Exceedingly Mundane

I saw on the news this morning that writer Nora Ephron passed away. Sad to hear, as she is behind so many of my favorite movies. I have a lot of favorites, but many of them are associated with her:

Sleepless in Seattle
When Harry Met Sally
You’ve Got Mail
Julie & Julia

Some of my other favorites are older movies, like…

Casablanca
Imitation of Life
Out of Africa
The Sound of Music

I have lots of other favorites, but those are always near the top of my list. Depending on my mood, I love to watch movies like my beloved Lord of The Rings movies, Star Wars movies, and then more action type movies like The Bourne movies, Italian Job, etc. When I’m in a girly mood though, Nora Ephron movies can’t be beat!

What are your favorite movies? Do you have movies you love to watch over and over again? 🙂

Obviously I couldn’t think of a good title. I’ve used “Odds and Ends”, “Catching Up” and “This and That” so much that I probably have double digit posts under each of blog post names 🙂 But that’s what this is, a various and assorted post.

It’s cold here this morning and was pretty chilly all weekend. I feel the need to go buy warm sweaters and sweatshirts! We’ve done really good though, and have not turned on our heat yet. It’s cold at night, but we sleep under a big quilt, and we’ve just been sucking it up in the AM until the house warms up in the middle part of the day.

We went to see Quantum of Solace over the weekend. I had read a review that probably pre-disposed me to it before we went. The review said this was more “Bourne than Bond”, and I have to agree, although I love all three of the Bourne movies. But this one had a fair amount of hand-held camera work in parts of it and that bothers me sometimes. It was a good movie though, typical Bond, high-action, and we did enjoy it.

We’ve also rented a couple of new movies lately from Netflix. We really liked “Get Smart” quite a bit, didn’t enjoy “What Happens in Vegas” all that much, and Tim watched the newest version of “The Incredible Hulk.”. We also just finished Season 5 of The Gilmore Girls, and will start Season 6 soon.

We got a new window, courtesy of Tim and his brother Terry, a couple of weeks ago:

I spent a gift card I got for my birthday (thanks Mark and Amanda!) at Target, and got a small rice cooker to try out. I fixed some Chinese food over the weekend, and white rice, and it was good. I’m going to look for some new stir fry recipes to try. If you have one, let me know! Also, I think I may try to make some red beans and rice this winter and use it for that also. Here’s my little cooker with rice:

I’ve read several books lately, and have been entering them over at GoodReads. If you’re not hooked up with me there, and want to know more about what I’ve read, just leave me a comment and let me know. I’m currently reading the first book I chose for the Winter Holiday Reading Challenge, “Until Morning is Nigh” by Leisha Kelly. This book is part of a series I’m reading and that I’m really enjoying 🙂

And I hate to end on a sad note, but today is not the most joyous of days for me. Today would have been my mom’s birthday, so I’m a bit sad today. It’s always hard this time of year, through the holidays, and around Mother’s Day. I wonder if there will ever come a time when I don’t miss her…

Well. I hope you’re all having a good day! 🙂

I probably won’t do this very often, but I thought I’d throw out a couple of quick movie reviews. As I blogged about a couple of days ago (here), we just started our new Netflix trial membership. We’ve received our first three movies, and have watched two of them. One hit and one miss 🙂

The hit was “Deja Vu” with Denzel Washington. We both liked that one. It does have some violence and language to it, but we both really liked the plot. The miss was “Catch and Release“. My sister Gail was here when we watched it, and I don’t think she liked it much at all either. I wanted to like it, as I really like Jennifer Garner, but it just wasn’t a good movie for us. Too quirky and too immoral for our crew. Tim really and truly disliked it. When I asked him to rate these movies (on a scale of 1-10), he gave “Catch and Release” a 3 and “Deja Vu” an 8 or 9.

We also checked out the second Pirates movie. I had wanted to watch that one again to refresh my mind on the plot, before we go see Pirates 3 in the theater. We’ve been seeing a lot of sequels this summer. We’ve seen Spiderman 3, Oceans 13 and the 2nd Fantastic Four movie. This weekend or next, we’ll probably go see Pirates. We’re both really looking forward to the third Bourne movie coming out in August, also.

