Stupid fat hobbitses!

This review is going to be special, because we are both writing it. Try to guess who is who! This is fun! (This is funner.)

I watched all of The Lord of the Rings movies! I watched all of The Lord of the Rings movies! I watched all of The Lord of the Rings movies! And let me tell you something else (but just once this time). They didn’t suck. Well, the second one I can’t really say much about because I did fall asleep suddenly and without warning in the first few minutes.

So we watched the first one, and it was good. I have seen it a few times. In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years (say hi to Smiegel!), I will be privileged now to give you a synopsis. There are these rings that a guy made. He’s the king of the world or something. And he makes one that’s a magic ring that gives people powers. I couldn’t decide what kind of powers, since it makes Frodo disappear, it makes Smiegel a crazy skinny gollumy creature, and Bilbo gets angry vampire teeth when he’s got it. But it’s supposed to make you all powerful. Smiegel didn’t get the memo, because the ring made him crazy and the opposite of powerful.

So the ring has to be destroyed I guess because it’s making river folks crazy, and turning hobbitses into angry vampire immortals. The ring has to be taken to Mordor, and thrown in the volcano where it was made. Sounds simple enough right? Yeah, so Frodo is a hobbit fella who, with his best buddy Sam, is commissioned with the task of taking the ring, simply walking into Mordor, and throwing the ring out with the trash. But little did they know that one does not just simply walk into Mordor.

That last sentence was the change up! Well they left me in a good position. Frodo goes with his buddies and makes 4 more friends who are ordered to help him walk into Mordor and destroy the one ring which rules them and in the darkness binds them. No need to tell me, I already know that my nerd is showing.

They venture off and go into the wilderness and start the trip. I like to imagine this as a really cool road trip with all of you best buddies. Just with orcs and goblins and a balrog trying to kill you. YAY more fun! so they go and meet elves and get split up and meet horse people and a creature that has crazy for brains and the whole of middle earth gets saved.

I love and worship these movies. They are so masterfully done. I did however get reminded of a joke that I heard that was made about it once that went a little something like this. Ahem:

Frodo: How are we going to get to Mordor and then to Mt. Doom Gandalf?

Gandalf: I know some giant eagles that we can ride on!

Frodo: YAY! We’re here! And it only took about 2 hours! (drops ring in volcano opening) Done and done!!

Roll credits. If they did this it would have been really lame and stupid but really think of how easy it would have been.

Anyway, so the entirety of the movies is about nine hours of your life, but we watched the extended versions, so tack on an extra decade or so. I may be 50 years old right now, not sure. My favorite thing about the movies was that they were done like a decade ago and the special effects are still super awesome. And by super awesome, I mean, they are a little ridiculous now and in another five years we’re going to watch them and put them in the same category with the crazy ridiculous ghosts that kill the guy in the movie Ghost. Pretty rough stuff. But for the time, sure, they were awesome. My least favorite thing about the movie was that Stanley Tucci wasn’t in any of them. Not even as a supporting role. So lame.

Basically, they weren’t bad. The second one I have a feeling was a snoozefest, mostly because I snoozed through the entire thing, but also because there are talking trees that talk forever. Kiiiiiind of a stretch, Tolkien. And kind of a lot like the poetry torture alien guys in Hitchhiker’s Guide. Again, so lame.

But now we get to watch a REAL movie, and it’s equally awesome sequel: The mannequin movies! I have been looking forward to this moment since the inception of this blog. This is Steve, signing out!

Off to Terre Haute. Only this time, there was no turning back.

I don’t even remember what this movie was called. It was a documentary about Larry Bird, so we’re going to call it Larry Bird: The Movie!

And since it was a documentary, and since Steve said it didn’t count as a movie, and since there was no storyline to speak of, I’ll keep my synopsis brief: Larry Bird chops wood. Larry Bird has a molestache. Larry Bird has a mullet. Larry Bird is really good at passing. Larry Bird makes some three pointers. Larry Bird shoots from the top of the key. Larry Bird, despite all of his hard work, somehow doesn’t win every single game possible.

That’s right, folks. We watched and watched for several hours, it seems, with some guy telling us how awesome Larry Bird is. And then at the end of every sentence, after sitting through several bad basketball metaphors, the narrator of Larry Bird’s life says, “But the Celtics lost.” Or the statement of eternal sads: “That year, Indiana State won every game they played except one… But they did it without Larry Bird.”

