Bringing Party Favors to Hell

Still here- still boring. :)

Saw X-Men: First Class and Thor last weekend. Enjoyed XMFC way more than Thor, though Thor was still worth seeing. I loved Chris Hemsworth's Thor- he actually has great comic timing and it would be fun to see him in a romantic comedy. Where I had issues were the portrayal of Odin as a loving touchy-feely dad (SO not how Odin is shown in mythology), and in the convoluted confusing mess that they made of Loki's characterization and motivations. (And minorly, I will probably never be able to see Jaimie Alexander as anyone but Jessi from Kyle XY so her Sif didn't really work for me.) Heimdall really rocked, though.

XMFC was a delight. Despite some quibbles with the "divorce" and some continuity issues between the first X-Men films and this one, over all the movie just held together better for me and was far more enjoyable. And with McAvoy, Fassbender and Vaughn all apparently agreed on a homoerotic reading of Charles/Eric, my slasher's sensibilities were definitely pleased. Not to mention that as someone who lived through the 1960's (yes, I'm ANCIENT!) it was fun to see where they got it right in set and costume design (especially loved the oscilloscope as part of Cerebro! Every '60s sci-fi device worth its parts needed an oscilloscope!) and also the attitudes toward women. It's actually got me reading fanfic again for the first time in ages.

That said, I've found several new items for my semi-annual spelling and homophone rant! I have seen a lot of 'alot'* and 'alright' is not all right. Here are some of the new goodies:

Bare/Bear - You bare your soul, (or possibly your body). You bear a weight or a burden (or you see a bear in the park!) You can have bare skin, or a bear-skin. ;D

Feat/Feet - A feat is a noteworthy or extraordinary act or achievement, usually displaying boldness, skill, etc. Feet are those things at the bottom of legs which come into contact with the ground. Oh, and also a unit of measure.

Rein/Reign - Reins are the things by which a rider controls a horse. To Reign is to rule over. You don't reign in your passions, you rein them in. Oh, and it goes without saying (I hope) that rain is water that falls from the sky.

Wail/Wale/Whale -
*Wail: to utter a prolonged, inarticulate, mournful cry.
*Wale: 1.a streak, stripe, or ridge produced on the skin by the stroke of a rod or whip; welt. 2.the vertical rib in knit goods or a chain of loops running lengthwise in knit fabric 3. the texture or weave of a fabric.
*Whale: any of the larger marine mammals of the order Cetacea.

Whoa is not spelled woah unless you're deliberately using netspeak. (Courtesy of shayheyred)

I'll have to try to remember the other ones and update my list. :D

One other mild slash fanfic-related grumble-- can I just say how TIRED I am of the one-finger-two-fingers-three-fingers-cock thing? Seriously. It does not have to be done that way every single time!!

*And if, like me, alot bugs you a lot, check out this link which was just pointed out to me in a comment by melodyunity.

I couldn't stand waiting, so I caved and went to see the new Trek movie. And like everyone else I've read who's seen it, I loved it. And that's speaking as someone who watched the original series in its original run, and even wrote a letter for the original "Save Star Trek" letter writing campaign. Spock was my second crush (Illya my first) and Trek has been an integral part of my fannish life for decades. I think Abrams et al. hit this ball out of the park. I really only have one and a half quibbles with the movie at all. (Yes, quibbles, not tribbles!) ( spoilery quibbles after the cut )

Aside from that, I thought it rocked and I can't wait to see it again, maybe in IMAX if it's still playing in that format next weekend. Kham loved it too. I'd read some predictions that only Trek fans would go see it, but the sold-out 5pm Friday showing we attended had people of all ages and definitely not all of them were Trekkies/Trekkers of any variety.

You see the headline: Iran tests 'new anti-ship weapon' and wonder what they've got against character pairings.

In other news, we went to see The Dark Knight this weekend. ( opinion behind the cut )

(I haven't got an Iron Man icon so I'll have to make do with AstroBoy, who shares certain... characteristics.)

Iron Man totally rocks. Also? My longstanding minor crush on Robert Downey, Jr. has been reaffirmed in spades. That man can act. He was the perfect choice for the role, giving it unexpected depth.

There were no really young kids at my showing-- 1:30pm on Sunday. There were a few in the 9-13 range but nothing younger-- unusual for a "comic book movie" but, you know, it really is aimed at grownups, not kids. Definitely at fans, too, though they were careful to make sure the move was 'readable' by both comic geeks who are already familiar with the whole Iron Man ouvre, and the casual fan, like me, who is peripherally aware of the character but knows little detail. Since this is the first film from the new Marvel Studios, it seems clear that they're not weakening the film by pulling it in a dozen different directions to try and please every potential audience. They they know their audience and go for it whole-hog. That showed very strongly in the casting of Robert Downey, Jr., who is far more mature than the usual superhero movie casting choice of a barely-out-of-his-teens boy.

I was really impressed by the casting all around, ( spoilers behind the cut )

I never would've believed that a movie based on toys could be so much fun. :)

Probable spoilers below (I never know what someone else is gonna consider a spoiler so better safe than sorry.)

( Dr. Who 'Utopia' )

( The 4400 season premiere )

( The Dead Zone season premiere )

( The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer )

I forgot to record this week's "The Next Food Network Star" (it aired opposite The 4400) but fortunately they re-run it 80 times during the week so I won't have much trouble catching up with it. (Yeah, Top Chef is much better than TNFNS but I still want to watch it.)

