Co-starring Matt Damon

Occasionally, celebrities have supporting roles in my dreams. As is the way with dreams, of course, this seems perfectly natural and normal while I’m sleeping. Then I wake up and I'm struck by how odd it was that a stranger with a famous face walks my dreams. Thankfully, none of my dreams involve anything creepy or nasty. 

The most popular guest star is Matt Damon. I'm not sure why, but I've dreamed him more than any other celeb. Sometimes he’s my brother, sometimes he’s a boyfriend (but without any naughty fantasies, he's just... there), sometimes he’s good friend. My husband thinks it’s pretty odd, but I have heard of other people that have similar dreams.

I have had other celebs appear in my dreams as well, but right this moment I can’t remember whom or for what purpose. Usually they are just supporting players and part of the stories, just like my family members or friends. They walk on, say their lines and walk off. :)

So how about you? Has your subconscious every inserted a celebrity into your dreams? Do you see them repeatedly? Do the celebs take turns? If you could choose a celebrity to have randomly pop in and out of your dreams, who would it be? Personally, I enjoy Matt Damon very much in the waking world. He is a great actor and seems like a good man. I admire his devotion to his family and his ability to stay "normal" while being an A-list celebrity. Well, at least, that's my perception. Who knows the true story?

A little Library Diversion...

This is off the track from my normal postings, but that's just how I roll. :)

Tonight in the library someone was whistling. Not a soft, peaceful whistle, nor a melodic, musical whistle. No. This was a repetitive, toot-toot-toot-too-too-toooo. I was engrossed in various librarian labors and the sound was faintly itching the back of my attention for a long while. Finally, though, unbidden, it clawed its way to the front of my conscious brain and I was forced to seek the perpetrator. Just as I left my desk to find him, the sound cut off. I sought him out, but my search was in vain. He escaped the half-smiling, half-vicious shushing I had in store for him.

I tightened the bun in my hair, fingered my glasses back up my nose, and returned to my seat, opening a book for good measure.

The modern library is a much noisier place than the one I remember enjoying as a child. I frequented the library, as my devotion to books began at a young age, and I remember them as places of peace, quiet and nap-inducing air conditioning. I am learning to tolerate the modern, clamorous library. I want children and teens, especially, to learn to love the library as I do. I feel it is one of my callings in life to encourage literacy, and one way is through frequent visits to the library to borrow books.

However, the incessant whistler or full-voice cell-phone talker is a distraction to all library patrons (or “users” in today’s lingo), as is the child who races, screaming, through the stacks. I appreciate and enjoy the happy squeals of a joyous toddler, but I still think children should be taught by their parents to respect the rights of others to study, read, research and relax in a quiet, albeit a moderately quiet, library.

I never found the whistler. Perhaps one of the other librarians beat me to the search and quieted him. I suspect it was one of the lanky teenage boys lurking near the entrance as I walked around hunting. They didn’t look suspicious, and I suppose whistling can be said to be a happy sound, but there is a time and place for even the most joyous of noise.

CGI Planet...

For New Year's Eve, we had a blu-ray double feature, starting with the amazing "Captain America", which we've seen before but loved and wanted to watch in blu-ray. The second movie was "Rise of the Planet of the Apes".

I hesitated to watch this movie at all. For one thing, having grown up with my father, I've seen the classic original film a couple of times, and I wondered how they would tell the back story for that movie with all the modern CGI bells and whistles without ruining the story, and to be honest, I anticipated it being quite scary. I don't like the idea of human subjugation whether to superior aliens or to apes, so I was really nervous. It has been many years since I saw the original "Planet of the Apes", though, so I didn't remember all the details.

This movie starts out with a bunch of science-y stuff setting up the story of one chimpanzee, Caesar, and the human who raises him, who is a scientist trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's (which his father is in the later stages of), testing a viral concoction on chimps. Caesar has had the virus passed to him by his mother, in vitro, and as such has superior intelligence and cognitive skills. The CGI Caesar is pretty dang good, though he strikes me as being very tall: nearly as tall as James Franco by the end, which I suppose could be possible, because Franco is only about 5'10" and chimps can get as tall as 5'5". Still... it was distracting... and I'm not a huge fan of movies that are 90% CGI...

