Quick Review: This Is The End

And now back to our regularly scheduled movie review programming. (I hope.) I expected a lot from the trailer for This Is The End and, unlike a lot of movies recently, this one mostly lived up to my expectations. A comedy in which the Apocalypse takes place is one thing. When it focuses on how this event affects Hollywood celebrities, that's another story. And when those celebrities -- James Franco, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride are the stars, with many other cameos, from Rihanna to Michael Cera to Channing Tatum -- are playing exaggerated versions of themselves, it goes to the next level. Lots of raunch, but also lots of laughs and some meta commentary about the celebs themselves, their importance (or lack thereof), how they're perceived by the public and media, etc., and a little stab at religious beliefs (after all, the Apocalypse is happening). Had me laughing almost from the start to the finish. My grade: A-minus.

Quick Reviews Catch-Up Part 2: Summer Flicks

Continuing my rally to get to the land of semi-timeliness...and now we get to the movie industry's prime time.

Star Trek Into Darkness: A couple of the nods to the TV series were actually a bit much for me. I don't think it was good as the previous film. My grade: B+

Now You See Me: At times fun, stupid, mystifying, ridiculous...I had an idea of who was behind everything but was only half-right. I can't explain more without spoilers. My grade: B

The Internship: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reunited. No "Wedding Crashers" - not as raunchy nor as funny - somewhat predictable, at times charming but too stupid too often. My grade: C+

The Great Gatsby: Visually spectacular. I say this despite the fact that I got a 3D upgrade for free because the theater loaded up the 3D version by mistake for a 2D showing, so they had to give everyone the glasses. I'm not a 3D fan. Anyway, visually spectacular. Some of the music from the touted soundtrack fit well, some of it was jarring. Acting, though, was not good. If I never hear Leonardo DiCaprio call someone "old sport" again it'll be too soon. My grade: C+

Iron Man 3: Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic in this role, as usual, but the plot was lacking. Not as bad as Iron Man 2 but not as good as the first (and nowhere near "The Avengers"). My grade: C+

The Purge: The premise that for one night a year all crime is legal is provocative, but I was unsurprised at almost everything that happened. Not many sympathetic characters in this. My grade: C-

After Earth: Who comes up with a script that has Will Smith play a cold military dad and Jaden Smith play his son, a sour, whiny military cadet, in a future where the earth is a very bad place and humans live elsewhere, and the plot keeps Will in one place doing nothing most of the time? Will's talent and charisma (and whatever talent and charisma Jaden has) are totally wasted. My grade: D.

Quick Reviews Catch-Up Part 1: Pre-Summer

Yeah, so remember how I used to write little reviews of movies I saw in theaters? Obviously I haven't done it in a while because of...well, a lot of reasons. But that doesn't mean I haven't been seeing them. So it's time to get started again. In order to get through this quickly I'm not going to say a whole lot about these, as most of them are already out of the theaters. (Some are out on DVD and Blu-ray already, though.)

I've broken them down into two posts. This one deals with everything released prior to the summer blockbuster season (which actually started in early May with "Iron Man 3"), with the rest to follow.

42: Well-acted, but kind of a standard biopic. My grade:  B+

21 and Over: College students get drunk and party. Again, kind of standard but well-executed. My grade:  B+

Oblivion: It held my interest. I saw this long after it opened and already learned of a key plot twist, so the element of surprise was gone. My grade: B

Oz the Great and Powerful: James Franco as the about-to-become-the-Wizard of Oz? A little bit meh. Which witch was going to turn green was pretty obvious. Speaking of, when are we getting a film version of "Wicked," by the way? My grade: B

The Call: Ridiculous and over-the-top but in a good way. My grade: B

The Croods: Unfortunately it's no "Flintstones" (TV series). Fortunately it's no "Flintstones" (live-action films). My grade: B

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: Underrated. Starts off rather horrendously but somewhere along the way it hooked me in. Magic? My grade: B-

Mama: Saved from a worse grade by Jessica Chastain and by a twist at the end that I rather appreciated. My grade: B-

Admission: Considering it starred Tina Fey and the adorable Paul Rudd, a big disappointment. My grade: C+

Escape from Planet Earth: Wasn't expecting a whole lot. Got what I expected. My grade: C+

