I open my box of macaroni and cheese (macaroni and cheese, lazy lunchtime meal of champions!) and, lo and behold, what do I see but the holy grail of macaroni and cheese consumption! Two packets of cheese! Now, granted, one of them looks like an assembly line aborted fetus and contains about a third of what you’d normally expect from a packet of cheese, but still. ONE THIRD MORE CHEESE!
Om nom nom nom.
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars
Bottom Line: Look, it’s a monster! Look, we’re ineffectively doing things! Look, we’re making extremely stupid decisions just so there is some sort of story line!
What a mess this movie is. It has only two things going for it. One, Bryan Cranston is in it. Two, a lot of the effects are pretty cool. Number one doesn’t last very long.
I get that the theme of Godzilla movies is basically man’s hubris in thinking he can stand up to nature without nature bringing down the hammer of justice, but something interesting should really be happening when making that point. Instead, this movie provides stupid rational after stupid rational for stupid action after stupid action. Case in point, the Yucca Mountain scene. Yucca Mountain, if you are not aware is where the U.S. stores all its nuclear waste. There is more radioactivity happening there than anywhere else in the world. One of the monsters is at Yucca Mountain and is pregnant for whatever reason and needs radioactivity to feed. Instead of staying there, she rampages across Las Vegas and heads to San Francisco because the Army is carting a single nuclear missile by train to San Francisco. This is all to be with her mate, who she doesn’t really need because she’s already pregnant. Now, maybe they decided to skip the funky monster love making scene for the sake of time, but come on!
Then there are other stupid decisions like running busses full of evacuees across the Golden Gate Bridge even though it is clear to everyone that the other monster is heading straight for said bridge. Oh, and there’s also the main character (who I will just call Not Bryan Cranston) who tells his wife and child who are in San Francisco to wait there and he’ll come and get them even though he has full knowledge that there are three monsters converging there. Come to think of it, that would have made the story somewhat interesting if he was actually trying to get them killed because his marriage really sucked.
The only thing this movie has going for it are its cool special effects. Even that is kind of spoiled by the fact that the entirety of the monster fighting scenes are done in darkness and are most often only glimpsed at in the background while our heroes are vainly attempting to be hero-y.
“Godzilla” would certainly be in my skip it category. The special effects are not enough to save it. Though, it may be one of those movies that, once you recognize the ridiculousness of it, turns it into a good movie.
You ever wonder why pet mice and gerbils and such seem to enjoy those little exercise wheels so much? Probably because they are in this little cage and there’s not much else to do, right?
Scientists decided to take exercise wheels out of the cages and put them in places outside and see what would happen. One they put in a green urban center and another they put in a remote dune area. Much to their chagrin, they found that wild mice and rats and even some snails, slugs, and frogs enjoyed using the exercise wheel. Over three years, they recorded over 1,200 uses of the exercise wheel. They originally used food to lure the animals to the exercise wheel site, but on the chance that they were using the wheel because of the food, they removed it and still were recording wheel usage.
This is the kind of experiment that gets mocked by people who don’t have a basic understanding of how science works. I have no idea if there are any useful scientific conclusions to draw from this experimeint or not. The authors suggest that there may be something to gleen about the habits of sedentary versus more active humans, but who know. They did an experiment that was never attempted before and reached a conclusion that is at least somewhat unexpected. Basic science like this is how big discoveries are made. There is a quote that I remember, but can’t find the source and it goes something like this: Great discoveries are often thought to come from someone burning the midnight oil and coming across some new discovery and shouting “Eureka!”, but more often than not it comes from someone looking at a bit of gathered data and thinking to herself, “That’s odd”.
What do you call a man laughing obnoxiously in a high class restaurant?
An amused douche!
Get it? Amused douche/amuse-bouche? Oh, come on, it’s funny! You obviously have no taste in humor. Unless you liked it. Then you are a connoisseur of comedy.
Jean-Paul’s Review: 3/5 stars
“The Sirens of Titan” is Kurt Vonnegut’s second novel and you can really feel him just starting to get his unique voice in it. It is kind of a hybrid standard novel/typical Vonnegut prose mix. There are none of the one word paragraphs yet, but the paragraphs sizes are noticeably smaller than your standard novel.
