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.