There were more than a few laughably stupid things, such as the sudden, unexplained explosion in numbers of the chimpanzees. Inside the chimp rescue facility, they show what looks like about 50 chimps, one gorilla and one orangutan, but when they escape, suddenly the hillsides are crawling with hundreds of chimps, multiple gorillas and at least two orangutans. This was before they had visited the zoo and the research facility to free the rest of their buddies. After that it looked like many more, maybe a thousand! Kind of made me wonder how many chimps live in that city in the real world?? 

Another silly thing was having Tom Felton (suppressing his English accent fairly well; there was really only one slip that I caught) actually say the famous Charlton Heston line from the original film: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" It was laughably bad and completely inappropriate for his character. 

There were a lot of campy "money shot" moments, as well, such as when Caesar speaks for the first time (in the scene above), or when Caesar, a gorilla, an orangutan and another chimp are all standing on a car on the highway and the camera pans back and stops as though they've posed just for us... and I doubt that apes could repeatedly leap through plate glass windows and emerge without any injuries.

I don't mean to be heartless, but I really had a hard time rooting for the apes in the movie. I had little sympathy for them. The abusive "rescue" facility was so contrived and obvious as to be almost cartoonish, and the animals were so violent to so many innocent people that I had no sympathy for them at all. In the battle for supremacy, I will always root for the humans...

My husband pointed out that had they started the movie about 2/3 through and told the story of the actual rise of the apes, it would have been a better story. The actual back story that sets up the classic movie was the only interesting thing, and it happened during the closing credits, rather than during the movie... I would have liked that a little more, as well.

All in all, it was a so-so movie. The plot moved slowly, the acting was just okay, and while the special effects were excellent, the script didn't really hold up to the standard of the effects.

One other note, I realized my son who watched this movie with us will never have that moment of shock and surprise at the end of the original movie when Heston realizes he's been on Earth all along... this movie kind of ruins that twist for new viewers of the classic film... kind of too bad.

Blood and Ashes!

My all-time favorite book series is Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time". My brother introduced me to these books about 14 years ago, when my second son was just a toddler and we were renovating and remodeling a little house in the country and living with my in-laws. I was desperate for some good reading escape material, and my brother said to check these out. I had never really been a big reader of fantasy-- still not, really, though I adore "The Hobbit" and all of the "Harry Potter" books. Back then, I really only read mysteries and some thrillers. I had read all the "Cat Who..." books to that date by Lillian Jackson Braun, most of Dick Francis and Tony Hillerman's collections, and a handful of random titles. I hadn't really read any series of the scope and extent of Jordan's books. Of course, 14 years ago, there weren't as many of them. I think there were 7... maybe.

So I picked up "The Eye of the World" and after slogging through the completely detached and confusing prologue (I tell new readers to skip it, they won't understand it until later, anyway), began the story of Rand al Thor, Mat Cauthon and Perrin Aybara, along with the various female characters, whose names I struggled to pronounce, even in my head: Moiraine, Nynaeve and Egwene. (I happily report that all these years later, those names are no longer so foreign to me...) I was hooked, instantly and deeply. I adored the first book, and, I devoured the rest as quickly as I could. I remember driving down the streets of Salt Lake City, in my old Toyota Corrolla, with the book in one hand, face down, until the red lights, then I would sneak in a page or two until the light changed and I had to put it down again. That's the only time in my life I've actually been hoping to hit lots of red lights.

