Hmm. Mr. Webber’s Phantom of the Opera line doesn’t quite work since this was during the day. How about, “The hills are alive, with the sound of music…” Yep, that works better. If you haven’t guessed by now the position I subbed for today was music. Elementary music. Like most specials jobs in the district I was in, it was a traveling job, but fortunately this time I went to the right school first. The first two classes were great. They were fourth graders and they were really focused. As they were in a unit about stage productions/musicals, they got to watch a video with scenes with a couple of famous dancers if you thought of Billy Elliot, you are dead wrong. In fact, he’s not even real. Did you know there is actually a musical based on this movie by the way?. Nope, not Michael Flatley. At least he’s real, but you are thinking too modern! Go way back to the 1930s-1950s to get this one. Okay, you have them- Fred Astaire and Gene Autry… No wait, not the kind of dancing that involves bullets at your feet- Gene Kelly of course.

Anyway, they saw scenes from a few shows including Ziegfeld Follies, Royal Wedding, and, of course, Singin’ in the Rain. In Royal Wedding, There was a strange scene where Astaire danced not only on the floor, but on the walls and ceiling as well! If you go to the Royal Wedding link and check out the trivia for it you can find out how they did it. These days they would just use computers of course. The kids really enjoyed that scene, as well as Kelly getting wet in Singin’ in the Rain.

I wish I could say that the fifth graders at the other school did as well with this video, but I can’t. There were technical difficulties (the LMC gave me a DVD player that was broken- it wouldn’t play the disc) and the first class just talked and talked, even after I finally got another player and started the movie. The second class was a little better, but still excitable during some scenes. The third class did much better, though not quite up to the fourth graders.

Finally, I had lunch then four afternoon classes with younger grades. No video for them, but instead the second graders worked on a show they were doing- we just went through all their songs on CD. I noticed this show involves the fifth grade as well. At first I wondered why the teacher didn’t have me do this plan with that grade, but remembering how the first two classes went I quickly shelved that question. First grade had yet a different lesson, which we only got partway through, but that was expected by the teacher. Well, that’s it for now.

Took the kids to see the movie Penelope this weekend.  Unusual choice for kids, I guess, but they watched the trailers for that one and for College Road Trip, and they chose Penelope, a movie about a princess named Penelope (played by Christina Ricci) who is born with a pig nose because of a generations-old curse that is put upon her family.  I wasn’t expecting much from the movie, mainly because I hadn’t heard much about it, but also because let’s face it, the premise isn’t exactly one based in reality.  I had read one little article about Christina Ricci, and how this is her first movie in awhile, yada, yada, but I didn’t think much of a movie about a girl with a pig’s nose – until it was in our local theater and it was only rated PG.  I did not doze off during this one, and it did not bore the kids like I was expecting.  Our 8-year-old liked it, our 3-year-old fell asleep; not from boredom, she just does that a lot in the movie theater, takes after Mom, I guess 😉 and our 17-month-old was rambunctious as can be.  I think she is getting too old for movies.  You know what I mean – there is a window where kids should not be taken to movies, I guess, say between walking age and an age they can sit still and actually enjoy the movie.  Our youngest-for-now is reaching that age quickly!

So anyway, Penelope is actually quite entertaining, and it wasn’t entirely predictable like I thought.  Overall, a cute movie that kinda throws a lesson in for the kids – don’t judge a person on looks alone.  Christina Ricci is pretty good, barely recognizable, and I had trouble figuring out if it was because of her acting or her pig nose.  Catherine O’Hara was wonderful and fun to watch as always, and Reese Witherspoon was also fun to watch (surprisingly so for me, because I’m not a big fan of hers) in her equally surprisingly small role as Penelope’s newfound biker-chick friend.  Fun to watch, ok for kids…  I’d see it again. 

