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Showing posts from January, 2005
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I've made it to Maui! The flight left San Diego right on time and we were started off with a Mai Tai. The condo is decent and now I'm ready to shop for pearls! 
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Me, Kathy, Mickey, Mondo. 
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Mickey and Brian. 
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This speaks for itself. 
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Mondo's off on the rollarcoaster. (I'm a wimp and stayed behind) 
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I'm with the sorcerer's apprentice Mickey! 
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Today was a great day for Disneyland. It was sunny and the crowds were non-existent. Here's Mondo with a Space Mickey. 

Million Dollar Baby

"Million Dollar Baby" finally found it's way to Carlsbad after a month of release. I hadn't really made this movie a priority but since it was playing close by, I decided to check it out. The story follows Maggie's quest to be a female boxing champ even though she's in her early 30's. Maggie has chosen Frankie, an aging boxing coach to be her trainer even though Frankie has made it clear that he has no desire to work with her. And so the story begins. We have the story of two people's lives that become woven together in a world of emotional survival where you never know who your friends and family truly are. The story is told through the witness to all this, a retired boxer who used to be trained by Frankie. The three characters make up the bulk of the story but there are some minor parts that are mainly to remind us that the world isn't a nice place. There is no sanctuary in the church or the boxing arena. In a movie where the priest h
I just spent the last few days at Primm, NV (stateline with CA) for a work trip. The big event of the meeting was a trip into Las Vegas to see "Mamma Mia!" at Mandalay Bay. It's a play about a girl searching to find her father on the eve of her wedding. The songs of ABBA make up the musical portion and are weaved in and around the plot. It was fun and if you like ABBA's music then you'll enjoy the play.
The Oscar nominees are out and as usual I haven't seen most of the nominated movies. It's probably time to break down and see "Ray" and "Million Dollar Baby" but "Being Julia" and "Vera Drake" just don't thrill me. I guess I'm lucky they're not playing anywhere close by. I still don't get the "Closer" hype. It just wasn't all that great and the actors got by with costume changes and being mean. Princess Amidala and King Arthur were good in their roles but the characters weren't believable to me. "Hotel Rwanda" is a great movie with great performances, so I hope it gets an award in one of the 3 nominated categories.
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My friend Sherry has finally achieved her goal of 4 pets. Here is the final addition to the family - Bailey. This fluffball is only 3.6 lbs but I'm sure she'll be big and spoiled in a few months! 
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Izzy is not at all amused with the new puppy. 