In my mind, this set of books sets the standard which all other fantasy series try to live up to. I haven't read many fantasy series, still. I've read the first three of George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" books, but there was a bit too much sex and incest for my taste, so I haven't ever re-read them. I started a couple of books by Terry Brooks and someone who I can't even remember, but wasn't really intrigued. I do love Orson Scott Card, and I've read two fantasy (not Sci-Fi-- that's a whole 'nuther genre, and please don't treat them as though they are the same. They aren't) books by him, "Enchantment" and "The Lost Gate", which are both fantastic books, especially the latter. I've read the LOTR trilogy, by the legendary Tolkein, and I was bemused by his over-descriptions of certain aspects of the scenery. I read those long before reading WOT, and yes, I'm aware that most fantasy books pay homage to Tolkein whether deliberately or unintentionally, but in my mind WOT still sets the standard.

I suppose I need to read more fantasy before making such a bold statement, but most that I start are pale imitations of this great series and I just don't care to waste my time on them.

The only series to come close to the magic and power of the world Jordan created (for me) has been Harry Potter. When I read those books, I wish I could visit at Hogwarts just a little longer. But Jordan's world is so vast, so epic and rings so true, I honestly feel like I'm there. Every now and then, especially when I'm doing a re-read of the books, aspects of WOT will creep into my conversation as though it's a real place. For example, once we were driving to Southern Utah for a vacation in the spring, and we were driving past a dry, arid place with no wildlife growing, and my mouth almost said, "Huh, kind of like the Aiel Waste, don't you think?" What made it out was "Huh..." and then I just grinned...

There are fans that are obsessed with these books, who attend "Jordon Con" and other events; who create costumes and fan art; who write songs and create video dedicated to WOT. I find them amusing, but I don't want to join their ranks. I adore these stories, I feel like I know the characters personally, but I am happily able to separate fantasy from reality.

It's been a long time since I read the entire series. A few years ago, when Brandon Sanderson finished book 12, I listened to it in absolute glee. When book 13 came out, I was in awe. Sanderson has taken the magic of Jordan and made it even better! I would have thought that would be impossible. Sanderson is a wizard. Absolutely amazing. His solo books are good, and getting better with time, but none of his older stuff is anywhere near as great as WOT. Until now. His "The Way of Kings" is excellent, and I look forward to more of the same. In the meantime, though, WOT reigns supreme and I'm just thrilled to have him at the wheel.

Yesterday, for Christmas, my husband gave me a Kindle Touch. It's nice and a lot of fun. Just for kicks, I downloaded a "sample" of "The Eye of the World", which I haven't read in about 6 years, I think. I can't put it down... If I pace myself, I could read a book a month and be done right about the time that the last book is released next year. But I've never been very good at pacing myself... I read super fast. I'll have to make a concerted effort to savor the stories, to try and keep all the Aes Sedai and Windfinders and nobles and other second- and third-tier characters straight. Maybe I'll finally figure out who Demandred is hiding as. Maybe I'll remember things I've forgotten and notice details that didn't make sense before.

Whatever happens, I'm sure I will enjoy the ride. Again. May you always find water and shade.

Mission... IMPOSSIBLE!

Midway through a long day of last-minute Christmas shopping (of which I am so NOT a fan), my husband and I went to see the new "Mission Impossible" movie today. He was happy to be out seeing a movie instead of at work, and I was happy to be seeing Josh Holloway again... at least, I thought I would be happy to see him again... because his name is in the first 10 or so names in the credits... and I stupidly got my hopes up that he would be an actual character of note. Friends of mine (also shameless "Lost" fans) had speculated that maybe he was one of the baddies... which we would have enjoyed. He became my favorite on "Lost", and I was so excited to see him doing something new.  So imagine my disappointment, when he appeared in less than 5 minutes of film. Wha??? I was very disappointed. I won't say more, because I don't want to be the spoiler lady.

As far as the film itself, I liked it. It was exciting, had some breathtaking scenes and was well cast. I'm not a huge Tom Cruise fan, but I like the other members of his team in the film quite a lot. Simon Pegg is excellent, as always, and the casting of Jeremy Renner as Agent Brandt was brilliant. I am giddily awaiting the release of "The Avengers" next year, in which Renner plays "Hawkeye". He had a small part, little more than a cameo, in "Thor", and I liked him then. In "Mission", he's funny, charming and very believable as an ISA agent.