Not that it’s anything to brag about, but I saw the new movie Shutter not once, but twice this weekend!  It was pretty good, if you like movies like The Ring and The Grudge.  There are a few other movies people say Shutter is like, but I haven’t seen them.  It did remind me a lot of The Ring – they were both super-natural ghost stories.  I should have known I’d like it, at least that I’d like it better than Doomsday, because the guy who gave Doomsday an “A” rating on movies.com gave Shutter a “D”!  I’m starting to think he’s a moron.  I gave you the quote he made about Doomsday in a previous post of mine; he talked about how great all the violence was, yada, yada, so just to prove his idiocy, here is a snippet of what he thought of Shutter:

“As unfrightening PG-13 horror films go, this unfrightening PG-13 horror film is the most unfrightening of the year. It’s even more unfrightening than The Eye, which featured such unfrightening scenes as Jessica Alba yelling into an oven. This one has unfrightening scenes of Joshua Jackson sitting in a chair. Okay, there is one jumpy moment. That happens when Joshua Jackson turns around really fast in that chair. All the 11 year-olds in the audience went, “AUUGGH!” when that part happened. So if you’re 11, then that part is really going to freak you out.”

So according to the movies.com review guy, a movie is not good or scary if it doesn’t have at least 3 decapitations, exploding animals, and some cannibalism.  Whatever.  He does have a point though – the 11-year-old in the theater with us was scared silly – which brings me to the reason we saw it twice in one day…

Grandma was in town for a visit.  Despite the impending snow storm (again), she was able to travel the 200+ miles to see her grandchildren, thank goodness.  Who would have believed that we’d have to deal with Grandma almost having to cancel her spring break trip to Ohio because of still more SNOW!  Thank you, Grandma, for taking the time and energy it took to come early to ensure the special time you were able to spend with the girls wasn’t ruined by yet another snow storm.  So anyway, with Grandma being in town, that left Hubby and I with a whole afternoon and evening to ourselves!  Snowstorm or not, we were going to make the most of it…  So we saw a matinee of Shutter, which we enjoyed.  It wasn’t scary, comes no where close to the creepiness of The Ring, but it was entertaining, and it saved itself from getting unbearably cheesy several times…  A lot of the reviewers didn’t like it, but I think they’re just sick of the whole PG13-Asian-horror-movie-remake genre.  As a side effect of the PG13 rating, during our matinee, there were obnoxious teenagers in the theater.  Their laughing and running up and down the aisles wasn’t totally obscene, but it did take away from some of the enjoyment of a horror movie.  When they left the movie at the end, they had a younger boy with them who looked scared beyond belief.  I think maybe all the laughing and whatnot was because they were actually really nervous and scared.  So, when we explained their antics to the movie theater manager, they were completely understanding and told us we could go ahead and see it again.  I didn’t really catch anything that I missed the first time (except for one itty bitty scene where I dozed yet again), but it was fun to watch a horror movie again that no one else in the theater had seen yet because it was its first day out in the theaters – you knew when the scary parts were coming and could watch the whole theater jump and gasp.

If you are a fan of the PG13-Asian-horror-movie-remake genre, I think you’ll like Shutter.  If not, it might not be what you’re looking for in a movie, unless you’re between the ages of 14-23.

Took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who today.  Ok, so the title of the blog is a bit misleading…  it wasn’t really boring.  I am just so tired that I’m 2 for 2 in the falling asleep in the movie theater tally this week.  I actually liked what I saw of the movie.  With the exception of my 3-year-old running up and down the aisle, I enjoyed the experience.  It wasn’t totally her fault though; we went to an Easter egg hunt this morning, so she had LOTS of sugar coursing through her veins, which is why she was extra-hyper and running around the movie theater.  Once we flushed the sugar with plenty of non-sugary fluids, I was able to relax and enjoy the show – after a trip to the bathroom, of course.  It should actually be called a candy clean-up since they pick candy up off the floor; it has nothing to do with Easter eggs or hunting.  Still fun though, I’m just saying.

Before the movie started, I found myself wishing I had read the book, just to see how close the movie is to the book because now I have no idea.  But as far as Dr. Suess movies go, this is the best one I’ve seen.  Then again, I HATED The Cat in the Hat, and never saw the live-action version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so there’s not much to compare it to in that respect.

