the good, the bad, THE UGLY

Today I took myself out to lunch, I went to the local Brueggers Bagel joint to get a sandwich and decided to eat there. I choose a table by the window since I would rather stare at the passers by than focus on the fact that I am alone and I am sans iPod, laptop, game console or book. So I watch a couple of women on their smoke break. One of them is a thin brunette in her forties, the other a woman in her sixties with short bleached hair who looked like she still shops in the Juniors sections of department stores.

I spend my time glancing at them and watching people walk by, when I get to the end of my meal and I am just finishing off the potato chips when I glance up and I am greeted to the sight of a naked woman's lower half. For some reason unknown to me, the older woman with the fried hair decided to drop trou in front of her friends, I assume to show them that she still has all her parts, and stand by the parking lot on the side walk of a strip mall.

Then calmly, as though this sort of thing happened every day, she pulls her pants up, tucks in her shirt, picks up her bag and walks away with her friend back to work.

I sat there staring at the place she once stood wondering why she didn't put on any underpants this morning.

Crap I want but don't need

Modern Tree Laptop Sleeve
I can imagine my Macbook comfy and snug, then I can imagine that I too am comfy and snug. This quilted sleeve is magic!
Brick Walls

The Uninvited

Apparently this movie is a remake of a Korean horror film titled A Tale of Two Sisters. I find this astounding because the Korean version would knock your socks off it was just that good, unfortunately The Un invited was not. Hollywood has done its best to remake Asian horror, and at times does it moderately well, I saw no resemblances in this movie to its Korean counterpart, they missed the point of what made “Sisters” scary as hell and a psychological horror that still gets me thinking. I would suggest watching A Tale of Two Sisters instead of this, but if you don’t like reading subtitles, or if you can’t read, watch this, obviously you were the intended audience.

We open to a narrated dream sequence, as Anna tells her therapist about her latest nightmare. Anna has been in a mental hospital since the death of her sick mother in a tragic boat house explosion and apparent suicide attempt. The doctors at this hospital suck because after she tells him about her nightmare, he says she is cured and ready to go home. And just like that, she packs a bag, her dad honks the car horn and she walks out of the hospital like she was only staying at a friend’s house for the night. In her absence, her father’s relationship with her late mother’s nurse has progressed. Obviously, Anna is leery of her, but finds support from her sister older, rebellious sister Alex.

By this point, if you haven’t figured out the twist at the end, you can keep watching. Anna begins to see visions of her mother, and three mysterious children, two boys and a red headed girl who seem to be trying to warn Anna about her shifty new step-mom to be. So Anna and Alex begin to do some Nancy Drew action and check out Rachel’s past. They do all the fun things super sleuths do, they make inquiring phone calls to her previous nursing companies and rifle through her underwear drawer. When not snooping they are hanging around the lake in bikinis.

I can’t give away the surprise ending for all of you who haven’t figured it out, which sort of puts the kibosh on me making fun of this cinematic fiasco. I feel duped for watching this, but I went into knowing it was going to be craptastic, I just feel that my time would have been better spent popping “Sisters” into the DVD player one more time.

the good, THE BAD, the ugly

Only in the American South will you find something called "The Redneck Games" and the celebration of ignorance and blatant bigotry, not to mention crappy taste in outerwear.

You know one of two things happened at this shindig. First, this man was complimented in a non-ironic manner. Second, he did not get the shit kicked out of him.

Crap I want but don't need

Women's Lightweight Intarsia Sweaters
I am not a big fan of Old Navy, but this is really cute, and probably perfect for a crisp Boston spring.
Old Navy

Nintendo DSi
Absolutely do not need this, absolutely want this.
Game Stop

Breaking Dawn

This has nothing to do with Stephanie Myers’s Mormon vampire love tale, it is your typical straight to video sleeper. I have seen this movie twice on cable, and I have to admit that it is really not that bad. I wouldn’t say that it broke any boundaries, or was more clever than any other psychological horror movies that are out there, but it had a quality about it that made it interesting to watch.