The movie is a little bit Bourne and a little Bond, adventurous, stunt-heavy with a barely believable evil plot to destroy the world. There were some fantastic moments where I cringed, clutched my husband's arm, and held my breath.

I can't bring myself to pay nearly $9 for a movie ticket, so we went to a matinee, and it was a full theater, and we only had a couple of idiots with cell phones. I've learned that if you sit on the back row, energetic tweens won't distract from the movie by kicking your seat the whole time. Unfortunately, so have a lot of other people, so our row was packed, elbow-to-elbow, but it was a fun time. 

Super 8!!

Take a little bit of "E.T.", a portion of "Jurassic Park", a smidge of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (all directed by Steven Spielberg) and a heaping scoop of the Rob Reiner directed "Stand By Me". The result is "Super 8", written and directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Spielberg. It is a terrific sci-fi movie, set in the '70's and starring a bunch of newcomer kids, all of whom were perfectly cast. I loved the fun, comic-relief moments, the authenticity of the kids' relationships and dialogue and the fast-paced script. The middle-school romance was sweet and endearing, the heroics just believable enough, and the pacing of the direction was excellent.  There are enough startle moments to keep you on your toes, and I have always liked Kyle Chandler, who plays the deputy/dad character perfectly.

"Super 8" had some of the best movie trailers I've seen in a long time-- scary, fascinating, enticing, with just a tiny bit of the story. I love a trailer that teases the viewers, making us want to see the movie, giving us just a taste of what to expect, without showing us the whole movie. Fantastic!!

This is a very Spielberg-esque movie and I enjoyed it very much. However, I was surprised by the heavy dose of common cusses by the tweens, mostly the s-word, so-called "religious" swearing, and one loud and clear f-bomb (said by an older character). It was unnecessary and annoying, and made my 12-year old uncomfortable.

We are in the habit of letting a movie run through the credits, and we were rewarded this time with the film that the kids in the movie were making-- a zombie flick intended to be entered in a local film festival. It was very funny.

Props to Pandora!

My 16-year-old son recently introduced me to the Pandora app on the ipod touch.  I tend to be very particular about music and haven't really used it much for music, but it occurred to me to look for a comedy station, and, much to my delight I found a PG comedy station!  It is mostly clean, family-friendly comedy-- bits from various comics shuffled together for my enjoyment.  The only thing I've heard that I wouldn't consider "family-friendly" was a short routine about sex after marriage.  Really, though, with hours of listening to it, that was the only even moderately offensive thing!  Well, unless you count the "bible" swears.  Those are used quite freely...

The comics include our family favorite Brian Regan, as well as Jim Gaffigan, Henry Cho, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Bill Cosby, Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen Degeneres, Frank Caliendo, and a bunch I'm not very familiar with, but who are also very funny.  My one complaint is that they don't play very much Ellen, and she's hilarious.  Oh, and they play too much Cosby.  I know most of his routines almost by heart, having listened to them since I was a girl and my dad had a couple of his records.

Thumbs up and big thanks to Pandora for providing my children and me with a place to hear some great comedy without risking too much naughtiness or language making its way through their headphones...

Anticipating 2012 Movies

My two-and-a-half teenage sons and I are very excited about next year's promised crop of movies. We are looking forward to:

Spiderman.  Yep, another "reboot".  My son tells me this version will be truer to the comics, including Gwen Stacey as Parker's big High School crush, rather than MaryJane, who came much later in the comic books.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  I love Martin Freeman.  I think he's such a fantastic, understated,  subtle actor.  I was so impressed by his performance as John Watson in the BBC production "Sherlock", and I can't wait to see his Bilbo Baggins.  I have a soft spot for hobbits as it is, so the casting of Freeman pushes this movie into the short list of my most anticipated movies for next year.