The movie is about an elephant named Horton who lives in a jungle in what must be a fictional place because to my knowledge, there aren’t any jungles that have both kangaroos and elephants as indigenous species.  I know, it’s just a Dr. Suess movie and I’m probably reading too far into it, but I can’t help but think of that sort of thing.  And judging by Horton’s ears, he is an African elephant, not an Asian elephant…  ok, I’ll stop.  So anyway, Horton hears a Who.  A Who is actually a type of teeny-tiny person that lives in Whoville, all of which is located on a speck on a clover.  The rest of the story is about how Horton tries to save Whoville from a conniving kangaroo (played by the brilliant Carol Burnett) intent on destroying it.  I don’t usually like when I know the big-name actors voicing roles in an animated movie – it kind of distracts me, which is what happened when I heard Jim Carrey as the voice of Horton.  His voice also made the Horton character seem less cute to me, but I did like Carol Burnett as that scheming kangaroo.  And, hearing Steve Carell as the mayor of Whoville was not distracting at all – he is even good at voice-over acting – is there ever a role he’ll butcher?  Watching the opening credits, I noticed a plethora of recognizable actors lending voicework for this movie; among them:  Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Will Arnett (from Arrested Development), Seth Rogan, Isla Fisher (from Wedding Crashers – she was surprisingly good as a cartoon voice), Jonah Hill, and Amy Poehler.

It’s a cute movie that’s perfect for the whole family, even though my 3-year-old asked about where the princesses were until the last 10 minutes of the movie.  When it was over, she did say she liked it, sans princesses and all.  There are some jokes for the parents that will go over the kids’ heads, and that’s always enjoyable in a kids’ movie – although I could have done without the kangaroo saying, “This is the jungle; we can’t behave like wild animals.” – just WAY too cheesy, think I’ve even heard that joke before somewhere else!  I loved how the Mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters and 1 son – someday I might know what that is like!  Is that in the book I wonder?  It seems almost too clever to be an add-in for the movie…  Either way, I will have to go borrow the book from the library to see how close the movie followed it, but I have heard that the book is pretty closely followed.  I’ve always liked Dr. Suess, and it’s a shame he’s not still around to gift us with any more of his work or to see his creations come to life on the big screen.

Oh wait, that was tonight.  Seriously.  We saw 10,000 B.C. (a new release, no less!) for $3 for 2 people!  It was a 5:00 movie at matinee price, plus bring a guest for free night = $3!  Add in our popcorn and pop, and we spent less than $10 for a new movie at the theater, with popcorn and a drink!  Can’t beat that!  If we didn’t live around the corner from the theater, we would have spent more on the gas to get there – more about gas prices in my next post, ugh.

We had heard that 10,000 B.C. was not a very good movie, but the other choices were Spiderwick Chronicles (which we really liked but have already seen) or Fool’s Gold, which I have no desire to see for some reason.  10,000 B.C. was exactly what the previews showed – an adventure movie set way way back into the past.  I don’t know how accurate it is, but the computer animation depicting early humans (though you forgot this fact given that many of them spoke perfect English) hunting wooly mammoths was pretty good, actually.  In the movie, they also used the mammoths as “work horses” to haul blocks to build pyramids, which I didn’t know, if this is indeed fact…  interesting theory.  Though they aren’t clear if these are the Great Pyramids of Egypt, which I think were actually started more likely around 3,000 B.C. or after…  but I’m no expert, this movie did get me thinking and wanted to research a bunch of stuff.  It was neat to see everything interacting together, the early humans and the dwellings they built, the animals, the environment – a great way to envision the past, but it did have me wondering how much is based on scientific fact, like I said.  I won’t go into the plot, mostly because I sheepishly admit that I couldn’t follow it.  I didn’t get my nap today, and I fell asleep during what were apparently a few pivotal scenes in the movie.  But, for $3, who cares?  And don’t think that the movie is boring either.  I have 3 kids and I’m pregnant, I get very tired and could probably fall asleep anywhere without that daily nap I’ve been so lucky to have most days.  And I did get to see The Dark Knight preview, which was pretty cool.  I’m not a big fan of the Batman movies – I’ve only seen 1 and 3, but this one looks really dark and creepy.  I think the whole Heath Ledger (R.I.P.) incident will sell tickets, but the previews might do a little ticket-selling themselves…  I can see why they say that role affected him in such a negative way – he looked really scary. 