The Work and the Glory

I had never heard of this movie until 24 hours ago when it showed up at the secret theater. A check of movie listing showed it to be in limited release for what looked like a test weekend to see if it would get wider distribution. After watching "The Work and the Glory" my guess is it will stick to limited screenings for a small target audience. Essentially a religious movie, "The Work and the Glory" is set in the early 1800's and examines the impact of Joseph Smith and his new religion impact a small community in Palmyra, NY. The movie revolves around the Steed family and how their lives are impacted by a move to a small town and a meeting with Joseph Smith. The religious tension is played out by the actions of the two Steed brothers, Joshua and Nathan. This is a full on movie with a point of view and it was made by members of the LDS religion. Therefore we always know our heroes from our villians. The heroes are all bathed, with clean shiny hair,
Light fixtures must be sturdier than I thought because after the flooding, the light came back on without a hitch! The work week is over, the sink has water when it's supposed to and there's light in the downstairs again! Bring on Saturday!
Nothing in this house is ever easy. Nothing. The latest example is the whole sink faucet fiasco. Normally my house can be in a state of disrepair and it doesn't bother me. But that's just me. I have friends coming to stay over for a week or two and sometimes, you just have to own up to a mess and fix it. This is that story. About 3 weeks ago, my bathroom faucet started to leak. I thought, "I can fix it!" I went to Home Depot and bought a bag of washers and a wrench and went to work. I promptly broke something and made it worse. I decided to turn off the water to the sink and I realized I now had a leak from the pipes under the sink. The bag of washers were no help at all. This was going from bad to worse quickly. At this point, I turned off the water and decided that the best course of action was to ignore the whole thing. After all, I have a downstairs bathroom. After 2 weeks of this, Homer agreed to replace the faucet for me and see what he could
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Ms. Kitty and her beer. 
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Homer with his reward for replacing the faucet. 
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The finished results of Homer's handiwork. 
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Aragorn and Gandalf share battle tactics. Gandalf won for Excellence in Movie Accuracy. Aragorn and his Arwen (not pictured) also won a judge's award.  
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We have an Arwen conferring with a Theoden. King Theoden went on to win best costume in the Master Class Competition. 
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The Ents won Best in Show! 
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Elves were a popular costume. We have 3 elves, Eowyn, the Tower of Barad-dur, and an Ent Wife all waiting to go onstage. 
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Here I am with a new friend. 
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Elijah Wood and Sean Astin had their own actor's panel. They talked about their current projects, favorite moments during the filming of LOTR, and took questions from the audience. For people who have been to cons, you know how awful the audience questions are. For newbies, most of the questions go like this... "Can I give you a hug?" No. "Can I give you a kiss?" No. Well the good folks at Creation finally put an end to these questions (thank-you!) but now the fans have come up with something worse. "It's my birthday, will you sing Happy Birthday to me?" We had to endure Happy Birthday 4 times before the actors realized that they were about to spend all day singing and they finally said No. At a certain point the actors just gave up on audience questions and talked about their own agendas and it worked out much better for all of us. 
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One of the activities at ORC was how to make yourself up as a Hobbit, Elf, or other Middle Earth types. In this demonstration we have a Hobbit applying make-up to Arwen. It's also a unique cross-dressing situation as the Hobbit is female but dressed as male, and Arwen is a guy! Make-up transcends all! 
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And finally, everyone's favorite, nicest, Hobbits! Some you may recognize them from their Comic-Con appearance. 
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In the dealer's room, I came across a group of Elven ladies. 
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First off, we have a Hobbit family, escorted by their Elven friend. 

ORC - The One Ring Convention

It's true. There are Lord of the Rings conventions and yesterday Kathy and I made the drive to Pasadena to attend one. There are programming tracks with the actors, costume panels, literary panels, kid's workshops, a film room, and a dealer's room all for your LOTR indulgence. Billy Boyd, Elijah Wood, and Sean Astin were the big stars of the day and as you might imagine, there were plenty of Hobbits in the audience. I'll blog more about this over the next couple of days, but for now, I'll leave you with Hobbits.

In Good Company

"In Good Company" is a the sort of movie that harms no one, has a fairly predictable plot, actors that make the characters fun to watch. Set in the corporate arena, it's the intertwining story of two men's lives as they take opposite twists in career and family. The movie is well paced, gave me a few smiles, and enjoyable. It won't win awards but you'll leave the theater feeling happy. Dennis Quiad and Topher Grace styles play well together and Scarlett Johansson and Marg Helgenberger do what's expected of them as Quiad's daughter and wife. Guys in their 20's that are climbing the corporate ropes will relate well to the story and Topher Grace's character of Carter, reminded me of a few people that I've known. Now in wide release, "In Good Company" is one of the better box office choices this weekend.

