Premonition (2007)

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 3
Violence = 6
Language = 7
Sex = 2
Plot = 7
Action = 5
Suspense = 7
Character Development = 5
Plot Development = 5

I found Premonition at the library. It seemed like a fun premise when I saw the previews on TV, but the previews disappeared after a short time. That didn't bode well for it and the box said it was 93 minutes or something like that, so I didn't have high hopes. Sandra Bullock is often good in movies, so I figured we could give it a shot.

It turned out it was slow. The script also had some continuity issues. Several of the continuity issues were resolved after my wife and I talked about the movie afterward. The fact that we it gave us something to do together to figure through it afterward made it semi worthwhile.

Language
There was brief profanity. But one of them was an F-bomb, so I rated it a bit harder. I was suprised to hear that ina PG13 film.

Man of the Year (2007)

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 2
Violence = 2
Language = 6
Sex = 7
Plot = 7
Action = 5
Suspense = 4
Character Development = 6
Plot Development = 4

Immodesty
As far as I can recall everyone seemed to be clothed fairly modestly.

Violence
The violence was pretty tame for having suspense and mystery elements. There were several attacks and attempted attacks on people.

Language and Sex
I'm going to group these together because there is only one huge issue I had in these areas and it was the same thing, Robin Williams' blue standup. We have seen that he is very capable of doing clean and hilarious improv (Aladin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and to some extend Mork), but when he drops to the gutter he digs deep. There were several scenes where he was doing graphic sexual gestures and talk. All of which, I felt, took away from the plot.

Plot and Plot Development
The plot a had a lot of potential. The idea of someone running and saying it straight and not taking money from special interest group as well as the scandle with voting machine. It turned out to be mostly about Robin Williams blue comedy and less about making the plot tight and believable.

Action
There was a fair amount of action, but could've been better integrated with a good plot development.

Suspense
There was a little suspense as people were being pursuded, but pretty tame.

Character Development
We got to know the characters fairly well, but with a better plot it would've rounded them out more. The wrap up by the psuedo narator helped a lot with the main character, but the co staring characters could've been given more story.

Farley's Gummy Bears

A friend bought a five pound bag of Farley's Gummy Bears. He brought them in to share partly because he is a generous guy and partly because he had to unload these travesties of gelatin candy.

I love gummy candy and I love to eat, but these things were very difficult for even me to stomach. It was not for the lack of trying. I ate many of these, trying to make them enjoyable, but they just made my stomach hurt.

CBS Innertube - Why do the ads have to be so LOUD?

I have being trying out some of the television network web sites that have reruns of their shows online. Most of the interfaces are clunky and the video sometimes stalls, but I can get to many of the shows I want to see without being locked into watching them on a certain day at a certain time.

One of the sites is what CBS calls Innertube. We go there to watch Numb3rs, extras from the Amazing Race, and sometimes other stuff. A lot of times we will watch after the kids are in bed. We settle in and get the volume set so we can hear it without waking the kids and it is a fairly enjoyable experience. Then the first commercial comes on. Even though the commercial is very short the volume is well above that of the show. Even if the noise wasn't waking my kids it really takes away from the relaxing experience.

I have had a similar complaint about movies for a long time. The action sequences and music have the volume cranked up on them. I understand that an explosion might need to be louder than dialog for the effect, but the way they do it is excessive. I get the volume set and I either can't hear the dialog or I get blasted out by special effects.

The Dead Zone (TV Show)

This is not a movie or product, per se, but it is a show that caught my attention and I didn't think it would at first. Maybe it was just that I was sick and laid up and watched a marathon of an entire season or so. My perspective may have been distorted, but here are my thoughts.

Pretty clean show. Exceptions to that are as follows:
-I believe profanity has been dropped a couple of times out of about two seasons.
-The show starts with two of the main characters sleeping together after they get engaged and have a child.
-There have been a few bedroom scenes.

