I wasn't really high on the first Fantastic Four movie. I thought it better than most of the reviews suggested, but that was sort of faint praise.The sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has gotten reviews that can be summarized as "better than the first but still not good", but I'd have to disagree. I though it was worse than the first one, splitting the story into four poorly blended parts:
- FF fight Silver Surfer
- FF fall apart as Reed & Sue try to get married
- FF fight Doctor Doom
- Silver Surfer fights Galactus
Luckily, along comes the third plotline - FF fights a revived Doc Doom - to bring everyone back together and realize how much they need each other. And then - in about thirty seconds - the final plotline is resolved. My biggest beef there was in the lack of threat from Galactus. He's like the biggest villian / force of nature / danger in all of the Marvel Universe, and this movie has nim appear as a shadow who seems to be a distant threat to Earth and then is defeated in about three seconds with a blink of light. They might as well not even have used his name, because it was stupid.
All in all, the flick was boring.
Nothing bad, nothing good, just very, very standard comic book crap.
This is the kind of stuff that turns folks off of superhero movies.
A smattering of reviews (collected from Metacritic) that agree with me...
- ReelViews James Berardinelli - A tedious, incoherent bore.
- Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov - Relentlessly dull and curiously bombastic.
- Chicago Reader J.R. Jones - This sequel to "Fantastic Four" (2005) drags in the Silver Surfer, who looks like a gigantic hood ornament and, given voice by Laurence Fishburne, has about as much personality.
- The New York Times Manohla Dargis - This existentially and aesthetically unnecessary sequel to the equally irrelevant if depressingly successful "Fantastic Four.
- Rolling Stone Peter Travers - The perfect summer movie, that is if you're eight years old or under. For the rest of us, the sequel to the first "Fantastic Four" that miraculously amassed more than $150 million in 2005, is a plotless, brainless, witless bore.
- Washington Post Stephen Hunter - Surely the dullest of Hollywood's many comic-book-derived summer movies, "Silver Surfer" is drearier than corn dying in the Iowa sun, slower than molasses in Antarctica.
Next up the far, far better Knocked Up.The Girl stumbled upon a Blockbuster gift card buried deep in one of our drawers, and upon a bit of calling to the Blockbuster corporate offices (have you idgits heard of a website query?), I found out that it had $5 on it that were going to expire on December 1. So off to Blockbuster we went.
As an aside, I hate renting movies. I hate going to the Blockbuster / Hollywood video stores so very, very much. I'd be a total Netflix guy if I weren't such a cheapskate. Gimme my PLCH movies store anyway.
The options came down to Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Children of Men, The Lives of Others, and Knocked Up. I wasn't particlarly in the mood for anything too heavy, so I went for the light-hearted, juvenile comedy of Judd Aptow.
Good god, but I didn't find this movie very funny at all.
It's very well written...very well made...and maybe a little too close to the truth.
I didn't enjoy the film, but I can certainly see the quality. I think I just might be at the wrong moment in my life to enjoy this. I've passed a point where The Girl and I have decided to not have a child. We've set ourselves down a different path, and if something like the major event of this movie happened, we'd end up handling it as best we can - as do the protagonists in this film - truly a duo act, not a single lead. It would be tough, but we'd manage as we could.
If I were younger - in high school maybe, and not sexually active - this might be funny because it'd be too far from possible. If I were older and past the age of child-rearing, it might be funny because I'd be looking back at other folks' possibilities gone astray.
As it is, though, I didn't find it funny in the least.
That same night, The Girl and I tried a new restaurant here in West Chester, Soho, a japanese restaurant with five different seating areas - a sushi bar, a regular bar, a hibachi area, and a couple of other dining areas.We chose on the regular dining areas, sitting next to the waterfall that you see in the picture. The atmosphere was interesting - odd because of the very much broken up feel of the restaurant. It felt like a half dozen ideas, none of which were big enough to be fully realized. The place felt like an appetizer sampler platter of a restaurant.
Which would've been okay if the food would've been good - which it wasn't. Our appetizer of tempura shrimp were bland, and the waiter took the sauce and the empty plate away before either of us could finish out last shrimp - moved to our plates but without the sauce. The middle course was a miso soup that wasn't offensive but wasn't anything special at all. If anything, it tasted of seaweed, the major ingredient. The salads were well presented, in neat bowls with a tasty, tangy ginger dressing over a rather traditional, easy bagged salad with a slice of cucumber thrown in for variety.
The main dishes were nothing special either - mine a pair of five ounce strip steaks that were too thin to be very well made by my American tastes. The Girl went for chicken and steak shishkabobs. Neither meal came with anything more than a teaser of vegetables and a side of rice that was overly sticky and gummy for us.
