Whew! It's been a busy July. I finished up a ballet, am now in the midst of designing the next thing, and ready to pick up the script to design the one after that. Donald and I finally got the house in a state to receive visitors! There is still more to do, including decorating, but now we don't have to step over boxes any more.

Movies lately:
Hellboy 2. Very different movie than the first one. I enjoyed it, but not enough to see it again.
Live Free of Die Hard: Enjoyable enough, but completely bullshit in many many places.
Juno: Fantastic. Loved the dialogue.
The Dark Knight: Also fantastic. Can't wait to see it again.
The Whole Nine Yards: Donald hadn't seen it so we netflixed it. Fun movie.

White Noise 2

Do not see it. You'd think that a movie starring Nathan Fillion and Katee Sackhoff would be a cool thing. It sure would be, if it were a movie that did not suck. There was a nice "Captain Tightpants" reference, but it was pretty much a crummy movie. The one thing that we enjoyed while watching was the 20 seconds in the making of when they talked about who would win in a fight between Starbuck and Cap'n Reynolds. I guess it was better than War (Jason Statham and Jet Li) because we didn't even get through the whole movie with that stinker.

Anybody else loving "watch instantly" on Netflix? It used to give you a few hours a month, but now it's unlimited. I watched 2 1/2 seasons of The Office (American version) on my computer before Donald decided to hook my laptop up to the TV. Then it was more awesome. I had to watch season 4 of The Office on Hulu which doesn't have the resolution that Netflix has. I'm also stuck watching BSG on Hulu, which is still a bit better quality than Scifi.com. Netflix downside: you have to use IE, and it sucks up your bandwidth big time. Netflix upside: no commercials, the "next" button when you're watching a TV show. Mike! You can catch up on Heroes on Netflix.

Iron Man

Iron Man lived up to its trailer. This may be brought to you in part by the fact that I can't remember ever reading an Iron Man comic. So I don't know/care about anything they changed for the movie. Robert Downey Jr was terrific. The CG was just right, it didn't stand out too much. Go see it!

If you do go see it, stay until the end of the credits for a little treat.

Incredible Hulk looked okay. Ed Norton looks good. Hell, it's got to be better than the first one, which I thought was dull.

Spring is here

I'm going from one thing to another this week. Today was focus at the Lyric from 8-5, then my show call here at Copaken at 5:30. I should be home by nine. Tomorrow and Saturday are all day Lyric, then on Sunday I'll close a show at Copaken then head back to the Lyric for more tech. It should be a profitable week, at least!

It seems Subway is having a promotion with footlongs for $5. I got one at lunch and ate the other half for dinner. Lunch and dinner together cost me about $7.

I'm sick of driving. It used to be fun, but now it just seems like there are too many assholes doing asshole things out there. I want a subway, now.

We watched 28 Days Later last night. I was pleasantly surprised that there weren't cheap scares where something jumps out at you. The story wasn't complex, but it didn't need to be. Also- more Cillian Murphy can't be bad. I'm definitely going to be waiting for Danny Boyle's next movie, since he also directed Sunshine which I loved.

I love flowers! I love going out every day and looking at new growing things. My hens and chicks have decided now is the time to grow bigger. It must be all the rain. I also enjoy daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, irises, and violets. I love that violets grow all over the yard. Purple, light purple, white with purple centers and white. Soon lilacs will bloom. I may have to dig up my plants when we move. I'm getting rather fond of them.

So awful

Whatever you do, don't Netflix The Girls' Room. The description makes it sound pretty entertaining, and it has Wil Wheaton, and Netflix thought we'd like it- but it was wrong. As readers of Wil's blog, we know that he acted in crappy movies in exchange for shiny gold rocks in order to feed his family. But damn. The dialogue was hokey, the characters were unlikeable, and the story lacked conflict. We fast forwarded large parts of it.

Verdict: Stay far far away!

I love trailers

Yay trailers! They're bite size bits of entertainment that sometimes indicate a whole movie of goodness! But sometimes the trailer uses all the funny. All you can do is hope you didn't spend $9 to see the whole thing before you found out. Here are my trailer verdicts:

Iron Man- Looks friggin' awesome. Robert Downey Jr is perfect for the role. Cross fingers and hope movie doesn't suck.

Wanted- Also looks awesome! Angelina kicking ass, check. James McAvoy, check. I'm so sold. I love me some good action.