The show is about Johnny Smith, who is played by Anthony Michael Hall. Johnny spends his time trying to help people that her perceives, through visions, are in trouble. The visions took some disconnecting from for me in order to get into the show. They tried to tie it to that these visions were possibly given by God. For me, I just don't believe that a stranger has stewardship to receive revelation over another's personal life. You personally, a parent, or a religious leader that has authority given him of God to lead a group of people yes, but just someone off the street who is not even sure of his own religious beliefs was hard for me at first.

The emotions of waking up after six years and having the woman you love and were set to spend your life with be married and having a son who doesn't know you were very touching. Remains to be seen if it will get old.

It was interesting to see Anthony Michael Hall. It was a more serious roll than what I am use to with him. He also looks very different. He has bulked out a little. I guess bulked out is the wrong word. Maybe filled out is a better phrase. He appears much more mature.

They also threw in Alley Sheedy at one point, which was also an interesting flash back for me.

I know my opinion probably sounds very confusing, but for right now I am enjoying the show. One thing they could've improved on is the opening dialog and then opening and closing music. I realize the original idea for this was a Stephen King book, but the feel of these don't match the feel of the show. There is a happy ending and then drop to gloom music.

Edit 5-17-07
Now that I have finished season five I have to pull back a little on my statement that it is a clean show. In season five they seem to have cranked up the profanity. They are using the Lord's name in vain a lot and also other ways the characters are expressing themselves could be done more intelligently and responsibly.

Comparatively there are few bedroom scenes, but still more than I would like and more than I originally thought there would be.

I still think it is really well done in many ways, but if the trend of profanity and eroticism continues I will stop watching.

Dada Supreme Tennis Shoes

I have a size 12 pair of Dad Supreme tennis shoes. I have been wearing them for a about a year and nothing seems to break them in. They stay firm. That would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that they are made narrow. My foot is slightly wider than normal. I don't know remember the width, but normal width shoes are usually snug on me. Usually shoes I have purchased in the past have broken in and comfortably accomodated my slightly wider foot.

If you like a shoe that stays firm and you have a normal width or narrow foot these would be good shoes for you. There is significant padding inside the shoe. It is very firm. The shoe also seems to have decent arch support, although I don't have bad arches.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 8
Violence = 3
Language = 6
Sex = 7
Plot = 7
Action = 5
Suspense = 2
Character Development = 3
Plot Development = 5

Immodesty
Short skirts, bedroom scenes, and one nude rear scene.

Language
I gave it a six in language not because of the frequency of the language, but because of the types of things they said. From the first scene there were really crude references by one of the characters. The character was supposed to be a shallow guy, but I think we could've gotten the idea with being so graphic.

Sex
There was a lot of going down the perverse trail of what it would be like to have a super girlfriend.

Plot
THe basic premise was really good I thought, but underdeveloped and shallow. Just like with character development. The plot was there it just took a bad way of displaying it.

Character Development
The movie was a little short at 95 minutes. That made for a fast paced story, but opened it up for cheap humor and shallow characters. Shallow as in not developed and also in stregth of character. Everything about them was on the surface.

In this movie Luke Wilson reminded me of a cross between Gil Gerard and Bill Pullman. This is not a positive of a negative, just an observation.

Tim McGraw/Faith Hill Concert

My sister-in-law got us tickets when Tim and Faith came to Indianapolis a month or maybe even a few months back.

We knew the seats were on the floor, but even though we figured that was very close we didn't know what to expect since we have never been on the floor before. Our tickets were for seat one and two, but you never know which aisle they count from, so we didn't know where we would be possitioned with relation to the stage. The usher told us to go down the stairs. The next usher said to go under this black curtain that appeared to be connected to the stage. I didn't know what to think of that. Did she get some back stage tickets?

It turn out that the stage was in the center and then had I think four runways coming off of it. We were walking under one of the runways. I think it may have also been a passage way for them to get under the stage, since we never saw them enter and they came up through the floor of the stage as they entered.

We continued walking and saw like a fifteen or sixteen on the outside seat. "Okay, so we must be on the inside", we thought for a second. Then we looked across to where we logically thought one and two would be and our eyes met another runway. We walked down the row and sure enough we were leaning right on the runway.

