Skip to main content

50 First Dates, Matrix: Reloaded, Drumline

8/21/04

I've seen a bunch of movies lately. I saw 50 FIRST DATES with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. (I'm liking his recent movies, he's somehow quite appealing as a hero.) Anyway, except for a couple cuss words and off-camera premarital sex, it was a fabulous portrayal of sacrificial unselfishness in love. Such a refreshing theme compared to the sex-is-love that seems to pervade most movies these days. I'd let my high school girls watch it, although maybe not the Junior High school girls.

I saw MATRIX: RELOADED finally. It was actually better than I expected, after reading a bunch of very negative reviews. The ending is a cliffhanger, which I think is part of the reason why people didn't like it as much. There were three things I disliked about it: 1) Apparently Keanu couldn't or wouldn't do his own staff-fighting, so while the choreography of the fight scene with the metal pipe and the multiple Agent Smiths is very good, the scene is all CGI, which looks a lot like a video game. 2) There is a totally useless dance party/gratuitous sex scene early in the movie with hundreds of young, nubile gyrating bodies interspersed with afforementioned gratuitous sex scene. Waste of film minutes, in my opinion. 3) Morpheus' inspirational speech to the crowd (just before dance party scene) has sentiments that are in character, but the writers did a poor job of copying the character's speech style. The language--the words chosen--belong to Shakespeare in the Park, rather than Morpheus' character.

But on a whole, I liked the movie a lot. I'd give it four stars. The car/motorcycle/big-rig chase scene is KICKIN'. Loved that. The albino twins characters are pretty neat, too, although I thought Frenchie is a bit overplayed by the actor. Agent Smith's new "powers" to be able to replicate himself is a nice concept, like a virus with AI. The biggest thing I liked was that, like the first MATRIX, the storyline makes the audience question their reality. Before, it was the concept that reality is all in your head, the computer-generated Matrix. This time, it's that this reality isn't the first reality, but one of many reboots. I thought it was a cool story premise. I would hate to think there are people who actually believe it as true, but for me, it's entertaining fiction.

Tonight I saw DRUMLINE. A totally feel-good movie. It also had characters that displayed all the 'classic' story arcs: The character has a goal, then there's conflict, boxing the character in until he has to make a decision to either 1) attain his goal easily but compromise his morals, or 2) give up his goal but do what's right. When the character does the right thing, it totally makes me, as the audience, want to root for him. It was neat to observe, in this movie, how to develop and retain reader sympathy for a character in a manuscript. I'm so hyped to have noticed it. I'm off to work on my hero!

I also started reading PREMONITION by Randy Ingermanson. I have to say, the entire storyline of the book is fascinating. Since Randy is a real-live physicist (and an incredibly smart guy), he wrote a story premise about a rogue physicist who utilizes quantum mechanics to travel back in time to kill the apostle Paul. The physicist is followed by two other modern-day characters who choose to stay back in first-century Jerusalem to ensure the murder plot isn't carried out. That's the story from his first book, TRANSGRESSION (which is out of print, and there are some booksellers charging an arm and a leg for an $11 book). PREMONITION is the sequel, and the characters are aware that next in the actual historical timeline is the murder of the apostle James and the Jewish revolt. On his website, Randy has a really interesting article about the bone-box found recently by archaeologists that may hold the actual bones of James: (http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/james__bone_box.html) That makes PREMONITION that much more interesting to read, even though Randy wrote it before the bone-box was discovered. Next month, the third book in this series will be released, RETRIBUTION. I can't wait to read that.

Well, those are my thoughts. I think I will try to blog more often from now on. I must like to listen to myself. LOL


Categories:

Comments

Popular Posts

I got my cover!

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Blog book giveaway: To enter, go to the blog links below and post a comment there. Eyes of Elisha by Brandilyn Collins Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith I GOT MY COVER!!!! What do you guys think?

Toilet seat cover

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Update August 2008: I wrote up the pattern for this with "improvements"! Here's the link to my No Cold Bums toilet seat cover ! Okay, remember a few days ago I was complaining about the cold toilet seat in my bathroom? Well, I decided to knit a seat cover. Not a lid cover, but a seat cover. I went online and couldn’t find anything for the seat, just one pattern for the lid by Feminitz.com . However, I took her pattern for the inside edge of the lid cover and modified it to make a seat cover. Here it is! It’s really ugly stitch-wise because originally I made it too small and had to extend it a couple inches on each side. I figured I’d be the one staring at it, so who cared if the extension wasn’t perfectly invisible? I used acrylic yarn since, well, that’s what I had, and also because it’s easy to wash. I’ll probably have to wash this cover every week or so, but it’s easy to take off—I made ties which you can see near the back of the seat. And...

Cover Reveal + New Logo for Year of the Dog, a Mahina Security Novel

A New Look for Year of the Dog (and a Behind-the-Scenes Oops!) What do a dog trainer, a security expert, and a nearly-naked book cover have in common? Let me explain. 😅 Year of the Dog is the first book in my Christian romantic suspense series, Mahina Security, set in beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) Hawaii. It features quirky humor, family tensions, sweet romance, and a mystery involving a missing person—and it’s now available to read in the Christian suspense anthology, Danger in the Shadows , on Kindle Unlimited ! But before that happened, I had a bit of a cover mishap… While creating the ebook cover, I realized that the original stock photo made my heroine look, well, completely nekkid. 😳 She’s actually wearing a tube top in the image, but when I cropped it for the ebook, the top disappeared—leaving her looking very PG-13. To fix it, I did some Canva magic on a strappy top from another image and stuck it onto the model (so she’s decent now). But when I resize...

Excerpt - A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS by Nicole Seitz

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.05.2009 Update: Sorry, this giveaway is closed. A Hundred Years of Happiness by Nicole Seitz A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence. Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father, by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother, who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain. They're all longing for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin. From the beloved author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass...

No Cold Bums toilet seat cover

Captain's Log, Stardate 08.22.2008 I actually wrote out my pattern! I was getting a lot of hits on my infamous toilet seat cover , and I wanted to make a new one with “improvements,” so I paid attention and wrote things down as I made the new one. This was originally based off the Potty Mouth toilet cover , but I altered it to fit over the seat instead of the lid. Yarn: any worsted weight yarn, about 120 yards (this is a really tight number, I used exactly 118 yards. My suggestion is to make sure you have about 130 yards.) I suggest using acrylic yarn because you’re going to be washing this often. Needle: I used US 8, but you can use whatever needle size is recommended by the yarn you’re using. Gauge: Not that important. Mine was 4 sts/1 inch in garter stitch. 6 buttons (I used some leftover shell buttons I had in my stash) tapestry needle Crochet hook (optional) Cover: Using a provisional cast on, cast on 12 stitches. Work in garter st until liner measures...