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Copyright |
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©2005 Jason Cross
All Rights Reserved
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 Sunday, September 29, 2002 |
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On Saturday I decided to see a matinee of "Sweet Home Alabama", that new "romantic comedy" starring "Reese Witherspoon". In this movie, she plays "Melanie Carmichael" a New York "Fashion Designer" who gets engaged to the Mayor's (played by Murphy Brown) "son". Only it turns out she's already married from 7 years earlier and has to return to Sweet Home Alabama (Pigeon Point, Alabama, actually) to get a divorce from her rogueish husband. "Hilarity" insues.
I'll admit it, though, I am a sucker for a good romantic comedy sometimes. Hope springs eternal and all that. I am having trouble defining if SHA is good, though. My Reese Witherspoon blinders are on (damn you Ryan Phillippe - and Tobey Mcguire for encouraging them to get together!). The movie was cute, though incredible predictable.
Do you think that:
A) Romantic Comedy Heroine marries guy she starts out with.
B) Romantic Comedy Heroine discovers she still loves the guy she left.
C) Romantic Comedy Heroine shows all the boys in Pleasantville what true "color" is all about.
Of course, telling you the answer would give away the ending. Then again so did the commercials if you look closely, so B.
I wonder if the Dixie Chicks have a song on the soundtrack. Wait, nope, Amazon says they didn't, but Jewel does a cover of the title song. Ugh. |
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Friday, September 27, 2002 |
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StarWars.com just posted a pretty cool article explaining widescreen vs fullscreen video formats, including some great side-by-side screenshots from Episode II which exemplify why widescreen is the way to go. Click here to read that story.
Of course, despite this they are still releasing Episode II in a full-screen format as an option AND re-releasing Episode I in full-screen too. Ah Lucasarts and the almight dollar... |
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Sunday, September 22, 2002 |
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Last night I went to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the new comedy making all sorts of money. It's a great movie, very funny. In fact, I'd call it the funniest comedy I've seen since Undercover Brother, and you all know how much I liked that movie!
The characters are all very real and fleshed out, the plot is not cliched (though it all happens rather easy), and the writing and observations are very witty.
Rumor has it that a sequel is in the works (My Big Fat Greek Honeymoon) as well as a TV series (My Big Fat Greek Family). Too much of a good thing maybe... |
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Friday night was the premier of Joss Whedon's new show, Firefly. The premise is interesting sci-fi, basically a show set in the future with spaceships and the like, but there are no aliens at all, only humans recovering from a major civil war where a federation of sorts forced all planets under a single rule. Kind of an anti-Star Trek.
As for the style of the show itself, calling it a space western would be very apt. From the clothing to the weapons and even the music, it's very old-west style in contrast with the clean militaristic government.
The writing is very sharp, the premise somewhat unique, and I usually have a measure of faith in Joss (creator of Buffy and Angel) so we shall see! |
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Thursday, September 19, 2002 |
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Today I gave Lori, who was on her way to Russia and the rest of Europe for a whopping *8* weeks, a ride down to Kansas City International, where she caught a jet to Chicago and then "over there".
We have an airport in Des Moines, but it cost $300 more to fly out of Des Moines! Crazy!
As we waited at the airport, this really drunk guy came up and kept talking to us about this prop plane he flew on once. "Oh yeah, it was this little plane from Brazil..." and then he'd apologize for interrupting us and then continue on "...but yeah, this prop plane..." It was actually kind of funny - I'm amazed how smashed some people get at the airport. |
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Wednesday, September 18, 2002 |
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No time, no time. Faithful readers, of which there are now likely only 4 rather than 5 due to a lack of updates, I will post more soon once I get caught up on other things! Check back soon, as I am going to see Ecks vs Sever this weekend, so you know I'll have to write about THAT! ;) |
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Monday, September 2, 2002 |
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Mom, Shawn, Misty, Keith, Sebbie, Nate and I went took a family trip to Omaha over the weekend, where we stayed downtown near the Old Market area and spent Sunday at the Henry Doorly Zoo. It had been over 14 years ago when I had last been to the zoo and being disappointed with the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, I was looking forward to the trip.
I mean, come on, Blank Park doesn't even have bears.
It took a good 5 or 6 hours to go through the zoo, and that was talking it fairly fast. We saw the Imax Kilimanjaro movie (note to self, add climbing Kilimanjaro onto life's todo list), visited the air conditioned desert dome, walked through the rainforest area, watched some gorillas, went through the aquarium, and much more stuff as well.
I'll have more later when I get my photos up.
The Fam and I - Click to Enlarge
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Using my theatre connections, I went to see Blue Crush on Friday. I went in with two expectations: surfer girls and cool surfing shots. What I got was a longing to visit Hawaii... but onto the movie.
Not bad, per se, not what I expected, which isn't necessarily a bad thing either, yet as it ended I felt a sense of pointlessness. Like the movie was heading towards a point that it just kind of missed.
The main character, whose name I can't remember though she's played by Kate Bosworth, was in a surfing accident two or three years prior and almost died. As the movie starts, she's gearing up for the "Pipe Masters" which appears to be some sort of surfing competition. Unfortunately, whenever she's getting ready to really go for it, her fear of getting hurt again holds her down.
So you think the movie would be about her overcoming this fear, though she never really does. In the competition she ends up sitting there scared most of the time until the wise pro-surfer in the round against her helps her just once overcome her fear and surf the perfect wave. She doesn't win, she doesn't overcome anything, but to wrap it up nicely a Billabong sponsor (which I guess is the maker of some sorts of surf stuff) wants to talk with her about joining their team. Too bad she'll probably continue freezing up out there. Oh well, I guess that's a problem for the fictional characters.
Despite this part of me liked the movie. Blame the surfer girls and cool surfing shots. |
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Late last week I finally saw Queen of the Damned on DVD. Having read the entire Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles series, I was hoping that it would be good yet fearing that odds are it wouldn't be.
Sadly, I was right in the latter of my judgements.
The movie bothers me with its stupidity in decisions. Vampires are described in the book as having a preternatural beauty and grace, so in the movie they look like heroin-strung addicts. They fill the movie with characters and settings that only make sense if you've read the books, yet they deviate from the books greatly in the history and reasoning of these characters.
Why make a movie that will only have a chance of appealing to the fans, and then screw with it in ways that are sure to annoy these fans?
And Aaliyah is actually in it for only 20 minutes or so. And she's not that good, though I blame the movie, not the late actress.
Queen of the Damned. Stay away from it. If you need a vampire fix, watch Angel. Sundays on WB. |
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