The show was nice. Faith went first and then they did some duets and then Tim and then some more duets. The only problem was the sound quality. Not because of the performers or the equipment, but because of the venue. Conseco Fieldhouse has terrible accoustics. I saw another concert there a while back and the sound bounces off the walls and really distorts it. It reminded me of loud AM radio or maybe even more descriptive would be to say music encoded at 8 kbps.

Faith came down our runway a couple of times and each time she touched everyone's hands. That was interesting to experience. The crowd was a little hysteriacal at times and it felt kind of weird holding up a hand to a performer.

I think Tim came down a couple of times too and that was little more comfortable, at least from the standpoint of having him touch us. I held up a fist and he gave me a knuckle bump. That was nice and it felt more natural. The crowd, on the other hand, was really out of control. He came down in front of the stage at one point to get close to the crowd and I guess one of the woman said or did something inappropriate and he pulled back and shook his head at her telling her whatever she did was a no.

The added hysteria that came with Tim being on stage was that women from behind us we jumping over us and crowding in on us to get to the runway. My wife was closest, so I had to block people out to keep her from being crushed against the runway. I locked hands on the chairs and locked elbows into the hips and checsts of a couple of women that we trying to pile on top of us.

Onekama, Michigan

Okay now I am going to stretch the purpose of this blog just a bit by giving a review of my sister-in-law's boyfriend's cabin.

It is located in Onekama, MI. I have to say that this was much better than the trip we took to Lake Erie a little while ago.

In addition to Lake Michigan there was a little lake called Portage. We only played in Lake Michigan, but we walked on the big cement pier that ran next to the channel connecting the two lakes.

The beach and the section of Lake Michigan that was close to us were very clean. Sister-in-law's boyfriend said it was the zebra muscles. Someone needs to transplant them into Lake Erie.

The cabin was nice. It had a couple of bedrooms upstairs and a couple downstairs along with a bathroom, a family room with a wood store, and a kitchen. The well water smelled like it was right out of the lake, but there was a spring close by where they filled up a big jug of water.

I'm pretty hard to live with, but I enjoyed spending time with them, even just sitting around talking. I know some folks have to doing things, but I am kind of a home body. Driving the 7 1/2 hours there was the hardest part for me, since, as I said, I am a home body, but once we got there I was able to relax.

Sterling State Park Monroe, MI

http://www.michigan.org/travel/detail.asp?m=4;0&p=G10164

It is Located on the South West side of Lake Erie.

We went in the middle of June 2006. We stayed for two nights.

There was very little shade at the camp ground. We camped at camp site 30. It was by a grove of trees, but they were on the wrong side of the camp site to provide shade for very long during the day. The one thing the trees provided was a skunk. When we first got there we smelled a slight smell, but I figured it was a fluke. We were fine that night, but in the middle of the second night it happened. I was awakened by the intense smell of skunk. This was like when you hit a skunk with your car. My wife slept through it, but it kept me up for an hour or so before it started to dissipate. It didn't spray the tent (I can only imagine what that would've smelled like), but it was somewhere close in that woods.

When we got to camp there were several of these little dragon fly like bugs that some were calling fish flies. At night a cloud of these bugs flew in and attached themselves to everything, especially to things with light. We got up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and the fish flies were everywhere. They crunched under our feet and were piled up in a heap in front of a pop machine. It possibly had the most heat in the place. The good news was that the fish flies must eat other bugs, because there were very few other bugs. No mosquitoes. The fish flies were everywhere the next day, but there was no more big swarms that came in.

There were also a ton of cotton wood seeds flying around, almost as thick as the fish flies. The cotton wood kept landing in drinks, food, and everything.

There was a government dumping area in the park surrounded by a fence with a sign that said that the ground inside would not support our weight, even though there were two bulldozers inside. There was a guy that I think was from the dumping ground was digging a whole on the far side of the beach and connecting a pipe to another pipe in the ground. The pipe that was being connected was brought in from the lake. For the most of the morning we saw a couple of tug boats pushing the pipe around. After it was hooked up it floated for a bit and then sank for a while. It then came back up and later went back down. In the process it pulled up a bunch of muck from the bottom. I'm sure the pipe was going down as it filled with whatever they were pumping out and coming back up as it emptied. It looked like it was being pumped from the dumping ground, since we saw a similar pipe just inside the gate aimed at an toward that side of the beach.