We meet Eve, a psych student who lives alone with a controlled routine. Her class is performing something like a “teacher assistance” program through the college. The students are given a mental hospital and a patient and are told basically to either fix or make progress with the given patient. Eve is given Don, a mildly catatonic patient that was traumatized as a youngster by the murder of his mother. Eve is hesitant to begin with such a difficult patient, but her professor puts the pressure on and she gets ready to begin the project.

Don, who is played by Angelina Jolie’s brother, sits in a chair and drools on himself, as Eve begins her introductions in a soothing shrink voice, she tries to get him to talk. She asks him questions about his feelings and his memories and makes little progress until he freaks out, he’s a mental patient they do that sometimes. As security comes in to take him away he tells Eve not to eat or drink anything as it is poisoned or some shit.

Eve tries hard to make progress with Don but he is still holding back his secrets. Eve becomes paranoid and the deeper she goes into Don’s case the more her reality begins to unravel.

It is not cinematic genius, there are few effects and the plot is slow and eventually predictable. But I found Breaking Dawn to be refreshing. It didn’t have ghosties or gore, hell it even had a happy ending, but there was something calming about the way this movie was laid out that made me watch it a second time.

the good, THE BAD, the ugly

It was inevitable that my honey's week and a half off from freezing in the Northern tundra of Greenland was going to end, and today is his last day at home before another six week stint at the top of the world.

I hate Greenland.

Crap I want but don't need

Cat Messenger Bag
To say "no" to this bag would be a crime, it has a cat with a god damn eye patch on it!
Decora Workshop

Backbone Shrug
Mmm, cozy.
Year of the Goat

Camp Rock

We all knew this was going to happen one day or another. I sat down for a Disney Chanel Original Movie. Oh yeah, that just happened. At first I was a bit overwhelmed where to start, I had not one but three High School Musical movies to choose from and this bad boy. I made it through five minutes of HSM so this was the obvious next choice. Making fun of this made-for-TV movie is a bit too easy, but I did watch it and therefore must review it.

We meet our main bitch Mitchie while she is dancing, hyper posing and lip sinking in her room while getting dressed for the last day of school. I thought I was dying most mornings, but if she has the spastic energy of a chipmunk at 6:00am more power to her I guess. Well from this display we glean that she has musical talent and does indeed want to rock, but alas, her parents are of humble salaries and are not able to afford the prestigious Camp Rock. Mitchie pouts because life is unfair, but in two seconds she is smiling like a god damn lunatic.

Since the movie is called Camp Rock we can deduce that she will be participating in the rocking activities in some capacity or another. So when she returns from school or work or whatever her poor slave driving family is making her do, they inform her that the camp chose her mother’s catering company to supply the food for the campers and Mitchie can join the camp as long as she works in the kitchen as well. I give this an “A” for predictability and for impossibility but whatever. So they roll into Camp Rock, with Mitchie hanging out the window like a dog and drinks in the splendor of the camp where she will indeed learn to rock. It is unbelievable that the camp is even functioning with a staff of one, a total of 50 campers and a full time catering service, I slap myself as I remember this is Disney and I move on.

Again as predictability would have it, an anorexic popular girl arrives by limo as she is the daughter of an absent pop star mother and the popular tween band “Connect 3”(aka: the Jonas Brothers) is having trouble with their dreamy front man, Shane. As he is the nephew of the owner of Camp Rock, he is sent there as punishment for his devilish ways and to straighten up and teach the kids a thing or two about being a tween pop star and about wearing skinny jeans.

Since Mitchie wants to fit in more than anything else in this whole wide world, she lies about who her family is, saying her mother is the CEO of the Japanese office of some MTV rip off music channel. She instantly is invited to hang with the pop princess and Mitchie smiles again like a freak. So Mitchie spends the rest of the movie smiling like a cracked out Cheshire cat and trying to disguise her relation to the “lunch lady” and singing the same song over and over with different melodies. The campers do a few synchronized dance routines, randomly burst into song while being accompanied by invisible instruments, jam by the lake and practice for the end of summer rockfest.