What the crap, Narrator? If Larry Bird was so awesome, why even bother mentioning that he lost like, 90 percent of the games they played in? Why even bother mentioning that he spent several years of his life not in school, sweeping garbage out of the streets in French Lick, Indiana? Why get my hopes up at all? You have to know that of all the people in the world who care about basketball, Stephen and I don’t make the cut? Why get us to care, even fleetingly, about this man who was apparently the greatest basketball player to ever live, and then tell us about how he lost all the time?

Basically, I’m eternally disappointed in Larry Bird. Honestly. I was seriously impressed watching his moves. I witnessed with my own two eyeballs him making a shot from half court, while running, with two seconds left in the game. You’ve got impressive things like that on your resume, you better have a documentary about you with a narrator who lies. You better have a narrator who tells you that the Larry Bird molestache of the 80s inspired a new superbreed of humans or something. Anything less, you’re just going to disappoint your viewers.

So anyway, the movie was all about the games and championships that Larry Bird lost, while simultaneously showing a steady stream of awesome layups (yeah, I know what a layup is, jerk!), game-saving three pointers, and games that were really too close (76 to 74 against the Lakers in 86) for someone who has a documentary made about him, available on VHS through Freecycle (that’s how I got it, anyway).

So I guess I don’t understand the hype. His moves look choreographed. He makes basketball look easy, which is saying something, because I know it’s not. I was politely dismissed in my ninth grade P.E. class during our basketball section to not participate anymore. Something about slowing everyone else down. (I hit my stride when we got to–I kid you not–ping pong–and was allowed to rejoin the throng.)

So I know it’s a little disjointed, but when has our blog been anything but? The point is, I think there are a whole lot of other people who should have documentaries done about them. People who won more basketball games than Larry Bird did, for example. I’m just saying, if you’re going to praise the guy for an hour straight, don’t let me down by following it up with, “And then Larry Bird got old, started hurting his knee every game, and died.”

Kidding. I know Larry Bird can’t die.

I’m pregnant.

I haven’t seen Junior in like a million years before now, and let me tell you something. The refresher was awesome! In case you’ve been living in a cave since the early 90s, this movie is about two doctors, who are denied FDA approval for a drug that would pretty much make miscarriage a thing of the past. They decide to take matters into their own hands, and get this. They make Arnold Schwarzenegger pregnant! Could a movie be any better than this? I think not.

Anyway, so Arnie is all pregnant, and he’s all hopped up on hormones, and his behavior is a lot like another favorite movie of mine (also on this list), Mr. Mom. He has the cravings, the hyperdrive emotions, mood swings, the whole bit. And it’s just amazing, is all I’m saying. Danny Devito… I can’t remember what I was going to say about him, because I just remembered to add “Renaissance Man” to my Pinterest and came back and forgot I was writing a blog.

Anyway, the whole cast is amazing. That may be what I was getting at. There’s the one lady. And Emma Thompson, whom I love. And Danny DeVito, whom I love. And Arnold, who I kind of loved before I discovered how freaking messed up he is. He is/was kind of like The Rock of the 80s/90s. You know what I mean? Big tough guy, kind of scary looking, starts out in some really BA movies and then turns to meaningless fluffy films. I’m talking to you, Kindergarten Cop. And stop laughing, The Tooth Fairy, you’re part of this too.

Anyway, so Arnold is pregnant, and the other lady is pregnant, and typical early 90s shenanigans happen, and the whole thing is utterly ridiculous. And awesome. Because “utterly ridiculous” and “awesome” are, for all intents and purposes, completely the same thing in my book. If you haven’t seen it in the last five days or so, I highly recommend it. Steve liked it even more this time around because now he can truly appreciate the psychotic nature of a pregnant person.

Now stay tuned for another ridiculous/awesome film about a pregnant person, Juno, reviewed by Steve!

cloth-eating death roll crocodiles!

The best part about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is watching it with my funny husband and hearing his own quotes. Like the one above. (Also: “Well it’s bright colors Thursday, so…” and “Hehe. I always hated that guy.”) I was going to pick another line from the actual movie, but let’s face it, half of the movie is screams and “Nooooo!” and “Indy! Indy! No!” and headaches. Trust me, this is better.

Okay, I’m going to start this review off with a confession. Prior to now, I had never seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, and really felt deep down in my gut that I wasn’t missing much. For about 20 years of my life though, and for the past two years that I’ve known Steve, it’s pretty much a topic that gets touched on at least three times a day. So I felt sort of… un-American. I mean, when you’re married to someone who every second is saying, “Kah-li-ma!” and trying to get you to guess what movie it’s from… you start to get kind of a bad self-esteem not knowing what he’s talking about, and blocking it from your memory every time he says “Indiana Jones, Brittany! I cannot believe you haven’t seen it.”

