home again, home again jiggety-jig
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-12-26 17:41:00
Tags: movies
Words: 644

We're back home. Christmas was nice but there was surprisingly little time to relax. And I was OK about going back to work two days after Christmas, but I'm decidedly less excited about it now.

Christmas with David's family was nice, though - we cleaned up in time Christmas morning for the big party, and it wasn't as awkward as I had feared, since I had been introduced to a lot of his family before. Played 42 with family for an hour or two - they're quite good unlike myself, but everyone was pleasant and whatnot. Also ended up playing a lot of Rook while we were there - the rules are similar to 42, except it's with cards, and the play is fairly different.

It looks like we'll be at my folks this coming weekend for Christmas instead of the one after that, which works out better for various reasons but means we'll be in Houston three weekends in a row (all for good reason) which is kind of a lot.

Just checked mail - I got a small package from Gary Madison (from NY) that contains a CD called "Por Vida" which I know nothing about. I'm assuming it's a present, and I'm all for random fun stuff showing up in my mailbox, but does anyone have the skinny on this?

Movies we saw: National Treasure 2, Underdog (the second half or so), Live Free or Die Hard, Stardust. Thoughts below; may contain spoilers.

National Treasure 2: Biased against it from the beginning, because, seriously? It was more or less what I expected - decent action, barely believable plot. There were some major problems in there. For example: the main bad guy (who looks totally evil from the very first scene he's in and I hope it wasn't supposed to be a surprise that he was a bad guy) presents evidence that Nicolas Cage's great-grandfather was the mastermind of the plot to assassinate Lincoln. The story that Cage's family was told was that he was killed because he didn't decrypt a treasure map for a group of Confederate sympathizers to the legendary city of Cibola. Apparently these can't both be true, because Nicolas Cage's plan is to go ahead and find that city, thus proving that...the treasure map was true. So his great-granddaddy wasn't a traitor. Or something. Also, the main bad guy tries to get some of the clues along with way, mostly by shooting the good guys. But then at the end he needs them to decipher the final clue, or explore the tunnel with them or something. So why all the bullets before? And at the very end he heroically gives himself up to save the rest of them. He seems to want his family name to be cleared, but that sure isn't clear until he says so. Blah.

Underdog (the second half or so): Biased against it because I saw the trailer and it looked cookie-cutter talking animal: dumb. I sat down to watch with David's nephews who were supposed to be napping in front of it, which didn't work at all. It ended up being not as dumb as I thought - I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but sitting down in front of it beats working. Jim Belushi and Patrick Warburton (Puddy on Seinfeld, The Tick) certainly help.

Live Free or Die Hard: Biased for it because I liked the first one and I heard it was good. It was awesome. Justin Long is good, Timothy Olyphant is good, and of course Bruce Willis is good. Good good good. Simultaneously made me want to work out more and work on my leet hacker skillz.

Stardust: We watched this lateish last night, and I think I would have enjoyed it more had I been less tired. It's a fairy tale, and it was sweet, but it just felt a little weird. Worth watching, though.

2 comments

Comment from djedi:
2007-12-27T11:16:11+00:00
Good summary. I agree with these.

NT2 - soo many plot holes and things that just don't make sense. The problem was that the movie itself was decent but the motivations make no sense as Greg pointed out.

UD - I used to kinda like the short cartoons but turning this into a live action movie was just...well, exactly as you might guess.

LFoDH - awesome!

SD - I liked it more than you did. I thought it was sweet and unusual. It was nice to watch a somewhat silly fantasy movie aimed at adults. Not quite as funny or silly as Princess Bride, but good.

Comment from copperwolf:
2008-01-06T19:28:11+00:00
Re: Stardust -- read the book, it's so sweet! :) Be sure to get the version with the drawings by Charles Vess.

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