My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary

I'm feeling kind of confused about my life, so I decided to start reading books about people. I decided to read autobiographical works, journals, memoirs, that type of thing.

I just realized that Beverly Cleary is still alive. She's 104 years old. I didn't realize she was such a successful author. She sold over 90 million copies of her books.

I'm not sure what gave me the idea to read this book. I just remembered That I enjoyed her books as a child. Though the memory of her book was very vague since it was so long ago. I think I read her book titled Socks.

I was hoping that she wrote books for adults too. My other favorite children's authors, Lois Duncan and Madeline L'Engle I also looked up to see if they wrote for adults. Lois wrote a book that was non fiction about her daughter going missing. I'm not sure about Madeline L'Engle. 

The only thing that Beverly Cleary wrote for adults was her memoir, and that actually worked out for my goals of reading autobiography type books.

Something about her book is really well written. I was super impressed with the first paragraph even. I'm not sure why it was so satisfying.

It was a real page turner too. I was wondering what would happen next, and how she would get over obstacles as she attended junior college and college. 

It was interesting to see her life and perspective because she attended college during the great depression and worked during world war two. It was very interesting to see what people's lives like were back then.

The one thing that I thought was odd was that she barely described or talked about her husband. Maybe this was out of respect for his privacy. She only had a shallow portrayal of him and her relationship with him. I kind of wished to know more about how she felt and how they connected.

She didn't talk about her children hardly, but they weren't born yet by the time her book ended.

I'm very inspired by how she always worked and tried to be independent and was so sociable. I'm also inspired by how she worked for her goals and how she started writing. She overcame writers block and that feeling of wanting to do something, but not knowing exactly how.

I felt sad by the time I was done with the book because I felt nostalgic. All the characters and personalities in her memoir existed many years ago. But they were real and once existed. It made me feel so sad and melancholy when I realized they are from the past and are long gone.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

      I didn't like the first movie, "the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." But, it grew on me. I was forced to watch it three times. Twice, I was invited to a friend's house to watch a movie with a bunch of people, and the movie being shown was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The second time I didn't want to be rude and say I have already seen it. The others seemed to be really looking forward to the movie. I don't know how I got stuck watching it the third time, but I think my family was involved. By the third round, I grew an appreciation for this movie.

     That is how I grew up the courage, patience and perseverance to see the sequel! Without the first movie being hurled at me three times, it would never have happened!!

     I liked this movie right away, and it didn't take three times for me to warm up to it. I like it better than the first one. But, it's not as dramatic and blockbustery as the first one was. Blockbustery isn't a word, but you get the gist. The first movie shows how 4 friends stayed together during a summer apart by mailing lucky jeans to each other. They were all three different sizes and figures, but by some strange magic, the jeans fit all of them. They would mail the jeans with a letter saying if anything lucky happened to them while they had the pants.

     The sequel was the same. They were four friends apart because they all had different plans for the summer. They mailed their jeans to each other in rotations. It was a lot to follow, because there were four completely different plots for one movie. It reminded of me of soap operas. Days of of Lives, for example, have many characters and plots.

      The movie was well acted, written, and really deep. It was a lot to take in all at once because each of the main characters learned a big life lesson and came to a big realization in the movie. It wasn't like a fake or contrived or forced upon lessons they all learned. Through really serious and great acting, and very gifted writing, they perfectly fit all four plots together to perfectly convey some real healing and realizations in this movie. These four girls had a lot of pain and heartaches of different kinds but they were all able to find some wisdom to get them through it and out of it.   

Dinner for Schmucks

    This is the first thing that I have seen with Steve Carell that was hilarious. (I didn't think his other stuff was funny.) I laughed out loud, not "LOL" figuratively, but literally, through much of the movie. But, that was just me. Humor is in the ear of the hearer?

    Though it had some cheap sex humor, or silly stuff in it, I thought this was a sophisticated comedy. I was impressed with tiny little details. I was thinking to myself, that, whoever wrote this movie is more intelligent than the average writer of scripts, especially for comedies. It just had a lot of subtle features, most people would have taken for granted if they weren't paying attention. I can't quite explain it, but it was just precious in some ways. This movie was loosely based on a french film called Le Diner de Cons. I want to watch that movie too.