It was with some trepidation that I went into watching these. Steve promised it would be better than Raiders of the Lost Ark , which it was. Slightly. But tell me something about Indiana Jones movies, people. Why is the worthless female accessory necessary? She walks around, screams when she sees bugs, or skulls, or a snake (and there’s always a snake), and by the end of the movie, most of her clothes have been torn to shreds. Also, why in these kinds of movies (not restricted to Indiana Jones movies by any means) does the female accessory always have to fall into water? Don’t answer that.

The synopsis of the movie is this: Indiana Jones is an archaeologist who is in China to get this big diamond. He gets the diamond, drops the diamond, gets poisoned, gets pushed onto a food cart into a wall (I noticed also that every time a fight scene takes place in a restaurant, someone always gets pushed onto a food cart and into a wall–try me), balloons are everywhere, then BAM! They’re in India. What the freak just happened?

So in India, they chance upon this village, and somehow good ol’ Indy, his Japanese sidekick, and his female accessory (who he picked up for who knows what reason in China), end up agreeing to go pick up a magical rock from some palace hidden in a mine. The rock will apparently bring fortune and glory to the village. And also, all the kids in the village were kidnapped by devil worshippers. Not sure how their parents happened to miss all 2,000 of their children disappearing into the darkness one night. But whatever.

So they go to the mine-slash-palace, the female accessory falls into water, gets wet, screams a lot, almost gets sacrificed to some hell-god (at which point, I’m thinking, “Yesssssssss!”), and then screams. They get the stone, Steve says some funny stuff, and then they go back to the village, where they discover that in Indy’s absence, all the formerly-dressed-in-rags villagers are now dressed in fine silks of assorted colors. And also, their village is no longer dirty. It is now green, lush, and people are pooping golden nuggets. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. You can watch it.

Good Points: The little Japanese sidekick is just a treasure. A treasure, I tell you. The special effects are also pretty amazing, and the movie contains more human skulls than you could ever imagine. It’s pretty amazing. I really liked the part where they stuck the female accessory, sweaty and in a bikini top, over the flaming hell god volcano, until Indy saved her. Which brings me to the bad points…

Bad Points: …Indy saved her. I’m tempted to skip this section because if you’ve seen the movie, you know what a bad movie looks like. (Kidding, Indy. Kisses!) I think my only complaint was that the ride at Disneyland takes place in a Jeep instead of mine carts (with Indians climbing into the cart with you to participate in a good old fashioned minecart fight), but that’s more of a bone of contention I’ll have to take up with the folks at Disney. And believe me, I will. Carts would be way cooler. And that’s a fact.

Another fun fact before I leave you. George Lucas, famed director (or something) of the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones series, paid homage to his Star Wars roots in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark: The nightclub they are at in the opening scene is called “Club Obi Wan.” I noticed that. You’re welcome.

Stay tuned, because after the Indy movies are all watched and reviewed, we get to watch Iron Eagle, a movie Steve has never seen but got from his psychopathic-pathological-liar dad, who gave it a wildly enthusiastic endorsement.

Hey, I’m not an animal! I… I am.

I think we need to start putting reviews of new movies we have seen on this blog. I am going to start with the movie I saw last night. While Steve was gone, I went and saw Marmaduke. No one I knew really had any interest in seeing it (I can’t imagine why–those trailers were hilarious!) and it had been a while since I went to a movie alone (read: a week and a half!), so I went by myself. Probably not the best movie ever. But I loved it.

The leading man in the movie (other than Marmaduke) was one of the worst actors I have ever seen, but the leading lady was none other than Judy Greer, who as far as I’m aware, has strictly been a character actress thus far in her career. Like Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones, I was glad to see one of my favorite actors in a leading role. Even if she was just playing the mother to a Great Dane.

I think Marmaduke is a must-see for all little children and dog lovers everywhere. It made me miss my little Pommers back home, and inspired me to train him really well because he is just too cute to not be a circus dog or something. (His repertoire currently consists of sit, come, and we are working on “Get up!” and “Look at me!” with dismal results.)

The CGI in this movie was very minimal. According to IMDB, the only CGI in the movie was lip syncing the dogs. (I am skeptical though, as I’m not positive that you could ever train a Great Dane to stand up and do the robot, but whatev.) The dogs were really smart and at times you forget that they are animals, but once I started forcing myself to remind myself that these dogs were being trained to do all this stuff they were doing in the movie. Super impressive.