Up next for us from Netflix (remember, you can check my queue out on my sidebar, courtesy of the neat plug-in I installed) is one for Tim (“Flags of Our Fathers”) and one for me (“The Queen”). Lots of popcorn in my future 😀

I was so excited when I won one of the Netflix complimentary subscriptions that Nan, over at her blog “Life is Like a Lunchbox” gave away last month. I’ve been burning a path to my mailbox every day since then, waiting for the information packet to come in. I had nearly given up hope, but a month after I won it, the package came! Yeah! I was literally jumping up and down and both Tim and Beau were eyeing me like I had lost my mind 🙄 I just love winning things, love having “fun” stuff come in the mail, and I love to get practical things that we really and truly will use. This is one of them.

I setup our free trial late Saturday night and immediately began adding movies to our queue. I’ve had a blast ever since then, trying to find movies for us to get, and reordering them in our queue. I was a bit bummed to learn that Netflix does not ship movies out on Saturdays or Sundays. For some reason, I think I was equating them in my mind to Amazon or someplace that worked around the clock, 7 days a week, to ship me my goodies 🙂 Anyway, the long weekend over, my first movies were mailed late yesterday (Monday) and we are hoping they come in the mail today. I’m so excited, I can’t wait 😀

I also downloaded and installed a plug-in for my blog, to show what we have at home from Netflix and also what is up next in our queue. Check it out on my sidebar, below and on the right. I think it’s so cool!

OK, so for my question – I have a bunch of movies in our queue, but I’m always looking for more suggestions! If you’ve seen a good movie, especially one that might have been a “sleeper” or not a blockbuster type movie that you’ve seen and enjoyed, let me know what it is! We see a lot of movies at the theater when they come out, and rent even more, so I’ve actually had a hard time trying to find movies. I’m finding some older ones, and some of the new releases that we haven’t seen yet to add to our queue. But I’d love to get more ideas 🙂 Leave me a comment and let me know some movies I should get!

So, if you also read my Project365 photoblog, you already know that we did the whole big “eat bad food, watch several movies” thing over the weekend. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. We’re really behind on seeing a lot of movies that have been out on DVD for the last few months. Plus, I’ve been really craving pizza. So, Saturday we ordered Papa John’s pizza (the Works, and we tried their little dessert cinna-pizza) and then on Sunday, we ordered take out Chinese from the place a few blocks from our house. Yummy! Tim always gets chicken with garlic sauce (spicy) and I always get shrimp with broccoli. We ordered some steamed dumplings, which is my most favorite thing that this particular place makes.

Anyway, here’s the movies we rented:

I thought I would do some quick movie reviews, then I got to thinking – I basically always like the movies we watch and the books I read! I am not a very good person to give a thoughtful, insightful kind of review. I just like to escape and I like to be entertained. I don’t like to really analyze the movies and dissect them. I just like to watch them and enjoy them 🙂

We liked all 3 movies, but we did enjoy “The Illusionist” the best. Very good movie, with a good plot, good characters and actors, and it was actually fairly clean. We both give it an 8 out of 10. The other two movies, we liked for different reasons. “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” is so lite and cheesy and campy, and even though it has a bit of off-color humor and crassness to it (and a bit of bad language), it is just so easy to laugh along to all of its silliness. We give it a 7 out of 10. The last movie was one I rented purely for myself, “A Good Year“. I had read the book “A Year in Provence” by Peter Mayle a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. I had thought this movie was loosely based on this book, but from what I remember about the book, the two don’t have anything remotely in common! I enjoyed it, nonetheless, and Tim said he did too, although I’m sure he would say this was his least favorite movie of the ones we got. The pace of this movie is slower, and it wants you to stop and think about your life and your job and your choices, and I really liked it. I thought it had a certain charm and a certain quality to it, that I really enjoyed. But, that’s just me, I love movies about appreciating the simple things in life.