    This movie is about a guy trying to get his girlfriend to marry him, and so he thinks that moving ahead and getting promoted will help his chances. He works at an equity firm ran by creeps that like to throw a dinner once a month making fun of the biggest idiot he can find. He has to find an idiot to take to a dinner party to impress his creepy boss and co-workers. The comedy just starts from that premise, and it becomes one of the funniest comedies I have ever seen.

A Thousand Words

    On the internet, I saw a lot of bad reviews for this particular movie. They said it was done before. You know, I see a lot of reviews like that. People saying they hate the movie because it was like other movies they have seen. I guess Solomon in Ecclesiastes was right; "There is nothing new under the sun."

  Well, despite what critics have said, I can positively report that the plot of this movie was new to me. I haven't seen anything quite like it before. Eddie Murphy plays a guy who finds out he will die when all the leaves fall off this magical tree in his back yard. Every time he speaks a leave falls off the tree. Eddie is basically trying to not talk in much of this movie for this reason. The comedy part is the silly ways he tries to live his life without talking.

 "It was not realistic!!!" Another common criticism of movies, (And of this one.) a criticism that I make sometimes too. But realism is not what this movie was aiming for. It had a fairy tale like aspect. Disney could have done this movie in cartoon version. They would just have had to change a few of the main characters to a prince and a princess and they would have been set.

   I liked the feel and vibe of the movie. I liked the moral of the movie, and the message it conveyed. It was not only a silly comedy, but it was trying to tell us some moral and message. It was well executed. I liked the main characters and the side characters. They were fun to watch.

   People say this movie is stupid, no good. But, I like the fairy tale, clean, moral atmosphere it created. I enjoyed it. Only thing that I can think of is that I was a little bored in a middle part of the movie. Not too many things can be perfect.

The Accidental Tourist (the movie)

     This movie is from the 80s! I grew up seeing the book, the Accidental Tourist on the bookshelf at my parent's house. My dad read a lot of books by the author Anne Tyler, who of course, wrote The Accidental Tourist. I haven't read the books. But, I watched the movie! I really did like this movie a lot.
     I might read the book that was written in 1985. It won a Pulitzer, and other awards. The movie was made just a few years later in 1988. I love the eighties. I don't know what it is, but even eighties movies, have something special about them. 


     I really ragged on the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. If you read my recent review of that movie, you would know I don't particularly care for it. I bring up that movie because it was hysterically and painfully, grasping at straws trying to show exactly what this movie, The Accidental Tourist showed, with much more realism, grace, finesse. This movie rung much truer to me. It did exactly what Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tried to do and failed; to show the pain and remorse of the loss of a loved one, and how they found a way to heal from it. 


   Sorry the to the people who made Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: You don't have to show someone crying and screaming and having tantrums and write the most ridiculous inconceivable plot, and have the most obnoxious main character to convey the pain of death and coping with the loss. 


   What this movie did was show pain and coping with it in a much realer, realistic, reasonable, way that really resonated with me and spoke deeply to what is true to me and in my own life. At least to me. It was well written, and acted. I really enjoyed this movie. 

The Vow

    My boss at work said that this movie was good. I decided  to check it out. I don't have any really strong opinions about this movie. I can't say it was good or bad, or if I liked it or not. Sorry, lame review I have got going. Don't have the magic movie reviewing mojo going on.

   This movie is really loosely based on a true story. When I looked up the true story, the plot seemed more interesting than this movie. I wondered why they didn't stay truer to the real life story it was based on. The movie is about a husband and a wife that get into a car accident. The wife looses her short term memory and can't remember ever even being married to her husband. She doesn't remember her husband, or that she is married. She is very apprehensive about going home with this strange man when she wakes up from her coma.

   The movie is about the husband fighting to keep their marriage together, when his wife frankly doesn't even seem interested in him any more.

   In a way, come to think of it, I did like this movie because I found it to be very interesting, and not for what it is at face value. Though this is a romance movie, or a testimony to keeping the faith in marriage in love, I was much more interested in the other facets of this movie, that didn't even have to do with the boy girl relationship.