Turns out that the pop princess is an insecure bitch, Shane overhears Mitchie sing her one and only song and spends the rest of the movie looking for “the voice” but falls for Mitchie who was “the voice” all along, squee! Mitchie’s true identity is revealed but she learns to “rock” through the embarrassment and participates is a poorly choreographed final dance routine.

Oh Disney, I hope you never stop churning out tweenage whores to do your bidding.

Daily Memory

Childhood would not be complete if elementary school did not include recess tetherball. The tetherball used to sit lonely, a solitary pole with a ball hanging limply from a string until slowly it was discovered and the fight for the tetherball was on. Once recess began, you would have to sprint to the tetherball to form a line where next in line plays the previous winner. It was great fun, the only problem was, the tetherball became a catalyst to form the popular vs. non-popular groups. Your social status was based on your form, overall score and ability to "talk shit". Only the strong survived at tetherball. Adverse to conflict I had to abandon tetherball for things that were less exciting, like the tire swing.

the good, the bad, THE UGLY

There is a pandemic happening in the world of denim-wear, and no, it isn't the pinch and roll, it is the mysterious removal of the back pocket. Wearing said pocketless trouser does not hurt you, but it hurts those around you. It's like someone sat down one day and said "what can I do to make the female ass less appealing?" as thus the pocketless pant was created. These unflattering garments are most commonly seen in malls all across America.

Crap I want but don't need

Pomegranate Mary Jane House Shoes
Who doesn't need these bad boys?
Elephant and Chickpea

Apple iTV
I really don't need this at all, and if it weren't a computer gadget I wouldn't even be coveting it.
But alas, I always pick one up in the Apple store and ponder dumping $400 on this thing
Apple

The Day the Earth Stood Still

…Long enough to waste my time with this crapfest. By the time the credits rolled, I experienced trauma induced amnesia and am not able to recollect the horror of the two hours I spent viewing this peach of a film. I will do my best to recollect and reconstruct my fragmented memories to alert you of this movie so that you will not make the same mistake I did by watching it.

At some point in time, an alien race decided to study our planet and the effects we have on it and in a plan to collect the samples or blow us up, they steal the DNA of a mountain climber. I believe this must be due to fact that if you are an alien and you plan to come to earth, there is no better disguise than Keanu Reeves. Whoa.

Now we are in the present and a giant orb is coming at us and a crack team of scientists who consist of one Jennifer Connelly (who is also a single mother who’s stepson is played by Jaden Smith who I would like to believe has “The Fresh Prince is my daddy, bitch” on constant replay in his head,) are pulled together to figure out a survival plan, and they have only 78 minutes to do it. Whoa. Everyone’s time is wasted due to something I care little about and the sphere lands in Central Park where all space waste lands and out steps Keanu and a huge fucking robot who turns out to be the only part of this movie I liked. A Republican caught wind that the alien was going to prove the existence of Global Warming and Keanu is shot. Whoa.

Keanu is taken to hospital to recover and his robot buddy is taken away for study. While recovering and being questioned, J-Con helps him to escape to Jersey of all places. Well Klaatu begins to send off the animals two by two to begin life on another planet I assume, but after talking to a fellow alien and has a heart to heart with John Cleese and decides that Earth needs to live. We have been sufficiently scared by the big threatening robot man and see the error of our ways and will all buy green and begin to recycle and will hug their neighbor instead of stabbing them, you know, like we did in Ghostbusters 2. But the robot dissolves into destructive bugs and begins to devour the earth. Whoa.

While New York and surrounding areas are being devoured by the bugs that can DEVOUR EVERYTHING, Our heroes are protected by a Footbridge. So J-Con convinces Klaatu to turn off his robot and we all live happily ever after. Whoa.

After watching this movie, the idea of being devoured by nano-bugs seemed like a pleasant idea. So now that you have been warned, I can sleep easier.