babies_stole_my_dingo

And how they can completely make or break a movie for me, as far as my desire to go see them.

Example 1: The Soloist. Not, frankly, usually my kind of movie. Even with all the critical acclaim it would no doubt get, I probably wouldn't go. Except for the fact that Robert's in it. That fact alone is enough to get my butt in a seat, even if his hair is horrible in the thing. (What? Not a fan of the super-short hair, sue me, I'm shallow.) Because it's Robert and it'll be nice to have watched and actually be rooting for a movie in Oscar contention for once.

And trust me, I've watched a couple of god-awful things with Robert in them. I get what they were trying to do with "The Singing Detective," but it just didn't work for me. "A Scanner Darkly" didn't actually get interesting until the last fifteen minutes or so. "Tropic Thunder," while not falling to the level of god-awful, had enough awful moments in it and enough bad language for three movies that length. So, yeah.

Example 2: Body of Lies. Ordinarily, this would be a no-brainer. Ridley Scott, action-adventure, spy stuff, count me in. But then I look at the cast: Russell Crowe and Leo DeCaprio. I'm not a big fan of Russ and Leo is actually an active turn-off. So I'm probably going to give this one a pass.

How about you, flist? Are there any actors that will get your butt in a seat no matter what the movie is? What about actors that you have to be dragged kicking and screaming to see?

Pygmy anteaters on Cute Overload!!! *dies*

So. We went and saw "Tropic Thunder" last night, as my Robert Downey, Jr., obsession continues apace.

I have...mixed emotions about it.

On the one hand, the fact that it left no Hollyweird trope unskewered filled me with unseemly glee. All the actors were brilliant, and Robert especially (I may be a teeny bit biased) blatantly stole every single scene he was in.

On the other hand, the language was incredibly, over-the-top, filthy. This detracted a lot from my enjoyment of the movie. Seriously, it was worse than KKBB, in which the last line is "And, to people in the Midwest, sorry we said 'f***' so much."

So...yeah. I knew it would have a shit-ton of bad language. I just didn't know it would have that much. I mean, I'm not shy myownself about using a bad word here or there *points at previous sentence*--except there are a few words that make extremely rare appearances on my LJ, and a couple that don't appear at all. And the f-bomb is one of the rare ones that make people blink when I use it. Most of the time, I think it's just sloppy writing, although I do believe there's a time and place for it.

Final verdict: I don't know, honestly. If I could get an edited version of it, I'd probably buy it. As it sits, it's not appealing enough to me to stick in the DVD collection.

However, blond!Aussie!Robert? *slobbers* Ohyesgivememoreofthatplease. It's the accent, I think. Especially blond!Aussie!Robert who is confused over who he really is. Also "I only break character after the DVD commentary" is GOLD. GOLD, I say.

And I found out tonight that, dude. I am such a lightweight when it comes to booze.

One drink. ONE. I have since become sober, but...whoo. Also, hee.

I've scribbled 1500 more words in the KKBB/IM crossover from hell. *facepalm* Harry is still unconscious. Tony's been shot. Pepper yelled at him. Perry and Harmony are both wrecks.

Yeah. Original fiction? What is this "original fiction" of which you speak?

CURSE YOU, TONY STARK. *shakes tiny fist*

We watched "The Dark Knight" today before driving up to Denver. For a movie whose tagline is "Why so serious?" that was some heavy shit, man. It was good...but I'm not sure I want to watch it again. I enjoyed Iron Man much more. Also, I wish they'd gone into the Joker's backstory a little more. I tend to think the first story he told (about his father) was the correct version, but what do I know? Also: Oh, Harvey. :(

Of course, that also got the crossover bunnies going. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark would hate each other on sight. Bruce would think that Tony's a frivolous dilletante with responsibility issues, and Tony would think that Bruce is an uptight stick-in-the-mud with a baseball bat up his ass. However, Jarvis and Alfred would get along famously. Alfred would help Jarvis make Tony more responsible, and Jarvis would help Alfred remove the stick from Bruce's ass.

