Reviews

Watched Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers, and don’t quite know what to make of it. Told as a series of flashbacks about the American assault on Iwo Jima, the film follows the novelist son of one of the flagraisers on Mt. Surabaci from this famous picture taken in 1945. The film is a fine piece of work, and the acting in it is tremendous–Ryan Phillippe shines–but I didn’t like it at first. It’s not the deep immersion of Saving Private Ryan. Where Ryan was a gritty, sweeping story about a platoon amid the massive invasion of Normandy, Flags feels very small, almost claustrophobic. We’re rarely in fire-fights; mostly, we see the fearful anticipation or the horrific aftermath. A few days after watching it, I realized: The hardest part of surviving WWII was living with what you’d seen and done. ...

Yes, it’s over-the-top. Yes, it has plot holes you could drive a pumpkin carriage through. Yes, it’s not IMPORTANT CINEMA. So what? This is a fun romp through fairy tale land (and into modern-day New York), complete with a wayward princess, overblown prince, and evil stepmother/witch. It’s a mashup of every cliche from the Golden Age of Dinsey, right down to the poison apples. The premise is…er…complicated: Giselle is about to have her happily-ever-after in Fairy Tale Land (Andalasia), but the Prince’s evil mother casts her down a well, delivering her to Times Square in New York. ...

Easter Pageant?! What is this, amateur hour? Who cares about some piddly church passion play? What’s next, “Best Little Christmas Pageant Ever”? How’s this for Piddly: Two professional composers, a 9000 seat auditorium, 75,000 tickets over a month-long run, a 300 person chorous, two IMAX-size video screens. Traditionally, Southeast’s Easter Pageant has been the biggest theatrical production in Louisville. They took a year off to retool and rework it, comissioning a rework from the ground up. Whereas the previous iteration had been a “cast of thousands” broadway-style production, they wanted something…different. ...

I second the review completely. This all punctuat… Whitney - Mar 1, 2008 I second the review completely. This all punctuated by a preacher who spent tens of thouseands of dollars to change the carpeting throughout the massive facility because he thought it’s mauve overcast was too feminine, eradicated the library completely to put in a starbucks, and banned the sunday school class communal coffee machines and bringing of donuts bc it would detract from the profits reaped by the coffee shop. Can we say Jesus angrily turning over tables and whipping the baristas for defiling his house? I get more angry every time I enter that building. We will not be returning, EVER probably. ...

So, Chinatown. “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” Iconic stuff. Nicholson back when was an awesome actor, not just paid to play himself (see “Witches of Eastwick”, et al.). Faye Dunnaway’s cheekbones. John Huston as the creepy dad. Umm…I hated it. Lined-up against L.A. Confidential, Chinatown is darker, more mysterious, but at the same time, distant. We learn about the characters bit-by-bit, but once we learn everything, we just want to forget them. ...

So, I pretty much spent this afternoon watching all 33 extant webisodes of Quarterlife, a melodrama about 5-7 late-20somethings who aren’t really going anywhere with their lives, but who have plenty of spiffy dialog. The central plot vehicle is Dylan, aspiring writer who’s turned to blogging (really video-blogging, but who’s counting) to express herself and her opinions, particularly on her friends’ lives. (Aside: This is the central tension in blogging–how honest do you want to be? What if someone reads what you wrote about them. That lead to the downfall–and deletion–of my “private” blog. Anyway, Dylan doesn’t pull any punches good for her.) ...

One the face of it, you’ll find few movies more different than End of the Spear and Black Snake Moan: One is a tale of Missionary zeal, the other a gritty portrait of depravity and betrayal. Thanks to an accident of Netflix and the sickness that descended upon our family, I got to watch both within a twelve hour span, and the messages of both harmonize – Redemption is available to anyone. ...

Link Brock Yates and some other ex-C&D guys have a new home, and so far, I like it: - More terse and coherent than autoextremist.com - Profane. Gotta love some locker-room profanity when talking about cars. - Not TOO profane. - Simple, easy visuals, good RSS feeds. Are you listening EDMUNDS!? - Did I mention terse? Edmunds.com, particularly Karl Brauer, treat the internet medium as a license to blather….forever… - They review cars people might actually buy and give honest opinions based around the target audience of that car. Is a Ford Ranger awful? Compared to a Lexus, sure. As a small, effective work truck? It’s awesome, and these guys say so. ...

So, my esteemed father-in-law had a little birthday surprise of his 60th birthday of his own: A Ford 500! (Not his, obviously…) He picked-up a 1 year old Limited model (leather, the works…) at Crossroads Ford in Indiana. It had only 10k miles on it, and I got to take a test drive yesterday. It’s a very well-executed car, and a great replacement for the Crown Victoria: Tremendous interior room, comfort, and driveability. The car stops, turns, and steers like a Euro sedan; driving it, I kept thinking “Volvo” or “Audi”. I found the suspension tuning particularly impressive–not harsh at all, but very well controlled…bumps caused one well-damped motion. There was no float or wallow; the car went where it was pointed and changed directions better than it ought to given its size. ...

