on one of the treadmills at the health club.

Now, I’ve actually got a bunch of book and movie reviews queued up waiting to be written, so this is more of an organizational post for myself (so I don’t forget what I need to write about) than anything else. Just bear with me!

• Angels Flight by Michael Connelly
• Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
• America the Book by Jon Stewart
• The Mist
• The Jane Austen Book Club
• Sweeney Todd
• Bee Movie

Yikes! I’m farther behind than I realized. Looks like I’ll be spending all day tomorrow writing up reviews!

I hate how the MLB playoffs has been messing with the broadcast schedule for the shows I watch on FOX. There was no Prison Break this week, which I guess I didn’t mind all that much, nor was there a new episode of House last night, which I minded a great deal since I love that show. Maybe if I was a Red Sox or Indians fan I’d be singing a different tune now, but since I’m not, I’m getting a little anxious to see the baseball season wind down.

I’m not sure why the major networks even bother to air the baseball playoffs anymore anyway. It seems that each year the national ratings get lower and lower because people outside the cities involved in the games simply don’t care. I mean, they had the Diamondbacks vs. the Rockies in the NLCS… I don’t think they could have found two smaller markets if they tried! Really, it’s time to put the MLB playoffs on ESPN or TNT, don’t you think?

Oh, well. I guess not having new eps to watch gave me time to do other things, like browse through some indoor Kichler lighting options and order my holiday cards.

Someone recently asked me what my pet peeves are as far as movies go. One thing I really hate is how long movies tend to run these days. Remember when you could generally count on a film being just 90 minutes? Didn’t matter what the genre, they were all more or less limited to that magic number. Heck, even the screenwriting books cite 90 as the number of pages a script should be because the general rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of screen time. But now it seems like most movies fall into the 105-115 minute range — or more. And most of the time, the films would actually benefit from editing out those extra minutes.

Another pet peeve is character stereotypes where the writers are too lazy to create anyone unique and memorable, so they just throw clichés out there. For example, instead of giving the town seductress an actual personality, they just let the audience know she’s a seductress by decorating her room with animal print bedding (most likely leopard skin) or something like that. That type of characterization is not original and it’s not interesting!

These are the two biggest pet peeves that jump to mind. I know there are others, but it’s far too early in the morning for me to remember them all!

My husband’s grandmother was recently placed in a nursing home. Her health has been slowly deteriorating over the years, and she’s now got a few issues that can’t be taken care of at home. It was a hard decision for my mother-in-law to make about her own mom, but it’s really for the best.

We went to visit for the first time last weekend and were encouraged by what we saw. Unlike most of the other residents, my husband’s grandmother wasn’t hooked up to a respirator, portable oxygen concentrator, or a monitor of any kind. It made us feel good to see that, comparatively speaking, she was doing pretty well.

Anyway, we’ll keep visiting as often as we can, and we hope that her status remains the same!

We’ve been thinking for quite some time now about remodeling our bathroom. It’s just not big enough for our taste, and since we do have a bit of space that we can expand into, we think we should just go for it. That way, we can get a nicer tub (preferably one with a jacuzzi/whirlpool), new tiles, and a better countertop. I also want to put in one of those magnifying makeup mirrors that light up. Our current lighting in the bathroom is too soft and isn’t very good for applying makeup.

At any rate, this project is in the middle of our list of home improvements that we’d like to make, so who knows when we’ll actually get around to it. We’ve got to paint and redo the kitchen first!

As expected, everyone’s still talking about Sunday night’s series finale of The Sopranos. The reaction has really run the gamut between love and hate, with some people calling creator David Chase a “genius” who left fans with a “brilliant” masterpiece, while others feel they’ve been given the “middle finger” after following the show for the last 8 years.

In my recap yesterday, I told you that fan speculation about the meaning of the final scene fell into three distinct camps. Well, from what I’ve read today, it seems to me that the majority now believe that the ending shows that Tony does indeed live on, but with the extreme paranoia that naturally comes to someone in his position. He’ll never again be able to enjoy a quiet dinner out with his family because he’ll always be looking over his shoulder and wondering if the stranger at the next table is there to take him out.

Anyway, here’s a thorough article by Jocelyn Noveck that nicely sums up the general reactions of critics from some well known publications. Check it out!

My four-year-old son loves looking through family photo albums and asks to see them almost every day. One of his favorites is the one containing pictures from a Florida vacation that my husband and I took back when we were just dating. We drove there from Chicago and spent a week in Daytona Beach, Orlando, and Key West.

It was actually in Key West that my husband proposed to me — on the beach at sunset. It was so romantic and perfect! Looking at those old photos now brings back a flood of great memories and makes me want to take off for another family trip soon. It’s no wonder that Florida is one of our all-time favorite vacation destinations!

I just realized that my new theme uses different function names for wrapping texts around images in posts. For example, if I wanted an image to appear on the right side of a post in my previous theme, I typed in

class=”alignright”

But for this new theme, I have to type

align=”right”

The result here is that all the images in my archived posts will appear to the top left of the text. I hate that look, but am not about to go through six months’ worth of posts to manually correct the problem. So if you’re looking through my archives, that’s why the images float at the top like that.

I just realized that there’s another unfinished task I can add to my list: I haven’t found a new template for this blog yet. Scratch that. What I mean to say is that I haven’t even tried to find a new one. I didn’t get to it over the weekend like I wanted to, so now it looks like I’m going to have to look at this boring one for at least another week. Sigh.

