I watched the Oscars from start to finish. It wasn't the best show ever, but I guess it wasn't the worst. Some thoughts ( Read more... )

I was going to do this in a comment to clyde-park's Oscar post, but I am desperate for my own daily content so I'm going to do a full-fledged post here.

This year (last year) I did a pretty good job of watching Oscar movies before the Oscars, and I've seen seven of the ten Best Picture nominees. Here's what I thought of them, in alphabetical order:

Black ( Read more... )

The documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work was one of the best-reviewed nonfiction movies of last year (though it failed to nab an Oscar nomination). You might have wondered, like me, how good a documentary about Joan Rivers could possibly be. (Seriously, didn't you think you already knew more about Joan Rivers than you wanted to?) The answer: ( Read more... )

These days it's pretty common to see movies with great trailers, big-name stars, catchy TV spots, flashy posters, all the other hallmarks of a strong marketing department... and even if you retain a degree of cynicism, you think "This is something I want to see." And then you get 2012 or Beowulf or Alice in Wonderland. Maybe it's not terrible, but ( Read more... )

I enjoyed liveblogging the Oscars last year, but I didn't get home until 20 minutes into the show tonight and I think I would have quit out of boredom after about an hour anyway. So let's just get all bullet-pointy:

• I saw The Hurt Locker. I don't see what the fuss is all about. It was competent and it was intense. But at no time did I want to ( Read more... )

Dad and I caught a double feature this evening at the Woodland Mall theater. Oddly enough, we paid for both movies, even though there was only a 15-minute gap between them and there were no employees anywhere in the theater checking tickets. Traditionally I would just walk from one theater to another, but I guess when tickets are $4 it's not such a ( Read more... )

I saw Avatar again today. The Ionia Theatre has $4 matinees on Tuesdays (10 a.m. shows), and despite no 3-D at the Ionia Theatre, I thought it was definitely worth another $4. Plus, even though I liked the movie a lot the first time I saw it, I dozed off a few times in the first third and I didn't quite understand what was going on when I woke up. ( Read more... )

✞ Went to church and a Thanksgiving-themed soup-and-salad dinner afterward, hosted by The Youth.

⊗ Went to the Lansing Model Railroad Club's train show/sale at the MSU Pavilion with the Grahams. I saw a sign advertising this when I dropped Mom off at the Pavilion for a meeting last week and thought it would be fun to go. I've been a big fan of ( Read more... )

Where The Wild Things AreI read this book again for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years and... my suspicions were right. I didn't like it as a kid, and I still don't like it ( Read more... )

If you saw the trailer for the new disaster-porn movie 2012, you might have thought, "This looks like it's going to be really dumb," and also, "But I'd kind of like to see it ( Read more... )