TOM (That Other Movie): Thought I was exaggerating, DIDN'T YOU??

Well, guess what, sunshine?
I MEANT EVERY WORD.
Best Scenes From The Happening

APFS review coming next.

Movie Review: Nights In Rodanthe (spoiler free)

3 out of 5 stars

YES I ADMIT IT!! I am a big Nicholas Sparks fan. Yes, he is sappy and overemotional and fluffy and manipulates your heart, but damn it I love a good sappy cry (ex 1 - I finally read The Memory Keeper's Daughter last night. Jason walked past me for at least an hour and I was bawling every time. Then I picked Kristen up and howled into her). So when I heard that my second favorite book of his was being made into a movie, I made Jason take me to opening night. He was NOT thrilled about sitting through a sappy chick flick, but did as he was told. *whip cracking*

Previews: I don't know, we walked in just as the trailer for Bolt was finishing and the movie was beginning. Hamster still cracks my shit up. Marley and Me is coming out in December. Since Jason and I, as well as both sets of parents, are retriever families, our lips started wobbling at the idea of it.

I was pretty disappointed with it at first. I hate when movie makers change details from the books for no apparent reason at all (ask anyone who has been at a midnight Harry Potter premiere with me). In the book, Adrienne has two sons and a daughter. In the movie, she only has Danny and Amanda. Her father has passed in the movie, although in the book he is living in a nursing home. The Jill Torrelson story line was nowhere near as detailed and heart wrenching as it played out in the book. And speaking of that, the movie on the whole was nowhere near as serious and heart wrenching as the book. They tried too hard to make it light hearted, and I think that was a disservice to the plot. And they added so many cheesy, hokey things - there is no spirit god room in the book, no corny wild ponies, and in the book they actually boarded up the house BEFORE the hurricane hits, and there is no damage (NOT THAT THEY NOTICE).

The book begins with Amanda all grown up with two sons, and a recent widow, as her husband has just died of testicular cancer. Adrienne, now about sixty, sits Amanda down and retells the story. The movie takes place in the present, as the story unfolds, which I think is one of the main reasons the overall tone was different. It got better as it went on, although they left out far too much of Paul's background story. The timing was all messed up. The bathtub scene had been deleted (Jason was v. disappointed, I promised him boobies).

I did not cry, but I knew what was coming. I heard a lot of gasps and sniffles around the theater, and I heard a lot of people who loved it as we were walking out. It was all right, but I really wish it had been handled the way the book was written. Jason liked it more than he had expected to. The scenery was fantastic, although the Inn looked really different than I expected it to, and that was jarring. My family and I used to take beach vacations to the Carolinas every year, and it is my favorite place, it really make me miss it. And there was a line about Hurricane Bertha, which made me giggle because we were down there for that and got evacuated.

Now, the day I hear that The Rescue is coming out, I will burst into spontaneous tears right there. They have to do it. He named the main character Denise after the producer of Message In A Bottle and The Notebook, and I noticed Denise Di Novi did this one too. So she HAS to do her namesake, right??

And wow. The girl who plays Amanda looks EXACTLY like Shana.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight (all the way) (spoiler free)

I've even done my best to make up for the lateness.

Jason and I went to the 10:00 showing on Friday (so it had been showing approximately every three hours for 22 hours). It sold out.
Number of Kids Under Eight: 4
Number of Kids Who Didn't Make It Through: 3
Audience Members Who Saw That Coming: All

Really...it's not a kids movie, people. Pay attention (although 8 Mile wasn't, either, and that was filled with obnoxious tween boys). Jason and I amused ourselves by yelling, "TWO! THREE!" as soon as people would walk in with kids. And by the end, everyone else had picked up on what we were doing and joined in. Great fun was had by all, except for the other parents who had also figured us out.
There were also stupid college kids running around yelling BATMAN in their Cartman In The Special Olympics voices. It seemed to suit them.
Trailers:
The Mummy, sadly, has jumped the shark (and with a three headed dragon, too). Jason and I are huge fans of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, but this just looks bad.
There is a kids movie coming out about a white husky who thinks he is a wonder dog because he plays one on TV. Kristen better get old enough to take very soon, because that hamster cracked my ass up.
I had *no* idea they were making another Terminator. It looks excellent!
The new James Bond is at dangerous shark-jumping level. Apparently Bond gets kicked out of the team, shunned by M, and goes galloping off on his own with his former coworkers after him. I'm not sure how far they can take this, lets hope they get back on track by the end.
Hmm...I know there were more, but they must be lame because I have no memory of them.