So, if you like lots of fighting; epic battle movies set in the past, or are just an admirer of CGI animation, check out 10,000 B.C. – especially if you can find it for $1.50 / person!

Last night’s movie was called Awake, and it starred Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen.  When I first saw Jessica Alba, I was not looking forward to seeing the movie, and I don’t know why.  It’s not like I’ve seen anything else with her in it, but for some reason, I was under the impression that I didn’t like her as an actress.  I think it might be an interview I saw with her on the Tyra Banks show – she came across as self-absorbed and dumb, and then the whole pregnant-out-of-wedlock thing doesn’t score her many points either…  Anyway, surprisingly, she was not the weak link in the movie.  It was the script.  The movie had tons of accuracy flaws, and I really don’t want to spoil it for you in case you’d like to waste your time on it, but let’s just say the movie was kind of pointless.  It’s about a young man who has a heart condition and must undergo a heart transplant.  When they put him under anesthesia, he does not fall asleep but instead overhears the doctors plotting his murder.  There actually is more to the plot, at least they pretend there is, and there are some so-called twists and turns that anyone with any movie watching experience can see coming from a mile away.  Aside from the unbelievability of the plot – and I’m not talking about staying awake during surgery; according to the movie’s tagline, it’s actually more common than you’d like to think – I’m talking about when this guy is getting his surgery, his “spirit” is walking around the hospital experiencing flashbacks.  It’s just dumb and ridiculous.  Anyway, aside from the unbelievability of the plot,  I have to share what the dumbest part about the whole movie is.  And I’m going to risk spoiling the movie for you, so if you might see this movie, stop reading now.  But I just have to say what the dumbest thing about the whole movie is:  there is no point to the main character’s overhearing his murder plot!  His mother, while waiting for his surgery to be completed, overhears everything anyway, the cops are called, yada, yada!  I still don’t consider watching this movie a waste of time – it’s really difficult for me to say that about a movie.  It was only 84 minutes long, and one of the rewards of watching the movie was seeing Christopher McDonald (aka Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore) as an alcoholic doctor who is too oblivious to stop the murder plot.  But I would much rather see him for the 100th time as Shooter any day – I would suggest you don’t waste your time with Awake, and go for something with more substance instead – like Happy Gilmore!  That sounds like a joke, but this movie was so bad, it’s really not that funny – Happy Gilmore is a much better movie in my opinion!

We went kinda crazy with the movies this weekend…  We watched the 1984 classic Splash with the kids, and we also took in Mr. Woodcock and Dan in Real Life (for the adults).  Splash is a Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah movie about a mermaid who leaves the ocean to come to New York city and fall in love with Tom Hanks.  It sounds dumb, but it’s actually pretty well done and a movie with substance and heart.  The special effects of her fins aren’t bad either, considering they’re over 20 years old and most likely made without computer assistence.  Since I haven’t seen the movie since I was a kid, I was wondering this time around about how many takes it took to film the underwater scenes…  mainly the one where Daryl Hannah’s character looks on a map in a sunken ship to find where Tom Hanks lives.  Also, there’s a scene in the movie where they are trying to choose a name for the mermaid, since her name is unpronouncable in English.  They’re walking down a New York street, and Tom Hanks mutters, “where are we, Madison…” to which Daryl Hannah replies, “Madison, I like Madison.”  That was a joke in the movie at the time, that the mermaid was named after a street in New York, but nowadays, the name Madison is almost TOO popular.  We had about 4 Madisons or Maddies in a play we directed last year out of 21 kids!  Anyway, I would recommend this as a good family movie, especially for little girls.  There is actually some nudity (female rear end), and I could have done without a few of the kissing scenes, but overall, it is good family entertainment.  I wonder if it would have gotten a PG13 rating if it had come out a few years later?  I know there is a Splash Too, but judging by the lack of returning actors, I haven’t bothered to check it out.  After a quick lookup on imdb.com, I found that it got a whopping 3.0 rating with only 170 votes.  Also interesting is that Madison the mermaid in Splash Too is played by Amy Yasbeck, who is nowadays best known for being John Ritter’s widow.  She was good in her bit part in Pretty Woman, but still…  I wonder if I should bother getting it from the library for the kids?  Also in the original Splash is Eugene Levy, who plays the bad guy trying to expose the mermaid  – literally, by throwing water on her in public.  This must be one of his first movies; I think he was a relatively unknown actor back then…  Also, the late, great John Candy is hilarious as Tom Hanks’ party animal brother, and those two have great chemistry in the movie…  but on to the adult movies…  ahem, I’m talking about the movies we watched without the kids…