   This women was a completely different person five years ago. She forgot the last five years of her life, and waking up to the decisions she made in the last five years were a true shock to her. She didn't know or understand the person she had become. She wasn't even sure liked her new self. She wanted to go back to her old life altogether. Seeing her go back to her college friends, and spending time with her family, it really was like a whole different society and standing from the new life she made for herself. 


   Other than her self exploration, I found her relationship with her family and rebuilding that even more interesting than the relationship with her husband as well. She hasn't spoken to her parents and siblings in years. When she wakes up in the hospital, she is shocked when she figures this out. She realizes her husband and her parents never met. She doesn't believe that he is her husband. She questions him, if you were really my husband, why haven't you met my parents? This was a big part of the story line. 

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

I know that I am supposed to feel very touched by a movie about a kid coming to terms with the loss of his father. I know that I am supposed to feel very sympathetic and open minded for the main character, who has Aspergers Syndrome.

I saw a lot of very positive reviews for this movie. They praised how emotional the movie was, and how good the acting was, and how it shows people overcoming death and moving on. I thought the acting was bad, I have seen better on ABC family TV Shows! I'm serious. I don't know why so many people said the acting was good. What?!

 As for the main character, the little boy, I am empathetic, and open minded usually, but I had trouble feeling that way towards him. I just couldn't stand him. He was annoying, bizarre, strange, and very smart, but super dumb. He was also very rude and obnoxious. He was in almost every scene. He was the MAIN, MAIN character, and I just couldn't take it. He drove me up the wall. The kid didn't strike me as having a syndrome, or a "problem." He just was really, really, weird to me. He seemed like a normal kid that decided to be weird, rather than someone that had a real issue. In a number of reviews, people said "I have a kid with aspergers," and his acting really accurately portrayed the syndrome. If you say so.

I couldn't wrap my mind around the plot. It was just too stupid to make me even care about what was happening. I was super bored, and felt no sense of expectation or curiosity as to what would happen. It was so implausible and ridiculous. How could a boy of that age think that there was a sixth borough of New York City? How could he think that by visiting everyone in New York with the last name Black, he would find out what the key in his father's closet opened? Rhetorical questions. What was really dumb and unrealistic is that he did find a person, with the last name Black, which solved the mystery as to what the key was for. In real life, good luck with that. Someone writes the word black on a tiny envelope with a key in it. You visit hundreds of people named Black. Bingo. Make me vomit!

 Then, in the end, to paraphrase he said, "My father is never coming back, and I have to move on, and be okay with it. My father would be proud of me moving on." Huh?! Never coming back? Don't believe in Heaven? No wonder it's a year after the kid's father died, and he is still having a breakdown.

 It's just so odd that a mom would let her young boy, what he looked ten, but could have been older, go around everywhere by himself. In the end of the movie, it shows that she visited all the Blacks, before her son did, to check them out to see if they were okay. Really!! No one has that kind of time. She works full time. Just ehh. Come on now. Not even trying to make a reasonable plot anymore? Why didn't she offer to go with her son as an escort, instead of visiting all the Blacks in advance of her son?

 This movie seemed to try to control your thoughts and feelings, and manipulate you rather than let things just happen organically. I felt like a dumb ass puppet. I just found the whole thing boring and annoying. Oddly, I have found that boring and annoying often go together, like peanut butter and jelly.

J. Edgar

Now, I don't have a crush on Leonardo Decaprio, believe me, but when I see he is in a movie I am more likely to go see it. Leonardo says he really cares a about making classic films that will still be good one hundred years from now. Clint Eastwood also had something to do with this movie as well. J. Edgar was in charge of the FBI for many years. 49 or 48 years. He made the FBI science based and a more viable power. He really did some good things and made some contributions to society. J. Edgar Hoover was a bit of a shocking movie for me. Despite his contributions, he was a sad petty little man, with a sad life, who abused his powers by blackmailing people, getting them in trouble if he didn't like them. Blackballing people, etc. He was alive when communisim was a threat inside the USA. He would acuse people or blacklist people due to suspected communism. He ruined peoples' lives and careers. He had people deported. He fired people for petty reasons, if someone was mean to him, he would try to use the FBI to destroy them. I was shocked at the movie becausd he was the main character and I am used to the main character in most movies being a hero and not a villan. I was incredulous. He said what?! He just did what?! I was shocked over and over again. He was 't likeable as a main character, and I am also used to the main character being likeable. Even as bad as entertainment has gotten, with sex, violence, shallow materialism, other bad influences... I am still used to the main character being a hero. I was disturbed by this movie, but the historical aspect of it made it worth seeing. After seeing this movie, I realized how ignorant I am and that I need to educate myself more. I also feel ignorant when I watch Jeopardy.

