Quick Reviews: Potter 7.2, Crazy Stupid Love, Rise/Planet of the Apes

Five movies over the last two weeks. I've let this go way too long and can't motivate myself to write separate posts for each of these, so I'm doing this in two posts.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2: Pretty much everything you'd expect from the final Potter movie, even if you didn't read the books. One of the hyped moments was the first kiss between Ron and Hermione, but what I really liked was their immediate reaction once the kiss was over. My grade: B-plus.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.: Why do we need, two commas and a, period in the title.? Very good, made me laugh, a little contrived, a plot twist near the end caught me completely off-guard (although some apparently guessed it in the trailer). Ryan Gosling: yum. My grade: B-plus.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: I've dubbed this a preseboot: a prequel/sequel/reboot of the franchise. Technically it's only a reboot but this is my word. I like that it gave a plausible explanation of how the "rise" actually starts, and how the story makes you root for the apes to win. James Franco's talent is kind of wasted, though. My grade: A-minus.

Weather Wars And Other Odd Screencaps

Here are a few things I copied from my screen today. Nothing like that weird Twitter comparison from yesterday, fortunately.

First, with yet more snow headed our way (have I mentioned how much I'm sick of this weather?) a Facebook post made a few hours ago by Adam Joseph, one of the meteorologists on 6ABC...

The "person who bashed us" is presumably John Bolaris of FOX-29. Locals may remember when a March 2001 "Storm of the Century" turned out to be a few showers instead of a blizzard. There was an interesting article recently about both the recent Bolaris comment and his role in the "Storm of the Century" hype, written by the station's news anchor at the time, Larry Mendte. Of course, Mendte has had his own problems in recent years, so you may want to consider the source. (And, while you're at it, here's an article from Phillyweather.net talking about TV news and weather hype.)

Later, as I was reading the list of Oscar nominations at Entertainment Weekly's website, I discovered a very popular film that I somehow neglected to see!

 

Gotta love those typos. And then tonight, there was lots of Twitter activity before, during and after the State of the Union address. Most of this "live-tweeting," as it's called was repetitive, boring and useless to me, to be honest. But in addition, Joan Rivers was live-tweeting the premiere of her new reality show, in which she moved in with her daughter for a while for some reason. President Obama made a comment about "our generation's Sputnik moment," referring to the 1950s space race in which the Soviet Union launched a satellite into orbit before the USA. So it was mentioned in a number of tweets on my timeline. But at the same time, Joan tweeted about another "moment." and reading these tweets one after the other made me chuckle:

Quick Reviews: Megamind, Morning Glory, Harry Potter 7

I don't like to do this but I'm going to be brief with these and combine them into one post. I have jury duty tomorrow and if I'm lucky enough to get picked to serve on a jury, it will create something of a time crunch. So...

Megamind: Animated, so it's easier to appreciate Will Ferrell because it's only his voice. Megamind (Ferrell) is the arch-nemesis of Metro Man (Brad Pitt), superhero protector of Metro City. Metro Man always defeats Megamind, until one day when Megamind actually wins. Then he has to find an answer to the same question Robert Redford asked at the end of "The Candidate:" what do we do now? It amusingly plays off the legend of Superman's arrival from Krypton and even has Ferrell spoofing Marlon Brando's Jor-El. My grade: B.

Morning Glory: Kind of a mish-mash. A little bit of a comment on the news industry, mixed with an attempt at romantic comedy (between Rachel McAdams, the new producer of a network morning show with minuscule ratings, and Patrick Wilson) that falls really flat. Harrison Ford plays an old-school news anchor, being paid to do nothing until he's forced, due to a clause in his contract, to take the co-anchor job on the morning show. Diane Keaton is the other co-anchor, who doesn't mind the fluffy, non-news morning segments, so she clashes with Ford. They're the best parts of the movie, particularly Ford. The rest is just meh. My grade: B-minus.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1: It's the beginning of the end. While there are a few humorous moments, it's mostly tense, with action-filled scenes mixed with some moments that I found rather dull, as Harry, Hermione and Ron are on the run from Voldemort and his minions. A lot of what went on was a bit vague to me. I only saw each of the previous movies once, and never read the books, so one of those "Previously, on..." montages like TV series use would really have helped. If you haven't seen the other movies or read the books, don't bother seeing this because you'll be hopelessly lost. My grade: B.