We finally got to watch the sequel to Wall Street, the iconic movie with the great Michael Douglas (who is still great in the sequel, but is given subpar material to work with in my opinion) and Charlie Sheen as his protege.

The movie was made at a great time in the eighties when greed and the “me” generation had taken over. The stock market was booming, and millionaires were being made every day.  It was actually a great decade for the US, and this movie was truly a sign of the times.

It also gave birth to Gordon Gekko, Douglas’ character, whose catch phrase “greed is good” really caught on and stuck in the American psyche still today even.

It was  story about the downfall of a wealthy, fast talking, wheeling and dealing tycoon, Gordon Gekko and the victims he gobbled up in his path, including Charlie Sheen’s character Bud Fox by showing them life in the fast lane.

The sequel is more about his daughter and the love story between her and another Wall Street up and coming hot shot, unconvincingly played by the too-young looking Shia Labouf. I think he did fine in the movie, but I actually think he and Carrie Mulligan, who plays Gekko’s daughter, were miscast in their roles.

Gordon Gekko is out of jail, and has been for some years when the story opens. His life has become lonely, and his reputation ruined. He returns to a world that has forgotten about him essentially, where there are other sharks and tycoons that have taken over in his spot.

He still has that fire and passion for the game, but he doesn’t have the money. He also seems to have learned something while in prison for eight years, but the movie does make us wonder when he’s going to turn on us and the daugher that has been estranged from him too.

He starts a sort of mentorship and dialogue with Lebaouf’s character (which that in itself is a bit unbelievable), without his daughter’s knowledge. His daughter runs a website that is a sort of do gooder site that tells the real news and has a liberal agenda.

He tries to get father and daugher reconciled, as Gekko shares information with him about the guy he thinks sold his beloved boss out. His boss’ life has been ruined, and he was like a father to Shia’s character, so he has a big interest in avenging him.

Through it all, there is a lot of confusing dialogue that someone who doens’t know Wall Street at all would get very confused by. I sort of knew what they were talking about, only because I follow the stock market and financial news a bit, but anyone who doesn’t would have been confounded by some of the dialogue going on in this movie.

Also, there are some cheesy scenes and a bit of stylizing that brought this movie down. It could have been a lot more intelligent than it was. I’m not sure what’s happened to Oliver Stone’s film making abilities, but it’s like he’s almost there, but just can’t quite get back to making fantastic, ground breaking movies.

We sat down to watch the latest Cohen brothers movie “True Grit”, which we’ve been somewhat excited to see for a while, and were anxiously awaiting it to become available in our Blockbuster cue, when it finally came in.  Due to other obligations though, it sat around for a few weeks.

So, we finally got around to watching it last night.  I knew I was in trouble when in the first five minutes, the main star of the movie, the young Hailee Steinfeld, actually annoyed me. I know that her character is supposed to have somewhat of that effect, but it went deeper than that for me.

I felt that this was a forced performance, as were the other performances in the movie. I felt like I was watching a movie, at no moment was I immersed into this story, nor did I care about the characters or what happened to them.

Steinfeld’s character, a young girl who is seeking revenge and justice for the cold blooded murder of her father, never comes off as sympathetic. She actually comes off as cold, and often unlikeable and unrelatable.

Jeff Bridges, who I normally love, I felt sort of phoned this performance in. It’s a character that feels a little like a lot of the other characters he has played. He wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t a stretch for him to play, and I felt like I had seen this movie before.

Matt Damon is another character who seems miscast. He garners no affection from the audience, and actually seems like an unnecessary addition to this story.

The pacing of the story is excruciatingly slow and uninteresting. The only interesting scene we saw before we turned it off and went to bed was one where they had cornered two outlaws in a cabin. A fight between the two outlaws ensues, and this is the only somewhat interesting scene in the whole movie!

Now, we will finish this one today, but it says something that we felt our beds calling an hour in to this drawn out movie. Not sure where this was going, but the Cohen brothers failed to rile up the same interesting feel and look, and great characters that they usually do in their movies.

Maybe I just don’t like westerns, but I thought a lot more could have been done with this.

Big Brother is back with season 13, and my husband and I couldn’t be happier. We were in quite a lull there for a while with TV, but now a couple of our shows are back on, and we have quite a few built up from Sunday night alone because it seems all the shows we like are on Sunday nights.

Breaking Bad is back, as are Curb Your Enthusiasm, True Blood (which sucks this season, can’t stand it), and Big Bro too. We couldn’t ask for much more during the summer, when we traditionally have nothing to watch until July some time.

This season of Big Brother is not short on the twists, and as a lot of other reality shows are doing, Big Brother has brought back some previous beloved players (and not so beloved, but fun to watch) to play with some “newbies” in the game.

As per usual, they have gotten a cute young guy who models in Dominic, a cute young girl who also models, Cassi, and a host of other diverse characters, ranging from weird to annoying to cool and level headed (Shelly).

Among the “veterans’ they have invited back are Evil Dick, who had to take an early exit from the show much to the shock of his houseguests due to a personal emergency, his estranged daughter Danielle, Rachel and Brendan, and the cutest couple on the face of the earth, Jeff and Jordan.

The newbies are definitely getting licked so far.  They fell apart basically after having the easy out of just all voting with eachother and getting the upper hand against the veterans, two of them split off and voted their own way, at the behest of the veterans, siding with them and creating a divide down the newbies.

No there is distrust amongst the newbies, as everyone denies that they voted to get rid of the ousted Keith when they had all agreed to get rid of the disloyal Porsche. I am shocked that they couldn’t pull this off.

They could have easily had this in the bag had they all stuck together, and I’m still not sure why exactly the two that split off (Shelly and Kalia) voted the opposite way.

