I must say, it usually takes me a little while to warm to most of the “characters” on Big Brother, the popular CBS reality show that my husband and I are shamelessly addicted to. But this season, it seemed like the drama and the warming up started pretty quickly. One of the quickest “shomances” ever took off between Rachel, the big boobed cocktail waitress from Las Vegas and Brendon, the swim coach chemist that apparently hit on the bisexual Annie first and then went after her “sloppy seconds” Rachel after that.

We didn’t know that until Annie was the first one to get the boot from the Big brother house. And what a bummer since she was the secret “saboteur”. Guess that twist blew up in their face since their only “twist” this season (at least that we know of)  was the saboteur.

But wait, we may have one more twist if one of the things the saboteur said was true. They said that two people in the house already knew eachother going in. I’m sure this has BB fans guessing who it is and if it’s true. If it is true, my bet’s on the adorable but outspoken little Britney and the female cop (older) Kathy being mother and daughter.

It has already been a really interesting season. There is already a major alliance between four of the smarter guys in the game, Matt, who is uber smart but hasn’t told anyone about his real background to protect himself from being a target (that may have already backfired on him though), Enzo, the tough talking Jersey guy who seems to think he’s a part of the mob, Lane, the soft spoken rancher dude who has barely said two words so far, and Hayden, the requisite scruffy haired dude that the chicks probably dig (not me, I’m a bit too old for that ruffled hair look, it’s way too contrived).

And who knew that Kristen and Hayden had a little flirty thing going on til later on- definitely not me!  This season is sure to be a good one as it’s already proven interesting with all the diverse personalities in the house.  We’ll see who wins – I just hope it’s someone that I like. I don’t really dislike anyone yet, but I’m not a fan of Rachel and Brendon running the house, they just seem too arrogant.

Well, Mel Gibson surely is making tabloid headlines lately. And not the kind that any Hollywood star likes. His ex girlfriend and the mother of his very young little girl, has (probably) released some very damaging tapes of discussions between the two where Mel appears very agitated, and even makes some racist and questionable comments and uses words that are questionable. 

One would question how fair it is that these tapes were released when obviously someone doesn’t know they’re being recorded. I gotta be honest, I know that he shouldn’t have said a lot of these things, but it’s sort of like the Alec Baldwin tape of a private voicemail he left his daughter Ireland. You almost feel a little sorry for someone who has had tapes released unbeknonwnst to them where they are making comments freely.

He may not be the guy we thought he was, and on top of the arrests and the anti semite language he used when he was arrested for a DUI a couple years ago, this really could damage his reputation.  Oh well, I”m done talking about that, let’s talk about his latest movie out on Blu Ray, Edge of Darkness.

This movie was one that we started watching (my husband and I) with great hopes because it really does start off as an interesting concept.  Mel Gibson’s college age daughter comes home to stay with him a few days in Boston where he lives. It’s obvious that Mel is a cop by the badge and gun he has on the counter under a cake cover, so we get that right away.

What we don’t get is that his daughter has seemingly been poisoned by someone.  She’s eating some dinner, and suddenly begins to violently vomit, and in a frenzied scene that has you on the edge of your seat, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s the most interesting scene in the movie, and you think the rest will follow suit.

Well, it’s not a bad movie overall, but I’ll tell you that it’s unrealistic, and it’s wrapped up too neatly with a “Hollywood ending” that you would hope it wouldn’t have. This movie with it’s concept of corporate greed and the poisoning of citizens in it’s Erin Brockovich sort of way, had great promise as being an original thriller,and even had some solid acting, but somewhere it veers off into the totally ludicrous.  Too bad, because it really was a good story.

Well, I have a different review for the Judd Apatow movie “Funny People” than most people did. I thought it was very funny. Yes, perhaps it was funny in a sort of understated way sometimes, but nonetheless, it was still witty and pretty hilarious in some parts.

The cast includes comedic movie veteran Adam Sandler, who plays a rich, spoiled and lonely comedic actor who’s made a fortune off crappy movies.

