Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

Manic Movie Monday

Yes, I'm well aware that I'm still running a day behind.  Deal with it.  Also be warned that some of these might include spoilers.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've watched quite a few movies.  I have a NetFlix subscription that was a gift from Cherise plus people lend me movies, out of pity I think.  I don't go to movies and I don't watch TV and so therefore, my life is seen as lacking.  As such, people lend me DVDs to complete my life.  Here's what I've watched and a quick blurb about each.

Transformers - This one was lent to me because the special effects are cool as this girl is hot.  It took Trey and I about a week watching a scene or two a day to get through the movie.  There were some funny bits but it couldn't hold my interest.  The only reason that I made it all the way through eventually was because Trey liked the robots.  He still talks about the scorpion robot.

Movie Review - Rush Hour 3

Three was not the charm for Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.  Warning - there is a spolier in here but really, nothing could ruin this movie.  You aren't going so you can be challenged with a whodunnit or figure out what the big twist is.  You're going to see Jackie Chan action and humor between partners in a buddy film.  Sadly, you aren't going to get any of it.

Highlights (more of mediumlights):

The movie opens with Chris Tucker dancing to Prince playing on his iPod while he's supposedly directing traffic.  Maybe it's just because I used to do goofy stuff while directing traffic but it was amusing to watch Tucker do his MJ impersonation in the middle of busy intersection in uniform.

Chris Tucker also learned a little bit of choreographed kung fu for the movie and made it look pretty good.

There was one line about calling Chan "Keiko" that I can't remember but that I actually laughed out loud at.  It was the one laugh of the movie and now I can't even remember the line.

The woman who is the key to the puzzle wears this dress that had to have been glued into place because it looked like it should have just fallen off.  Seriously, they must have used some kind of glue.

The fact that I have resorted to commenting on women's fashion to try and give the movie good marks says something.

What's wrong with the movie?  "Everything else" would be a cop out so I'll hit the major points.

"That was a long movie," I said as we left.  "90 minutes," my wife said.  "You're kidding me," I said.  Damn, this movie drags.  I was bored.  You had Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker working together and I was bored starting right after Tucker quits dancing in the opening scene.

If you've seen Rush Hour 1, you know who the bad guy is 15 minutes into the movie.  It's just a matter of going through the scenes until Chan and Tucker figure it out.  You would think they would be a little bit suspicious since they must have seen the first movie.

The scene with the nun is about 3 minutes too long.  It might have been funny if it was 10 seconds long.  Set up and punchline.  Instead, they took a 10 second joke and played out until it just wouldn't play anymore.

The scene where they rescue the girl from the stage is incredibly forced.  It doesn't flow.  It doesn't feel right.  It's like the script said, "Rescue girl, try to think of something funny later," and they never came up with anything.

I think I have also finally had my fill of Jackie Chan choreograpy.  How many times can you see him roll over a table and then slide under it before you're bored?  The answer for me is, right up until Rush Hour 3.

There you have it and what do you know?  I actually did something that resembles a movie review.  To sum it up, if you are like me and enjoyed the first two, you're going to go see this anyway just like I did.  For the rest of you, give it a pass.  You must have something going on in your life that's far more amusing than this.  Sit on a bench with a smoothie at the mall and make fun of shoppers or something.

Movie Review - Ratatouille

Like all my movie reviews, this isn't a movie review at all but just a story that has a movie in it.

For the 4th of July, instead of going down to the park for tamales, we decided to take Trey to his first movie in a theater.  Ratatouille was playing at the local theater and we thought it would be the perfect test.  We went to a matinee on the 4th of July so there would hopefully be very few people there.  That's how it was.  Us and one other family.  Perfect.

We bought the popcorn and drinks and went to sit down.  My wife and I sat at the aisle end and put Trey to the inside.  This worked out because even with a kids' movie, it's just too long for him to sit still.  He was able to stand up, walk to the wall, and come back.  No one was behind us so he wasn't distracting anyone and, in this fashion, he made it through the whole movie. 

The movie itself was okay but not as funny as Pixar usually is.  It was an okay story but I just thought there should have been more funny bits in it.