So, there you go. We at least knocked 3 movies off our ever-growing list. We haven’t rented hardly any movies this year, and we’ve only been to the theater once. This is way behind schedule for us. I know it will pick up a lot more in the summer. Once our shows like 24, Idol, Lost, Survivor, etc go off for the summer sometime in May, we’ll start renting a lot more movies. I say every year that we want to try Netflix, but somehow, we never seem to get around to it. One reason could be the 100+ DVD’s we already own, and the massive amount of channels we get on our digital cable. Anyway, if you have any movies you’ve seen lately and would recommend, leave me a comment and let me know 🙂 We still have a lot left to rent, and I’m always looking for more good ones to add to that list!

This week – Ten Movie Characters You Love:

Ooh, tough one. I love so many movies and so many characters, it’s actually hard to narrow it down!

1. Aragorn – Lord of the Rings movies (Viggo Mortensen)
2. Legolas – Lord of the Rings movies (Orlando Bloom)
3. Kathleen Kelly – You’ve Got Mail (Meg Ryan)
4. George Bailey – It’s a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart)
5. Trinity – Matrix movies (Carrie-Ann Moss)
6. Lara Croft – Tomb Raider movies (Angelina Jolie) – both #5 and #6 are kick-butt girls, love em!
7. Will Thacker – Notting Hill (Hugh Grant)
8. Luke Skywalker – original Star Wars movies (Mark Hamill)
9. Westley – The Princess Bride (Cary Elwes)
10. Jason Bourne – Bourne movies (Matt Damon)

Also, because I can’t pick JUST 10:

Melanie – Sweet Home Alabama (Reese Witherspoon)
Toula – My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Nia Vardalos)
Ouiser Boudreaux – Steel Magnolias (Shirley MacLaine)
Lucy and Jack – While You Were Sleeping (Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman)
Alex Hitchins – Hitch (Will Smith)

UPDATE: Well, as my dear friend Susie pointed out in the comments, she had done this one before, and lo and behold, so had I! I wasn’t completely consistent, but pretty close. I named almost the same ones before, with a couple of exceptions. All depends on what movies I have seen recently or are stuck in my head, I think 😀

In keeping with the recent movie motif (I blogged Friday on my Project365 blog about the movies I picked up at the rental store, and I did that fun movie meme yesterday), I thought I would do a quick review of the 2 movies we watched this weekend.

Friday was the first time I had walked into the video store in a couple of months. We’ve mostly been watching TV or movies we own, or some on HBO (we’re still getting free HBO a while longer through our cable provider). I have quite a few movies on our rental list, and so I went ahead and picked up a couple of them. One for me, “The Holiday” with Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Kate Winsley, and the Disney movie, “The Greatest Game Ever Played” for Tim.

Both were good movies, in their own way. “The Holiday” was cute and light, although it wasn’t the greatest chick flick I had ever seen. It was a decent rental though, and one I am glad that I got to see. I liked both of the British actors the best, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. I’m not a big Cameron Diaz fan and even less do I like Jack Black, although he was ok in this movie and didn’t annoy me. Tim watched it with me, and we’d give it about a 7 out of 10.

The other movie is in the same vein as all of the other Disney sports movies we’ve seen and enjoyed. Movies like “The Rookie”, “Remember the Titans”, “Miracle” and “Invincible”. All good movies, all true stories, all heartwarming and inspiring, and best of all, all very clean. Good family movies. This one, “The Greatest Game Ever Played” is a golf movie, which of course is Tim’s favorite thing on the planet. So, I knew he would like it 🙂 I really enjoyed the movie too, and we both rate this one pretty high, probably a 9 out of 10. We were both tickled at the beginning because it starts off by saying on the screen “This is a true story”. Unlike the standard, “Based on a true story”. It’s an obscure story, about an amateur golfer way back in 1913, but it’s a good one.

Tonight, we’ll do the Sci-Fi thing – watch The Dresden Files and then the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, my favorite show on TV. We’re still boycotting Amazing Race, but we’ll be back in the swing of heavy TV watching tomorrow with Prison Break, 24, and Dancing with the Stars. Tuesday is even busier – we’ll have 2 VCR’s going and be watching a third set of shows.