He wants to get back to standup, and finds that he has a serious, perhaps deadly disease when he befriends newbie to the business played by the hilarious Seth Rogen.  Seth Rogen by the way, looks a LOT skinnier in this movie. Not sure if he lost weight for another role or what, but he’s looking good!

Plus he’s a naturally funny guy, and you can tell that he’s gotta be down to earth .Someone cannot have that type of presence on film without actually being like that in real life, and his likeability shines through even more in this movie.

I think this movie was marketed all wrong. I remember seeing the previews for it, and it really didnt’ look all that funny.  I know that it didn’t get the greatest reviews either. It may be due to it’s more serious theme, I’m not sure, but I definitely got a few laughs out of this one. Now, it’s not as funny as some of Apatow’s and Rogen’s previous movies, but it’s still pretty darn funny with it’s cast of offbeat characters.

Leslie Mann, who incidentally is also Apatow’s wife in real life, is absolutely crazy funny in her role as a crazy actress that Adam Sandler was in love with a long time ago, and with whom he tries to reconnect after finding out he’s gravely ill. Even though she has a husband and two kids.

By the way,  comedy may be more of Eric Bana’s calling than drama. I’ve never liked his serious roles, but he was pretty damn funny as her Aussie husband.

It’s a long movie, and I do think that it should have been edited down to maybe two hours or just under instead of the 2 1/2 hour mark. That may be part of why it got negative reviews from some people, it just needed to be shorter because there wasn’t enough “funny” in the 2 1/2 hours of film.

One of the best scenes, I think was where they were in the doctor’s office together and making fun of their very tall, very blond, anglo saxon looking german doctor with cracks on how he died in the end of Die Hard and they can’t put his IKEA stuff together.

That was some pretty funny stuff, and you had to be quick to catch some of it. I’d recommend this movie if you are ready to see it and know what to expect from it. There’s not a whole lot of the expected sophomoric humor in former Apatow movies, and maybe that’s what people expected, but there’s a lot of more adult humor, and that’s what I liked about it.

Well, I really hated to do it, because Netflix served me and my husband, who actually still has his account with Netflix, but I had to cancel my membership with Netflix last week. The reason wasn’t the speed of service or the selection of movies or anything like that. It’s just that for some reason over the past few months, all of the Blu Ray DVD’s we got from Netflix were unplayable in our Sony Blu Ray player.

We weren’t sure at first if our Blu Ray player was going bad, which wouldn’t have made sense because we just got it one and a half years ago, or if there was something about the Blu Rays suddenly that Netflix was sending us, so we checked.  It did seem that every other Blu Ray, except the ones that Netflix had been sending us with the exception of a few, was playing perfectly fine. The Netflix Blu Rays were either coated with something or were averse to playing in our particular Blu Ray player, we’re still not sure.

We would return some of the discs 3 times before we got one that actually worked, and it got really frustrating.  So, what I decided to do was give the Blockbuster online DVD rental with Blu Ray service a try and see if their Blu Rays gave our player any problems. And what do you know, we haven’t had one problem with Blockbuster blu rays yet.

We did have to use our Monster Screen cloth and cleaner on one of them because it had fingerprints allover it, but that was it. Every other one has booted right up and began playing instead of giving us that weird “disc unreadable” error or whatever it was that was so aggravating when you had your feet propped up and were ready to watch a great movie.

So far I’m very happy with the Blockbuster Blu Ray service. Not only do the DVD’s play, but they also are shipped quickly, and don’t have as much of a wait time on the Blu Rays, at least in my area where there must be a warehouse close.  We also like the fact that we can trade in up to five blu rays a month at the store by us for another selection, that’s really handy. So far, so good with Blockbuster!