Mission Impossible. Ghost Protocol.

I was impressed with the witty technology of this movie, and the athletism of Tom Cruise. I was really excited by some parts of the movie because of the stunts and intelligent plot changes. The beginning of the movie and how the story line unfolded made scense and I it worked out without being off the wall or overly unbelievable. I am embarrassd to admit that towards the end I got a little confused. I understood the general gist only towards the end. It was nice to see different parts of the world in this movie. It started out in Russia, then moved to Dubai and then finally in India. In the very, very end was a US city, but I am not sure which. Overall, it was entertaining, and thrilling with a good sustainable plot. My only issue was being confused in the end. I can't really go into much more detail about what took place because the tiniest mention of any event would just ruin most of the suspense. I guess you could say they were trying to stop a terrorist. But, it wasn't a religious terrorist so it's not getting into any of that type of drama. The terrorist managed to frame the Mission Impossible team for something they actually did. I will stop there. It is a movie that gets ruined if you know much going into it.

Thor

I went to see Thor today. It was about a monarchy on another planet. It's about the Father, who was almost about to give up the throne to his son, Thor, and of course the other son gets jealous. The aliens are from Asgard, and they know how to travel to other planets by creating a worm hole. That's how earth gets involved in the planet Asgard's monarchy family drama. Just about when Thor gets to be crowned, a situation ensues and one thing leads to another and Thor ends up on earth. I don't want to give too much away.

I explain it badly, but the movie is somehow cool because it mixes science and reality with magic, legend and "dumb" marvel comic characters. Basically, the Marvel movies like Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Transformers, could easily be very lame like the power rangers, and they almost get to that point at times, but they redeem themselves by mixing real people, scientists, and just what seems like a real world, and the wonder of science in with the crazy "power ranger" characters. They mesh the far fetched with reality and it comes off as very intriguing. Altogether, I liked most of the Marvel movies I have seen, especially Iron Man.

This movie had some very good special effects and some very beautiful scenes from Asgard and outer space.  The movie had plotting and treachery and betrayal and family dramas and a lot of fighting and excitement and special powers. Then the Asgardians had an alien enemy called the Frozen Giants which added extra intrigue to the movie. It had a good plot to go with all that power ranger action effects.

The one thing that was a put off for me was that the Asgardians seemed primitive. If they are from another planet and are smart enough to travel from planet to planet, how come they still ride on horses? Why do they dress like humans from six hundred years ago? Or a thousand years ago? If they are alien, should they have their own fashions? Not human fashions from back in the day? And, it was hard for me to see the aliens as real people or to take them seriously because of  the way they talked. No one talks that way. It was a distraction for me.

It was a good movie, but somehow embarrassing for me to watch, because it's not a real drama, or thriller, a serious movie for adults. But, it was very imaginative and well done with very good visuals. I'll be honest, I am not good at noticing if the acting was good the first time I watch a movie. I'm too caught up in the movie the first time around to notice if the acting is top notch.

Taken

This movie came out last year in 2009. I didn't see it back then, but I caught it on Netflix. My co-worker who is from Albania, told me about this movie which peaked my interest. The villains in this movie are mostly Albanian. To sum up the movie, it's about evil Albanians who are trying to kidnap or have girls "Taken" and force them into a life of prostitution by drugging them.

A retired CIA agent, played by Liam Neeson finally is convinced to sign the consent form to let his teenage daughter who just turned 17 go to Paris with her friend for the summer. As soon as she lands in Paris with her friend, they meet a boy who wants to share a cab with them. He says, "Cabs are so expensive in Paris, do you want to split one?" Through this, he figures out where they are staying and he calls his henchmen to come and abduct them.