But both our beautiful boys have massive issues. *nods*

Anyway. I've skimmed the flist--not the comms or my Iron Man filters, just the journals. I want to be at the convention center no later than 9:30 tomorrow morning, and there's a full day of programming and stuff. Hubby is taking off back to Pueblo tomorrow as well, which is where Da Boy is (at Grandma's) right now. I managed to pick up the last remaining hardback copy of "The Name of the Wind" at the local B&N this evening (they had no hardback Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan books, alas--I hope to find some at either The Tattered Cover or the Con itself), and we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was very very tasty. Also expensive, what with the *cough* booze. Which was damn tasty and totally worth it.

*waves* Will have more to report on later tomorrow. :)

And saw "The Hulk" with "Speed Racer."

Non-spoilery reviews:
"The Hulk" was...good. Not excellent, but good. Somehow, they managed to suck all the fun out of it. I counted one funny line--and you get that in the trailer. It just lacked "Iron Man's" sarcasm and wit. The characters are quite earnest and mostly fundamentally decent, and we got a couple of iconic moments, but this read more like a prequel and a character-set-up than a standalone. And there's nothing wrong with that--I loved the ending; that was fabulous. I gave it 2 3/4 stars out of four. Not bad enough to be 2 1/2, not good enough to be 3.

"Speed Racer," on the other hand...

Boy, this is a bad movie. Eye-searingly, cringingly bad. I think everyone here knows I'm a NASCAR fan, right? And this movie commits the deadly sin of being a boring racing movie. Seriously, the pontificating in this thing would make a theological debate between Joe Lieberman and Ben Stein look interesting. (Yes, I know they're both Jewish. That's my point.) They take a point, beat it into the ground, bury it ten feet, and keep going. OMG. "I love you. I really really love you. No, really. Really really. And did I mention you make me proud? You make me so proud. So, so proud. Prouder than proud. I love you and I'm proud of you. Really, so much." I kept waiting for their lips to keep moving after they got done talking; the dialogue was like something out of a badly-dubbed movie.

Which, if that's the effect they were going for, more power to them, but this was painful to watch, folks. Classic instance of show, don't tell. They kept telling us that these are decent people whom we should be rooting for, but they never really showed us why.

And you guys know me. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and dive into a world, no questions asked, I'm along for the ride. Smoke Monster on LOST? I'm there. Alien that farts helium on "Farscape"? Count me in. Sound in space in "Star Wars"? Eh, why not, at least for the original trilogy. This? Didn't pull me in. At all. Michael Medved gave it a star and a half. I think he was generous.

In other news, I've solved my Faerie Show Fic problem. I know how the new one ends. Now all I have to do is write it. *evil laughter*

In other other news, I'm looking at laptop bags, now that I saw that one on Ebags. We're going out later today to put actual eyeballs on some. If I can find one for under $31 with the same features, I'll buy it locally.

First of all, a big THANK YOU to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today. *smooches you all* For anyone wondering, I turned 21 again today. *nods firmly* Really.

All we did special today was go out to dinner at Red Robin, where I ate ridiculous amounts of fried shrimp, steak fries, and fried zucchini. Seeing a pattern there? However, we have plans to go see "The Hulk" this weekend, and we hope it's playing at the drive-in with "Iron Man," because that would be awesome. Or we might go see "The Happening," because it's M. Night and we like him in spite of the last train wreck. Hey, M. Night? You're awesome, but you're not Neil Gaiman. Don't try.

We also went grocery shopping at The Evil Mart of Walls. Which had the original X-Men movie in their $5 bin. And a double disc Will Smith set that had "I, Robot" and "Independence Day" for $9. Alan Tudyk is in the first, and Adam Baldwin is in the second. What's not to love? Also, Will rocks like a big rocking thing.

Borders has "MirrorMask" for $8 this week, and the Seattle's Best Coffee places that they have in Borders has a coffee milkshake to die for. OMG YUM. So, I have new/old SF/F on DVD.

