Song of the Week - Uninvited/Alanis Morissette

Well I know I've been a bit absent lately, but I'm back in full swing. Just you wait for all the treats and sugarplums coming your way for December. In the meantime enjoy my favorite Alanis song. This song was on the soundtrack to the horrible movie City of Angels.

Happy Thanksgiving From My Couch to Yours

Take a moment to be thankful for all that is wonderful in your life. I have many things to be thankful. I'm certainly thankful for all the people who take the time to visit my blog. I hope I find things that bring a smile to your face. Like Adam Sandler singing the Thanksgiving Song. This never gets old for me.

Black Swan Trailer

I kept wondering what all the hype was about. Why would I want to see a ballet movie? Then I saw this trailer and now I'm counting the days until its release!

Felon (2008) - DVD Review

A few minutes into this film quickly reminded me of why I never watched the critically acclaimed HBO show OZ. Watching prison life is absolutely brutal and I frankly like to pretend it doesn’t exist. However, Felon was my potluck pick from Castor at Anomalous Material, so I dove right in. I’ve taken so long to get this review written that I’m sure he thinks I didn’t even watch it!

I’ll start by saying that this was a good movie. It was well acted and had a strong storyline. However, it was difficult to sit through. While this film was hardly as violent as it could have been, I found the storyline very frustrating, although believable.

An average working joe (Stephen Dorff) kills an intruder and finds himself serving a prison term with hardened criminals. From the start, you can put yourself in this guy’s shoes. He finds a burglar in his young son’s room and chases him with a baseball bat. His intent is not to kill him, but he’s angry and continues to chase the rogue and hit him with the bat while they are both outside of the house. A misaimed blow to head quickly turns our main character’s life upside down.

We see how difficult it is to survive in prison and it’s unlikely that you’ll be allowed to serve your term quietly and unnoticed. Everyone has their allegiances and all you can really do is hope you’ve chosen wisely. Dorff’s character finds himself deeper and deeper into a mess as he tries his best just to survive.

The performances of the supporting characters are fantastic. Marisol Nichols turns in a fine performance as his frustrated and exhausted fiancé. We see her torment as she ties to stand by her man but begins to question if she can love the man he is becoming.

Harold Perrineau is also a standout as a corrupt prison warden. You will love hating this guy. He seems to play a lot of assholes, but he does a great job at it!

The stand-out performance, by far, belongs to the virtually unrecognizable Val Kilmer. Kilmer is in serious Brando territory here. Sure, we all get older, but it’s hard to believe this is the same guy that played Iceman in Top Gun and one of the many Batmans. The acting chops, however, are still there. He makes his character so riveting that you begin to wish the film was about him!

I will recommend this film. As a character study it was great and it’s always nice to see a good DVD film that you probably never heard of, I know I sure knew nothing about this film prior to the AM Potluck Pick. It does come with a warning though that it will make you angry, depressed and reminded of how quickly everything can be taken away from you. Hey, maybe this is a good Thanksgiving movie. You’ll certainly look around and be grateful for everything you have after spending time with this flick!

Song of the Week - Dilly by Band of Horses

Hey, Band of Horses, if you want to get the word out that you have a cool new video, you got to let people share it! I'm getting tired of all these sites that only have share options for Twitter and Facebook. I'm a blogger baby! Don't make me walk through all the posting steps only to get a "disabled" or "unavailable" message.

So this was going to be the song of the week, but now I'm mad.

Gobble Gobble Fridays - Cheers

This Cheers Thanksgiving episode is one of my all-time favorites. Diane Chambers was arguably the best love to hate character to ever grace a sitcom.

Song of the Week

I Can't Wait - Nu ShoozI loved this song in the 80’s. I never thought it would have so much staying power for me, but I’m telling you, when this comes on my classic soul radio station, I totally crank it! Sometimes you never know the songs that will stay with you. Some songs bring you right back to that time the moment it starts to play. As soon as this begins I’m in my mini skirt, neon tights, headband and off the shoulder sweat shirt.

Breaking News - Michael Jackson

I accidently heard this on the radio today. I had no idea they were releasing a new Michael Jackson song today. What do you think? Will you buy the new album? There's already controversy as the whether this is really him or not.

The New King of Late Night

Well, tomorrow is the debut of Conan’s new late-night talk show on TBS. Everyone thought he was facing tough competition going up against Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Conan was going to have a jump on those guys by airing a half an hour before they come earlier. However, there’s one show that airs the same time as Conan and he’s the new King of Late Night. I’m talking about Jon Stewart of The Daily Show.