The rest of the movie is Liam Neeson shooting a bunch of slave traffickers and killing a bunch of people to save and find his daughter.

I like to read movie reviews on yahoo movies. The Users gave this film an average rating of A+, but the critics gave this film an average of a C. I liked the movie, but the complaints by the people who gave the movie an F, D, or C were all true. Yes, it was predictable, yes, it was unbelievable, yes, some of the main characters seemed too unlikeable and stupid and one dimensional, and yes, it was bad casting.

Yes, the critics were right with a lot of their complaints, all true. But, despite that, it was likable, exciting, suspenseful, and entertaining. I think that's why the average yahoo user review gave it an A+. Despite all those bad things about the movie, it didn't detract it from its entertaining aspect. This movie made me feel a lot of emotions, and it made me get emotionally involved and committed more so than the average movie. It truly was an entertaining flick.

It was predictable and unbelievable? Really? It's a work of fiction! Got news for you, most works of fiction being produced lately are unbelievable, unrealistic, and frankly predictable. That's why it's fiction! But, truth is often stranger than fiction. I saw a movie based on true story about Chanel. Very unpredictable, except for what her career choice would be, and it had a very depressing ending. We don't get the depressing endings much with our fiction do we? We get fairy tales.

RED Retired and Extremely Dangerous

I went to see this movie not knowing what RED stood for. I caught the movie during a matinee. There were a lot of old people in the audience. When I realized that RED stood for Retired and Extremely Dangerous, it made sense as to why there were so many elderly viewers there. When I saw the A Team, there were a lot of teenage boys, and when I saw Takers, which had a lot of black main characters, there were a lot of black people in the audience.

It seems people like to go see movies about themselves. I heard that Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't get as many male viewers as female, and that the spin off from the show, Angel, whose main character was male, had a lot of male viewers.

If I made movies, to reach the widest audience, I would have characters that were young and old. I would have white, Latino, black, and Asian, male and female characters, etc. I would just try to attract the widest audience possible. But, come to think of it, Angel was a character in Buffy, but that didn't seem to help bolster male viewership. Maybe it matters most who the main character is. In that case I would make my main character be whoever could attract the widest demographic. How boring and strategic though. Losing art for business.

This movie is about a retired CIA agent, played by Bruce Willis, who leads a calm relaxing life, talking on the phone to a girl he has a crush on in a call center. Puttering around the house, having calm relaxing mornings eating breakfast. That all changes for him fast, when he is faced with people trying to kill him. He also finds a list of names through a clue left by a dead reporter. His name is on this list. Most everyone on this list has been murdered recently. In this movie, he has to figure out why they are trying to kill him, and how all the people on the list are connected.

It's an action packed movie, with a lot of investigation work on top of shooting and fight scenes. I kind of liked the movie alright, but, it didn't leave much of an impression and it wasn't too memorable. I also thought a lot of the side characters that hung out with Bruce Willis seemed weird and unbelievable as real people. They were comical though, but It would have been better if they were somehow more normal, rather than strange side kicks. It made the movie more of a joke. The main characters didn't have the fear of someone trying to kill them either. It seemed like they had fun with the circumstances and enjoyed it.

In reality, this movie was a serious matter, they were trying to kill him. "They" being the CIA he used to work for. The CIA can just go around killing people, and on whose orders? This movie showed that the CIA received their orders to kill all the people on the list from almost the top of the government. The reason to have them killed was unethical. The CIA couldn't question it though, they had their orders. Could the government be corrupt like this?

Wall Street

This movie is what it sounds like it's about. It's about someone who works on wall street. It took me into his world. I felt the joy with him as he made a ridiculous amount of money. He got a million dollar bonus! Felt amazed and prosperous right with him. I felt his pain as the world he felt comfortable and blessed in was falling apart when his firm started to collapse because the stock market dropped dramatically. I felt his pain when his boss commit suicide due to the blow of his firm being bought out 3 dollars a share. I was with him when he proposed to his fiance, who, oddly enough hates her father who was an investor, hates wall street, money and investing, but has a fiance who works on wall street.