Many of the standard Vonnegut subjects are already present in this novel. You have Tralfamadore and allusions to “Harrison Bergeron”. Much of the book deals with finding your place in the world and fate’s part in it. The humor is dark, even more so than his usual fare. I suspect that my three star rating has more to do with the fact that almost everything contained in the book has been done better by him later in his career and I read all of those first.
The book starts with the chrono-synclastical infundibulated (think unstuck in time-ish) Winston Niles Rumfoord paying one of his cyclical visits to his wife, Beatrice, and special guest, playboy billionalre Malachai Constant. Rumfoord tells them both their future and how they will go to Mars and get married and have a kid together before heading to the Saturnian moon of Titan, with Constant making a side trip to Mercury beforehand. Finding each other mostly repulsive, they attempt to avoid that fate by any means necessary only to have it all come true.
It all comes true in horrible Vonnegutesque fashion. When I said this novel was dark, I meant it. No one in this novel is a good person, except for maybe Salo the Tralfamadorian and he’s a machine. So it goes. I had no idea where anything in this novel was going until it went there. None of it was out of left field either. It was all, “Oh, that makes beautifully horrible sense.”, which is quite an accomplishment.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors and it’s really interesting to read his second novel and see his growth as an author. If you’ve read most of his later stuff, you should totally pick up this book, but if you’re a Vonnegut virgin, there’s better to be had in “Slaughterhouse-Five”, “Cat’s Cradle” and, well, most of his other works. That doesn’t make this book bad, it just makes it not as good.
Today is Limerick Day
For it is the 12th of May
So I’ll write you this ditty
Though I’ll admit it’s quite shitty
And now it is over. Hurray!
This is possibly NSFW just because of what it is more than what is contained in the video. The Dutch electronic music band ADAM produced a video for their song “Go to Go” with a bit of a twist. They attempted to sing the song as straight-faced and emotionless as possible while using a vibrator. The result is a brilliant concept perfectly executed with highly amusing results:
[youtube http://youtu.be/3h37xswCoY0]It’s a fun little pop song that starts with all three hitting their marks flawlessly but soon they start with the smiles as their bodies take over. Soon they start missing their marks and then they start completely missing entire sentences. Now someone needs to make a male equivalent. That would probably be even funnier.
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: A fun raunchy comedy with some unexpectedly excellent chemistry between the actors.
Now, this may have been one of those movies where you go in with low expectations and it surprises you so much that you give it a better review than you normally would. And who wouldn’t have low expectations when the plot revolves around a fraternity moving next door to a couple of new parents? And who wouldn’t be surprised when that flimsy premise actually turns into a very enjoyable movie?
Obviously, with a plot like this, the movie is a bit unbelievable, but it does a really good job of making it as close to believable as possible. The pranks that are pulled and the schemes that are concocted are all things that you might imagine doing if you were in a similar situation. In fact, with the exception of the air bags stunt, which was both over the top and hilarious, it only takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to see this movie happening in real life.
A lot of what makes this movie work is the acting. What makes good material great material is the chemistry between the actors and there is chemistry aplenty in this film. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne play off of each other so well as the new parents next door. One set of comedic talent is enough to carry any movie, but this movie has two, for Zak Efron and Dave Franco also work off of each other well as the fraternity president and vice president.
Only time will tell if “Neighbors” has any staying power as a classic raunchy comedy. I can see myself breaking out this movie every few years and laughing all over again.
This movie also contains, perhaps, the cutest baby that was ever created on this planet, played by twins Elsie and Zoey Vargas. Disgustingly cute applies here. Be sure to stay for the credits where Elsie and Zoey are dressed up to look like all of the actors as their names scroll by.
Jean-Paul’s Review: 3/5 stars
Bottom Line: More of your standard super-hero fare. Special effects are better than average and make good use of slow motion. Suffers from super-villan overload which is a good sign that they’re out of ideas.