This baby is two hours and forty minutes long, and you sit through it without taking a breath. The only possible thing they could have maybe done without is the Two Face storyline - that seems to drag it out just a tad too far, and make everything a tad too complicated - but that is me reaching to find a drip of excess. The movie is fast past, exciting, and really WHAM BANG OH MY GOD THE PENCIL TRICK never saw it coming.
The opening scene with the clown robbers/introduction of the Joker is excellent, and filled with the OH THAT BUS DRIVER moments I was just talking about. The movie, which already has you enthralled, hits you over the head repeatedly, and I almost always loved it (for those of you who have seen it WHICH SHOULD BE ALL OF YOU, I'm sure you're also thinking of the warehouse scene right now).
Heath Ledger is amazing. The walk, the stare, the tongue flicks, the way he moves his mouth and sucks on his cheeks - oooo it gives me the chills remembering. He deserves every single ounce of praise that everyone is giving him. The world has lost an amazing actor, who could have done so much more. Forget Brokeback Mountain - this is his best performance (and I loved what he did with the emotional turmoil of Ennis). And he's funny. Not in the Jack Nicholson way, but funny. When asked by the mob, "Do you think you can just burst in and rob us blind?", he considers, then nods and says, "Yeah." There is a scene when he is blowing up a building, and walking away from it as it seems like every room in the place blows up. He stops, turns and stares, throws up his arms, and begins furiously pushing the detonator. The building finally blows up with such force the audience began whooping, and he bounces away.
Amazing as Ledger was, I assumed that most of the hype and accolades for the movie was based on his performance and subsequent death. It's not. The Joker was perfectly played, and yet does not overshine the rest of the movie - it's ALL that good. Maggie Gylennhaal plays her part nicely, and Aaron Eckhard IS Harvey Dent. And Christian Bale. Yeah. Man can fill out the Batsuit. WhatIwouldn'tgivetobethattackybelt.
The toys and gadgets Batman has access to are very well done, if not a little over the top (there is a kidnapping mission to Hong Kong that's a bit out of place feeling). There is a scene where a tractor trailer flips, longwise, on its back, where the entire audience was whooping and screaming.
The plot: They blow things up. But it does have a lot of deep, dark stuff. The Rachel storyline is amazing. The moral line (Is Batman a hero or menace? Does Gotham even need him? Should Dent step up and Batman step out? Should Batman give in, or stay strong, even if people are dying?) And I loved the ferry quandry.

Bottom Line: You MUST see this movie. Even if you didn't see Batman Begins. I have not (yet...I will be now), and you can tell that you are missing some background, but it is an amazing story and easy to follow all the same. Go see this!

Movie Review: Batman: The Dark Knight

Omf-gahholyFUCKmostawesomethingevahtp.

I am about to kill pretty lady...and her retard stable boy.

Disclaimer: This was my first viewing of anything Get Smart. So I don't know what has been taken from the original and what is new. So when I lament about a stupid plot point...it may not be their fault. I will attempt to make this spoiler-free, as this movie is actually worth seeing on it's own, unlike That Other Movie.

I will start with the trailers.
Hellboy II - Hella lame.
The Dark Knight - So very excited. Sho very excited. Poor dead Heath. Man, did Heath Ledger have a thing for the Gyllenhaals or what? Not that you can blame him. Mmm...I'd totally be into a Heath/Jake/Maggie sandwich...oh shutup, brain!
Wow, the movie is starting? Only two trailers?

Overall? I laughed. Not quite as much as I had hoped to, but it was decently funny. There's a subplot with this really lame "Bad guys are people too...they hurt just like we do" feeling that plays out into an even lamer scene. The Max/Agent 99 'chemistry' felt really forced at first. Can you REALLY do that while skydiving? That makes me want to try it more. I don't like much that The Rock has done, but I loved him in this. I thought he played his part perfectly.
MAX LISTENED TO ABBA!!! My favorite dance around like a drunken prat song of all time is Does Your Mother Know, thanks to Johnny English. So I liked that part.
The twists are very predictable, and I never try to figure out twists. I just sit back and enjoy the ride. And I knew every 'twist'. Gorgeous Russian scenery.
There are some very sly pot shots at Bush that Jason and I enjoyed. The big finale chase scene was, as often happens, way overdone and unrealistic. But I liked the ending.

Three stars!

Get Smart

Will be reviewed either late tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Just so you know. Prepare yourselves. Get some popcorn and a beverage, and maybe a hankie or two.

And speaking of tissue-necessitating issues...Blanche (Pippi) and her new brother will be boarding with us next weekend. I am so excited. I can't wait to see her. I'll see her Tuesday when we start our next round of obedience classes.

WAIT WAIT I FORGOT

Elliot has a mood ring. It's very special to him. He remembers to grab it before he evacuates. The preteens they are fleeing with ask to see it, and they are messing with it. His response?
"HEY watch out DUDE that's MEANINGFUL to me!"

AND ANOTHER THING

Plot Hole 1: Why were some people flinging themselves off buildings and others watching in awe? In NYC and Paris, there was at least one person watching this all, horrified. Why didn't the toxins infect them? What about the people watching the lions?