Mr. Woodcock is a comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton, who came no where near to reminding me of his character in Sling Blade – that’s probably why he was nominated for an Oscar for that performance.  I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, but it was actually worse than I thought.  It wasn’t horrible, and I didn’t feel like I wasted my time watching it, but it wasn’t very funny, and there wasn’t much to get from it.  For one thing, I thought they would make the Mr. Woodcock character a little more nasty.  As it turned out, he was really only nasty to little kids, which is still pretty bad, but I thought we’d catch him being nasty behind his girlfriend’s back.  Let me back up for a minute and give a plot synopsis – Mr. Woodcock is a horribly nasty gym teacher who terrorized kids so badly that a former student uses his experiences as fodder for an inspiring self-help book he wrote.  This former student returns to his hometown in Nebraska to receive the “corn key to the city” only to find that his mom is happily dating Mr. Woodcock – his childhood nemisis!  The successful author is played by Seann William Scott, whose acting I wasn’t thrilled with.  His mother was played by Susan Sarandon, and she was pretty good in the movie, given the character she had to play, who didn’t have much depth.  Like I said, I didn’t feel like I wasted my time on this movie, but I don’t know that I’d watch it again either.  It definitely wasn’t one of my favorite comedies.

Dan in Real Life is a touching comedy (just falls short of a dra-medy, I would say, not quite sad enough, thank goodness) about a columnist widower named Dan (the ever-awesome Steve Carell) who is raising 3 daughters alone.  The girls seem to be about 16, 14, and 9.  For starters, let’s just say that this movie had me dreading my life in about 10 years – the movie depicted teenage girls as frightening challenges for parents!  Anyway, Dan takes his girls to visit their extended family for a few days, and when he first arrives, he really falls for the ‘perfect woman’.  He gets to his mom and dad’s house, and wouldn’t you know it, the ‘perfect woman’ turns out to be his brother’s girlfriend.  After a few days of torture…  well, I’ll let you watch the movie, I don’t want to spoil anything for you.  It’s a really cute romantic comedy.  If you have sons, you will be amused at Dan’s daughters’ antics.  If you have daughters, be afraid, be very afraid!  On another note, Steve Carell has beaten out Tom Hanks as my favorite actor – he is just amazing and so fun to watch, whether it’s in the Office, Evan Almighty, or Dan in Real Life.  His characters never remind me of each other, and it’s not like they’re mentally impaired like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade or Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump – sometimes those types of characters are actually easier to play since they have a very specific demeanor about them.  Steve Carell plays ‘regular’ guys, yet he gives them such depth and character that it really helps draw you into the movie and / or show.  I never watched the tv show Get Smart, but with Steve Carell playing Maxwell Smart in the big screen version of Get Smart due this summer, you can bet I plan on checking it out!  Dan in Real Life is funny and heartwarming, and it makes me look forward to having huge family get-together weekends at our house someday with the kids and their spouses and kids…  providing we survive the teenage years of course – that remains to be seen!

Bet you think this is going to be about one of my kids, don’t ya?  Well, the truth is, they’re all good.  Unless you count yesterday, when #2 and #3 were acting up…  but it was another snow day, so I think they had cabin fever.  And luckily for me, my friend and neighbor called out of nowhere and asked if she could take the older 2 sledding with the kids she watches.  I was having a bad day, especially since the dogs were being needy about going outside constantly (with a new one, it’s not really a fun gamble to see if she’s “lying” about having to go potty!), and as I said, the kids were acting up, so I was very agreeable to the sledding plan!  It was like a miracle – I SOOO needed that break, and the kids needed to get out of the house, so in the words of my friend Morat – EVERYONE WINS!!!  THANK YOU SHELLEY!

