Movie review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

My husband and I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall today. Here's the premise of the movie: Peter (Jason Segel) has been dating television star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) for the past five years. One day, Sarah suddenly breaks up with him. It turns out that she has been dating rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). In an attempt to forget about Sarah, Peter goes on a Hawaiian vacation, only to find out that Sarah and Aldous are at the exact same hotel. Peter befriends most of the hotel staff, including customer service rep Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis). With their help, he realizes that he is more than just "Sarah Marshall's boyfriend." I expected Sarah Marshall to be funny. However, I didn't expect it to be this funny. The script, which is absolutely brilliant, was written by Segel. There are also a few original songs he wrote for the movie as well. All of the actors gave amazing performances, though I have to admit that I loved Russell Brand the best. This isn't a movie that you can go see with your kids though. There are a lot of sex jokes and quite a few penis shots. (It is rated R, in case you weren't paying attention.) But if you are of age and have a good sense of humor, I think you will really enjoy the movie. I know I'll be buying the DVD the day it comes out.

I am a girl and I like tools.

Thanks to growing up with a mechanic for a dad, I'm a bit of a tool nerd. Despite the fact that I haven't had to fix anything in a long time (I let my husband do the 'manly' work), I still enjoy the feel of a good heavy hammer or the clicking noise of a nice socket wrench. Though I kind of want to give air tools a try. I don't know a whole lot about them. I'm guessing they run on air pressure instead of electricity? That might be handy if you have a dead battery on your electric screwdriver. I wonder if I can find a demo of one somewhere...

Plan a trip for me

Since it is Friday and you are probably as bored as I am, I have a challenge for you! Maybe not a 'challenge' but a 'game.' I spend a lot of time daydreaming about vacations I never get to go on. While it's fun, sometimes it gets kind of boring. So your challenge - Check out some Branson resorts and plan a theoretical vacation for me. It can be a week-long thing or just a weekend jaunt. Make sure you include any entertainment plans as well as which hotel you think I should stay in. There aren't any prizes and most likely I won't actually take the trip but it'll be a good time waster for you.

Movie review: Cloverfield

No, I didn't see Cloverfield in the theater. It was probably a good thing considering the shakiness of the hand-held camera work. I felt nauseous just watching it at home. I can't imagine how people made it through the movie on the big screen. There will be spoilers in this so if you haven't seen it and you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

OK. Let's talk about this thing. I've been looking forward to Cloverfield since the teasers started coming out last year. Unfortunately, my husband and I just didn't get the chance to see it on the big screen. However, friends of ours saw it and said the graphics were really nauseating. I completely agree. I understand why they used a hand-cam for the movie but I really think it detracted more than it added anything to the film as a whole. Sure, you got the "in the midst of the battle" feeling...but you couldn't SEE anything half the time. It was just a jumble of pictures while the main characters were running. The only time the camera was still enough to see anything was when the characters were standing or sitting still, which wasn't very often. I think it might have been a bit better if they had mixed steady-cam shots with the hand-cam shots. Show an outside view while the characters were running but then switch back to the home video when they are sitting around talking. Not only would it have made the movie easier to watch but we would have been able to keep track of the characters better.

My next problem with it was how the monster was handled. In the DVD extras as well as in many interviews, J.J. Abrams kept talking about Godzilla and how he wanted to make an iconic monster for America. I don't think he's ever seen a Godzilla movie. Those movies focused on the monster as well as the humans. Not to mention that, since Godzilla was created thanks to some hydrogen bomb testing, there are quite a very environmental messages in there too. In Cloverfield, we learn nothing about the monster. We don't even know where it came from! According to the interview with Abrams, the monster is a newborn. There isn't anything in the movie to indicate this nor is there any explanation for the parasite-type creatures that the monster drops. So that negates classifying this as a "monster movie." The monster is only there to act as a catalyst to move the human characters into motion.

Ah, the humans. There's Rob (the guy going to Japan), Hud (Rob's best friend and the cameraman for the movie), Beth (Rob's sorta-girlfriend), Jason (Rob's brother), Lily (Rob's girlfriend) and Marlena (Lily's friend). At no point in time are we compelled to feel anything about most of these characters. Rob is a douche and he tries to make up for it by trying to save Beth after treating her like crap. We don't learn a whole lot about Hud, beyond the fact that he hits on women a lot, because he's generally behind the camera. Jason kicks the bucket early on, leaving Lily to hold the group of friends together. Poor Marlena got the short end of the stick since she wasn't even supposed to be at the farewell party for Rob in the first place. Not only did I not care about these characters, I was actually rooting for their death by the middle of the movie. There was no real emotion behind any of their actions. The only reason Rob wanted to save Beth was because after having sex with her then not contacting her for two weeks, she decided to move onto another relationship when *BAM!* Rob realized he loves Beth. Yeah, Rob, you didn't love her until she found a new man. Douche.