Indiana Jones 4- Looks okay- the trailer doesn't really show a lot other than clips of the action. I'm cautiously hopeful, but not holding my breath.

Get Smart- Trailer delivers. I'd like to go see it.

The Love Guru- Netflix. I laughed in places, but it's nothing we haven't seen Mike Meyers do before. And Jessica Alba promises to be as dull as always.

Sex and the City- Netflix. It'll probably be more of the same as the TV show, and I didn't pay to watch that either.

Doomsday- Apparently not starring Kate Beckinsale, but I didn't realize that until I read the cast list. The action looks good, but it'll probably be a Netflix.

The Bank Job- Doesn't look like Jason Statham will be flipping any cars in this one, so yay! Looks decent, probably Netflix.

Many thanks to Apple for putting all these trailers in one place for me to enjoy.

movie roundup

Donald and I watched the third Resident Evil movie tonight. I say it's better than the second, but not as good as the first. Milla Jovovich entertains, and zombies eat people. You know the drill.

I saw Atonement a couple weeks ago, and thought it was excellent. Not my usual sort of movie, but some folks invited me along. This is one of the few times I've seen a best picture nominee before the Oscars.

More Netflix fun included Brick last week. We both really enjoyed it. It's described as an unconventional film noir set in high school. It was certainly something different.

Next in our queue: The Last Kiss, with the Braff. (who Donald loves in a non-gay way.)

Nothing terribly interesting has been happening lately. I worked a bit more on the UMKC show, and I should be done with it now. I cooked on Monday night. I tried a new pork chop dish. It was okay, and Donald liked it well enough. I got tired of it the second time I ate it so I don't think I'll be making that one again. I really enjoyed the pork chop part though. I'll have to get pork chops more often.

I've washed dishes almost every day this week. I'm very tired of washing dishes. Period. I want a dishwasher. Maybe we can get one in our new place. We're moving in a few months! My dad is buying a house from a nice old fellow on the next block. We're going to rent from him. We'll have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a garage! We'll be able to keep the car indoors!! That's going to be awesome. I'm also looking forward to not hauling everything I buy up the stairs anymore. That's especially troublesome after I go to Costco. It's a 1 story ranch style so it's not a cute house, and it doesn't have a porch. But it's solid, well insulated, and not owned by the university. It does have a small back patio, and we may be able to build a deck over it.

Donald and I watched Shoot Em Up last night. The title says it all- there's a lot of shooting. Very well choreographed shooting! It was pretty much great. If you're in the mood for some fun action that's not dragged down by a lot of plot, rent this. Clive Owen is badass. It's an hour and a half of pure entertainment.

Update: Amazing

eBay batteries arrived, and when installed in flashlight, produced light. Success! Hooray for the internet.

We watched Mean Girls the other night, and were thoroughly entertained. Tiny Fey should write more movies. I loved the dialogue! It also made me sad that Lindsey Lohan has turned herself into a scrawny blonde burnout. She really had potential (and pretty red hair.)

Transporter 3 will probably take place in a secret moon base

The Transporter, which I was assured was much better than the Transporter 2, was not much better than the Transporter 2. It was better, but it still wasn't what I would call good. There were some very enjoyable fight scenes, especially at the beginning. It started to go downhill when he let kidnapped girl stay at his house, and he went to bed. Good idea, sir! Clearly you've kept your reputation as a guy who does the job without getting involved by making genius moves like this. What could possibly go wrong?! It got more improbable from there, but at nowhere near the level of the sequel. Probably because the piles of cash available on the sequel allowed them to make exponentially more unrealistic stunts. And somewhere between the two movies Mr. Badass took a class in Matrix-esque bullet dodging. I still like Jason Statham though. I enjoyed him in the Italian Job.

Donald and I decided that the producers of the Hitman movie (which is based on the Hitman vidya game) were insane to have someone OTHER than Statham play the main character. Timothy Olyphant is a lovely guy, I'm sure, but I just don't buy him as this character. Somebody else already went through the trouble of comparing:
Whatever. It'll probably end up as one of those movies I want to see but not badly enough to fork out $9. There have been an awful lot of those lately.

Not quite Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs

I sat down in my desk chair this morning and wrapped myself up in a blanket because it's kind of chilly. A couple minutes later Anna dashed in, hopped onto my lap and gave me a dirty look- as if to say, you got out the blanket and didn't tell me?? Then she turned in circles a few times and settled down, purring furiously. I love having a cat.