And I have comicses. New Angel: After the Fall, and Chuck #1 (of 6), which starts us out on Gilligan's Island, Chuck style. *dies of funny*

In other news, my body this morning said "Happy birthday! Here's your period and some cramps! Whee!" I growled and took ibuprofen. HAH.

And now I suppose you all are wondering why I hate my brain. Well, I was discussing with the Hubby the fact that several people have mentioned that the ending of the Faerie Show fic is "too easy," for one reason or another. So, I had a Bunny for a new ending.

And I don't know whether to go or

What if, rather than reciprocating Saffron's feelings, Amethyst does what dragonfly-winged faeries naturally do to butterfly-winged faeries...and eats her? This might require tweaking the beginning a little so that Sheila brings two faeries instead of one, so the unveiling might be a little more shocking when she gets back to her setup.

So, yeah. I hate my brain. Why does it always go to a dark place when I'm trying to be light and funny? Now, I realize that I can play this for laughs, and I probably will, but still. Sheesh.

The MountainCon ConComm meeting today. Much discussion of publicity was had. Consider this me, blogging about it. Because I'm going to be there, on panels, and we've got shiny shiny guests as well. Consider:

Kevin Sorbo, of Hercules, Xena, and Andromeda fame.

Brandon Sanderson, aka mistborn, who's been pegged to write the 12th and final "Wheel of Time" novel, since Robert Jordan passed away before he could finish it.

Herb Jefferson, Jr., who played Boomer in the original BSG.

I'll probably be hitting the publicity on this one fairly frequently, because we want it to be awesome, yo. Anyone considering coming totally should. I've got a banner on my userinfo page page now.

In other news, I came home to find an ARC of "The Betrayal: The Lost Life of Jesus (a novel)" in my mailbox today, courtesy of ... someone at TOR. No note or anything, just a book in a bubble envelope. It was kind of surreal. But, hey! Free book! I'm not going to complain.

Unless it's crap. In which case I will, loudly. Because you don't mess with my faith, man.

In other other news, as some of you may have seen this morning, we went and saw "Kung Fu Panda" at the drive-in last night, double-featured with "Prince Caspian." Without spoiling either of them, let me just say that I was kind of disappointed in KFP and loved PC. KFP's characters were pretty paper-thin, and so was the story. The animation, however, is gorgeous, enough so that I kind of wish we'd seen it in a "real" theater rather than the drive-in, because you lose a lot of detail at an outdoor theater. It's just not dark enough. OTOH, I loved PC and hope they make the other five books into movies so I can have a shiny shiny boxed set.

The Hubby and I were able to go see movies in a regular theater that we would have had to get a sitter for, were he here.

So, we double-featured Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones*.

AND THEY WERE BOTH MADE OF AWESOMESAUCE WITH CAKE ON TOP. AND ICE CREAM.

Oh, golly yes. Give me more of this.

We had a half hour between movies and walked around looking at posters, going "Yep. Yep. OH GOD NO. Yep. DEFINITELY. Why is that guy still working again? Oh, hey, that might actually be good since Lucas isn't writing it. OMG MUST SEE. AUGH WHERE'S MY TEN-FOOT POLE? *makes warding signs*"

This sparked a discussion of actors and how we perceive movies that star them. We agreed that we wouldn't touch the new Eddie Murphy vehicle, "Meet Dave," with a ten-foot pole...but that the concept would have looked pretty cool had it starred someone actually good, like Will Smith. Conversely, "Hancock" wouldn't have looked nearly so shiny with Eddie Murphy in the starring role.

Discuss.



*May be spoilers in comments.

And saw a double feature of "Iron Man" and "Drillbit Taylor."

"Iron Man" was awesome. I'm pretty sure the physics don't work out with it, but still. VERY tasty. DVD collection material.

"Drillbit Taylor," on the other hand...