How about you – have you seen a movie lately that you like and would recommend? 🙂

Snagged this one from Deb over at Sugarfused. Thanks for letting me swipe it, Deb!

Movie Meme

1. Name a movie you have seen more than 10 times. Star Wars. You’ve Got Mail
2. Name a movie you’ve seen multiple times in the theater. Star Wars
3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie. Clive Owen; Christian Bale
4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to see a movie. Will Ferrell. Blech.
5. Name a movie you can and do quote from. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. You’ve Got Mail. O Brother, Where Art Thou
6. Name a movie musical in which you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs. The Sound of Music
7. Name a movie you have been known to sing along with. The Sound of Music
8. Name a movie you would recommend everyone see. All of the Lord of the Rings movies
9. Name a movie you own. All of the Star Wars movie, all of the LOTR movies (and a hundred more!!!)
10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops. Mark Wahlberg
11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what? Nope.
12. Ever made out in a movie? Not much
13. Name a movie you keep meaning to see but you just haven’t gotten around to yet. See all the ones listed on my sidebar!
14. Ever walked out of a movie? Yes. Yanks years ago and “Forget Paris” in 1995
15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater. Titanic
16. Popcorn? YES!
17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)? We go sporadically during the year, but a lot in the summer when all of the blockbusters come out
18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater? Hmmm, not sure? It might have been “Facing the Giants”
19. What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie? Comedy or Romance
20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? not sure, maybe The Sound of Music?
21. What movie do you wish you had never seen? Any Given Sunday
22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed? Memento
23. What is the scariest movie you’ve seen? Sixth Sense
24. What is the funniest movie you’ve seen? What Women Want

Mindless ramblings on books and movies… 🙂

I was out running errands the other day and I just couldn’t resist stopping at the library. I had been purposefully staying away, trying to read some books that I have here at home, but the lure of the library (and the bookstore) are sometimes just too strong for me to resist. I went with a purpose though, to try to find a short, light, Christmas type book to read here at the holidays. Last year I bought a paperback in Walmart by Debbie Macomber, one of my favorite “women’s” authors, and I enjoyed reading it during the holidays. I like having something Christmas-y to read this time of year. I looked under her name first at the library, and found two Christmas themed books, and grabbed both of them. I’ve already read one of them, a really short, small book called “Can This Be Christmas”, about a group of weary travelers stranded by a blizzard, stuck at a train depot in the Northeast on Christmas Eve. It was a really short book, but sweet and happy and had a good message about the real meaning of Christmas. I also picked up another one called “The Christmas Basket”, that I haven’t read yet. I’m still working on the second book in the Beverly Lewis Amish series, and I am really enjoying those books.

I also picked up a cookbook from the New books section at the front of my library. It’s called “Eating Well Serves Two” and I hope to get time to go through it and maybe copy out some recipes before it’s due back after the new year. Since I cook almost exclusively for two, and this one is a healthy type book, it seemed perfect for me. Can’t wait to go through it… I tend to read cookbooks like regular fiction books!

I went and got my hair cut yesterday and the girl that cuts my hair had a big bag of paperbacks that she was going to give away. All she asked was that if I read them, that I bring them back another time and leave for someone else to pick up and read. That kind of plan suits me just fine, and so I just quickly grabbed a couple of books from the bag. I saw Nora Roberts name and realized she had a trilogy, called the Circle Trilogy, and without reading the jacket, just said, I’ll take these and read them and get them back to you next year. Well. I have liked what few books I have read by Nora Roberts, but when I got home, I read the inside jacket and found out these are about vampires and witches and sorcerers, so not at all what I thought they were going to be! I’ll see after the holidays if I like them, they were free and I can give them a try. I sort of hate to take them back without reading them… I don’t want to appear ungracious, but I’m not sure these are the kinds of books I want to be reading! 🙄

