Happy Easter

The book is still going well and demanding almost all of my internet time.
Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be saying Happy Easter here.

I'm not religious so this day really doesn't mean anything to me except for eggs, chocolate, bunnies, and chicks, so.....
Happy Easter anyway!

Snow White and the Huntsman

Released: 2012
Fantasy
Director: Rupert Sanders (You know, he's the guy that cheated on his wife with Kristen Stewart.  Who knows why?)
Starring: Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Icky Kristen Stewart
Running Time: 127 long LONG minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: The classic story of Snow White and the Evil Queen all messed up by Hollywood.

So, I didn't really want to see this movie, but Charlize Theron was in it and I love her so I sat through it.
It was pretty crappy.
It was all style and no substance - a lot like all the other fairy tale movies as of late.
All the special effects were nice, Charlize's wardrobe was phenomenal, but the story didn't hold up.
Charlize was great as an evil queen, she was commanding and beautiful as usual, Chris Hemsworth was hunky and decent as usual, but the weakest link (well, besides the lack of substance in the story) was Ms. Kristen Stewart.  Looking uninterested or like she just smelled something really bad, her acting was crap as usual.

I will never sit through this movie again.  And I don't recommend it to anyone.
SKIP IT!

2 out of 5.  1 for Charlize, and 1 for the special effects, otherwise it's crap.

I forgot the plot.
Here it is:
Snow white grows up a prisoner of the evil queen after her mother dies, and the queen marries then kills the King.  Eventually, Snow White breaks out and is hunted down.  The queen sends a hunter after Snow and he finds her, but ends up helping her out instead of turning her over.  Blah, blah, blah.....the plot's really boring and I'll forget about this movie in a couple of minutes.

About to hit week 9 of P90X

So today is the last day of week 8 for me.  This week has been light as it is a recovery week.  Doesn't mean I get to sit on my ass, it means the work outs are a little lighter.
I've lost 4 pounds so far and probably would've lost more if I had eaten right.  But I'm pleased that I'm losing any weight at all.  I'm over the halfway mark and I'm glad I'm getting strong enough to finish the workouts from beginning to end.
We will see what the next 40 days or so brings.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Released: 2012
Fantasy
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan
Running Time: 169 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown:  The beloved book of J.R.R. Tolkien comes to life in a longer than necessary movie.

I already knew this movie was very very long, so I skipped in the theaters and watched it at home recently.
Based on the book "The Hobbit" this movie was full of CG and over the top gimmicks.  Still, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I didn't like the book when I read it, and I only read it after I saw the first LOTR movie and fell in love with that story.

I still don't like the book, but I'd say 80% of the movie was good, while 20% was too much junk thrown in for eye candy.

The main plot, although I think you are already familiar with it-
Bilbo Baggins gets approached by Gandalf the Grey for an adventure with a lot of dwarves.  At first, Bilbo is very resistant and just wants all of them to leave, but after a night's sleep, he changes his mind and goes along with them for an adventure of his own to tell others about.  While out in the world, he comes across all sorts of new things including trolls, giant birds, and elves.  He's feels as though he doesn't belong, but soon finds out he does.

3 out of 5 for some good stuff, but still a lot of stuff that just could've been left out.

Rock of Ages

Released: 2012
Musical
Director: Adam Shankman
Starring: Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise
Running Time: 123 agonizing minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown:  Based on the play of the same name, this story is about a young mid-west girl that travels to Los Angeles to become a music star.

This movie has gone down in history for me.  Within the first two minutes, I let out my first groan of agony.  I don't think any movie has ever made me do that this early on, and it just got worse from there.
I can only assume that anyone who was anyone knew this stank before they finished reading the script and promptly turned it down.  The only person who could actually sing well in it, was the professional singer, Mary J. Blige.  
Tom Cruise didn't suck at singing, but I wouldn't pay to hear him do it, since I can't stand him in the first place.
Julianne Hough may be a great dancer, but that's where her talents end.  She should stop trying to act, and REALLY PLEASE stop singing.  It was awful!
And seeing Russel Brand and Alec Baldwin sing and fall in love with each other, uck, yuck, vomit.

Oh, yeah, the plot.
Hough plays a young impressionable innocent girl from Oklahoma who goes to L.A. to make it as a singer.  She ends up as a waitress in a bar, and then a strip club.  I think she's also supposed to be a stripper at some point, but they make that ambiguous so you're really not sure.  She meets a guy who works at the first bar she waitresses at and he's a singer too!  Big surprise, he asks her out.  Blah, blah, blah, it's too boring, overdone with superficial and stereotyped characters to give a crap about to talk about the rest of the plot.

PLEASE DON'T WATCH THIS.
1 out of 5 for some well choreographed strip pole dancing.