Perhaps they felt more comfortable playing with people who knew what they were doing, or they wanted to play with the veterans simply because they liked them better.

One thing is for sure, this will be a very interesting season to watch, but I hope it’s not just a case of them picking players off one by one. There needs to be some sort of drama to make it go down unexpectedly.

I had high hopes for the new HBO show “Game of Thrones”, a period piece about the struggle over king’s thrones in medieval times, with a possible supernatural element to it (at least so I thought by seeing previews of some of the shows).

Sean Bean heads up a cast of great actors on this, mostly made up of unknowns, except for him and Lena Heady, who starred as John Connor’s mom in the Terminator TV series, and also starred alongside Gerard Butler in the hit movie 300.

Lena Heady, as I came to find out in the first episode, plays a not so good character, which is what you are lead to believe until you see the end of the episode. My husband feels she is a bit miscast in an “evil” role (sorry, spoiler alert), but I think she does a great job, the blonde wig notwithstanding.

We have only seen the first two episodes thus far, as we downloaded them from HBO On Demand. The last episode has actually already aired real-time, so we are going to have to get through them quickly as I don’t think they’re available much longer.

The first episode of Game of Thrones is a little confusing, as most ensemble cast shows are, since there are multiple story lines and character’s names that you have to remember.  However, the second episode ties it all together nicely and you start knowing what certain scenes meant in the first episode and putting things together of who’s who and what everyone’s agenda is on the show.

Essentially, it is about the battle for power in a fictional land, where there are several kindgomds by geographic area.  Some kingdoms are those of savages, and some are of peaceful people, while others are richer and rule with a heavier fist.

Sean Bean’s is the more peaceful, just of the kingdoms, as we see in to episode 2.  I think there is a supernatural element to the show, but my husband is not convinced. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!  There are savages called “white walkers” that we saw in the opening scene of the first episode, but it is not clear whether they are simply humans or a supernatural force, even though their eyes appear to glow.

A supernatural element would be pretty cool, and I hope that the book this is based on has that story line.

So, these Twilight producers, just like the producers of the Harry Potter lucrative fillm series, really know how to make the maximum buck on something that makes teens, kids and adults alike go crazy with mania.

The final installment of the Twilight movie series, Breaking Dawn, since it is such a long book and has a complex story to tell, will be broken into two movies, just like the final installment of the Harry Potter series.

The release date of the first part of Breaking Dawn is slated for November 18th, 2011. I may actually have to drag the hubby out to see that one, because then I’ll also have to wait to get installment two, and that might be a little too long to wait to get the Blu Rays, which is what I have done for every other part of this epic movie series thus far.

If you are a fan of the Stephanie Meyer books, then you know how the story ends. There will actually be – gasp – some sexual content with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in this final installment, and there will be some more adult themes and a bit more gritty darkness, from what I’ve seen.

Bella and Edward carry their love to the next level in many ways, and there is plenty of adventure and intrigue that go with it as usual. Jacob continues his angry streak over Bella’s love for Edward, and his knowledge that she will be transformed into his sworn enemy, the vampire.

Gosh, can’t we all just get along?  Jacob will have the women swooning again in what looks like plenty of topless scenes, and Edward will as well, with his smoldering eyes and chiseled cheekbones.  The final Twilight movie is a little more adult though, so it may not be appropriate for some of the younger fans, but it will still be rated PG as far as I know and from what I’ve seen of the trailer.

The last movie is directed by a guy named Bill Condon, who seems to be adequately eqipped by keeping the beautiful lush, colorful and sometimes dark scenery and keeping the actors true to their character, although many of them have evolved.

He is known for directing several films that received a lot of accolades, including Chicago (with Catherine Zeta Jones), Dream Girls (with Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson), and Gods and Monsters.

I’m sure this will be a fun and engrossing finish to the legendary Twilight series!

Oh, before I start this review of Jersey Shore Season 2, let me wish you a Happy Fourth of July! Hopefully you’re gonna go party and see some fireworks tonight.  I wanted to review the second season of Jersey Shore, the ultimate Guido and Guidette reality show that exploded in popularity since it was introduced in MTV’s lineup a few years ago.

I admit, I’m late on the draw in watching the series, but we just like to watch everything unedited, and on DVD or Blu Ray, so we can watch it whenever we want, at our own pace, and we don’t have to deal with censors getting rid of the juiciest and most lascivious parts of the show.

Jersey Shore, my friends, is definitely a show that you want to watch unedited if you can.  First of all, they do bleep a few things out, but they let everything else fly. I’m not sure why they would bleep out certain things, but they let all the f bombs fly, and some other very bad words.

The second season shows the gang in Miami Beach, where they are living in a nice little complex together, and get to hit all the Miami clubs like BED, Clutch and more. They even reportedly got banned from several clubs in Miami who wanted nothing to do with the theatrics and attention the gang commanded, plus the hot tempers on some of them.

But that didn’t stop girls from swarming on Pauly D, Vinnie and Mike “Situation” at some of the clubs. It amazed me that many of these girls actually went home with them, knowing full well what male whores they are and that they were really only into girls that were “DTF” (that’s Down to F@#$).

But hey, that’s girls for ya!  At least the types these guys like to bring home.  Snookie was a little low key this season, while Jenni seemed to kick her girl fight powers into high gear, getting into fights with Angelina and Sammi (Sammi held her own, trust me).

Of course, Sammi and Ron fought a lot, but not as much as last season, and there was a bunch of drama about a note that Snooki and Jenni “anonymously” wrote to her about Ron’s antics when they were actually not together anyways.

This show is still immensely entertaining to watch. The cast is mostly likeable, and Angelina took off again with no one really caring, so what’s new with that.  Overall, season 2 was very good, and we can’t wait for the third season to come out on DVD. Bring it on!