Carriage Ford, honey :) Whitney - Feb 1, 2008 Carriage Ford, honey :)

Wow…I’ve been underwhelmed before, but just…wow. Okay, so let’s review: I had a bout of unaccountable Car lust starting earlier this week. The Astra was the newest Euro kid on the block, all sexy and angular. So, today, I took a detour on my way to work and drove one. Walkaround: The car is handsome and substantial…it really doesn’t look like an economy car, but rather an upscale small hatch, a segment the MINI Cooper created. Doors open and close with an assuring thunk. The hatch is pure euro, complete with parcel shelf and a good-sized storage area with the seats up. The rear window is very small (but we’ll get to that…) ...

Joey: “I wish we had cable.” * * * LOST why do I care again? Eli Stone actually made it through a whole episode and found some stuff to like. On the whole, I’d rather sleep, but eh. This one gets the biggest award for “Zero chemistry between main character and his ice queen fiancee.” Oh, and Sydney’s dad from Alias is a co-star. He pretty-much plays the same character. And ‘Ed’ shows up in flashbacks as his Dad. ...

yes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed … Whitney - Feb 5, 2008 yes but if you add water and reheat it, congealed oatmeal can be pretty good. by the way, you left something on at home. (K)

I thought it odd that when I checked-out Rich Dad, Poor Dad as a book-on-tape from the library that the first cassette was not rewound. Nor was it at the end of a side…it seemed as though someone had stopped in the middle of the tape. None of the other tapes were that way. Then I found out why: This book is complete crap. I suffered through half the tape, then took the book back. The author kept spouting platitudes like “Poor people work for money, Rich people have money work for them,” wrapped in some saccharine false anectdote format. ...

Dave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasion… Chris - Jan 2, 2008 Dave Ramsey has recommended it on several occasions, so I added it to my “to read” list a few weeks ago. Looking for something to use a Borders’ gift card on, I started going through that list last week to decide which book to get. After reading some reviews on Amazon and elsewhere about the book, I took it off the list. Seems like you’ve confirmed my assumptions from those reviews… Thanks for the warning about it. ...

Really enjoyed this one, in spite of myself. Jessica Alba’s hot, thought her blonde hairdo is jarring at best. Lots of humor and social commentary here, especially surrounding Alba–she wishes for a normal life, she laments being the hottest woman on the planet, she exclaims after a ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ “Why does this always happen to me?!” The beginning was very slow, as they try to ease us back into the characters we knew from the punchier 1st installment. The Four have grown very accustomed to their powers and their role as planetary protectors, so much so that they seem bored. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the same feeling I get about the actors here–phoning it in, hitting their marks, but without the snap of the 1st movie. This felt more like a really, really expensive TV show than a summer blockbuster: The actors seem comfortable in their characters, and the scope of the action always centers around them. Some of the lines delivered seem like before-commercial, writers-room fodder, especially the lines from Ben Grim. ...

I benefit from the polyglot nature of my upbringing. I speak two languages–English and Kentuckian. I can blend into almost anything from a discussion of Platonic philosophy through a rib eating contest at the county fair. At the Truck Pull tonight at Rupp Arena, I realized that not everyone benefits from this, so I thought I’d prepare this handy guide. Thus: Easy ways to tell if you’re having a Redneck good time ...

Well, a week later, here we are. I’ve gotten and gotten-over a nasty stomach bug, so I managed to miss most of Wednesday through Friday. In my absence, the Wii has replaced the iMac as the coolest thing in the household. Yes, it’s that good. Just to give you an idea, we had Stu and Cathy using it within 4 minutes of watching us play it. We’ve played it for at least 5 hours a day since we got it. ...

2 hours and 20 minutes of THAT?!!! This is a pretty-standard war/buddy flick. Some guys wanna go fly, they go through some training, meet an old salt who tells them they’re stupid, and get a rude awakening when they first meet the enemy. They ALL have backstories, and they’re all (poorly) developed. One resembles Porkins from Star Wars and dies similarly. There’s a love interest thrown-in and many long, conceited scenes flying about in a CGI wonderland resembling a decent WWI Video Game. ...

Yes, it’s that good. Just finished watching the Odyssey-in-a-Microbus, Little Miss Sunshine. It’s the type of movie my wife hates, but which I love, where all the characters are shades of gray. They’re intensely real, and flawed, and they love and hate one another. Yet they’re bound together by bonds that bring them together when it counts–death, adversity, and the bald insanity of life. Steve Carell is a revelation as Frank Hoover, the frustrated homosexual academic who we meet in a hospital fresh off his failed suicide attempt. Out of work, without insurance, he’s kicked out of the pysch ward to the care of his overwrought sister, Sheryl. We meet her blended family next: Her husband Richard the self-help guru, the vow-of-silence goth teen Dwayne, the heroin-snorting profane Grandpa, and the little ingenue Olive. ...