Pain and Gain: Biggest problems: implausible plot (despite being based on a true story) and unlikable characters. My grade: D+

Scary Movie 5: Serious lack of funny jokes is a bad thing in this spoof genre. My grade: D

Spring Breakers: Garbage featuring the worst James Franco performance I've seen. At one point he performs fellatio on a gun. That's not what we want to see him fellate, trust me. My grade: F

My Summer Playlist "Update"

...and by "update" I mean, here's the whole damn list from my iTunes library. Instead of repeating links to the prior posts and their bits and pieces, I decided to just copy and paste it all here. This means a number of songs I put on the list in the last year or so haven't been mentioned before.

I guess I'll repeat all my disclaimers as well: the songs on my list fall into at least one of the following categories (other than the obvious, that they're in my iTunes and I like them):

• To at least some extent they're about summer or the sun or warmth or heat
• They were released during/became hits during the summer
• I either discovered/fell in love with them during the summer or associate them with summer for some reason or they just felt to me like they had a summery sound or vibe -- so this part is very subjective and your mileage may vary

Feel free to go back to my old posts and see some of the things I wrote about the songs when I first posted the list, and in some cases listen to them via YouTube links. And so, after the jump...174 songs of my summers, past and present:

More OKStupid Follies

Presented without comment, other than that I keep saying I'm going to blog more and then I don't, for various reasons, but I'm saying it once again...

Okay, a slight comment. I actually replied to this one with: "Pics, profile completed, an explanation of why someone whose profile says 'straight' and 'seeing someone' is sending a message to another guy...I'd say all of that is needed."

Swedish?

Google Chrome's got some 'splainin' to do...

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 4-12-13

Sadly, I continue to procrastinate at this blogging stuff. But somehow, someday, I'll do something more substantial than this...


Walk Away From Love - David Ruffin
All The Things She Said - Simple Minds
U Got The Look - Prince/Sheena Easton
Love Come Down - Evelyn "Champagne" King
Got To Give It Up (Pt. 1) - Marvin Gaye
Give It To Me - Timbaland feat. Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
He's On My Team - Ari Gold feat. Kendra Ross
Smithereens - Annie Lennox
Gold - Spandau Ballet
It's My World - Ultra Nate
We Are Monkeys - Travis
Waste - Smash Mouth

Facebook Ad FAIL

I've noticed an increasing amount of advertising and pseudo-advertising on my Facebook news feed lately. There are obvious ads, of course, but there are also other posts -- "promoted" articles, "sponsored" posts, etc., all based on your "Likes" and those of your friends. For example, there could be a post saying "John Smith likes Wal-Mart" followed by a post from Wal-Mart's Facebook page. Here's another example, which just appeared at the top of my feed:

Just because I "Like" Jody Watley's page doesn't mean I want to like the page for her old group.

Sometimes, though, these auto-generated posts are wayyyyyyyyyyyy off-base. Here's a recent example: I "Like" the FB page for singer Will Young...

Based on this, here's what Facebook generated:

Ummmm...what?

I keep saying I hate Facebook more and more. I have too many friends (real-life friends as well as  Facebook "friends") who aren't on Twitter, though, so I'm stuck. 

Too Long For Twitter: Nashville Teens

Hi. Remember me? I hope so. I also hope to actually blog more often, but I've said that before. Anyway, I started to tweet this but I can't fit it into 140 characters, so...

Ever hear a song and think it's great, find out the artist and song title and put it on a list of songs you want to download, and then don't do so for quite some time and then, after a long time passes, you win 25 free downloads from a Coke Zero promotion and start downloading songs from that list, see the song and wonder what the hell this is, so you listen to it and you don't really care for it much and wonder why you put it on the list to begin with, and then you check Wikipedia and find that it was featured over the closing credits of a "Mad Men" episode in 2010?

Presenting "Tobacco Road" by Nashville Teens...

Bieber vs. Brown

I think we need to set up this cage match: Chris Brown and Justin Bieber: two "men" enter, one "man" leaves. Who's your money on? Check the videos at each of those TMZ links and decide for yourself. Bad language on both videos. Imagine little Justin Bieber dropping f-bombs. For shame!