Category: media

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spidey 3

the fam and i just got back from watching spiderman 3. i’m not real sure of my overall impression of the movie yet. i’ll probably figure that out in a few days when i know if i would actually like the watch the movie again or not. so these are just my initial thoughts:

  • spidey 3 was quite good – not as good as the second one but it was still a good movie.
  • it’s nice to see the spidey franchise do better than the batman franchise did with it’s initial movies (i exclude batman begins from this characterization because it was, in my opinion, a very good movie).
  • i didn’t like stan lee’s appearance in spidey 3 as much as i did the others – it was too obvious. it’s better to sneak him in.
  • i really enjoyed the first 1/3 of the movie, was a little bored by the middle third, and then won back over by the final part of the movie. the first third was the best part in my opinion.
  • i’m not sure how i feel about a fourth spiderman movie. i kind of hope they stop while they are ahead – of course, they won’t though.
  • i do not enjoy watching movies in full theaters unless the theater is filled with fanatics. fanatics understand how to respond to the movie without missing anything (star wars and lotr fans are a good example of this). the theater we were in was filled with people who wanted to talk about their day and let their kids run around the theater during the movie.
  • the popcorn at the rave 16 cinaplex barely had any salt on it – this almost ruined the whole experience for me.

no matter what i think about spiderman 3 it is still head and shoulders above rambo 3 which is on superstation wgn as i type this. i liked sylvester stallone in the original rockie because it was semi original but all the sequels pretty much killed my opinion of him.

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the mormons

i know it will be too late by the time most of you read this but i still want to say that the second part of the pbs frontline documentary “the mormons” comes on at 8 p.m. tonight. pam and i watched the first part last night and it was fascinating. though i know a decent amount about american history and even the history of the lds church i was still not familiar with much of the history that was discussed within the first two hours. i was floored by the mountain meadow massacre. the wikipedia entry on the massacre actually seems to lay less of the blame at brigham young’s feet than the documentary did.

[tags]mormon, pbs, frontline, lds[/tags]

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max tivoli

i just finished “the confessions of max tivoli“. it was pretty good overall – not great but good. the best part of the book was actually the concept behind it. max tivoli was born looking like he was 70 years old. he physical appearance changes the opposite of his actual age. thus when he is 15 years old he actually looks like a 55 year old man and when he is 45 years old he looks like a 25 year old. the book is about all the problems that would occur from a person being a mental age that does not reflect what everyone who sees him expects of him. the golden rule that his mother sets up for him is that he should always act the age that people believe he is. imagine the trouble of a 15 year old having to work like a 55 year old man.

the book was an excellent study of an individual who just doesn’t “fit in.”
[tags]max tivoli, fiction, fantasy, reading[/tags]

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JESUS camp – part deux

pam and i just finished watching “JESUS camp” with our neighbors. this was our second time to watch the documentary and it was even better than the first time because of neighbors. pam and i are obviously on the leftward side of evangelicalism and slightly right of middle of the road politically (conservative on some issues and getting more liberal on others). our neighbors are unitarian and episcopalian and would describe themselves as liberal democrats. pam and i were scared by what we saw in the movie the first time but it was even more interesting to watch the movie with someone who wasn’t as familiar with the more fundie side of evangelicalism. our neighbors are great people and it made for a wonderful night.

our neighbors also pointed out that a stray basset hound has been found by their next door neighbors. the finders of the stray basset haven’t had any luck in finding the owners of the dog but they don’t really want to keep him. the problem here is that pam, the boys, and i desperately want another basset but right now is simply not the perfect time. we were hoping to wait until we moved to wisconsin. of course, this little guy (we think he is about a 9 months old) isn’t going to wait. nobody seems to be sure what will happen to him if we don’t take him. to make matters worse (for us not for him) he is a very well behaved dog and about as cute as can be (i’ll post a photo tomorrow). this makes it all the easier to want to bring him home. we’re talking things over about possibly bringing him home and keeping him with us while we still look for his owner. first though we’ll have to see what montana says about all this.

SIDE NOTE – noah’s team won their last soccer game today. actually they thought they had lost it because the score said so (3 to 2). it turned out though that the other team had brought in a “ringer” from one of the premiere teams. that’s right a team full of 11 year olds brought in a “ringer.” the end of the story is that they were caught and had to forfeit the game, which was great because the “ringer” had score 2 of the team’s 3 goals. of course, this story wouldn’t be complete if i didn’t point out our neighbors involvement once again. kirby is noah’s soccer coach and so we all celebrated the win together.

[tags]JESUS camp, neighbors, basset hound, soccer[/tags]