Movie Review - The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnasus

Quick review here...

This was Heath Ledger's last movie (he died about 1/3 of the way into filming) so they got creative and finished it out using Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. These 3 guys actually work in the way they shot it which was very interesting. The movie itself is beautiful, very neat costumes and set designs and interesting concept. It was hard to follow at times and could have used a good bit more back story but the real beauty of this movie was Heath Ledger.

Heath is really shown off in his smallish part, you can see just how good of an actor he was, the Dark Knight really had him hitting his stride and compared to the 3 others that played him only Depp rivaled in performance. I am not a huge Ledger fan but I really began to appreciate his skill in the art of acting in this movie and look forward to seeing some of his other movies that I may have missed.

The story of the movie is also a little creep especially related to Ledger's death, you will have to watch it to find out :)

I give it a Red Box rental because it isn't the type of movie everyone will like but might just be up your ally.

Book Review - The Lost Symbol

Before reading this let us make a quick check list:

Angels and Demons - Read it
The DaVinci Code - Read it

p.s. Don't worry about the movies.

Ok now we are familiar with Dan Brown and his character Robert Langdon, who is the lead role as a Professor of Symbolism who finds his way into crazy situations where he is the only person capable of deciphering symbolic messages. The Lost Symbol doesn't stray from the formula. Unfortunately unlike the story lines where the point of Langdon's adventure makes some kind of sense, this is not the case. The whole story is spurred on by this demi-god-like man who is searching for the lost secret of the Masons. Masonic culture is very richly ingrained in the history of our country so a lot of that aspect of the story was interesting although somewhat fictional I am sure. The part of the book that disappointed me was the villain who gives himself several different names throughout the story. He believes that there is a magical power that will turn him into an all powerful god, and you know right then that this story is going to be a let down because it is spurred on by some moron who thinks there is magic, you know there won't be any magic.

So while the story still has the excitement of the chasing and puzzles, the expected end result of the villain isn't even plausible, so you know it is all a waste of time. There isn't even a great moral victory for the end, no new knowledge or anything. The only positive part of the story line was the beliefs of the Masons and how they view religion (all which could have been learned by looking at their Wikipedia page I am sure).

I would not recommend reading this, if you really feel the need to do so get it from the library for FREE it is not worth paying any money for. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that maybe I was wrong...but I wasn't. I really hope this isn't made into a movie, it would be a gigantic waste of time and money and you are better than that Tom Hanks.

Movie Review - Alice in Wonderland

I could go on for a very long time about this one. I REALLY enjoyed it! To keep it quick, I was very nervous because it is technically a sequel to the original story, normally that means FAIL. I thought they did a very good job with it though. The characters were great, a lot of CG and Mr. Depp too. Depp was not amazing in my mind, the breakout was Alice herself. She did a wonderful job. This will definitely be a buy for me when it comes out. There is no reason to see it in 3D...I hate this 3D fad, it is stupid...most of these movies are not shot to be in 3D they just "can be 3D" where something like Avatar was shot to be specifically in 3D. One of the best movies I have seen in a long time.

Movie Review - The Box

The Box had all the potential to be a great thriller/scary movie. My dear god did they screw that up. It is a very mysterious story where they could have taken it in a really interesting direction but instead it kind of went no where and eventually involved some kind of aliens and/or a government conspiracy. The thing is that by the end you still had no idea what was going on because they only explained like half of it. PLEASE DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.

Movie Reviw - Where the Wild Things Are

Disappointing is a good way to describe this movie. We all know that the book is probably one of the best literary works of all time so the movie had a lot to live up to. It is always a bit difficult to take a 10-20 page childrens book and turn it into a full length feature film, and this one fell short. It felt more like a commercial for kids who have ADHD than a movie. Max who is the main boy clearly has issues instead of just doing something bad and being sent to bed without dinner, he basically goes crazy and runs away. The story then goes a bit long and it does make sense but it just doesn't hold that wonderment the book did. The thing that finally turned it from "ok" to not great was when one of the wild things ripped off an arm from one of the other wild things, it just didn't seem to fit in with my memory of the book.

This brings up something that has always bothered me, is the telling of these children's classics in full length movies...they just don't do the original work justice. The only one that really has so far that I can remember is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but in order to make that work they basically told a different story. Not everything needs to be made into a movie, it isn't always the best idea...

If I see a smurfs movie being made I think I might die

First Day of Spring

This picture turned out really well! It is even better when it is regular size. We took the little guy to the beach this weekend, not for us to go swimming but to see how he did with the scary waves. He did really well, had to be on leash though so that meant someone had to go into the water with him...FREEZING COLD (as expected), but he really enjoyed himself. He liked walking on the sand and the waves were fun to run away from and then jump over. I love the picture because he is so crisp and clear and his normally blank mind seems to be showing a lot of thought (probably something along the lines of "my balls would have frozen if I still had them"). The beach was in Brigantine, NJ which is the town directly north of Atlantic City (which was on fire by the way) and driving in I was not expecting much...seemed pretty trashy. Once we got past A.C. it was a nice little town and the beach was very wide so hopefully somewhere we can go later in the summer. One thing N.J. likes to do is to charge you to use the beaches so that kind of sucks...we did not pay to go on there today!

Once we got back to the apartment and dropped off the now sleepy puppy we hit Rita's Italian Ice for the annual Free Rita's on the first day of spring and we plan on hitting it again after dinner :)

The Art of Shaving

I was given a gift card to the (at the time very new) retail store "The Art of Shaving" about 2 years ago. It was a very exciting gift as I had talked about wanting to get a straight razor shave...like the good ol' days. So long story short there aren't many locations and the only one around here is the one in downtown Philly. We had stopped by once before and at that point they didn't always have the "barber spa" available only on certain days so we struck out that day. Now they have it all the time and we went in without an appointment just going to buy some product to use and we were pleasantly surprised that I could get something done! So I chose a traditional shave which for me meant trimming my beard and shaving my neck with the razor. This included hot towels, cold towels, lotions, hot shaving cream and god knows what else as I was border line asleep once that hot towel hit my face. I COMPLETELY recommend for any guy to get this done at least once in your life...even if u get your whole face done. It is an amazingly relaxing experience and after you really feel like a million bucks.

I still have $20 on my gift card and I am debating between 2 things. While being unemployed I have though about shaving my head completely bald and that is a service the Art provides so I am toying with that just to see what it looks like and the other option is to purchase a straight razor of my own. They last for as long as you take care of them so you never have to buy new blades but they are a bit pricey to start out (saves you money in the long run) and I would have to teach myself how to do it (and be VERY careful!).

Check out The Art of Shaving, their products are pricey but their services are really fun to try!