Monday I finished up Aida. It took about an hour, then I spent a couple more finishing up my gel file cabinet organization project. I'm pretty damn pleased with the outcome. There are a few more things to organize, and it's not perfect, but it's sooo much better than before. All it took was a bit of time. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because I started the file cabinet project many moons ago, and just now got around to finishing it up. Monday evening we watched Heroes. It was a good start to the new season. Lots of questions to answer!

Tuesday I went in to work and started my dimmer check as usual, to find that the entire first rack of dimmers wasn't working. That meant zero lights were working front of house. I had no idea how to fix that, so I called SMJ, who came over to save the day. After poking at several things, they came back to life. We didn't really figure out what was wrong, and that's never good. If it happens again and we can't get them up at all, there are several backup plans. First plan was to turn on the Studio Spots and use them to frontlight wash the whole stage. (The set is small. This would have worked.) Plan 2 was to turn on the followspot and have SMJ followspot the whole show. (It's a one woman show. This also would have worked.) Comedy option three was to give the audience free booze so they'd be so drunk they wouldn't care what it looked like. This led people to suggest that we should have had free booze all through tech. Yeah, and if wishes were horses we'd all be eatin' steak.

Wednesday Donald stayed home sick, and spent most of the day sleeping on the couch and feeling crappy. We got Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from Netflix, and tried to watch it in the afternoon. I say tried because it was a really crappy movie. I dozed off once, and then gave up entirely and got ready for work. I sure hate it when a good book is turned into a bad movie. That night was opening night, and it went just fine. All dimmers kindly performed their dimming, the audience clapped, then we ate nibbles at the opening night party.

Thursday I went for a walk in the morning, washed some dishes in the afternoon, did the show in the evening, and watched the tape of the Grey's Anatomy season premiere that Donald kindly remembered to record. We're so hooked on that show.

I have the ForecastFox extension installed. It puts today's weather in the bottom of my browser. I just glanced over and saw a curly looking symbol I'd never seen before. I moused over it and saw that it was predicting wind, but not until after I thought to myself, "Ah, sunny with a chance of squigglies." Now I'm picturing squigglies falling from the sky.
It'd be different!

Stardust

I really enjoyed Stardust. I know they changed things up for the movie, but I'm okay with that. It's been several years since I read the book, so I barely remembered more than the plot anyway. I found it to be about 90% delightful. The part I did not enjoy was the completely pointless DeNiro mincing about scene. The movie people clearly think it's hilarious, but it just made me feel embarrassed. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the 7 brothers, Michelle Pfeiffer and her goat drawn chariot, Claire Danes, and the guy playing Tristan.

It's been a lazy week for me. Dishes have been washed, groceries have been purchased, laundry has been laundered. Annnd... I played a bunch of Wario's Woods. I just can't help it, I love games when things fall out of the sky. We've certainly gotten our $5 out of it. It's funny that I've never played it on the Nintendo. I played it on Donald's computer- emulated, and on the Wii- also emulated? I don't really know how the virtual console works.

Well look what I didn't know- Wario's Woods was released for NES an SNES at the same time. Wish they'd released the SNES version for the virtual console instead, it looks eaisier on the eyes. After entirely too much time playing this game, all I can see is little dancing creatures. Must stack them!!

HP7- done!

I finished Harry Potter yesterday. It was full of ups and downs, and very hard to put down! I just wanted to keep reading. I know I'm not alone in feeling kind of sad that that's the last book. That's all I'll say, no spoilers here. Donald and I took turns reading. He got it in the evening, and I read during the day. It was kind of fun to be sharing a book. Of course, it was hard to wait while it was Donald's turn.

Donald and I went to Odessa to get his car back last night. Driving on the highway by yourself sure is boring. I don't know how people do it for 8 hour trips. Listening to music certainly helps. Driving at night is even more boring, since you can't see the scenery. And it's only about half an hour to Odessa! We stopped at his parents house for a few minutes, and saw both of the nephews. It's weird that I'm an aunt now.

We watched The Illusionist after we got back home last night. I enjoyed it, but Edward Norton's accent was awful. The story kept me interested all the way through, then the ending didn't really resolve anything about the magic. Pretty good overall.

Dental Fun? maybe

Today I'm scheduled for Root Canal- take 2. I've been taking penicillin for 6 days. I really want to get this over with. Donald took the day off to go with me, which is nice of him. Cross your fingers for me.

