Breaking Bad (season 1)

Awesome tv show, about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking crystal meth when he finds out he has terminal lung cancer. This show is even more fun than it sounds (and contains one of the greatest mormon missionary references I've ever seen in pop culture!)

4 of 5 paranoid meth heads.

p.s. Bryan Cranston won the Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series Emmy for this show... so check it out!

Old Man's War

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

My review

rating: 4 of 5 well recycled scifi ideas.
Big fun. Totally guilty pleasure. This book has pushed me back into an old jr. high school habit that I had of waking up early to read. Back in those days it was all Asimov all the time.



This is really good, escapist (I know I'm stealing your term Mitch) scifi. Reminds me a lot of the Weber stuff that I have read (Empire from the Ashes). It definitely geared toward a grown up audience, so I'm VERY curious to see what the author does in "Zoe's Tale" (which apparently is aimed at young adult readers)


View all my reviews.

Stormtrooper driving

Stumbled upon this the other day without any explaination or mention of ownership, but it was too cool to pass up.

Despereaux

It is (as always seems to be the case) "not as good as the book". The unfortunate part is that with the great voice talent, fantastic art, and flawless animation, the weakened story manages to bring the whole thing down a bit. It's a little dark and sometimes complex for it's target audience. In the end both Emmalee and I really enjoyed this one, with the exception of the way the story diverged from the book. And those differences have actually just convinced each of us that we really ought to read the book again for a good Despereaux palette cleansing.


6 out of 10 things that remained (luckily) unchanged from the book... (i.e. a solid rental to watch with the kids, but read them the book first, or instead... either way)

p.s. isn't it odd how much worse "6 out of 10" seems when compared to "3 out of 5"???

Revolver

So myManMacomber and I were talking about movies that employ some version of an unreliable narrator, and he asks me if I've seen Revolver. I wasn't sure, so I asked him to "hum a few bars"*... after a short description I said "Yeah I totally saw that, that was the one where they smeared it in your face that they hadn't ever said the name of the main character right?" he says "I can't remember, but yeah maybe, that sounds about right"... we traded bits like this back and forth for a while, and while each one seemed familiar neither he nor I was able to actually lock down any one piece or part that we both remembered. In the end he was talking about Revolver but I was thinking of Layer Cake, a film that really doesn't have THAT much in common with Revolver... that said I thought Revolver the better film.

I'd give it 3 out of 5 times I felt like an idiot for confusing it with Layer Cake.

* I love the original joke:
there's a noisy party with a guy playing the piano overly loud. Another guy walks up to him and says "Hey, do you know there's a little old lady upstairs trying to sleep?" And the piano player says "No, but hum a few bars and I'll fake it!"

Trailers for Em

Baby Mama (or: 1 down, 3 to go)

Despite Deb's assurances that she wouldn't actually hold me to 4 chick flix just for season one of Dexter I thought we'd better focus on the "Romantic Comedy" genre when searching for something at Blockbuster over the weekend. Unfortunately Deb had already seen 3 out of 5 of the romantic comedies we considered on this particular Blockbuster trip.

I haven't watched 30 Rock, but the recent slew of Tina Fey skits on SNL made this seem like a good choice. It's a good solid rental. I did have problems with the ending so if you haven't seen this, but plan to then STOP READING NOW... The movie established a "happy" ending by delivering what we had been informed had a "billion to one" chance of happening. I felt a little betrayed. At that point they might as well have had aliens show up and HAND Tina Fey's character a baby (it would have been more plausible and more entertaining!).

[update]I'm going to assume that this one was better than 3 out of the 5 romantic comedies that Deb watched without me.

NetFlix Baby Mama (2008) add to your queue

360 surprise

So last year I bought myself an xbox360 for my birthday. Little did I know that Microsoft was going to remember that and give me a completely unsolicited gift for my birthday one year later.

Thanks Microsoft, it's the little things like remembering a customer's birthday, that really set you apart.

Tehanu

I love Earthsea. This book was hard to love, but the ending was strong and beautiful.
The first 3 Earthsea books are fantastic. The sort of thing I could pick up and read from any point and enjoy. This one feels almost like an 100+ page epitaph for the world of Earthsea. The Earthsea you knew is dead, long live the new Earthsea. The very last chapter changed tone a little and felt a little like the old magic that I want to hear more stories about... With 2 books left in the "cycle" I guess I'll just have to read them and find out which direction the head down?
That said, I would recommend the first 3 Earthsea books to anyone. But be prepared for something VERY different if you choose to read the 4th.

3 out of 5 times that I wondered if I would enjoy this book more if I were a woman?

How long could you survive?

Dexter (season 1)

I finished watching this (again) the other night. Somehow I talked Deb into watching this with me, even though it isn't really her type of entertainment (She considered breaking up with me when I applauded at the end of Mr. Brooks... but that's a different story). That said this obviously isn't for everybody. BUT if you can enjoy a story about a Miami police department blood spatter analysis specialist who just happens to be a serial killer... The Showtime version is definitely "R" rated, but because of the writer's strike season one was edited down to air on CBS (in case anyone in Utah county wanted to watch it).

4 out of 5 chick flicks I'll now have to watch before I can convice Deb to watch season 2.

Spider in the street

Deb, Zack, and I were headed away from my parent's house on Sunday when we saw this guy walking down the street. There is a teacher at Zack's school who has a few tarantulas so we decided to catch this one to add to that collection. The only thing I can add in defense of my less-than-manly behavior during the process of capturing the spider is that while you probably can't see it during the video, the spider is pretty aggressive and at one point jumps at my hand (but is stopped by the plastic container).
video

Ender's Game Comic

I'll be picking up my copy tomorrow!