Now, for what the post is really about:  The Jennifer Aniston movie, The Good Girl.  We watched it last night.  You’re probably thinking, wow, they watch lots of movies, and you’re right!  We have a lovely library system where you can search almost every Ohio library online for almost any movie you can think of, and they will ship it to our home library for free – you just have to wait a few days, sometimes longer if it’s a popular movie with a waiting list.  So, almost every night, hubby and I like to sit down with a movie during our “parent time”, providing the kids willingly go to bed, which of course is not always foolproof…  But most of the time, it works, so last night the movie was The Good Girl.  The movie started out kinda slow, but it did get better.  I would classify it as a dark comedy.  Jennifer Aniston plays a bored, depressed housewife who decides to have an affair with a co-worker, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.   Her morals (if she had any to begin with that is) and behavior spiral out of control from then on, and the movie is an entertaining look at modern day suburban life gone awry.  It is a good dark comedy, like I said, it takes some getting used to, but we liked it overall.  Jake Gyllenhaal probably stands out as the best actor in the movie (along with Mike White – more on him later); his character was just this crazy 22-year-old man-child.   Jennifer Aniston was ok, but it took me about 20 minutes to get past her just acting like Rachel from Friends with a southern accent.  Maybe an actress playing the same character for 10 yrs. in a hit sitcom clouds a viewer’s perception, I don’t know…  I did really like that show and have seen every episode at least once, some MANY times.  Once I got used to her in this movie, she did a good job of bringing her character to life, although none of the main characters in this movie were really all that likable.  That probably has to do with it being a dark comedy – more on those later.  You have to really feel sorry for her husband in the movie who is a real dip (not to mention a pothead), but comes nowhere close to deserving all the crap she makes him put up with, not that I know who would…  Zooey Deschanel is great in this movie; she doesn’t play a likable character as far as being a nice person, but she is hilarious and provides much of the movie’s comic relief.

I really only like to compare movies in the same genre, so it’d be difficult for me to rate this one compared to other movies I’ve watched lately, like Vantage Point, The Hitcher, or As Good as It Gets.  I can’t really remember the other dark comedies I’ve seen, but I know I liked them; Heathers and Drowning Mona come to mind, but I’ll have to watch them again cuz it’s been awhile.  Overall, I would say that if you like dark comedies, I recommend this one, but I don’t think dark comedies are for everyone.  The script is interesting, and some of the acting is pretty good.  Mike White wrote the movie, and I have to say, I like his work.  He is best known (to me anyway) as Ned Schneebly from The School of Rock, which he also wrote.  Maybe it’s because he writes the characters he plays that he is fun to watch, and this film is no exception – his character (a religiously religious security guard who moonlights as a minister) is actually quite likable, especially compared to all the other characters!  Also to Mike White’s writing credit is Nacho Libre, but I don’t think I was a big fan of that one.  Since we try to cram in so many movies, some are watched while we’re ultra-sleepy or being interrupted by kids, and Nacho Libre just might be one of those because I don’t really remember it.  Either that, or it was just bad.  Again, if you like dark comedies, go rent The Good Girl, it’s certainly “different” as far as comedies go…

Ok, I’m exaggerating just a tad on the number of snow days we’ve had, but that’s what it feels like by now!  I suppose with the new dog in the house, today was as good a day as any to have yet another snow day, but my poor husband is going to go crazy from shoveling all this snow!  It’s become almost a daily chore – just what he needed!  And, the weather guys are saying that they’re tracking ANOTHER system due here on Friday!  They won’t use the dreaded 4-letter “s” word though, it’s kinda funny.  They’ll just call it a “weather system” and “let’s see what it drops on us” – as if there’s any chance it will bring something other than snow (that dreaded 4-letter word!), yeah right.