"The Dark Knight Rises"-  I was so impressed by Christian Bale's Batman, in spite of his throaty stage voice, and in spite of the darker nature of the most recent movies.  I found "The Dark Knight" a bit too dark for my taste, but "Batman Begins" is one of my all-time favorite films.  Just great entertainment.  I am interested in where the story will go, now that Bruce Wayne's lady love has been killed, and he has resigned himself to a life of "darkness".




The 2012 movie I am most looking forward to has to be "The Avengers".  The bringing together of so many awesome characters, played by fantastic actors can't be anything short of amazing:  Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (played by Mark Ruffalo this time), Hawkeye, Thor and Captain America... did I miss anyone? Enjoy the trailer.

Have You Seen This?

One of the funniest things I have ever seen on the internet.  Whether you are a supporter of Romney or not, this is hilarious.  I love the idea of "bad lip reading".  It reminds me of when we were young and sometimes my dad would just turn down the sound on a particularly bad movie and he (and my brothers, probably) would make up funny dialogue to go along with the stupid action.

This is very good, but most of their other videos are pretty stupid.  I did like the Justin Bieber/Rascal Flatts video, though.  That was good for a laugh, even though I hadn't ever heard the real song...

Enjoy!

Oh Captain, My Captain...

Lack of spending cash has severely damaged my movie attendance in the last few years.  I was very disappointed when I missed the many theatrical showings this year, but my sons and I have enjoyed catching up on my husband's ridiculously-oversized TV at home.  Tonight's installment was the highly anticipated (at our house), "Captain America", which my second son has been talking about since it first went into development.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  As usual, I went into this movie not really knowing the back story, and (as with Thor), not sure the star was good-looking enough to impress me as the hero.  And (as with Thor) I was pleasantly surprised.  Chris Evans provides some lovely patriotic eye-candy.  

As far as the film itself is concerned, I was blown away by the computer-graphic animation (or whatever it's called) that was used to make Evans look much, much smaller than he really is.  It was seamless-- amazing!  They even made his face look slightly slimmer.  He was so cute-- like his own little brother.  Special effects just get better and better. 

This isn't Evans' first foray into the genre of comic-book movies.  He stole the show as "Johnny Storm" in the "Fantastic Four" movies a few years ago, but I wasn't sure he could pull off the sweet-kid-turned-soldier. I was impressed by his seemingly effortless performance. He's a lot more talented than I realized.  I completely believed he was a skinny, bullied young man, and I completely bought his physical transformation that didn't change who he was inside.  

I also enjoyed Hugo Weaving as the Captain's nemesis, Red Skull, but I had a hard time shaking the image of him as Elrond (a leader of one group of elves in the LOTR films), and that was distracting. Not his fault, just what got stuck in my head.  He was good, though, sufficiently evil and naughty.  

I had anticipated that, because the story is set in the 1940s, much of it would have a corny feeling, but the director and scriptwriters handled the cheesy, comic-book stuff really well-- it was amusing, and a little uncomfortable to watch the Captain performing for crowds, encouraging them to buy war bonds, instead of doing what he wanted to do and fighting against the Nazis, but the reaction of WWII-era children (especially those reading "Captain America" comics) was very well written and heartwarming.

There were a few unintentionally amusing things in the movie, which I wouldn't have even noticed had they not been pointed out by someone (so sorry, I can't credit whom, because I can't remember; if anyone knows, please tell me so I can give credit where it's due) such as the fact that the bombs heading for the U.S. were conveniently labeled "New York", "Chicago" and "Boston", in English, though the baddies were German.  Also I wasn't totally convinced that the Captain had to make the choice that he made at the end-- I understand the story has to go that way, but... really?  He couldn't turn the plane around?  I won't say more, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it, but it seemed like a silly thing to do, really.

This was a four-star film, engaging, fun, adventurous, humorous and surprising.  Just what you go to the movies to enjoy.

I found the photo on: http://www.figures.com/forums/news/12450-new-photos-chris-evans-captain-america.html