There were a lot of dead fish the first day. One every five feet or so. Not enough to scream that there was a problem, but enough that made me feel uneasy. The next day there were a lot less dead fish.

This was our first trip to Lake Erie. I have been to Lake Michigan a few times and it was always freezing. I have been to Superior once and it was cold as well. I was surprised when I stepped into Erie and it was luke warm. The second day it was almost like bath water. As we read one of the information boards around the park we read that Erie is the warmest of the great lakes. This is because it is the shallowest. It sounded like it was especially shallow on the end we were on.

The beach had nice sand and there was a lot of it. The problem was that it was covered with tiny pieces of shells and as you got a bit away from the lake it had many sticks here and there.

There was a cement walkway down at one end of the beach that ran along side the dump fence and the lake. It was nice because it was kind of like being a little ways out into the lake. There was a nice breeze and wave would crash on the big rocks below the walkway. There were breaks in the fence that appeared to be designed to allow people to get onto the rocks to fish or put their feet in the water. I wanted to get down by the water, but again the dump made me a little nervous, so we sat on the edge of the walk. We read some and watched the water.

During our stay we walked around the two and a half mile loop trail. It was not very shady and very typical Midwest ponds, grass, and trees. Not that exciting, but it was good exercise and a good way to do something and talk. There were a couple of benches along the way to sit on.
Along the trail there was also a metal set of steps with a couple of platforms that you could look out over. There wasn't much to see, but it was something to get up high and look out.
There was also a big walking bridge across one of the ponds.

It was a nice little place, but not worth the hours that we have to drive to get there. It would've been nicer to drive a little further and get to the mountains of WV or TN.

Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003)

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 2
Violence = 1
Language = 1
Sex = 0
Plot = 8
Action = 4
Suspense = 2
Character Development = 5
Plot Development = 5

It was a good movie. Not great, but good.

I'm not sure if they were trying to translate the book into LDS culture like Bride and Prejudice with Indian culture or if they just wanted to do a modern story with LDS characters.

If they wanted to compare and contrast LDS culture with Victorian culture I think they shouldn't have cut out the parts of the book dealing with the pressures family was putting on them to get married.

If they wanted to just show LDS characters in a modern version of the book they could've done more justice to the LDS characters. The only characters to stand by their LDS values were portrayed as geeks. Again, as I said above, they could've done more with the original story.

I'm glad to see more movies being made showing LDS culture. I applaud those who are putting the effort into making LDS culture movies. Hopefully more interest, better distribution option, and more inexpensive production technology will make more of these movies possible and also make it possible to make them better.

Fire Birds

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 6
Violence = 5
Language = 6
Sex = 5
Plot = 6
Action = 5
Suspense = 5
Character Development = 5
Plot Development = 5

Nicolas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones

This was a good plot and had potential, but was underdeveloped and slow. At under 90 minutes there isn't much you can develop. The acting was good, but the characters didn't gain enough depth.

There was some decent action at the end, but didn't make up.

{Proof}

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 1
Violence = 0
Language = 5
Sex = 0
Plot = 6

The sister reminded me of Hilary Clinton, so that was disturbing.

The movie had potential with the idea of making you think a little and maybe even learning a little about math, but it never completely got there. The ending left a lot of things unanswered. There seems to be quite a few movies lately that leave it to you to make your own ending. So far I haven't really liked movie like that.

The movie was directed by John Madden. He is into everything. Monday night Football, video games, and now directing movies. ;-)

Dark Water

Scale 0-10 0=none 10=Ultimate
Immodesty = 0
Violence = 2
Language = 5
Sex = 0
Plot =5

The movie was very slow and we had trouble finding what the point is. I know some will say that it is a movie and it doesn't have a point. I just couldn't figure out if they were going for a mystery or what.

It was very much the same angry little girl ghost that we have seen elsewhere.

There were many loose ends that felt like they were not tied up.

My wife found it very suspenseful, but she also found it slow.