Plot Hole 2: If you are escaping the killer grass (snarf), why run through fields of it? Why not hole up in a house and shut all the openings a la Signs? A HS Science teacher should know that if being around plants and trees is killing you, perhaps you should be NOT RUNNING THROUGH FIELDS AND FORESTS THE WHOLE FRICKIN MOVIE.

PLOT HOLE PLOT HOLE PLOT HOLE

My Review Of "The Happening"

Ahoy, LLOCers! Spoilers ho!

I am a huge M. Night Shyamalan fan. Huge. The Sixth Sense? One of my all-time favorites. Unbreakable was good. Not quite my favorite genre, but good. Signs was excellent. The Village got panned by critics, and I was stupid and read a spoiler, but man, when she is wandering through those woods and you hear her father start talking about how the creatures were rumored to be real...I still have to watch with a cat held up in front of my face snorting into it (the cat purrs happily). And then I can't go outside at night for a while without seeing Noah in costume.
Lady In The Water was kind of lame. Fairly amusing and intriguing, but kind of lame. So when I found out about The Happening, the first R-rated film, I was thrilled. I have been waiting, what, two years for this? We got a babysitter. I put on red pumps half a size too small. We went out to dinner.

And we completely wasted fifteen bucks. What the HELL was that?

I am completely disappointed. Mark Wahlberg is a very tall 14-year-old boy. The dialogue between Mark and his coworker, Julian, is awful and awkward (and HELLO! If you are going to be doing extreme close ups on a 20-foot tall screen, BRUSH YOUR TEETH, JOHN LEGUIZAMO!!!) And you don't just pull a pin out of your hair and stab it into your neck like that. Which we got a full view of. I always appreciated the psychological aspect of MNS's movies. This has NOTHING. NO substance whatsoever. Just:
1 - People calmly walking off buildings and splatting onto pavement (dear friends of people left standing there)
2 - Woman stabbing herself through neck with hair pin, sitting beside close friend or sister
3 - Man holding arm out for lion to rip off. Holds out other arm for other lion to rip off.
4 - Police officer shooting self in head. Falls to ground. Blood begins to spurt out of head.
5 - Julian (come on, the characters we're close to? The man who left his already traumatized daughter, desperately trying to save his wife) calmly picking up a piece of car glass (left after the driver of the car slammed into a telephone pole, sending bodies shooting out of the car and landing with a thud) and digging it into himself.
6 - A woman screaming with horror and misery and panic as she tries unsuccessfully to prevent her young daughter from committing suicide over the phone
7 - Sounds of the group the main characters were with shooting themselves one by one, as a member of the current group points out that there were children with the other group
8 - A preteen boy, trying to man up and get food for the eight-year-old girl, get shot point blank, blood spurts everywhere. His friend then gets shot point-blank in the skull. In front of the eight-year-old.
9 - Eight-year-old listening to all the reports of people dying and realizing her parents, whom she could barely speak when not in their presence, have killed themselves, and collapsing into misery.
10 - Elderly woman slamming her head into the wall and through windows (we are lucky enough to be on the other side), glass embedded into her face and eyes, until she is dead. *TRY TO HOLD ON, MRS. JONES! THERE'S ONLY TWENTY MORE MINUTES LEFT OF THIS MOVIE!*

All of this is in full view of the camera. The deaths of children upset me the most.

Also? At one point Wahlberg tells the group to wait here while he checks a truck. And then he skips off across the meadows with his arms held out, holding his giant leather satchel. I will never take him seriously again after this. No more tightey whitey ogling for me.

The basic 'plot' of the movie - The plants are all mad because we have become a threat to the planet, so they start releasing neurotoxins into the air that flip our self-preservation sensors in the brain around and make us kill ourselves. As the 'event' gets stronger, it takes a smaller and smaller group to set the toxin off. You have to run and beat the wind. Or something.

Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel (who plays a sarcastic blonde trying not to fall in love with a sugar-hyped Will Ferrell MUCH better) emerge from their buildings to meet their death twenty minutes after the event has ended, and then Alma (Deschanel) is pregnant, Jess (said eight-year-old daughter of Julian), starts school again, and all is well. But then it starts again in France.

Only good part? Elliot (Wahlberg) turns around in an abandoned house to find a potted plant staring at him (trust me, it is. You can tell). Elliot starts talking to the plant, telling him they're just here to use the bathroon, they'll be on their way, please don't eat me, etc. Then he realizes it's fake.

I don't think I'll ever be watching this movie again (ok, maybe the skip through the meadow part, it made me titter). In fact, I don't think I'll be going to see any more MNS movies. Ugh. LAME.

I like saying that word, apparently. About this movie.
And that makes me very sad.
And that is also lame.

/gavel