As for movies, we’re still watching a lot of movies on our new digital cable and free HBO. They are not having a lot of good movies available “On Demand” right now, although we’ve watched a couple of mediocre, older movies lately. Last night, we thought about going to rent one, then decided to be lazy and finally enter the 21st century. Yes, we had never done a Pay-Per-View movie until last night. We went through the list and found 2 or 3 that are on my rental list, and Tim was being very sweet and offered to let me pick one (aka, a “girl” movie). I picked “The Lake House” with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. I liked it, it was sweet and sappy and predictable, but more than that, it was clean and had a happy ending. My kind of movie. I really liked it and enjoyed it. Except, that our company came in about 3/4 of the way through it and proceeded to heckle and make fun of my movie. Because of the time sliding aspect of the movie and the overall sappiness of it. I told them to please not make fun of my movie, I wanted to enjoy it. Which I did, but they got Tim going and then he proceeded to make fun of it. Anyway, Tim gets the next choice and he indicated that he wants to watch… sigh….why do guys like things like this… his choice is — Larry the Cable guy, or Inspector something or whatever that movie is. Big Sigh. I’m sure I won’t like it nearly as much as Tim, but then again, I’m sure I enjoyed “The Lake House” a lot more than he did too! 🙂

How about another Question of the Day: What was the last movie you rented that you really liked?

Our out of town company (Round 1) is still here, and the guys went hunting yesterday. They didn’t get a deer, which doesn’t surprise me, since it’s so warm here. It’s not really hunting weather, not when it gets up to around 75º during the day 🙄 I think they had a good time though, and then we all watched Monday Night Football when they got back.

Before they got back, though, I had a chance to pop in a Christmas movie and have a little girl time. Believe it or not, I had never seen “White Christmas”. It’s my sister Gail‘s favorite Christmas movie, I think, so I thought I would buy it and watch it. Well. It was a good movie, but it really wasn’t very Christmas-y! I think that’s the case with a lot of the older Christmas movies that they might have come out at Christmas or maybe had one Christmas scene in them, but they aren’t really all that Christmas-y. Tim will never watch “White Christmas” with me, that’s for sure. Too much singing and dancing in it for him!

I also own “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Bishop’s Wife” on DVD and I must say, I think I like those movies better as Christmas movies. Those still are my two favorites. I also really like Holiday Inn (but I don’t own that one on DVD, maybe next year!) and I like to catch “Christmas in Connecticut” on TV when it comes on. We also saw “The Polar Express” on TV a week or so ago and it was good.

So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? One that you watch every year? One that really says “Christmas” to you, for whatever reason. Leave me a comment and let me know!

We rented a movie over the weekend and we stayed so busy that we didn’t have a chance to watch it until last night. It was Tim’s pick, and even though I was mumbling in the video store “I haven’t heard good things about that one, let’s get another one“, he got it anyway. We rented “The Matador” with Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear.

I almost hesitate to do book and movie reviews here, even though it is my blog and I think I’m allowed my own opinion.

However- Number one, I’m a pleaser and I don’t like confrontation. I like to go with the flow and do what makes everyone else happy. Number two – I also firmly believe that what one person likes, another dislikes. But, since it is my blog, I’m going to just state my opinion – we disliked this movie tremendously.

Even Tim, who picked it out, didn’t like it. It had a bad plot, not great acting, some raunchy parts, lots of bad language and it just drug on and on. Several times Tim and I glanced at each other and one would say “I wonder how much longer it’s going to be”. Ugh. Lots of people might like this movie (although it’s hard for me to see how), but we thoroughly disliked it. In fact, on a scale of 1-10, we give it a 2 or maybe a 3 at best. My recommendation would be to save yourself the money to rent it and that two hours of your life that you can never get back. I wish we had!

Sheesh, I was a couple of months behind on entering book and movie reviews in the Reviews section of our main website, Hambones.org. I just entered them all, and for what it’s worth, most of what I wrote was already covered here in this blog. I’ve gotten accustomed to just blogging about movies or books here, and not entering the reviews. I’m not sure if anyone reads them (except Gail, of course, LOL), but I did go ahead and catch up and enter them all.