I was very tied to the main character as if I was living his life and sharing his joys and pains more so than in any other movie I saw. It was a real disruption of my cushy life there to see that market crash. It was a real blow to see my fiance break off the engagement because she was upset that I was seeing her father; who she is purposely estranged with behind her back. I was with him and felt his betrayal when he realized his fiance shunned her father for good reason; when he realised he got robbed and lied to by the treacherous schemes of his fiance's father.

I was with him, when he realised that someone named Brenton sabotaged his firm and pushed his boss to suicide by making up rumors about their firm, and then making those rumors true. I rejoiced in his ability to outsmart his nemesis and find a way to pay back what they did to him and his firm twice!!

In this movie I was pulled into the world of the investment banker. Felt rich for an hour or so. Too bad it didn't last.

Easy A

I need to plan my movie outings more, I just go to the theater, show up, and watch whatever happens to be in my time slot. Now, I had slim pickings this time around. I was between exorcist, the Devil, and other weird Halloween movies. Now, as tempting as that sounds, I was never much for horror flicks. Anyway....

Easy A wasn't a bad movie, but it lacked dimension. It had one plot, and it stuck to that one thread like IRS sticks to your money. It got tiresome and repetitive after awhile. Yes, everyone thinks you are a whore. That's scene one, Then scene two is, everyone thinks you are a whore, scene three...they think you are a whore...what's scene four about? Still thinking you might be a whore. Pretty much summed up the plot of the movie right there for you.

It was about a bunch of teenagers in high school, it was so channel 19 abc family. I could see that movie on that channel. It's something to catch on tv.

I was impressed by the main character, or the actor that played the main character, Emma Stone. She had a strong way of presenting herself, which made the movie watchable. That's a good point, but at the same time, it seemed like she was too confident and adult in the face of all her opposition. She's a teenager, but she acted with the confidence of someone who rehearsed the parts, and prepared the lines. It wasn't real. In real life, someone wouldn't have had that kind of confidence and flare so easily. This could have been a true human story, to show the true plights of society. But, instead it was a story, or a drama, or a drop of entertainment for the movies, or abc family, and it had all the pride of an in your face production.

Persuasion by Jane Austin

Now what made the two main characters in Pride and Prejudice not get together at first was of course pride and prejudice. In this book, what made the two main characters not get together and get married at first was Persuasion. The main character Anne, agreed to be married to Captain Wentworth, but she was "persuaded" that marrying him was a very bad idea. Thus, she called the wedding off.

Her love to be, was so distraught by the rejection, that he moved out of town and was gone for 8 years. Then, he comes back to visit because his sister moves back in the neighborhood. They act prideful and ignore and shame each other as much as possible in the reunion, but the whole book you know for sure that they're going to end up together. And of course, you have to wait until the very, very, end of the book for it to happen, but they do end up together.

Anne was the youngest in the book. She had two older sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. The book describes her family, the Elliots as being rich and upper class. Sir Walter, their father, is really vain and superficial to the point he doesn't even like Anne, his own daughter, because she is not good looking in his eyes. His favorite is Elizabeth. She is very pretty. Mary, Elizabeth, and Sir Walter are portrayed as very proud, vain and materialistic. They are very concerned with social class, wealth, and beauty. They don't listen to or respect Anne.

Anne, however, is well respected by people outside her family. She is seen as the only Elliot not filled with the disgusting Elliot pride. She is seen as the only nice one in the family.

I was bothered throughout the whole book by how some people were respected if you had money, connections, class and looks, and thought of little value or as no good if you didn't have these. Marriages, and all else rode on these things. If seemed heartless, and unethical to me. I was greatly disturbed by their values.

Now these values are muted today, but people are still very much like this aren't they?

Takers 2010

Someone asked me to drive them to the dollar tree at 9:15PM. I was thinking like...no way. I thought they closed at nine anyway. But in the end, I agreed to go since, I had to get gas and as it turns out, they close at 10PM. And...since I was the Dollar Tree, and the movie theater is right next door.....Long story short I went to see a movie on a last moment spur. Basically, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. I knew nothing about any of the movies playing, and two of them I actually saw already and I didn't want to see it again.