I have always loved Jeff Bridges. Ever since I was a little girl and saw him in the remake (the first remake, not the Peter Jackson version mind you) of King Kong, I pretty much had a crush on him and thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Not only that though, he’s always been an actor that can evoke such a powerful emotional reaction from me, and I’m sure from other viewers, which is why he has been around doing movies for so long and was able to take such a risk as Crazy Heart, a low budget movie with a somewhat formulaic story line but a ton of heart and a lot of acting chops and emotion.

The story is about Bad Blake, played by Bridges, who is a down and out, has been country singer who’s doing the whole bowling alley and bar scene after having his hay day and seemingly blowing it, and several marriages, from being a severe and chronic alcoholic.

We see him having to leave the stage at one show because he had to go throw up in a garbage can, a wretched mess who can’t control himself and seems to have no ambitions to clean up his act or do what he has to do to get back on the road to success and revamp his career.

When he meets a small town reporter, played by Maggie Gyllenhal, who has a little boy,  Bad falls head over heels in love for this down to earth, high quality woman. From what we’ve seen, he’s had bar groupies coming at him his whole life, so Maggie’s grace and humbleness seems to really sweep him off of his feet. It’s really sweet, the love scenes between these two actually. I was a little afraid they might be creepy because of the age difference between the two, fifteen to twenty years give or take a two, but they come off very tender and genuine.

You really want this relationship to last, but of course there is this overriding feeling of dread that Bad is going to do something to screw this good thing up, as he seemingly has with so many other good things in his life.  He’s 57 years old and broke for example.

He then runs into his former protege, turned huge country star, played by Colin Ferrell, who wants him to write songs for him again, and he’s offering to get his career going again. Bridges reluctantly agrees. I won’t tell you any more after this point, but I will tell you that this movie is one that has you routing for him to the end, and saddens you for him when you see him at his lowest, most desperate point.

Jeff Bridges deserved the Oscar for this one. He really made what could have been another story about an alcoholic’s struggles into something really special, really heart felt, and extremely moving.  I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.

So, I finally saw the latest Peter Jackson-directed movie, The Lovely Bones. I was excited to see this movie, because I had heard so much about the book which is it based on, by Alice Sebold.  Several of my friends recommended this book to me, but I hadn’t really heard of anyone who’d seen the movie yet.  The movie stars Mark Whalberg as young Susie Salmon’s (like the fish, as they say in the movie, twice, ick) father.

It also stars another actress that I usually like, Rachel Weisz, as her basket case of a mother who up and leaves the family when they most need her. And yet somehow, throughout this tragic story, I failed to really care about this family or the vicious murderer that took Susie’s life after raping her.  Something about this movie just doesn’t click on an emotional level like it’s supposed to.

It seems like they are all play acting, which of course they are, but there’s just something that’s not real about it. The young girl who plays 14 year old Susie Salmon is pretty good, but the rest of the cast fails to pull through on this supernatural drama.

The story is about a young girl, Susie, who is 14 when she is raped and murdered by one of their very own neighbors. The neighbor is played by Stanley Tucci, who was actually nominated for supporting actor in for this film. Why, I have no idea.  He’s just not convincing or menacing enough for you to loathe and fear him. Maybe it’s the bad wig or the phony looking colored contacts or over the top creep acting, but I just wasn’t buying it.

You never quite see Mark Wahlberg as being a father to a 14 year old girl either, I just couldn’t suspend reality enough to buy that one.  The story seemed to be stuck at several points in a lull, and I found myself waiting for it to be over, rather than riveted to the screen.

You really just wanted the sick neighbor to be nailed, but even the ending wasn’t satisfying that way. The end was actually preposterous if you ask me. I don’t know if that’s how the book ended. Let’s just say that there is a “lost love” idea in the film, but it’s all based on a boy she never even talked to, and never kissed, who just asked her out before she died. It seemed really forced and unbelievable.  I give this movie a bad review, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Well, after a long waiting period, we have finally gotten the blu ray for “The Road”, a movie that I had long anticipated, as I’m sure many others had, after reading the novel by Cormac Mcarthy. It’s one of the most moving, simplistic yet powerful books I’ve ever read, and I’d recommend that anyone put it on their “to read” list right now if you haven’t read it yet.  For those that have never heard of Cormac Mcarthy, he also wrote No Country for Old Men, which as you know was turned into a major motion picture success that garnered a lot of critical acclaim and put the talented Josh Brolin on the map as a great actor.

