My book's progress

I see it's been a long time since I updated the status of my book here.
I need to let you know, it's over 650 pages now and 17 chapters
I still have only a working title for it, The Dark Horse, but
I've got 10 people reading it and reviewing it and I'm working on it
every damn day.
It's still fun and exciting.

I'll try to do more updates if nothing else to help copyright this work and
distinguish it as my own original ideas and words.

Thanks to anyone still reading this.  It's not a dead blog yet.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith

Released: 2005
Comedy
Director: Doug Liman
Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn
Running Time: 120 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A long time married couple that's getting bored with their marriage realizes that they are both assassins who need to kill each other according to their bosses.

This movie first off isn't funny, second it's not a romance either, so to call it a rom com or even a comedy is misleading.  It's ridiculous most of the time and average the rest.

A man and woman fall in love within weeks and get married.  They've both lied to each other about what they really do for a living and on the outside, 6 years later, they look a bit bored with each other.
After both their bosses tell them to kill the same target, they end up realizing who their spouse really is.
They try killing each other and then have sex.  Their marriage is renewed, blah, blah, blah.  A whole bunch more stuff that is totally unrealistic happens, happily ever after.

1 out of 5 for some nice sets and cute outfits.

The Distinguished Gentleman

Released: 1992
Comedy
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Lane Smith, Sheryl Lee Ralph
Running Time: 112 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown: A con man decides to go for the biggest con of all and become a US senator.

I watched this movie by accident, and even though it got some really poor reviews, I thought it was funny enough to be good.

After a well known and well loved congressman dies suddenly during his campaign for re-election, Eddie Murphy realizes an opportunity.  They both have the same name and he wants to ride the dead senator's popularity and hope the voting public doesn't realize the switch.
It works and he's elected.  He moves from Florida to D.C. and starts learning what happens in congress and how wrong and crooked everyone really is.  Even though he originally wanted to be as crooked as the rest he sees some opportunities to help people who really need it and he has a change of heart from a con man to someone who's trying to make a difference.

It was funny and cute enough to probably be counted as Murphy's last good movie.

2 and 1/2 out of 5 for being entertaining and fun.

Prince of Darkness

Released: 1987
Horror
Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Jameson Parker
Running Time: 102 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown: Inside an old abandoned church lives pure evil in green liquid form.

An old priest dies with a box containing a key to an old empty church.  A new priest investigates and finds in the basement of this abandoned church a vat of swirling green liquid which he thinks might be the devil.  He hires a bunch of physics students and their teacher to investigate what they can find out without opening the vat.  Through research they find ancient texts saying the liquid is Satan himself and if released he will try to bring his father, an Anti-God into our plane, presumably ruining the world.  Problem is, as they discover more info, liquid starts to escape without anyone noticing and people start acting very strange.

I thought this was a really interesting idea for a movie.  It's original, well paced, and interesting to watch.
With that said, it looks pretty dated and some of the effects look pretty goofy.
Some of the scenes came off kinda' silly, but I'll forgive that since I enjoyed the story.

If you like horror movies, I'd recommend it with the caveat that some of it comes off a bit silly or goofy.
3 out of 5 for being a great idea, if not a great execution.

Melancholia

Released: 2011
Drama? Sci-fi?
Director: Lars Von Trier
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Skarsgard
Running Time: an agonizingly slow 136 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown:  I don't really know how to summarize this one.

This movie is a ripped off idea, style-wise from Kubrick's 2001.  The opening sequences are all slow motion and has a backdrop of classical music while strange impossible images are shown involving space and planet's colliding.

The first half of the movie, complete with black and white title card using one word, just like 2001, is about a wedding of Kirsten Dunst and some other actor I've never seen.  They are two hours late to their own reception apparently trying to help the limo driver navigate the long driveway.  Dunst is ill with either depression or bi-polar disease because she's terribly unhappy and stops in the middle of the celebration to take a bath upstairs in her sister's house.  Oh, she also sleeps with some random guy out on her sister's golf course instead of her new husband, who she left waiting for her in a bedroom upstairs.  I should mention her sister and brother-in-law have a huge mansion and their own golf course and paid for the wedding.
Anyway, the husband's tired of waiting for her to come up to have sex with him so he leaves her, as in, I want to divorce you.  So then she's alone.
Second half of the movie, they finally start talking about the new planet that supposed to either pass by Earth or collide with it.  The sister who isn't Dunst, has a child and seems to have some sort of anxiety problem as well.  Slowly, the non-Dunst sister gets more and more concerned that the other planet is going to collide with Earth.

This movie was a HUGE waste of time.  It's not stylish in a creative unique way, it's a direct rip off of Stanley Kubrick's style for his own sci-fi movie from the 1960's.  There's also not a lot of dialogue as was the case with 2001, but this time it doesn't work.  It simply is annoying and makes the movie seem even longer than 2 and 1/2 hours.  It was painfully slow, agonizing to watch, and I don't know how such a useless movie got such good reviews on Rottentomatoes.com.