Otherwise not a lot going on. Donald and I were relatively productive this weekend. We took all our glass to the recycling center Saturday. In retrospect, we should have done that before taking showers because it was HAWT and sweaty business. Everyone else also seemed to have taken their glass in, because the bins were very full. We also recycled batteries, but I forgot the styrofoam. After that I was less "productive" while still getting something done. I beat the Pit of 100 Trials in Super Paper Mario. You have to fight through 100 levels of creatures in a row without leaving. It took 2 hours, and I gained 2 levels doing it. But it's done! Sadly, finishing it opened up another Pit in a different area.

Sunday we did a bunch o' laundry and Donald went through ALL his computer parts to sort out things to get rid of. Now we just have to get rid of all the stuff. There are 6 empty computer cases and 3 boxes of parts to get out of the living room! I think a lot of it can be recycled.

We got Ultraviolet from Netflix. That movie was pretty much terrible. For an action movie, it was damned boring. I can't believe it was from the same guy who made Equilibrium! That was a great movie, with an interesting story and really cool action. Part of what made the action so cool is that it was used sparingly. Ultraviolet just drowns you in fighting, so much that you don't care anymore if it's cool. There are so many bullets flying that it's ridiculous for our "heroine" to walk away unscathed every time. You don't care AT ALL about the characters, the dialogue is corny at best, and the story is practically nonexistent. Milla Jovovich looks cool, but that's about it. Best thing I can say about it is that it was only an hour and a half long. 1/5

Movies today

Ocean's 13: Decent. Better than the second one, still nowhere near as good as the first. There were a few shining funny moments, but it still lacked something pulling the whole thing together. I'd give it 3/5.

Children of Men: Pretty good, but depressing. The end is hopeful, kind of, even though you never find out why women aren't having babies, and just about everybody ends up dead. We gave it 4/5.

Rebel Without a Ticket

I still hate teeth. I'm trying not to think about it. I can mostly put it out of my mind if I take an advil every 4-6 hours, as I've been doing since Friday. I called the dentist office yesterday to see if I could get my appointment moved up, but it was not to be. So 2 more days of mild pain relievers.

This weekend I went to see the new art gallery expansion. It looks a lot better from the inside then it does from the outside. It's very spacious and open and white. Most of the gallery space is sunken into the ground, with the windows near the top of the room. It's built into a hill, so there are lots of places where the ground level meets up and you can go out to the big lawn in front. My mom dragged dad and me into a photography exhibit that I was certain you were supposed to pay for. She didn't seem to think so, but when I went back with Donald and Mike, there was a sign saying that you needed a ticket past that point. It was a neat exhibit, about the origins of American photography. I guess it would depend on the price of admission whether or not I'd have actually paid to see it. My mom's such a rebel, accidentally sneaking into art exhibits. What next, turning left between the hours of 4 and 6 PM?

Netflix seems to be taking an awful long time to get the DVD's we send back. We sent back Clerks 2 sometime early last week, but Donald just got the confirmation email yesterday. I thought they'd get the discs we send in about 2 days. I thought we'd be able to get through 3 discs in 2 weeks, but it seems to be working out to one a week. Donald's theory is that the mailman steals them and watches them before sending them back. Clerks 2 was okay. There were funny parts, and a lot of slow parts. The guy who plays Dante still can't act. (Surprise surprise.) I like Kevin Smith movies more when they're being funny then when he tries to get all dramatic. It just comes off as hokey to me somehow. Probably why I like Mallrats so much. More funny, waay less talking and shit than in Chasing Amy. ("What, like the back of a Volkswagen?")

what I watched on Sunday

We watched Pan's Labyrinth yesterday with Mike. I enjoyed it, but not so much that I understand all the rave reviews. I liked the look of the whole thing, and I thought the story was very interesting and original. But it was kinda slow moving, and the Captain character was really hateful. (I know, that's the point, but still.) The ending was pretty depressing too. I'm glad I watched it though.

I watched the Tonys last night too. You'd think being in theatre, that this would be an important broadcast for me to watch. You'd be incorrect. I don't know who 90% of the people on the stage were, and didn't see any of the plays. I fast forwarded through a lot, because I just didn't care what they were saying. At least when you watch the Oscars, you had a chance to see the nominated movies. (Even though I rarely see any of the Best Picture nominees.) You'd have to spend a LOT of money and effort to see even a few of the Tony nominated plays. It's a weird thing that Broadway shows, the supposed center of the theatre universe, are COMPLETELY inaccessible to the majority of Americans. Why even bother watching the Tonys?