Author Archives: gloaminganddawn

Watching one good sketch of a really bad interview made me think of another. It’s been way too long since I’ve revisited this show.

My heart is currently losing a battle to a paper that should be really easy. My prescription was that I needed something funny to watch. I decided to share some of that goodness with you.

I can’t embed, but damnit, you should watch this anyway.

Then go to Netflix Instant and watch every episode of this show, ever. Well, at least the three series available on Netflix Instant.

I’ve already made quite clear how much I loved Zusak’s The Book Thief. I’ve just finished his previous release, I Am the Messenger (published originally as The Messenger in Australia). The Book Thief was no fluke, I Am the Messenger was another brilliant book.

It’s the story of a 19 year old underage taxi driver in Australia named Ed Kennedy. Ed helps apprehend a bank robber, and soon after receives a mysterious piece of mail: an Ace of Diamonds with three times and addresses written on it. From there, the story unfolds to engaging and satisfying effect. I won’t say anything else about the plot, spoilers are sad.

Zusak writes such literate and subtly poetic prose. His pacing aids the reader in entering the mind of the narrator, whether that narrator is Death or a directionless 19 year old cab driver. All of his characters in I Am the Messenger are wonderfully ordinary, I feel like I went to high school with these people, aside from the accents that is.

The thing about Zusak I find the most remarkable is his ability to write books about hope and redemption that feel believable in the real world. For all the beauty in his books, they never come across as precious or overly sentimental.

His books are certainly entertaining, fun reads. They’re so much more than that though. They quite honestly make me want to be a better person, and somehow also convince me I truly can be. Hell, they might even help me on my way toward actually becoming a better person. For me, this is proof positive of how formational fiction can be.

I think Zusak’s work affects me so much because he seems to truly want to believe that hope can mean something, while never ignoring the absolutely terrible shit that happens all over the world every day.

I think everyone should read this book.

My friend Josué emailed me a screen grab. Apparently, Roused to Mediocrity looks amazing on iPads.

Thanks to whoever made this theme. Keep up the good work!

I know, I know. It’s like three days old by now and everyone has seen it already, even my mom. Still, on the off chance someone hasn’t, I’m sharing it anyway, because that’s what we do here. I told you, I’m posting everything late this month.

Two Amy Ponds.

It’s been sort of a weird few weeks for me. So, I’m really behind on sharing so many things.

This is the first of those things:

Doctor Who. The BBC Comic Relief, Red Nose Day 2011 Shorts.

Space:

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Time:

In other Kristen Wiig news, here is the newest trailer for Bridesmaids.

I should have posted a trailer before, but haven’t yet. Time to remedy that.

The response to the trailer that it’s just a female version of The Hangover is fair enough, but people who have seen the almost final cut of the film at SXSW have reported that it’s good, and that it earns far more respect than just a mindless ripoff of previously trekked terrain.

I’m not going to lie, watching the trailer at the theater last night, when that little kid said he ate Saturday, I lost my shit. I don’t even know why, I just found it hilarious.

The boys from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are at it again. This time, without the direction of Edgar Wright.

I was worried a bit going in, because for the most part I’ve found the trailers underwhelming. Gladly, I can report that I had a great time watching the movie, even if it does pale in comparison to Shaun and Hot Fuzz. It doesn’t equal anywhere near the epic hilarity of those two films, but it was still most definitely an entertaining homage to nerd culture. There were even scenes I didn’t find funny in the trailer, which were more entertaining in context.

Kristen Wiig was especially awesome, as a former fundamentalist trying on cursing for the first time, and being really, really terrible at it… in the best possible ways.

With all due respect to Greg Mottola, Paul did suffer from the lack of Edgar Wright’s directing awesomeness. Yet, it still managed to put together a satisfying adventure comedy. With references to popular alien movies coming out of its ears, plenty of somewhat foulmouthed humor from the all-star cast, and the sense to never take itself seriously, the film was far more satisfying to me than the trailer led me to expect.

There were a few things I found grating, which I can’t share without spoilers so I’ll leave off for another time.

The film gets the Scott Small thumbs up, but, granted, there is plenty of bias here, because I want to love movies with Pegg and Frost in them. However, that’s something I won’t apologize for, because everyone does that. It seems to me the people who bitch about that sort of bias the most are the biggest offenders in doing the same thing in ways they are blind to. We’re all biased, just enjoy it. Just like I enjoyed Paul.

We went to see Girl Talk in concert last night. It was amazing. Non-stop dancing in a mass of sweaty people, complete with confetti, balloons, and other party favors. I realized after the show that I had completely stopped paying attention to my body, and if the show had gone on for another 30 minutes or so, like I wanted it to, I would have passed out from dehydration.

It was so different from the normal concert experience. There was no shoving, no tempers, no attitudes about who gets closer to the stage… on the floor it was just a venue of people dancing, jumping, and being sexy (and REALLY sweaty) together. And yes, Gregg looked exactly like he does in the picture above at the show: no shirt, lots of sweat spraying hair, and more than enough crowd riling energy to spare. I wish every night was a Girl Talk night.

Life is better when there’s dancing.

First, ‘Movies in Space’ got rolling, now it’s time to get started on the other side of that coin with ‘Alien Invasion/Visitation Movies.’

Movie #1 is a film I really wanted to see last year, but was robbed of that potential when the film never had a run near Seattle. That’s a rare occurrence, what with the Emerald City being such a movie loving town. If you ask me, it’s pure nonsense. Universe, don’t let it happen again!

So, I finally watched it. It was pretty much exactly what I expected, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because I was looking forward to seeing it, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. Bad, because I wasn’t surprised once throughout the film, and in a film like this you sort of want to be surprised.

For those who don’t know the film, it goes like this. NASA sends a probe into deep-space after discovering the possibility of alien life. It crashes on the way back, over northern Mexico, and the eventual result is an infestation of giant extraterrestrial creatures against whom the US declares war (which includes building a giant wall along the border). A photojournalist hoping to catch a photograph of a living creature is ordered by the owner of his newspaper to get said boss’s daughter safely back to the States.

Doesn’t that last part sound like either a Cary Grant bedroom comedy, or a terrible romantic comedy (minus the monsters)? The handsome photojournalist has to find a way to get the bosses hot socialite daughter home, who just happens to be unhappily engaged to be married. Adventure ensues! “Wait, there’s only one bed! You wouldn’t make me sleep on the floor, would you?” Along the way, they learn a little about what it means to work together, a lot about themselves, but most of all, they learn about love. It sounds terrible… unless it’s a Cary Grant picture, then it would be awesome.

This movie was worth watching, mostly because the world feels real. The subtlety with which they draw this alien infested North America makes it feel more authentically human. The best scene in the film happens in the final few minutes, when some ‘monsters’ show up at a gas station where our hero and heroine are holed up. The biology of the creatures was so well-crafted that it felt like watching Planet Earth instead of a low-budget sci-fi film from England.

Obviously, in a lot of ways this is the North American version of District 9, with the immigration issue replacing Apartheid. The US walls off Mexico, after we were the ones to cause the problem to begin with, then attempt to bomb the creatures out of existence without much concern for the damage done to the people of Mexico by bombs and agitated monsters. Fortunately, the film never becomes heavy-handed. We never get an eye-rolling moment where they force the whole, ‘but who are the real monsters?’ thing down our throat. It’s subtext, which is much better storytelling.

All in all, it could have been a much better film, but for what it was I think they did a pretty good job.