( Why is it that every movie about high school is an advertisement for homeschooling? Er, spoilers. )
However, the fact that the principal was played by the same guy who played the principal in the original Buffy movie (and the same sort of clueless idiot) was amusing. Apparently Stephen Root works a lot, and I know I've seen him in other things too. What do I recognize him from? Buffy. Yeah, that's me.

And Adam Baldwin has a freakin' hilarious cameo.

You know, I just created a JournalFen account a couple of days ago. I've got the same name there as I do here. Feel free to friend me.

However, this is and will always be my main journal, and so the JF one is kind of sitting there, blank and lonely.

I could just...put my fic there, I guess.

In lieu of actually writing. *headdesk*

But it would be kind of shiny to have everything all in one spot, nicely tagged and indexed.

I will ponder this. In the meantime, I should be writing. That 250 words I didn't write yesterday is making me feel terribly guilty, so I'm planning on 500 today.

*snorts* Yeah, RIGHT.

And it looks like everyone on my flist has seen "Iron Man" but me. *cries* Medved gave it three and a half stars and publicly wondered what was wrong with the critics at Rotten Tomatoes who didn't like it. It's at the drive-in with "Drillbit Taylor," which I also haven't seen yet. As Adam Baldwin has a cameo in it, I must see it.

Also, Free Comic Book Day today. Yes, I'm going, and I'm going to prepay for the Urru cover of Spike: After the Fall #3, because I want to be sure and have it. Because, DUDE.

But apparently the fact that I've been blogging about the BearFic again means that I'm back on the bear radar. Yes, because no one who is writing about bears in HER blog might be talking about Ursus spelaeus.

In other news, we went and saw "Expelled" yesterday. Yes, that "Expelled," with Ben Stein. I'll probably do a reaction post to it later on.

The World Horror Convention has begun. In Salt Lake City.

And I can't go.

*cries*

The Hubby has to work this weekend, and I have no one I can ask to watch Da Boy ALL DAY LONG for three days. We're solving this problem for CONduit by flying him out to Texas to stay with his aunt, but no can do this time.

Yes, I'm feeling a bit whiny about this. Especially as I could have got in for the whole weekend for $25 as a volunteer. Wah.

In other news, some of you know that I do an hour a day/burn 500 calories on my stationary recumbent bike. Last night? I ripped out those 500 calories with eight seconds to spare in one session. I usually take two to four, depending on the day. The day before yesterday, I did one 35-minute session and one 25-minute session. I've heard that runners who train a lot can double their usual distance, and I now tend to give that some credence.

We went and saw Horton Hears a Who yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was terribly afraid they'd butcher it, but they did a great job. It's my favorite Seuss book ("A person's a person, no matter how small" tickles my little pro-life heart), and this one is definitely going in the DVD collection.

Also, I will get some writing done today. And I will also call my dad, whose birthday it is. We have four and a half hours of school to do (starting cursive today, and oh my gosh the whining!). Somewhere in there I'd like to go pick up my copy of "Everybody's Dead" that the comic store is holding for me. Food. Food would be good, as the cupboards are somewhat bare.

AUGH. At least I've caught up with my flist, mostly?

We're having a pretty nasty snowstorm right now. The roads are sucking quite a bit. So I thought I'd check the bus schedule going to Provo tomorrow, because someone else driving in this crap FTW, right?

I can get there. I can't get back. CRAP.

So I guess I'll get up a little earlier and take some extra time. *grumbles*

In other news, the Hubby and I went to see "Fool's Gold" and it's dumb, goofy fun. I laughed quite a bit, and so did the Hubby. It's a lot more farcical than the National Treasure movies, and Shirtless!Matthew is never a bad. And he spent a good half of the movie shirtless. Yay!

I just saw an ad for "The Golden Compass" that said it was "A brilliant fantasy in the tradition of Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia." YEAH. Because those two devout men would totally endorse a movie or book series whose author is an avowed atheist, and in which ( Cut for a big fat SPOILER ).