Castle Crashers

So, Emmalee and I like playing video games. In particular we enjoy games that employ some form of multi-player cooperative play. Because of this we have found countless hours of satisfaction playing the Star Wars Legos video games. This weekend we found what looks to be our new favorite coop game.

Without going into details on the tight controls, excellent art, appropriately complicated RPG elements, ... let me just say that the game is FUN. A whole bunch of fun. My only warning for anyone considering playing it with kids is that there is a little bit of gross humor. The comedic well of "animal poop" is drawn from more than once in this game.

The other thing that I personally dig is that Castle Crashers is the gaming equivalent of an Independent Film. While the finished product was moved to release by many people, The Behemoth (the company that developed the game) was started by 2 guys. One programmer and one artist... the relatively inspiring story can be found here

Short weekend with Em

Em had to get back to her mom's house because she had a church program on Sunday. But we managed to make the most of the truncated weekend.
-dinner with Gram and Poppa
-played The Force Unleashed (basically the first 3 chapters)
-played a little Rock Band (I had to include the picture of Em playing the Guitar AND singing... too funny)
-went to the theater to see Igor
-watched the season 6 finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine together (she can't believe there is only one season left... after that we'll have to find something else appropriately geeky to watch together)

Igor

Em, Deb, Zack and I caught this one Saturday afternoon. It was alright. Not great, but certainly not a waste of time/money. The kids really enjoyed it, and it had a few moments that genuinely made me laugh. The one thing that I really got a kick out of was the character "Scamper". He's one of Igor's first experiments, and is basically a talking rabbit who is immortal. Unfortunately Scamper isn't too thrilled about the idea of living forever. While it's a little dark for a kids movie, I can find the funny in a rabbit repeatedly trying to kill himself. Imagine if Wile E. Coyote had turned all of his roadrunner destruction devices on himself.

3 out of 5 trailers for movies that looked LESS entertaining than this one.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (season 1)

I almost skipped right over this one. There is a lot of good TV out there that really is worth watching (BSG alone makes a strong argument that the best writers in Hollywood are working in TV not feature films). But in the end I gave in and watched it. I have to say it wasn't all that bad. To be fair, I have a soft spot for the Terminator franchise (there's a few really great stories in the Dark Horse Comics).

I'm a little enamored by this idea that stories are really just a collection of words, images, noises, sometimes even songs depending on the medium... and that really great stories are only great because the reader/listener/watcher emotionally connects with something bigger than the sum of the parts (there's got to be a greek word or phrase for that idea right?). That said, The Sarah Connor Chronicles is only a mediocre TV show, but (IMHO) it happens to take place in a fascinating universe.
The acting is OK.
The writing is alright.
The cinematography is acceptable for TV.
The effects are also OK... for TV.
The music is great actually... all the time.
The ideas are pretty good, but occasionally phenomenal. (i.e. a terminator who has all of his disguise (flesh) burned off needs to replace it (right back to the roots in scifi horror); Sara Connor's psychiatrist from T2 becoming a believer!; sleeper cells; time travel paradigms; and hard choices;)
There's scifi gold in there. Sure sometimes you have to squint to see it, but it's in there.

3 out of 5 ways to avert Skynet nuking the planet.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

I finally finished this the other night.

Great show that did not end up getting picked up after it's first season. I could complain about it being under appreciated; Argue that NBC didn't know what a great franchise they were tossing aside; Compare it to some of the really terrible shows that air nightly on NBC and other networks; But in the end, much like Firefly, I didn't watch this when it was airing. Even though I knew it was good at the time (based on sentiment of people I trust), I always planned on watching it once it hit DVD. I read an article that talked about how the Nelson Ratings were making adjustments during the year that SSotSS aired to better represent DVR viewership, utilizing terms like "live +24 hours" or "live +7 days". Considering that I personally don't watch a lot of TV shows until after they have made it to DVD (gotta love NetFlix), I feel like I'm lucky for the enjoyable shows that hang around for multiple seasons (since I didn't contribute anything during their initial run). Years ago I did get to be a "Nelson Family" for a week though. They sent me a paper journal to leave by the TV and fill out whenever someone was watching something. The end result was nothing like my typical week of TV watching (even at the time). Knowing that each "Nelson Family" represents so many viewers, I felt it was my responsibility to watch a lot of shows that I enjoy but wouldn't typically make the time for... so if the Star Trek reruns had abnormally high ratings that week, it's totally my fault.

...better than the other 10 shows NBC cancelled after that season (10 out of 11).

Time to buy a real camera

Em and I were up at my grandfather's cabin last night and saw some fantastic wildlife on the way down. I tried to grab a few photos with my phone, but the quality is pretty bad. I guess it's time to invest in an actual camera (again). Em's favorite was the porcupine (assuming you can tell which picture that is in.)

My Fair Lady

Deb, Zack, and I caught this on opening night. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie, and IMHO no one can play these parts better than Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn; but there is something present in stage performances that movies never seem to capture. (The singular exception being the 1982 TV broadcast of Sweeney Todd, which was really just a filming of the stage play. George Hearn is the quintessential Sweeney)

Back to My Fair Lady... If you get a chance, this one is well worth checking out (I'm going to try to take Emmalee while it's still playing if possible).

Show details here.

4 out of 5 fantastic lead actors.