You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting as many movie reviews as I usually do. That’s because I’ve been extremely busy with offline stuff (read: real life) and haven’t had any time to sit down and watch new flicks. Whenever I have spare time, I try to catch up on my favorite TV shows because it’s important to keep those recaps up to date.

Anyway, this is already shaping up to be another hectic week, so I don’t know when I’ll get back to reviewing 5+ movies per week. I do have a couple of DVDs in front of me and will probably be able to do reviews for those, but otherwise I’ve got nothing.

Please bear with me — I’ll be up to speed by next week for sure!

I’m getting a bit tired of the plain-Jane look of my current WP theme, so I’m going to spend some time this weekend looking for another one. I think I’m going to change to three-columns so that I can put more blogrolls and useful links up on the front page. I really want to work with a designer to get a custom theme made, but that won’t happen soon. In the meantime, I hope I can find something decent from one of the free WP theme sites out there.

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to make a quick post here to let you know that I’m currently on vacation and don’t have regular access to the Internet. As a result, I won’t be able to write up any television show recaps this week, so I apologize for that. However, I do have some movie reviews queued up and should be able to post a couple of those in the coming days.

I’ll be back to my regular schedule beginning next Sunday!

Thanks,

J.E.

Edit: Actually, I’ve been staying at a hotel that has high-speed Internet access and was able to watch the online versions of a few of the shows that I regularly recap, so I’m going to try to get those posts up by the end of the day.

My husband has to use one week of vacation time before the middle of March, and it looks like we’ve got our travel plans finalized at last. We ran through so many destinations, including China and Australia, but one thing (tourist visa) or another (budget limitations) quickly ended those proposals. We also considered the Outer Banks, but decided to save that for warmer weather.

So instead of those fun and exciting places, we’re just going to St. Louis and Washington, D.C., which is a pretty big letdown if you ask me! We’ll be in St. Louis on March 3rd and 4th for the Amp’d Mobile Supercross, then we’ll head to D.C. for the 5th, 6th, and 7th. This is not quite what I had in mind for vacation, but hopefully we’ll have a good time anyway!

Yesterday I told you that I’m thinking about getting some business cards printed so that I can present a more professional front to potential clients. Well, I’ve been looking around and I’m not sure what I should do. There are lots of websites that handle business card printing online, but I’ve never used these places before so I don’t know what kind of quality I’d be looking at. I certainly don’t want to get stuck with paper-thin cards just because I was attracted by a good price….

I’ve decided to start giving a weekly preview (whenever I remember, LOL) of the books and movies I plan to review in the near future, so here’s what’s in store for you this week:

Movies

• Inside Man
• Hostage
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Ladykillers

Books

• Of Human Bondage
• Partners in Crime
• Money

You’ve probably noticed a slowdown in the number of books I’ve been reviewing. That’s because I haven’t really been motivated to read. I decided to pick up an old favorite (Of Human Bondage) to help me get going again. I’m reading it on my iPaq Pocket PC, and the book is approximately 3500 pages long (as paginated for the device). I’m through 600 already, which is pretty good progress for me.

I’ve given up on The Ambassadors for the time being, but will try to get to it again at a later date.

Effective from December 16, 2006:

Even though this is a personal blog written and maintained by me (”J.E.”), some of the content here is paid for by product sponsors. Not every sponsored post is labeled as such.

Again, I get paid to provide my opinions on products, services, websites, and various other topics. Even though I receive compensation for some of my posts, I always try to give my honest opinions about whatever I’m reviewing.

Since I’m not an expert on everything I write about in this blog, it would be in your best interest to do further research on your own instead of just relying on my opinions. I encourage each and every one of my readers to perform their own due diligence before purchasing any product or service mentioned on this site. I’m just a regular consumer like the rest of you, so you’d be smart not to take my opinions as the absolute final word on anything!

Please email me (admin[at]reviewsandmore[dot]net) if you have any questions about the content of specific posts.

Thank you for reading Reviews and More!

J.E.

Please feel free to contact me about anything you see on these pages. You may do so via the comments section after an individual post (this is probably the easiest) or you may do so via email: admin[at]reviewsandmore[dot]net. I’ll do my best to respond promptly!

-J.E.

Welcome to Reviews and More! This blog began on blogspot in September 2006, but I decided to move it to its own domain so I could have complete control over the content. I mostly write about TV, movies, books, websites, products and services that I view/consume/use, that I would like to view/consume/use, or that simply seem interesting to me. That’s the “Reviews” part of the title.

The “and More” comes into play because I have a hard time limiting myself to these kinds of topics and occasionally might feel the need to spout off about a current event or something.

I also do plenty of paid insertions for products or services that I believe are useful or worth a second look. Please do follow up on any that seem interesting to you, but remember to check directly with the manufacturer or seller if you have any specific questions about these products and services. I make no claim of being an expert on everything I post about, and won’t be held liable for expressing my opinion.

That being said, I hope you enjoy what you read on these pages!

-J.E.

A few people have asked me where I get ideas for the reviews I write here, so I thought I’d make a post about it. Mostly I just write about things that I’m using in everyday life. For example, I’ve reviewed my vacuum cleaner, my PDA, and a couple other products that I use. I also review the movies and television shows I watch, as well as the books I read. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the products I choose to review — it’s all pretty random and based on what I’m doing or what I’d like to do.

Some people have noted that I write an awful lot of movie reviews. That’s true, and it’s because I get paid a very small stipend to write full-length movie reviews for a different site. Since I get paid more than the cost of renting the DVDs and since I can write the rental fees off on my taxes, I take full advantage of that gig. Plus, I don’t work outside the home, so I have time to watch a lot of movies!

And that’s really all there is to this blog!!!

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