That reviewer (whoever it was) is completely clueless...

Which, yeah, shouldn't surprise me. Not really. But it does make my head all desky.

Or, Happy Thursday, if you're, you know...not in the US.

What I planned on doing and what we wound up doing were two entirely different things. See, the Hubby has been at work since Tuesday, and I didn't expect him home until...about two hours from now. So I was basically going to clean like a madwoman and have the house all shiny and clean when he got home.

Of course, he was deadheading back from wherever it was he was...so he found an earlier flight and surprised me by coming home, er, before noon. And therefore the house was a wreck. *sigh*

Anyway, I hadn't planned on a big feasty thing for me and Da Boy. I have some turkey left over in the freezer from the last time I cooked one (which I do on a fairly regular basis, because, dude. Cheap meat that feeds us for, like, three months), so I was thinking about warming that up and mashing some potatoes, etc. That went out the window because, well, there were three of us now.

After hemming and hawing and saying "Well, what do you want to do?" to each other for awhile, I had the brilliant idea of checking to see if our local Megaplex was open today. And it was.

I've had a yen to see "Enchanted" ever since I saw a trailer for it, lo, many moons ago. The Megaplex has an amazing food court, where you can get just about any sort of food your heart desires, from pizza to hamburgers to Mexican to Chinese. So, I got pizza, and the Hubby got a Mexican thing, plus the popcorn and frozen Junior Mints. And then we setled in to watch the show.

( DUDES. THIS IS A FABULOUS MOVIE. )

And we also saw trailers for "Horton Hears a Who" and "Get Smart." The trailer for "Get Smart" had me giggling like a crazy thing. MUST. SEE. And of course "Horton Hears a Who" goes without saying. That's my all time favorite Dr Seuss book. There was another trailer for some Martin Lawrence thing where he's going on a college road trip with his daughter to help her pick a school that had me going "Why would I want to see that?" and the trailer for "Alvin and the Chipmunks," sadly, gave me the same reaction. If you're trying to get me into your movie with a poop-eating joke (I kid you not), you're doing it wrong.

I just saw a trailer for "I Am Legend," Will Smith's new movie. I don't know anything more about this movie than what I just saw (and I can't find the version online that I saw)...and I need to see this movie.

Seriously, all I saw was Will Smith running on a treadmill with his dog, playing golf on a roof, and walking through a cornfield in the middle of an empty city. And sleeping in a bathtub with the aforementioned dog, which is a German Shepherd. And the narrator says "The last man on Earth...isn't alone."

I have no backstory. I don't know why he's alone in the city and what happened to the rest of humanity. (Well, I know now, because the internet is my friend.) But that trailer pulled me in and made me want to find out. THIS is the job of a movie trailer, people. Suck me in and make me have to see your show.

Don't make me look at your film and go "Ew, why would I want to go see that?" Why, yes, "40-Year-Old Virgin," I'm looking at you. Now thare's a movie that lived down to expectations, rather dramatically. And the promotions for "Bee Movie" have been completely and totally LAME, although Medved said it was a good movie. But the promos for that one have made me go "meh" rather than "squee!" and I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to have the opposite reaction.

Of course, I'm weird. That commercial on TV with the animated bee with the French (d'oh! I fail at accents! Apologies to Antonio Banderas) Spanish accent? I hate those, because boy bees don't leave the hive. Their job is to mate with the queen and die. Talking bees I have no problem with. Drones going out have me making warding signs against evil. And I'm getting the same thing for "Bee Movie," but at least I think they're going to explain to me why this drone decided to go out into the wide world.

Still, people. I'd like some scientific accuracy with my talking bugs, please. *crosses arms*

Pixar is developing a "John Carter of Mars" trilogy.

Seriously, I haven't been this excited about movie news since Serenity, y'all. After my comic book hopes got shot down, I figured we wouldn't ever see anything in print or on video doing anything with Edgar Rice Burroughs's most excellent series, but it appears I was wrong.