My husband

I know I've given my husband a bad rap on my blog for years, but recently he's been doing a lot better.  We recently shared our 5th wedding anniversary and his father pretty much ruined it for both of us.
My husband probably feeling bad for me, took us out to two dinners to celebrate and he got my favorite flowers delivered to me yesterday.
It was very sweet of him to be so thoughtful and I just wanted to point that out in front of the world.
Thanks hubby!

BIG Announcement

For anyone still reading this blog.....I know it's not many, but if you're reading this you should know I'm starting a novel.
It's always been a passion of mine, and I've always been told, I'm good at it.  So I'm throwing my hat in the ring and am gonna' do it for real.  I've got 50 pages so far and am asking for a little help.
I'm contacting people directly, but if you haven't received a request yet and would like to help me by answering some simple questions about what's sexy and great love stories, please contact me through this site or any other way you know how to reach me.

Since I'm putting so much passion into my story, that means this blog will probably fall behind it's daily schedule quite often.  So if you don't see anything here for a week or so at a time, don't worry, it's means I'm working hard on my book, but I will try to stay as up to date as I can on this.

Wish me luck!  I really want to get this one published!!!!

Exit Humanity

Released: 2011
Drama, Horror
Director: John Geddes
Starring: Brian Cox, Mark Gibson, Dee Wallace
Running Time: 114 minutes
Rated: Not Rated

The breakdown:  A bit of revisionist history here as the zombie outbreak occurs during the American Civil War.

My husband had heard a lot about this film and wanted to see it.  I had nothing better to do so I sat through it with him.  Turned out to be a pretty good little movie.
During the American Civil War, a soldier finds out that the dead are rising on the battlefields.  Pretty soon, the population is overcome and he runs home to his family.  His wife turns and his boy runs away.  While he's  searching for his son, he sees how bad it has become out in the world.  He makes some friends, fights some human bad guys, and kills a lot of dead bad guys.

I don't want to ruin it for you since a lot of what happens to the main character should stay a surprise to fully appreciate the film.  I can tell you, it's original, well done, and well acted.

If you like dramas, or zombie pics - watch this one!

4 out of 5 for being a small budget film that punches like a big budget film with an entertaining story.  GO SEE IT!

The Omen

Released: 2006
Horror
Director: John Moore
Starring: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles
Running Time: 110 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown:  The remake of the 1976 horror classic of the same name, except there wasn't any apparent reason to do so.  The plot's about a young child that is potentially the anti-Christ.

So, I've never seen the original, but my husband had and he wanted to see how different this version was.  According to him, it was the same and there was no reason to remake it.

The plot is that a young couple loses their child in childbirth and of all people to recommend this, a priest pulls the father aside before the mother was told she lost the baby and says he has another baby where the mother died and why doesn't he take this child and pass it off as his own to the mother.
The guy does and the boy grows up as their own.
As he gets older, the family starts to be plagued with a lot of unusual problems of people close to them committing suicide and such.  Things just get worse from there and people come to the man trying to explain this child is the devil.  The father, of course, doesn't believe them, until things get really weird.

I thought the plot was ok, but I'm eager to see the original for differences and how it was originally intended to be seen.

2 out of 5 for Liev Schreiber.  Skip it.

The Walking Dead Video Game featuring Lee and Clementine

Released: 2012
Rated: M for mature

Since I loved the tv show, my husband decided to buy this for me on our PS3 and play it together to watch the story.
You play a character named Lee that was a murderer before the zombie outbreak, but due to some unforeseen events gets busted free and has to find his way through the world alone.
You travel around and find a little girl all alone in a tree house named Clementine.  She's sweet and you decide to take care of her.
The rest of the game is you doing everything you can to protect her through various situations.

If you want to play it, I'm not going to ruin much of the story line for you, but I can say, sometimes you'll travel alone, sometimes with a group.  People you like will die, and people you don't like will die.

I enjoyed the story of the game, but felt like the ending was pure audience emotional manipulation due to Robert Kirkman's insane control over his work.  He's terribly protective of it and seems to really only be good for comics, not for tv, or games.  With that said, I wouldn't recommend that you skip it, if you like the tv show.  Just be prepared for gritty on screen deaths and horrible circumstances for anyone to live through.

The thing I disliked was the controls for the PS3.  Most other games have much more advanced systems for moving, weapons load outs, ammo, hand to hand combat, and they do well with simple controls.  For some reason the game's simple moving and fighting is very poorly done for PS3.  I don't know if it's equally frustrating on PC or other gaming systems, but I know it for Playstation.

3 out of 5 for a good story, but bad controls and an ending I think was manipulative that didn't have to be.