And rats are rats and there is very little way to make them cute for me so during a scene where there are hundreds of rats in the kitchen, I just got a sick feeling in my stomach.  Yucky.  Hundreds of rats fixing dinner.  No thank you, even after running them all through the dish washer.

We decided that Trey isn't quite ready for a movie in town where there will be lots of people.  He said he liked the movie and he did watch most of it.  He just needs to be able to move around.  The small town worked in our favor and we'll wait for a while before trying again.  Maybe for a Christmas movie.

Movie Review - Live Free or Die Hard

I don't really do movie reviews but since I actually went to a movie theater, it was worth a journal entry.  This is the third movie in 3 years that we have been to.  We saw Constantine when it came out because it reminded me of Matrix and pretty much, that's what it was.  We saw Pursuit of Happyness which was very enjoyable because we are working so hard on our money and have a young son.

When I saw that Die Hard was out, I thought I better see it.

Man-law.

It was entertaining as long as you just went along with all the so-far-fetched-that-it-tested-my-limits kind of stuff that went on.  It was probably the worst of the 7 movies (I've lost track) but it was funny and the hacker, Justin Long, was a great character.

The story is about a hacker that decides to completely shut down everything in the United States that's run by computer.  Pretty much, that's everything.

John McClane finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time yet again proving that he has the absolute worst luck in the world when it comes to that sort of thing but the absolute best luck in the world when it comes to every little trick that he uses to escape death.

I was entertained and that's all I hoped for.

You should have seen me walking in after visiting the concession stand.  I was loaded.  I could have stayed in that theatre for a couple of days with what I took in there.  It was easy to tell that I hadn't been to a movie in a while.  I had a tub of popcorn that was the size of laundry basket hugged up against me so that I could hold the little bucket of Dibs in that hand with the gallon size drink in the other hand and the tickets in my pinky.  It was crazy and I was laughing as we walked away from the concession stand.

It was all part of the plan to just go and have fun.  It worked even though I brought more than half the popcorn home so that Trey could have some.  No one has touched it yet so I may end up using it to protect Christmas gifts that I pack this year.

"I love my new sweater, it's very pretty but it smells like buttered popcorn." 

Family Dinner

Growing up, we had a tradition.  When my dad wasn't out on some aircraft carrier, we would meet for dinner every night as a family.  Everyone was expected to be there.  If friends were over at the house, they could go home but they were also invited to stay if they wanted.  Extra people was allowable, missing people was not.  It's a tradition that I have continued with my family when my shifts aren't interfering.

There were three other significant factors in the tradition.

First, there was no TV in the dining area.  Eating around the TV was a completely foreign concept to me.  I didn't think that people really did that but they did and still do.  People who do that are missing out on something that will have a lasting effect on their children. 

Second, we often had the word of the day.  My dad would tell us a word that we had never heard, give us a definition, and use it in a sentence.  The next day, if he remembered, he would ask us what the word was yesterday.  I didn't truly appreciate it back then (I didn't dread it by any means) but now that I write every day, words are extremely important to me.

Third was the movie quotes.  Somehow this tradition started and it continues on today at the family parties.  It didn't happen every night but it happened several times a week.  Someone would reply to a comment with a comment and that would lead to another quote and to another.  It has become a code language for our family.  There was always laughter at these quote meals but my youngest brother, Apple Core, has the record for making people laugh the hardest.

He was about 5 years old at the time and didn't take part much in the movie quote game.  We were going around the table, everyone spouting off quotes from different movies when my brother broke in with, "Hey, what is this shit?"

The timing, his age, the fact that no one in my family said that word, it all caught us by surprise and we busted out laughing . . . hard.  We were laughing hard enough that he ended up crying.  My dad was trying to comfort him but no one could stop laughing.  I ended up leaving the room because I could not stop laughing.

For the curious, it's a line from E.T.

It's one of those memories that will be with me forever, not only because it's so memorable but because it's brought up every now and then at family parties.

For example, it would be a great line if someone put a bowl of extra strength garlic soup down in front of you.