The movie The Road has so many things going for it that it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, it is based on one of the best books of this decades in my opinion. They knew they had a good basis for a movie, and that they couldn’t screw it up, because to screw it up would be a huge disservice to such great writing.  Second, they had two of the most talented, distinguished and wide-ranged actors out there today. I’m talking about Viggo Mortensen, who is spectacular in pretty much everything, and Charlize Theron who is as talented as she is beautiful.

The story is really a post apocalyptic one about a disaster that makes the world a very hostile environment to live in. Everyone that is left, which isn’t many, is left to fend for themselves in a foodless, sunlight-less, cold and grey environment. We don’t know what happened to make the world this way, but that does matter. Because what the story is really about is the love story between a boy and his father.

The boy is played by an Australian actor, of about 9 years old approximately. You’d never know he was Australian by the movie though. He is a talented kid who isn’t over the top or cheesy at any point in the movie. Gazing into his big blue eyes and genuine affectations, you really believe this is a child who is scared and has never known any other world except that dark and hostile one he was born in to.  We feel for this child, as we did in the book, and the kid really does a great job at making us feel those same emotions, being true to his character and conveying that same innocence and good nature that children are apt to have.

It’s a heart breaking story, but so well played and convincingly so by every actor in the movie that you feel their pain. You feel the warmth when they have one moment of relaxation, of lightness and joy and full bellies, and you feel the bleak hopelessness that is their reality when everything seems to be  going wrong and they continuously have to be on the move from gangs of cannibals. This movie conveys what the book did – a story of hope in humanity even when most of the race has gone crazy.  Still, I must say the book is better than the movie.

I bought my husband the Fight Club Blu Ray DVD last Christmas, and we just now got around to watching it and checking out some of the extras.  We’d both seen the movie when it came out around ten years ago, and the movie itself definitely holds up, I can tell you that. Sometimes with movies that are ten years or older, that you have really fond memories of, just don’t hold up when you watch them again and you’re ten years older.

Not sure if that’s because your perspectives and life experiences have changed so much, or what, but I’ve often found that movies don’t hold up, the longer it’s been , the more likely it won’t hold up.

This one though, did. Brad Pitt does a great job with what he does best, which is the wacky, eccentric characters, which is truly his niche, although he is often considered a leading man because of his Hollywood image.

Edward Norton probably does one of his best acting jobs in the movie, besides his superb acting in American History X as an ex skinhead who murders a black in cold blood and pure hatred.  Ed Norton is Jack, and Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, is his alternate personality (as we find out for sure in the end of the movie).

We both noticed a lot of flashes of Tyler Durden in the movie leading up to the ultimate revelation that he is in fact the same person as Jack, Norton’s character, who suffers a psychotic break after lack of sleep and life events that he can’t deal with in his ultra uptight personality.  My husband and I both wondered how we were so clueless when all the facts pointed to it in the movie all along in the second watching. It was almost like watching a different movie because we already knew that they were the same person.

You notice that they are always in the same room together, and people’s conversations with Jack could be interpreted as conversations with Tyler. Especially Helena Bonham Carter’s character in the film, who is seeing Tyler/Jack. Her lines definitely clue you in, but somehow we were both clueless when we first watched this movie ten years ago!  The soundtrack is great, the sound itself is really awesome.

At some points, we thought it might blow our speakers out, but they were fine. The sound and picture quality are really superb on this Blu Ray, so if you’re thinking of buying it, it’s worth it. There are also some great extras, and the commentary features Brad, Ed, and Helena, which is awesome for commentary to have all the big names in it.

I am a huge fan of Stephen King books, so when the Dead Zone series came out a few years ago, I was curious about it, but never got a chance to actually see it until recently since it was added to the instant options at Netflix.