And that is the entire plot of the movie. Rob and his friends try to rescue a girl that he realizes, in the middle of a monster attack, that he loves. I don't even believe that he loved her. I believe that he felt badly about the way he treated her. I believe that he cared for her a bit. However, I mostly believe that the only reason he wanted to save her was to save himself from being the big dickwad of the movie. Too late, Rob.

After all of this, I can't say that it was a bad movie. It just wasn't a good movie. It definitely wasn't a good monster movie. If Abrams was aiming to give the American audience an iconic monster to identify with, he failed miserably. Yes, the monster was cool looking but there was nothing about it for us to identify with. There was nothing to make the monster endearing to us. Nothing to make us want to buy a big plushie Cloverfield monster for our bedroom. There are rumors that there will be a sequel. I can only pray that they do a better job than they did with the original.

New bed, please!

I think, by now, I've made it clear that I need to do a lot of stuff in my house. New lights, painting, some repairs...just a lot of stuff. On top of that, I need a new bed. I think those adjustable beds are so awesome but they would never fit up my stairs or through the upstairs hallway to my room. Our house is about 100 years old so the halls are rather narrow. In order to get our current bed up there, we had to fold the mattress in half and shove it through the hallway. I don't want to have to do that again. I swear that I had read something at some point about king sized beds that are actually two smaller mattresses pushed together. That would work a lot better for us. Unfortunately, I've never been able to actually find them in a store. Has anyone else heard about those?

Game review: Ice Cream Mania

Heading back into time management games after a short break from the genre, Ice Cream Mania caught my eye. After all, I like ice cream so it can't be that bad, right? And, to tell the truth, it's not. You play Cindy, one of the heirs to an ice cream mogul. Cindy is competing with her sisters to win her deceased father's fortune. The gameplay is fairly easy. Make a scoop of ice cream in your machine, put it on a cone (or in a bowl, whichever the customer prefers) and top it off with some flavored cream-type stuff. As the levels get harder, you'll gain the ability to add things on top, such as orange slices or gingerbread men. The customer will also be able to order two scoop sundaes as well.

For the most part, the game is easy. It gets a little more difficult when you get to the two scoop levels but that is mostly because it can be daunting keeping track of which order the scoops go in. Otherwise, the game is fun. I found myself buying new toppings instead of upgrades to my ice cream machines, which may have hindered my progress a little. Considering I made it to the second store before my trial ran out, I didn't notice any hindrance if it existed. Since your character doesn't move around any, the graphics can get a little boring. It's basically just a row of customers sliding into place in front of you with either a daytime or nighttime beach background. So it wouldn't be a game that you could play for hours on end. But it's a nice time distraction for a half hour or so at a time.

Prescription drugs and Insurance

I spend way too much time looking at various insurance things. Today I shall be reading about health insurances and drug coverage like medicare part d. Personally, we have Aetna health insurance and, while it's not particularly good coverage, it does cover prescription drugs. (Though, for some reason, insurance companies have decided that birth control prescriptions don't really need to be covered so the out-of-pocket fees for those are higher.) Mostly I'm just curious about what Medicare will and won't cover. No real reason why I'm curious. I guess it's just interesting information to have handy.

Kago too?

Yesterday, I posted about Gackt acting in a Hollywood movie. Well, today it has come out that former-Morning Musume/Mini Moni/W girl, Ai Kago, will be acting in a Hong Kong movie. For those of you that forget, Aibon was at the center of a lot of scandals a few years ago. First it was underage smoking then it was dating a man a lot older than her then it was smoking again. It got her booted out of the Hello!Project world and she's been very quiet since. Earlier this month, she reappeared with a new, more mature look saying that she wanted to return to show business, specifically acting. I've always really liked Aibon so I'm very hopeful that she will do well in her new path in life.

No room on my desk!

I wonder if I could get some sort of wall speaker mount for my computer speakers. I don't have a whole lot of space on my room and, even though my speakers are pretty tiny, I could use the room they take up. Maybe I can mount them on the wall behind my desk. They should still sound the same, they just wouldn't be on my desk anymore. It might look a little odd and I wouldn't be able to move my desk without moving my speakers but it's not like I have anywhere else to put my desk anyway. This is definitely something I will have to ask the husband about.