Sure the week they tabulated the rates all three shows were in repeats, but do you realize what a major accomplishment it is for a basic cable show to beat out the networks?

It’s also a major win for us viewers. While on the surface, it may look like it’s making Conan’s job harder, it’s actually a good thing. We will flip. We the audience will seek out quality entertainment and we won’t watch whatever comes on after the local news. There are options out there and if it means the pie gets sliced thinner, I’d rather have a small slice of chocolate cream than a huge piece of coconut, which I hate.

So I relish Stewart’s victory. It means there’s now officially diversity in the late night wars. But you and I have known that for a long time. Now the big-wigs need to take note.

Fall Back!

Hey everyone, don't forget to set your clocks back an hour at bedtime tonight. This means you have an extra hour. Here are some things you can do:
Watch The Twilight Zone. Of course you have to watch, Time Enough at Last. I tried to post, but Hulu wouldn't let me. You can watch it over there.

I'm pretty frustrated because I wanted to load up lots of cool time related items for you to have fun with but it seems like the internet refuses to cooperate with me today. I've tried to upload photos using Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Chrome. Does this happen to you guys? Sometimes my copy/paste function refuses to work. If any of you have tips, I'd sure appreciate it!

Back on topic. Here's some great songs about time.

Time(Clock of the Heart) by Culture Club

And the two videos that I'm able to post:
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper

Time Will Reveal - DeBarge

Gobble Gobble Fridays

If you enjoyed Colleenie Ghoulie every Friday in October, I now give you Gobble Gobble Fridays for the month of November.

I’m focusing on TV for Thanksgiving. Lots of TV shows do special Christmas episodes, but I’ve always loved when shows take on the Thanksgiving holidays.

One show that always did a great job was Friends. They may have made more Thanksgiving episodes than any other show. Although the Bratt Pitt guest role was a gem, my favorite will always be the very first one. The storyline with Joey posing for the VD posters is hysterical!

Deathnote

DVD Review
Deathnote

The great thing about taking part in the Netflix Potluck over at Anomalous Material is watching a lot of movies I never would have picked on my own. This week’s pick for me came from Manikandan. Her blog MoviesCrunch is a great site for checking out some cool foreign cinema.

When I looked this film up on Netflix, I found a lot of different options. There were Anime versions and live action. I watched the live action, Japanese 2008 version.

This was quite a different film for me, and I had mixed feelings about it. Story wise, it was excellcent. Light, a young criminology student, finds a notebook on the street. The cover of the book says Deathnote and inside is instructions for how to use it. If you want someone to simply have a heart attack and die, write their name in the book, and as long as you know what they look like, (to ensure someone with the same name doesn’t accidently bite the dust) they will drop dead in 40 seconds. Of course Light doesn’t believe this. He decides to try it out when his TV flashes the photo of a horrendous criminal currently in police custody. To his surprise, the guy is on the front page of the morning paper because he dropped dead. Suddenly, Light gets the bright idea that maybe he can use the Deathnote to change the world for the better.

As far as plot went, I thought this film was thought provoking. What would anyone do with that kind of power, and would it go to your head? Now, certain other elements of the film bugged me; specifically, the animated punk-rock looking character that followed Light around. This animated character, named Ryuk, looked very out of place in this live-action film. He was also supposed to be some type of comic relief/narrator and none of it worked. This animated “Death God” over-explained plot points and giggled and danced around eating apples. It annoyed me to no end.


Lastly, as I stated above, this film over explained itself, and I didn’t know if that was a type of style or just bad moviemaking. However, after having the whole film overly analyzed, it ended with a possible set-up for a part two and no real conclusion.

In the end, I was 50-50 with this one. Some things were great; other areas needed a lot more work. I did enjoy checking out a new genre and seeing the current Japanese youth culture. I just wish more of the good points prevailed.

Show Zero

I will be in front of my TV on Monday, November 8th for Conan's premiere. This hardly satisfied me.I truly hope Conan finds a happy home on TBS. Hey, little old Comedy Central worked great for Jon Stewart.

Song of the Week The Underdog - Spoon

This song is in honor of my San Francisco Giants. No one picked these World Series Champs. But my awesome ragamuffin team really showed their spunk. As the song says, “You got no fear of the underdog. That’s why you will not survive.” GO GIANTS!

NaNoWriMo

Hey, can you write a novel in a month? I'm embarking on my second National Novel Writing Month. My budget looks pretty tight this month, so I might as well stay home and write a 50,000 word novel, right?

I didn't quite make it last year, but I've brushed myself off and I'm ready to try again. Want to join me? I'm signed up as Colleenie. You can log on and be my buddy. I'd love to ceer you on.

Together we can do this.