Edward Norton is charmingly disarmingly idealistic and Robin Williams is joyously profane in what you might at first think sounds like a fairly predictable gag. Both characters lay on just enough edge to put it over the top. Fun fun.
Author: m
8.0 Intolerable Cruelty
I’m the last person to search out movies that allow you to indulge in the “opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous”, but when the Coen brothers are driving the horsecart, sign me up. In this case it’s Catherine Zeta-Jones and George Clooney playing the cold-hearted gold digger and high-powered divorce attorney, respectively. It’s like a surreal self-parody of themselves (or at least their stereotypes), and of course, being a Coen movie, there are some great supporting characters (even if there are less than in the average Coen movie) – don’t miss Geoffrey Rush’s great performance kicking things off.
MammaDonna Turns 29 (again)!
It was a birthday too big to not celebrate in person, so we packed up the minivan with the family, dog, snacks, sleeping bags, VCR, pillows, cooler, laptop and kitchen sink and headed out for the 13-hour drive from NC to FL. We didn’t realize until the day before that we would be driving right through the Superbowl in Jacksonville, FL, but the only repercussions were passing an occasional decked-out RV enroute to the 100,000-member party. But we had our own to attend, and the important people were at ours: Donna, Dick, Reiley, Wren, Bailey, Mike, Andrea, Dan, Val and Betty. It was a bummer that Niki, Tom and Corey weren’t in town, hopefully we catch up with them the next time.
We came down for the weekend before her birthday, driving down on Friday, whooping it up on the weekend, and heading back on Monday. The plan: to surprise the guest of honor by arranging a Saturday lunch with her usual gang, with the rest of us already there waiting for her arrival. We somehow managed it, but when she arrived, she jumped right in the buffet line and was NOT about to give up her spot! It took us 10 minutes to get her attention off of the line. When she finally looked over, her jaw hit the floor. Wheee!!
A nice full weekend of meals and jokes (and even some video gaming with bro, whoop) later, we headed back home. We need to work in more family time!!
Wrenny Turns Six!
Wren turned 6 on Tuesday! We had a party for her on the previous weekend at her gymnastics gym. We were worried it wouldn’t happen – ice and snow were predicted – but the bad weather held off and all 12 friends showed. The kids started arriving in the front room, and before the party started they had turned that into an extension of the gym, rolling and tumbling and yelling. Everybody had a blast!
I think the best part was watching Wrenny thank each kid for attending, politely handing each a goodie bag. Mom had given her some preemptive manners lessons to head off Wrenny’s shyness, and it worked like a charm. Coupled with Wrenny’s new desire to carefully enunciate every word, you couldn’t ask for a cuter kid. :> Pictures forthcoming…
On Tuesday we all played her new cooperative game called Rainbowland. You can’t beat a great cooperative game for family fun, and this one qualifies! Cute as all get out. :>
9.0 Battlestar Galactica
Just finished watching the Battlestar Galactica miniseries (read: pilot) and season 1. Good fun! I fell in love with episode 5 and did not like 10, other than that it was solid military-centered space sci-fi. I even broke out Descent yesterday in inspiration! Descent 3 still rocks to this day. If anyone’s got the guts to play, shoot me a hello and I’ll hook ya up for a smackdown. :>
Rubik’s Cube: 3×3 down, 4×4 to go…
I solved the Rubik’s Cube I got for Christmas yesterday (cool gift, thanks baby!). I never had the patience for it in my youth, and that always bugged me. This time, I just used some formulas and it’s a piece of cake. My pal Larry got a 4×4 Rubik’s Revenge (he’s the pro) and I played with that a little bit… now THAT is going to take some work…
Let it snow!
We’ve got a white day-after-Christmas!
It was snowing when we woke up this morning, and it kept up for an hour or two – just enough for us to scrape out a few small sled runs, throw a few snowballs, and harvest up enough snow for a snowman “little person”. Once we were frozen we headed back inside for some Burgundy Soup that Grammy and I scrounged up. Yum!
And Happy Birthday Grammy! We gave her tickets to see The Nutcracker performed by the Carolina Ballet Company and the Carolina Symphony Orchestra. We had to leave extra time for driving on the icy roads. We ended up in the FRONT ROW! We got to watch the percussion guy pull out all kinds of special noisemakers – he was only 10′ away from us. It was a great show, full of beautiful costumes and mesmerizing dancing – leaping acrobatics, a choreographed war between the rat and his mice and the nutcracker and his toy soldiers, and the enchanting “coffee” dancer – quite a hottie! And it’s a pretty rare treat to be that close to a full orchestra.
9.5 The Polar Express: An IMAX 3D Experience
The most visually stunning computer animation display to date. Imagine seeing a gentle snowfall in 3D, and you’ve just started to understand how beautiful this film was. Not just cheesy layers of occasional 3D, but a total, immersive 3D world. Everyone loved it, even Wrenny, who closed her eyes a few times when things got scary. A nicely done story about a kid recapturing his faith (even if it was faith in some guy in a red suit). It was below freezing and windy at the IMAX theater, which added to the ambiance.
From a technical perspective, the only thing that still needed work was modelling the physics of the human body better – all the human characters still had that imperfectly-motion-captured jerkiness. But the richness of the 3D world drawn on the huge IMAX screen was simply stunning.
Hera and Zeus winning streak shattered!
Andrea has whooped my butt at Hera and Zeus every time we’ve played for a LONG TIME. Until this last week – I scored 2 wins in a row! She won the third game, so she’s still sitting on the queen’s throne… it’s just a little bit more wobbly now…
New Old Pictures
I cleaned up the header of the blog a little, stuffed a little thumbnail of a random bit of artwork from the girls in the upper left corner. The art’s really old and there’s only a few to start. I will add more over time…