I hated it.

0 out of 5 for annoying the hell out of me and having nothing redeeming about this movie to say.

Never Been Kissed

Released: 1999
Comedy
Director: Raja Gosnell
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Michael Vartan
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A new reporter gets her first assignment as an undercover teenage girl in high school.

A copy editor wants to be a journalist.  The Chicago Sun Time's owner lets her leap frog over her bosses wishes and allows her her first story.  Go undercover as a high schooler and learn what kids are doing these days.
Problem is she was a total loser back in high school and it seems she's doomed to repeat the same path, until her brother saves the day and her reputation.  She falls for a hot teacher, but is conflicted when the paper's owner tells her to make a story out of him or else she'll lose her job and get her boss fired as well.

This was a predictable, uninspired movie with a terrible performance from Barrymore.  She was a producer and that's always a bad sign that it wouldn't get made without her money behind it.

Skip it.
1 out of 5 for Michael Vartan.

Dune

Released: 1984
Sci-fi
Director: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Sting
Running Time: 137 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A Duke's son is the chosen one and leads his new army on a strange desert planets filled with sand dunes and giant worms.

This movie was so weird and I don't know who to blame.  Could be David Lynch since he really likes to do weird concepts, could be the author of the book since I've never read it.  Could be that 2 and 1/2 hours isn't enough time to compress this really long novel into anything that makes sense.
With that said, it's hard to describe.  Easy to say though that the special effects are certainly dated and some of the scenes are kinda' goofy.

The universe is under the power of this drug called spice that allows people to fold time, live longer, and expand their minds into traveling through space without machines.  The Duke's son wasn't supposed to ever live, but his mother knew his father wanted a son, even though she was only allowed to have daughters. Anyway, the son ends up being the chosen one and starts a war to control the universe.

I don't know what to think of this one.  I guess...
2 out of 5 for some interesting ideas and maybe in the hands of a less bizarre director, could have been better.

Before Sunrise

Released: 1995
Romance
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
Running Time: 105 long boring minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown:  Two young people spend a day and night in Vienna talking after meeting on a train.

So SO BORING.
I saw this got 100% on rottentomatoes.com and I had accidentally seen the sequel to this movie first, Before Sunset where they meet up again, and I didn't really like that one either.  I thought maybe I would like the second one more if I had seen the 1st one but it looks like that's not the case.
These two strangers meet on a train on the way to their separate locations when they strike up a conversation and hit it off.  When the guy is supposed to get off he asks the woman to come with him and she agrees.  They end up walking around Vienna all afternoon and night until they stop and have sex in the grass.  I guess they are supposed to have some connection, but I don't see it.
I was bored within the first 20 minutes of the film and I saw no instant connection that the actors should have had for this movie to work.  I don't know what the critics were watching, but it couldn't have been this movie.  It's not a romance, it's not a drama, it's not a character study.  It's just a bad idea.

0 out of 5 for giving me nothing but a wasted block of time.

Ali

Released: 2001
Biography
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight
Running Time: 157 long boring minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown:  The story of Muhammad Ali as he started out to his time in the ring later on.

It's obvious that a lot of time and money went into this biopic that travels with Ali from 1964-1974.  As he rises to the world Champion, marries and divorces multiple wives, as he's drafted for the Vietnam war and refuses to go, where strictly for political reasons they strip him of his belt and there's a lot talent in the film as well.
With that said, it's boring.  Muhammad Ali's life story is not boring, but the presentation of it here, and the extremely slow pacing is what brings the picture down.
I was interested in seeing it at first, but after the first 40 minutes I realized I still had 2 hours to go and it just seemed to drag on and on.
Even if you like Muhammad Ali, I recommend you steer clear of this rambling, slow paced film.
Skip It!
2 out of 5 for some good acting from people in small roles.

Major Payne

Released: 1995
Comedy
Director: Nick Castle
Starring: Damon Wayans, Michael Ironside
Running Time: 95 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown:  A Major is being discharged from the Marines and finds a new purpose at a kid's school.

So this is a goofy comedy with lots of silly bathroom humor and visual gags, but there was some of this that I did think was funny.
Major Payne loves to kill people, but the wars he's used to are drying up and the Marines discharge him from the Military.  Without anything else to do, he longs to kill something.
His C.O. finally contacts him that there is a place he's needed.
He shows up for work, only to find out, he's going to be training R.O.T.C. members in a kid's school.  The kids, for the most part, are horribly out of shape and seem to have no pride or interest in themselves or the military.  Major Payne shapes them up and makes them a cohesive family unit.

3 out of 5 for being funny where it's supposed to be.
Incidentally, I watched this movie the same day as Will Smith's Ali, and this movie was much better.