But first, another rant against 3D. I try to avoid watching movies in 3D because it tends to not add to the enjoyment of the movie and it costs a few extra bucks more besides. Sometimes time constraints force you into it as it did with my viewing of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”. The use of 3D was actually distracting in this movie. Imagine your normal movie shot. Your primary attention goes straight to the people/actions that are in focus, but there is a whole other world of softly out of focus background existing peacefully in your field of view. Not so with this movie. All the background was not only out of focus, but in 3D and out of focus. It draws your attention away from the primary focus so your brain can take the time to identify what the heck these floating pixies of light are doing in the background. It was so annoying. Why won’t 3D die the death it so richly deserves? Oh yeah, because it makes money.
Now on to our regularly scheduled review. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is enjoyable for what it is and that’s about it. The movie takes a bit of time to get going but when it does, it sails along prettily from action sequence to action sequence and super-villan to super-villan.
Speaking of super-villans, Jamie Foxx is completely wasted in this movie as Electro/Max Dillon. The crappy 3D in this movie had more depth than the Max Dillon character. Electro is a super-villan for three year olds. Spider-Man good, notice me!, now Spider-Man bad. The movie would have been so much better if they could have given Max Dillon a compelling back story. It’s movies like this that make me hope that Disney’s upcoming movie, “Malificent”, will do gangbusters so people will realize that evil’s where the story’s at. One can only hope.
The other main super-villan was, once again, Green Goblin/Harry Osborne. The good news is the story is a bit different from the first series, though the broad brush strokes are still the same. The better news is that Dane DeHaan, who plays Harry, was very well cast if just for his looks. He just screams evil even well before he turns into Green Goblin.
As per usual with super-hero movies, there’s very little female acting to report besides your standard Hollywood approved female roles. There’s love interest Gwen, and sage matron Aunt May. The angsty teenage romance between Peter and Gwen got a bit annoying, but I suppose that’s what angsty teenage romances are all about. The Aunt May stuff is a bit better, but is mostly rushed.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is not necessary super-hero watching material. It’s fun and light and you won’t hate yourself for watching it and there’s not really much showing at the moment to compete with it so you might as well go see it if you’re in the mood for a movie. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars
I subconsciously started reading “Treasure Island” shortly before my planned trip to Grand Cayman. I have a long backlist of old books that I want to read and it amuses me that my brain chose this book without my being aware as to why I chose it. It wasn’t until shortly before I left for Grand Cayman before I realized, “Oh, that’s why I chose this book!”
Ahoy matey! If you know anything about pirates, chances are what you know came from “Treasure Island”. Almost every pirate stereotype is a stereotype because of this book. Parrot? Check. Peg leg? Check. Drunken revelry? Check. Buried treasure? Check. X marks the spot? Check. You would be hard pressed to find another example of a piece of literature that so thoroughly defines a genre so completely. That, my friends, is art. I would go even farther and say that “Treasure Island” also inspired, consciously or unconsciously, many of the top young adult novels of our time. Can you think of other wildly successful novels as old as “Treasure Island” whose main character is a young boy on an adventure?
“Treasure Island” has so infused our culture that even if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you know the story. Pirate Billy Bones comes to an inn run by young Jim Hawkins’ family. He is hiding from some of his former pirates and he has a treasure map. He is eventually found and dies after a confrontation with one of his brethren but not before Jim finds the map. Jim confides in Dr. Livesey and Squire Trewlaney and soon an adventure is set up to find the hidden treasure! The crew they hire, of course, turn out to be pirates and the rest of the book tells how the good guys survive the pirates and gather the treasure.
“Treasure Island” is an incredibly fun escapist read. Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver are as memorable characters as you will find in literature. Reading the book, you can not help but want to be there with Jim on his adventure. Well, maybe without the pirates trying to kill you, but you get the idea. Sailing a ship through the ocean in search of buried treasure, drinking rum, and singing sea shanties is awfully appealing.
If you have not read this book, you should. I can see myself reading this book again and again. If you have kids, you should read it to them. There’s some material that is age inappropriate, mostly murder and mayhem, so be ye warned if you are of the opinion that children should be hidden from such realities as long as possible.