One thing I really would have liked to see in this movie is more rescue/shelter dogs. All of the dogs were obviously purebreds, even the “mutts” that Marmaduke chills with are purebred (Australian Shepherd, Dachshund, and Chinese Crested). I stayed after the credits to see where they got the dogs for the movie, and it regretfully was not a shelter. I thought that would have been pretty great, but alas.

The movie was a combination of 10% Marley & Me, 10% The Ugly Dachshund, and 80% Some Kind of Wonderful. That’s right, in Marmaduke, Mary Stuart Masterson’s equal is an Australian Shepherd whose crush, a Great Dane (Eric Stoltz), thinks he’s in love with a Sheltie (Lea Thompson). It’s amusing a little bit. I love Some Kind of Wonderful.

But anyway, if you love dogs, please see this movie. Dogs are the smartest animals in the whole world and I’m pretty sure I need to have 20 other ones so they can have awesome parties while I’m gone.

This isn’t how I go.

Big Fish.

This is my favorite movie of all time for various reasons. Let’s make a list and discuss the individual points, okay? YAY!

1. The story line is amazing. It’s very reminiscent of the relationship that I had with my father.
2. The cinematography is fantastic.
3. The Music is enticing.
4. The acting is well done.

Reason #1: My father was a big talker, he told impossible stories and was never around while I was growing up. In the movie it was because he was a traveling salesman. In my life it was because my dad left when I was VERY little. I never knew the real him. He was a likable guy and tried to be everyone’s friend including mine. Unfortunately for me that isn’t what I needed, I needed a Father. Someone there to teach me how to shave, someone there to baptize me, to be a positive influence, to keep me going on the right path. Someone to help me with my advancement in the various levels of the priesthood. Someone to go through the temple with me for the first time, to cheer me on at my choir concerts. Like I said these are the things I needed.

What I got instead was a guy that we would go up to see in Montana over the summer for maybe 3 weeks at a time. His stories were very entertaining for a young boy but as I became a man I was struck with a hint of realism. I wanted the truth of how he lived his life, not what he thought I wanted to hear to think  that he was a cool guy. As an adult I wanted nothing more than to call him on it like Will does in the movie. I’ll never have that chance.

My father passed away on January 22, 2010. He went in for a surgery earlier that day and my step-mom found him lying on the floor in the middle of the night. The doctors say that it could have been a blood clot or perhaps a pulmonary embolism. He had had health problems for a long time but even still we didn’t see it coming this soon. Brittany was a savior for me, for even though I wasn’t as emotionally traumatized as someone would have been that had their father with them their whole life I still wouldn’t have handled it nearly as well. I’m just glad that they got to meet each other in this life.

Unlike the movie, my father’s funeral wasn’t filled with all the characters from his tall tales. Over the last year or so of his life he claimed to have been in the marine corps for all of his life. If he was as highly decorated as he claimed to be then there would have been a 21 gun salute and the whole enchilada. Instead some of the employees from the mortuary folded the flag and handed it off to my step-mom who, incidentally, still believes his impossible stories.

Enough of that.

Reason #2: The cinematography was marvelously done. All of the angles and the little details were very well taken care of. I have found that if your camera placement isn’t in a proper location for the moment you lose 90% of  the effect that is being sought out.

Reason #3: I eat, sleep and breathe music. I was once told by my best-friend Matt Maughan that if you were to dive in my head you would get caught in a musical tornado of lethal proportions. With that being said I think it safe to deduce that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to music. It is all very appropriate for every scene. It truly helps to draw you in deeper into the story and experience the same emotions as the characters.

Reason #4: The acting. All of the actors did a fantastic job at their individual roles. I was, still am and always will be very impressed with the caliber of the casting agent chosen for this movie.

Tim Burton, I know that you love Johnny Depp and all but I know with every iota that makes me me that Ewan McGregor was the perfect choice for this film. Johnny Never could have pulled this role off. I’m sorry to all of those Depp fans out there but admit it. He couldn’t have done it.

Well that’s all I have to say about the best movie known to man. A movie of such high caliber that it deserves a post of such length to describe it. Interweb, for now I bid you adieu. My beautiful and ever so lovely fiancee is asleep by my side and needs to go to bed and so do I.  Keep checking for the next review. Blades of Glory reviewed by the always stunning Brittany. Peace out!