YAY for being wrong.

But in case you weren't, "Stardust" is an absolute MUST SEE movie. It's fabulous from beginning to end.

Saw the Transformers movie last night. It was double-featured with Evan Almighty at the drive in, so we thought we'd toddle over and see it.

And it was pretty cool. We were thoroughly entertained. Just...leave your brain at the door, because it's monumentally stoopid. More stoopid than the new Die Hard movie. They'd make a great double feature together. Big dumb action movies with big dumb plots and big dumb set-pieces. I liked the Die Hard movie better.

FWIW, Da Boy (who is six) enjoyed Transformers as well. We were hesitant about letting him watch it because, you know...scary robots doing a lot of property destruction and people getting hurt, but he thought it was really cool and thinks we should buy the DVD. We told him to save his money. *snerk*

Evan Almighty was just as awesome the second time around. More so--because there are anteaters at the end that I didn't notice on the first viewing. *flails*

New Spike: Shadow Puppets comic today!

Found this via slushgod: Habitable Planets for Man. A research tool for sci-fi writers building new worlds. Free pdf DL.

We're gearing up for the Seattle trip. I checked the weather, and the highs are going to be somewhere around 75. This is 25 degrees cooler than what we're getting here in SLC. We might need jackets! Hee!

And Da Boy just came in and informed us that there was a garter snake in our front yard. Lo and behold, there was! It went into the bushes before I could get a pic of it, though. This is the second snake we've seen in our yard; the other one was in the back. HOW COOL IS THAT???

We were going to see "Ratatouille" in a real theater rather than the drive-in. The picture is better, the Megaplex theaters have real food you can take into the theaters, etc.

Well, that went out the window when we found out that it's playing with "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" at the drive-in. Not only is the drive-in hella cheaper than the Megaplex ($6/person, under 9 gets in free, bring our own food, TWO movies for the price of one [under $20, total]--as opposed to $5.75 each for all three of us for the matinee, plus all that food [round about $45]), but that's one heck of a double feature.

"Ratatouille" is brilliant. Fer reals, dudes. Simply fabulous. Not only that, but the short they have before it, "Lifted," is hysterical. Hubby didn't like it as much as "For the Birds" or "Bounding," but I liked it better than "Bounding," which I thought was...kinda weird. This may be a function of the fact that I'm a sci-fi geek and he isn't, and "Lifted" is an alien abduction thing. So, yes, go see this.

Pirates held up way better under a second viewing. Now that you know what's going on, it's a whole lot easier to keep track of the plot twists and who's working the angles and who's betraying whom.

Also, Captain Barbossa never gets old, man. He needs way more screentime. Like, all the screentime.

And now that I've seen it again, I'm reconciled to another series of movies. HOWEVER...I think that they should leave Will and Elizabeth out of it. Their story arc is over; stick a fork in them, they're done. I want Jack and Barbossa and the Pearl hunting for that thing they're hunting (see, I can be vague and non-spoilery). And I want them to use the same writers. Because I'm terribly impressed with the storytelling they managed to do based on a freaking ride at Disneyland, dudes.

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans. We have fireworks, which is sort of like taking a twenty-dollar bill and setting it on FIRE, but it'll be cool. I'm fair certain we'll get twenty bucks worth of entertainment out of it.

And saw "Live Free or Die Hard."

DUDE, IT WAS AWESOME.

This is what a summer blockbuster should be. A big dumb movie with a big dumb plot where lots of shit gets blown up, and the hero has been bloodied, beat up, shot...and yet is still standing at the end, leaving you cheering. The set-pieces were fabulous, there was a really COOL fighter jet (OMG *flails*), Justin Long is cute (is he getting type-cast or what?), Bruce still has it.

We were hugely entertained by this movie.

"Ratatoullie" (or however you spell that) opens today...

And in other news, I realized last night that this is the second story in a row where I've used a hidden pregnancy as a plot device.

But you know what? I don't care. It works for those stories, and is thus staying.