Hubby and I braved the weather last night to venture out to a movie for date night.  Our date night is once a week on Tuesdays, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s snowed for the last like, 5 Tuesdays in a row, no exaggerating this time!  Last week,  our movie theater was CLOSED because of the snow – that stank.  Instead of having a nice dinner, we got snacks at KFC cuz we were running late for the movie, and then we got there, and they were closed!  So sick of this weather already!  What did that groundhog say again?!?  So anyway, we ventured to a neighboring town with a movie theater that’s a little bigger; that way we could be assured it would be open.  We saw Vantage Point, an action movie with Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whittaker, and Matthew Fox.  And speaking of Groundhog Day, if you’ve seen that movie, even though it’s a comedy, Vantage Point actually had something in common with it in that they kept showing the same scene over and over.  The point of the movie was to take the audience through an incident of terrorism, one persepective at a time.  Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox played secret service agents, and Forrest Whittaker was a tourist bystander who happened to catch everything on video.  It was a satisfying action movie – MUCH better than Gone Baby Gone…  I might actually say it was kinda like Groundhog Day meets In the Line of Fire, if you’ve seen that movie, since Dennis Quaid’s character had been through an assassination attempt on the President before and was jumpy – just like Clint Eastwood’s character in In the Line of Fire.  If you like action movies, this one won’t disappoint.  I was actually surprised there wasn’t a little more to the plot, and I can’t believe the constant violence earned it only a PG13 rating.  But when I think about it, I suppose you could see the same type of violence on tv any given night or even on cable during the day – it’s just what has happened to entertainment these days, I guess.  Vantage Point has constant action, the movie is never slow, and seeing the action from the different people’s perspectives (vantage points 🙂  get it?) was interesting and not at all confusing like I was concerned about.  I found something at the end of the movie incredibly hokey, but then again, that’s common in action movies, you gotta appreciate them for what they are.

Hubby and I watched this movie last night.  Plot inconsistencies aside – it is a horror movie after all, so we weren’t expecting much – it was actually better than I thought.  I really enjoyed how they let the main characters keep slipping away from the Hitcher, the bad guy, only to be back in danger…  but I kept wondering, ok they’re safe now, but the movie can’t be over, so how are they going to get back in The Hitcher’s clutches?  The answers to these questions are an entertaining combination of extremely stupid and horrible decision making on the part of our “heroes” and also some pretty good plot manuvers on the part of the script.  There was also a lot of police involved in this movie, which, for a horror movie, is pretty rare.  Usually once the main characters encounter the police, they are safe, but without spoiling TOO much for you, this film is different from the norm.  Like I said, it was better than I expected.  Not super-great, but I was never bored or grossed-out, both of which I can’t say during my recent viewing of Saw IV – now that was an awful movie.  I think part of it is the pregnancy, but I just couldn’t handle the gore.  It never bothered me before, but I always did find it annoying when they use lots of gore just for shock value.  Now it’s both annoying AND so gross I can’t even watch it.  And what was with the casting of Saw IV?  They chose 2 actors who look exactly alike!  Even if I was making a serious attempt to follow the plot of the fim, which I wasn’t anyway since I constantly had to divert my eyes and ears from all the gore, I wouldn’t have been able to follow the movie because of the 2 identical actors they cast who were not supposed to be the same character but looked like it!  Anyway, back to The Hitcher – I liked it better than Gone Baby Gone, but then again, it’s a totally different kind of movie.  If it weren’t for some plot unbelievabilities and some of the STUPIDEST decisions I’ve ever seen main characters make, the movie would have been better.  In review, if you like horror / suspense movies, see The Hitcher.  By the way, I’m talking about the newer version, don’t know anything about the older version, maybe I should give it a try.  If you like pointless gore fests, I still wouldn’t recommend Saw IV – I wouldn’t recommend that movie to my worst enemy.  If you want to sit through a terrible movie, try The Night Listener – at least it has Robin Williams! 

On an unrelated note, for those of you who have read my Walmart rant, during my weekly visit today, the “magic price increase of the day” was yogurt – up from $.44 per container to $.46 each.  By the way, have you noticed that computer keyboards do not have a cents sign?  If I’m mistaken, let me know, I have actually gone to use them before!