We didn't wait around for dessert, and we won't be returning to Soho anytime soon.
A week or so ago I mentioned the Batter Blaster in the blog and to my neighbor at school. He went out that night and bought the can, bringing in pancakes the next day, singing the praises of the Blaster. So, on the night of Soho and Knocked Up, The Girl and I stopped in a Meijer - the only place locally that stocks the Blaster. At $4.50 it was a bit pricey for a lark, but worth a try.The final details - six waffles and a pancake came out of the blaster before it was spent. The waffles browned nicely but were too thin and rose too quickly to have enough sturdiness to them to be quite right. The pancakes rose too much, too, and ended up fluffy, high, and most - the kinds of pancakes that most people enjoy but that I can't stand. I'm a thin pancake kind of guy because that's what my dad's dad always made for us when we were growing up - fried up in Crisco like he knew them to be.
By the time the blaster was spent, I'd had a half dozen solid, quick, and easy breakfasts. No effort involved other than turning the waffle iron on and turning the can upside down. And I still hadn't had a really good waffle.
The Blaster goes the way of Soho for me. Worth a try once but not twice.
I'm saddened to say that I like Eminem. I find a lot of his rhymes and wordplays amazing, and I love the sound of lots of his songs.And I can't stand the man. He's offensive and mysogynistic and sexist and racist.
And I love his music.
Not all of the songs, but a lot of them. So I checked out Curtain Call, hoping to grab the songs I liked and not have to give the man any of my cash. Bit of thievery, admittedly.
About half the songs are entertaining and fun to listen to - "The Way I Am", "My Name Is", "Without Me", "The Real Slim Shady", and "Just Lose It". One isn't fun but was worth grabbing - "Stan". One is truly a great song, the only work on the entire album that sees Eminem write about anything other than himself, the one song that actually lets somebody else empathize with the word - "Lose Yourself".
And then there are the horribly offensive song - "Fack", "Shake That", "Like Toy Soldiers", "Mockingbird", "When I'm Gone", "Cleaning out my Closet". I skipped those when I was playing the cd in the car, and I certainly didn't grab for my iTunes.
I can't in any way endorse listening to Eminem. He's not to be praised, but damn he can be catchy.
I know Judith Owen because of her work with Richard Thompson on the 1000 Years of Popular Music performances. I heard her on a recent broadcast of Prairie Home Companion, and it turns out that she's got a new album out. PLCH didn't have that one, but they did have Happy This Way, so I gave it a try.It's not excellent all the way through. It's gets too long toward the end, but the first half dozen songs are excellent songs in the style of old torch songs but with very odd modern sensibilities. Instead of writing about the great old guys, we get a song about Nick Drake (with Richard Thompson as backup). The best song is "Sympathy" which turns Owen's voice into a totally new instrument, something that can't be replicated by any musician's fiddle or guitar.
As I mentioned, the album gets to be a little much by the end. It's worth a listen to hear what a gorgeous voice can turn a song into.
Ok, quick hits from here...
Ok Go - Oh No...the videos are better...these songs are okay but are too polished...like rock with all of the heart and soul ripped out
The Animals - Retrospective...a forgotten Brit invasion band with two or three hits that have lived...I mostly enjoy those hits...and I absolutely love, love, love (my all-time favorite song, maybe) "House of the Rising Sun"...good greatest hits of a band whose greatest hits I don't need...
Original Cast Recording of Avenue Q...the Broadway musical isn't for kids...it's a pastiche of Sesame Street but with songs like "The Internet is for Porn" and "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"...funny for a listen through...I doubt it'd have staying power in any playlist for me...maybe if I'd seen the musical itself...
U2 - U218...I've got nearly all these songs elsewhere...two new songs - the ok "Saints are Coming" (with Green Day) and the outstanding "Window in the Skies"...a good greatest hits for non-fans...leaves out way too much for a true U2 retrospective...wait for a big boxed set (or head to iTunes to get The Complete U2
3 comments:
It's a very nice record (Avenue Q). Extra points for figuring out what comedy soundtrack the above sentence comes from (Hint: it's not in the movie itself)
I'm just speechless after reading the sentence and a half in your Knocked Up review!
He never used Crisco.... only bacon grease. Trust me, I still have the container they kept it in. Every once and a while dad asks me to let him smell it.
Being a musical geek I enjoy Avenue Q, and have for several years. I do wonder if it has staying power though. Many of the songs are dated. "George Bush ois only for now".
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