Takers was playing at a good time for when we arrived. I asked someone standing in line what that movie was about. She couldn't remember at first, then she said it was about mobsters. I got tickets to see Takers, and the funny thing was that we were the few white people in the whole theater to see the movie. Most of the audience was black. I was in great suspense to see the movie since I knew absolutely nothing about it. Didn't even see the preview. But, from the audience, I started to believe that the main characters would probably be black. Turns out Chris Brown, Tip T.I. Harris, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Michael Ealy, and a lot of the other main characters were black. They also had a few white people in the movie, such as Hayden Christiansen, Paul Walker, and Matt Dillon. It was a diverse mix of actors.

After seeing the movie, and coming home, I read the reviews of some critics and some people. I read a lot of reviews of people that liked it, hated it, or they thought it was okay. I liked the movie. It was okay. I didn't love it or anything, but I don't think it was a bad movie.

Anyway, out of all the reviews, I agree with the one that said he felt like he was routing for both the bad guys and the good guys in this movie, which caused a internal conflict, and suspense. I disagreed with a lot of common criticism that I heard such as, the movie had no plot, the acting was horrible, the camera work was confusing and I couldn't tell what was going on.

I did agree with the criticism that the characters were not that well developed, so you didn't know them very well. Who and why were these people? Normally, I would have a problem with that, but somehow not knowing much about the main characters worked for this movie. I had no trouble seeing what was happening...the camera work was fine. The people who said that they couldn't tell what was going on probably had bad sensory skills, I don't know what their deal was.

As for it having no plot, I believe that the plot of this movie was actually interesting, and it had good twists and surprises. It wasn't your run of the mill bank robber movie. It had some extra complexity to it. I guess I'm not great at giving reviews, but, I did like the movie. It's not sophisticated or anything. It's an action packed bank robber movie for pete's sake.

Tip T.I. Harris made a great impact on this movie, and if his character "Ghost" wasn't in the movie, it would have been a lot less interesting and would have been a movie with no plot as they would say. It was very interesting to see his con game and how the betrayal fell. It was also stupid as to how they all fell for it. Teaches you to play the safe side, trust your instincts. Put yourself in other people's shoes to know their true intentions, and be realistic. One thing this movie teaches you is that crime doesn't pay. Especially since a lot of the criminals die in this movie.

Julie and Julia

This movie had a happy ending and it had an interesting premise. It really spoke to the human situation of not knowing what to do with yourself, and finding yourself. Sticking to something, and finishing it.

I just found this movie really boring though, despite it's grand nod towards the human condition. It wasn't what I thought it would be at all. Though it had clips from the life of Julia Child, it was mainly about a blogger named Julie Powell, who believing she was a loser, and going nowhere in her life, decided to find herself. So, she started a blog where she was to cook a recipe everyday from Julia Child's cook book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and then write about it in her blog.

This movie was too much about, "who read my blog?, and wow I have so many readers of my blog! Oh, my cooking is great, everyone is reading my blog!, opps, I dropped the chicken on the floor. I ruined the mold, the stew is bland, I'm not a good human, my days are going badly, freaking out when I have a disaster." "I'm learning about Julia Child, she was such a great women, she is an inspiration, I'm strangely connected to her and feel a kinship because I'm cooking all the recipes from her book"..."Am I a bitch, am I a horrible wife, I'm narcissistic and self centered because of my blog?" Then it's "Yay, everyone is calling me for a book deal, phone calls, publishers calling me...bla, bla, bla...yada, all that jazz."

That's what this movie felt like. Overkill of all the above. The movie was dull and uninteresting.

Anne of Green Gables

This book was written a hundred years ago by a Canadian Author from Prince Edward Island. By some strange coincidence, it takes place in Prince Edward Island too. Though it was so long ago, and in a different time and place, I felt that this book was very easy to relate to and understand. It makes me think that we barely changed in the last hundred years. In some ways that is actually a good thing.

I never liked a book so quickly as I did this one. After the first page or so, I was really was impressed. The way L.M. Montgomery writes is hard to explain, but it really shows the story from a good vantage point and from a witty and smart frame of reference.