Oh, and ( Kyle XY's season premiere was last Monday )

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Gah. Kidunit and I cleaned house. And we... have a LOT of stuff. Much of which is crap and should probably be gotten rid of, but that's kind of intimidating to think about. Anyway, that meant that most of this weekend was spent sorting, cleaning, pitching, and going out to buy some new storage bins and shelves for stuff in order to accomplish said task. We've been to Target four times, Bed Bath & Beyond three times, and Wal-Mart twice (once to buy shelves, once to return one broken set and get an unbroken one. No, we didn't break it! ;D) We have bags and bags of trash, and the house is still a mess but at least we have potential places for some of the stuff now, we just need to get it shifted around. And I'm tired and sore and my back hurts like crazy. And I think I am fighting off a cold. Ugh.

In between all that, we managed (mostly because I demanded it) to go see Casino Royale. ( spoilery reactions behind the cut )

I just read that Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson) has optioned naominovik's Temeraire series.

Now, we all know that an option does not a movie make, but still how cool is that?

Congratulations, Naomi.

With theamusedone visiting last Thursday and then bluster coming up immediately after that, I've been offline for nearly a week. I gave up trying to catch up with my flist (it's at about skip=325 so if I missed something important, I apologize. :)

Friday bluster came to visit and she just went home today. We had a great time relaxing, yakking, watching lots of gritty British cop dramas (Touching Evil, and Wire in the Blood), and cheesy old American TV westerns (The Wild Wild West), and a little Stargate Atlantis on top of all that. ardent_muses came up for a while both Saturday and Sunday and hung out with us, it was wonderful fun. We got pedicures (bluster lost her pedicure cherry!) and The Cheese Importer was visited, of course, and we had several delicious meals out and I cooked a slapdash coq au vin using some frozen boneless chicken breasts and a lovely cabernet sauvignon bluster had brought with her. Note to self: you need to remember to caramelize the onions beforehand next time, so the reduction is brown rather than pinkish.

Last night, on the spur of the moment, bluster, kidunit and I went to see the late showing of Superman Returns, which we all thought was great. Bryan Singer has an amazing knack for giving big mindless action flicks a heart. We thought Brendan Routh was an appealingly vulnerable Superman and Kate Bosworth was a stronger Lois Lane than usual. Kevin Spacey was a surprisingly understated Lex Luthor-- usually filmic Lexes chew the scenery more (which is not to say there was NO scenery chewing). Maybe he took a cue from Michael Rosenbaum's Lex on Smallville (where he is the best thing about the show). Frank Langella made an excellent Perry White, and it was nice to see James Marsden's eyes for once. He's a better actor when you can see them, they're very expressive. (I wonder if his Superman role was why his Cyclops role in X3 was so small?) We were surprised that they used much of the original score from the 1978 Superman. The only thing we didn't like was that we thought they got a little carried away with the opening credits. We got kind of bored waiting for the actual movie to start and wondered why they hadn't moved most of them to the end credits.

One thing that struck me as stylistically odd ( very minor spoiler behind the cut: )

Finally, just for fun I took the "What type of MAN turns you on Test". While I actually kind of agree with the results, I can't really agree with the representative of the type they chose, since Jude Law does exactly nothing for me. But hey, can't have everything, right? Full results ( after the cut )

So in a rather vain attempt to take my mind of world events, I watched Pterodactyl tonight. And sithdragn was pretty much right. "Greatest amount of crap crammed into two hours EVA." Despite having about 15 minutes of David Nykl in it as a hard-bitten Special Forces sergeant. A very short hard-bitten Special Forces Sergeant. :-) I have to say I like him better with glasses.

Okay, maybe it wasn't the worst movie ever, I still think that award goes to either Purple Toast or Now and Forever. (Yes, I will watch utter crap just to see my favorite actors, why do you ask? Fortunately I can forgive my favorite actors for making the occasional crap movie so they can pay the rent.)

And it did have two redeeming features. 1) Angie bought it. (Sorry if anyone feels hideously spoilered) 2) Check out the list of character names:

Actor .... Character
Coolio.... Captain Bergin
Cameron Daddo.... Professor Lovecraft
Amy Sloan.... Kate Heinlein
George Calil .... Serling
Ivo Cutzarida .... Yolen
Mircea Monroe .... Angie
Jessica Ferrarone .... Zelazny
David Nykl .... Russell
Steve Braun .... Willis
Petr Jákl .... Tezo
Dusan Fager .... Burroughs
Todd Kramer .... Clark
Danna Lee .... Gwen Kemper

Now, I don't know where Kemper, Tezo, Russell, Bergin or Angie came from, but I certainly know where Lovecraft, Heinlein, (eta: Serling, Yolen,) Zelazny, Willis, Burroughs and Clark came from. ;-D Hee!

(PS: Did anyone else think that Zelazny looked like Sandra Bullock and the dorky kid with the glasses looked like Rick Moranis?)

I have that song running through my head so I thought I would share.

Why yes, I am evil. Why do you ask?

Went to see the movie today with the daughter-unit, and thought they did a great job. Yes, it's a comic book movie but it's a GOOD comic book movie. I actually thought it was better than the first one, which I also liked so I'm not damning with faint praise. Well worth the cost of admission.

( spoilers )

On the spur of the moment, my daughter and I went to see Troy tonight. In brief: it was better than I expected, but not fantastic. I did enjoy it a lot more than I did VanHelsing though. More behind the cut tag.
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