I watched the first and second episode last night, and I must say I’m disappointed with the way the show was executed. I understand that the show is filmed with a low budget, but they still could have hired better supporting actors for Anthony Michael Hall’s decent portrayal of Johnny Smith.  He plays the nice guy come psychic who discovers he has psychic powers after his brain is injured in a bad car accident that leaves him comatose for several years.

He awakens after years in a coma, only to find that the love of his life, Sara, has moved on and married the sheriff of their small Maine town.  His mother has died, and he’s missed out on a lot of the latest news, as his new friend and physical therapist has filled him in on.  Some of the dialogue is actually witty, with his physical therapist telling him that Clinton got busted for getting head in the oval office and that a black man is the greatest golfer in the world, but most of it is just dumbed down and predictable.

It needs to be a lot edgier, and a lot less cheesily filmed. Every time Hall’s character has a flash of something when he touches someone, time slows down and we see everyone frozen in motion ala Matrix style.  This has the effect of alienation for me, since I picture his flashes as a short, inferred glimpse into the future, not one where he can freeze frame the scene and see what’s going on.  The original movie with Christopher Walken did just that, gave you short bursts of scenes that he now had insight to, and that seemed to be a more effective use.

Dead Zone seems like it was filmed by Disney. It’s too safe, and too predictable to be a worthy telling of Stephen King’s edgy, early days writing. Wish I could have given it a better review, believe me, but it’s just not “smart” enough to hold one’s attention raptly as it should.  By the way, I’m reading one of King’s latest novels now, Under the Dome, and I’ll have a review of that soon. It’s a long one, well over 1,000 pages, so it may be a little while!

Ok, finally a movie that we rented on blu ray, that was actually watchable (every blu ray we rent lately from Netflix is somehow not playing on our Sony blu ray player, and sometimes we have to return them twice to get a working copy, not sure if it’s our player or the DVD’s they’re sending us but it’s really frustrating).  Not only did the blu ray of Shutter Island, the latest Scorsese film noir endeavor, play ok on the player, but it also was a really good, really entertaining movie.

Leo DiCaprio did a great job, as did the rest of the supporting cast. Even Mark Ruffalo, who my husband and I were surprised to see in a relatively big name movie, did a really good job as Leo’s partner Chuck.  The movie is based on a book that I had read already as well, and incidentally, I wasn’t all that big of a fan of the book.  Dennis Lehane’s writing style just isn’t my thing.

However, I love almost every film that Scorsese has ever done, and I’m a big fan of Leo’s acting abilities and have enjoyed him in everything he’s done, so I was pretty sure I’d like the film adaptation of the book.  The movie Shutter Island is about two federal marshals, Teddy (DiCaprio) and Chuck (Ruffalo) who set out to investigate the appearance of a Rachel Solando, a patient at a high security mental hospital called Ashcliffe on Shutter Island.

They soon begin to encounter fishy stories and potentially bizarre experiments that they believe may be carried out on the criminally insane patients at the hospital. Ben Kingsley plays the head doctor in charge, Dr. Cawley.  As Teddy investigates, he begins to suspect that a lot more goes on at the facility than meets the eye, and he can’t stop having delusions of his dead wife, played by Michelle Williams.

He also has repeated delusions about his days at a nazi war camp as a soldier, his murder of unarmed German soldiers along with the rest of his camp, and the ghostly images of a little girl that supposedly was Rachel Solando’s little girl that she murdered (one of three children she murdered).  Throughout the complex weave of Teddy’s experiences and run ins at the island, one does begin to wonder how all of this will come together. I did kind of wonder if I hadn’t read the book if I would have figured it out before the end.

The creepiness and eerie feeling of the book is kept in tact in the movie, Scorsese does a great job of getting a passionate performance out of Leonardo, and the whole supporting cast is pretty much top notch. I’d recommend this one, whether you’ve read the book or not – a very entertaining ride!