I liked the book a lot better in the beginning when Anne was a very silly, fun, colorful character. Reading a book full of her thoughts and her sayings is perfect for putting someone in a good mood because she is so positive and really enjoys the little things in life.

Towards the end of the book, it had some good plot twists and turns, and I was surprised by how it turned out, however, it became more of a summary, lacking the life it used to have, and the main character was not as entertaining as before. Anne became more mature, in the beginning she was 11 years old, and at the end of the book she was 16 years old. For most of the book, she was 11 and 12, then towards the end it just did a quick overview of her older years.

She became less imaginative, less talkative, and more serious, competitive and sober. I didn't see the passion and life in the older Anne like in the younger Anne. I supposed it was a good thing she grew up some.

Though I'm not as happy with the end of the book as the beginning, I am very curious to read the next book from the 6 book series, Anne of Avonlea.

Inception

I wanted to see this movie just because Leonardo DeCaprio was in it. I don't like him as an actor that much, but he was the main character in one of my favorite movies, the Aviator. I also saw on Oprah that Leonardo really cares about making good movies that will be a classic. I thought that Inception has to be good if Leonardo is in it. Only because he is so passionate about making good movies that will be talked about still, one hundred years later.

The writer and director of this movie is Chris Nolan. Chris said, "Films are subjective-what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there-I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies."

I really sense that Chris poured everything he had into this movie. I thought to myself when it was all over; This movie was very carefully, masterfully done. Every t was crossed and i was dotted. He tied all loose ends and accounted for and explained everything. His intense amount of commitment to this movie showed. It has been awhile since I have seen a movie this polished.

Some people complain that this movie is too complex and hard to understand. It is complex, and a bit hard to follow at times, but Chris Nolan takes you by the hand and guides you through the complexity. All things I wondered about was explained by one of the actors in some way or another, anything that confused me later became crystal clear because Chris Nolan was careful in his execution of the complex. He really made sure you got it. If you didn't get it, you weren't paying enough attention. He didn't fail to account for one detail in the movie. It's not hard to follow if you just relax and let yourself get into the movie. It's like you are being guided through the movie, and not watching the movie.

I really thought that the message of the movie was interesting, which was, an idea can be powerful and take affect in your life and change who you are. An idea is more dangerous than a virus, parasite or bacteria. An idea is the ultimate threat.

A Team

I have vague memories of watching the show A Team as a kid. I was really entertained by the main characters of BA Baracus and HM Murdock. Seeing the previews for the movie the A Team based on the TV show, spurred my memory, and I ended up buying season 2 on DVD really cheap. I enjoyed it as much as I did when I was a kid(at first) but after many episodes, the plots seemed to be the same for each episode. A boring trend ensued. Despite this, I really like the interaction of the main characters and I was impressed with how the plot was about them helping people and risking their lives for a good cause. It is a naive series, since, even with all the violence, shootings with machine guns, cars getting flipped over, and explosions, people rarely get hurt in this show. No blood and no bruises.

Anyway, on to the movie. As you can gather from the previous paragraph, I had a refresher in the show before watching the A Team movie. There was something likable about this movie, however, I am really disappointed with the way they re-did the main characters. My one reason for really loving this show was how the main characters interacted, and they didn't interact that much in the movie. They were together in one explosive scene after the other, but not enough interaction took place for me. They remade the characters all wrong. It's as if they went out of their way to redo them differently. They remade Murdock very wrong. His craziness was scary in the movie, and in the show it was a fun kind of crazy. In the show his craziness made him do a better job, because it made him get into his roles more, and be more creative and savvy. In the movie his craziness made you wonder if he would be competent. They did the worst job with him by far.

I can live with how they redid the other three characters, but they really stole the joy, fun and soul of these characters and made them something they are not. BA was into peace and non violence. Faceman was scrubby, Hannibal wasn't the planner in this movie. I was really disappointed that this movie murdered the whole premise of the main characters because that's what makes the A Team enjoyable.

The whole premise behind the plot really stunk. I just plainly didn't like the story line. I could see people go through all that trouble for real money, not counterfeit money.