I entered book reviews for the following:
“The Preservationist” by David Maine (here)
“Goodnight Nobody” by Jennifer Weiner (here)
“The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd (here)
“Vanishing Acts” by Jodi Picoult (here)
“Shem Creek” by Dorothea Benton Frank (here)
“Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden (here)

And movie reviews for:
Finding Neverland (here)
Because of Winn Dixie ((here)
Failure to Launch (here)
Walk the Line (here)
Memoirs of a Geisha (here)

WHEW! I think I’m caught up now. Tim is watching Underworld:Evolution tonight, but I’m not. I’m waiting for Treasure Hunters, I like that show. I doubt there will be a review of Underworld, since I didn’t watch it. I have also read the first 2 books in the Tucker Mills trilogy, but I won’t write a review until I’ve read them all, and then I’ll write one to cover all three books. Taking the easy way out, yessirreebob! 🙂

I blogged several weeks ago about the free DVD offer from Kellogg’s and how we were collecting coupons from our favorite cereal boxes. I mailed off the first two and then a third request, and yesterday, we got our other two movies. Here’s what we got, totally free, except for the stamp to mail the envelope:

We have 3 coupons toward another movie, but now they are not printing these on the Kellogg’s cereal boxes any more. I haven’t been able to find them for several weeks now, so I guess that’s the end of our free movies! It was nice while it lasted – I so love to get freebies and fun things in the mail!

I made yet another trip to my library today… to return the “Finding Neverland” DVD and “The Preservationist”, both of which I finished this week. I tried to just drop them off and walk out of there, but I have this sort of defective gene when it comes to the library. I feel like I have to at least look around, then after I start looking, I feel compelled to leave with several items in my hand. It’s a sickness, I tell you, a sickness.

I brought home 2 more movies – I have discovered the joy of renting movies for free from the library and I just can’t resist. I got another one on our rental list that we missed earlier when it came out, “Hotel Rwanda” and I also picked up the DVD of “Wuthering Heights”. Sigh.

I got 2 more books, and have just added them to my sidebar in the “up next to read” segment. They are “Vanishing Acts” by Jodi Picoult and “Shem Creek” by Dorothea Benton Frank. I have read one other Picoult book, “Plain Truth” and really enjoyed it, so I looked for another one. I have never read anything by Frank, but she’s a Southern writer and I generally like books like this. I have seen her newest one “Full of Grace” at the bookstore and resisted, so I thought I would start with an older book of hers (aka, free from the library). 🙂 Check back in the next couple of weeks for a review of these… these are both a bit heftier books, weighing in at 400 and 300 pages or so, so it may take me a bit longer with the weekend and holiday to finish them. 🙄

I blogged last week in my Thursday Thirteen post, about some movies I wanted to rent and watch over the summer. I had already found one and we watched it (Because of Winn Dixie, great movie), and I went back to the library yesterday to return that one, and look for more movies. I came home with “Finding Neverland” on DVD, and we watched it last night after Tim got in from the golf course. So, that makes 2 out of my list that I’ve seen in less than a week, yeah!!!

I really liked it, and I think Tim did also, but he did comment that it was a bit slow in the beginning. We give it a 7 out of 10 stars (and we’ll rate the Winn Dixie one an 8 out of 10). That reminds me, I need to do some book and movie reviews over on our main site, Hambones .

By the way, for those of you who do not know me, I didn’t ever really have a childhood. I didn’t grow up doing normal childhood things, like seeing Disney movies, playing games, singing kids songs, etc. Those things are foreign to me. I’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz, although I wear that like a badge of honor now and refuse to watch it. But, I realized last night while watching “Finding Neverland” that I never saw Peter Pan either. In talking to Tim after the movie, he liked that movie growing up and has happy childhood memories of seeing it and liking it. He said I’d need to look for either Peter Pan or maybe Hook with Robin Williams at the library and try to check that out. He seems to think that I need to see Peter Pan. 😆