Elektra

Before you go see "Elektra" you need to know a few facts: Fact 1: It received the lowest score on the Tomatometer that I have ever seen - 3%. Fact 2: On the IMDb it scored slight higher with 3.6 out of 10 stars. Fact 3: Almost all the fan sights have scorned the movie. So even knowing these facts, I went off to see "Elektra" tonight, with a couple of friends. Why? Because being a SF genre fan, I had to. The call was too much to stay away. Was it as bad as 3%? Well, I hated "Closer" and that's nominated for all sorts of awards but I liked "Elektra" a lot more than "Closer." Here's a simple list of + and - , so you can decide for yourself. Plus + The visuals are good. The costumes are good. You can just sit there and not have to think or do anything. Just stare at the screen. The movie asks nothing from you. If you're a guy - Jennifer Garner. The movie is only 90 minutes and change in length. Minus
For those of you that have checked out "The Five Stages of Beer" to the right of this blog, you've seen Binary Film's first feature movie. I'll admit it, Binary Film is made up of friends of mine and I help promote the movie. For a small Indy movie without distribution, this film just keeps showing up at film festivals. It's going to return to Park City in the big dance known as Sundance, Digidance, Slamdance, Tromadance, and now the second annual Park City Film Music Festival. (PCFMF) www.parkcityfilmmusicfestival.org The film screens at 8:30 pm on Saturday, Jan. 22nd, 6:00 pm, on Monday, Jan. 24th, and 4:00 pm on Saturday, Jan. 29th. The Jan 29th screening will be followed by a Q&A with the Director And Producer. The screenings will take place in the Main Street Mall at 333 Main Street, Park City, Utah.
Two days of clear skies in a row! I thought driving would be easy but so many people were on the road and in a hurry there were accidents everywhere. It was almost worse than the rain! There are still puddles of water everywhere but we're on track to dry out. Only two more days of work and then we finally have a free weekend with no holiday and no rain!
At long last there was sunshine again in Carlsbad! The sinkholes about the yard have slowly meshed into one big long depression in the earth. If it stays dry for more than a day, I can even go out and attempt to fill in fresh dirt. Even with all this water saturation, that stubborn tree stump won't budge an inch so I still have the unsightly "stumpy" in my yard. It even started to sprout a leaf! Cheers to the sun!
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The rain has continued for what seems like days. The Weather Channel has had a fog alert for Carlsbad all day but I couldn't figure out why until now. It's just after 4:00 pm and the fog has begun to roll in. Here's the view from my balcony. 
Every January, Sittingkitty and I go to Alexandra's psychic fair to find out what might be in store for us in the new year. Alexandra is a psychic in San Diego and she's legit, and has even worked on police cases. She's also my friend so I've seen her predictions come true for a long time now. This year I stuck around for her annual predictions, so here's a few that we can look back on 12 months from now and see what happened. From Alexandra: World healing in 2005 as people reach out to help the tsunami victims. US Dollar gaining strength later in the year. Good investments are gas, pharmaceuticals, wedding industry, and porn. (Yup, Porn!) California economy will stabilze in most markets. San Diego will see continued political upheaval. Neither the Chargers or Padres will go all the way. More rain. Well we all knew that! And the reading that Alexandra did for my year ahead: All vacation travel will be great. I'll end up dating a conservative older man.

Hotel Rwanda

First - a brief factoid about Rwanda from the CIA: In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda. "Hotel Rwanda" is set in the events of 1994, when the civil war is at it's worst. One man is caught up in the m

The Aviator

I enjoyed the flight sequences in "The Aviator" more than the actual movie itself. While the movie is more the story of Howard Hughes and the turbulence of his life, it also is the history of commercial aviation and how Hollywood embraced the man who loved airplanes. The movie plays out over grand sets, nighclubs, movie premieres, flight logistics, arguments, politics, and mental illness. In short, it has something for everyone. For me, it was the all about the airplanes and the sequences were both suspenseful and grand. I also liked the back story of the history and rivalry of TWA and Pan Am airlines. It was interesting to watch their power struggles, especially since both of those airlines have disappeared from flight. No matter what actor you like, they're probably in this movie. Leonardo DiCaprio does a great job playing sometimes fun, sometimes disturbed, but an always driven Howard Hughes. Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale bring Katharine Hepburn and
I've settled into my Palm Desert hotel for the night and am happily munching away on a salad as I try and ignore the fact that most of the roads on my route are flooded. It's still raining and as long as it doesn't full out storm, the roads should dry out by the morning. I checked the weather in Carlsbad and it's raining hard so I'm glad I put out all the emergency towels in case the downstairs gets flooded again. The mini-sinkholes were filling up with water as I left but since Yucca Valley has one 20 ft long and 10 ft deep, I'm doing okay. On to baseball. I'm on the camp of "How stupid is that name?" The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, CA. Since when have the Angels ever represented LA? LA has the Dodgers and Anaheim has the Angels. It will be interesting to see the fan reaction at the ballpark. As for the new task force of Clinton and Bush Sr. to raise money for the tsunami victims, I think it's the smartest thing that W. has don
I had the best intentions of finishing up movie week with "Aviator" but I just couldn't see myself sitting for 3 hours in a theater today. I looked about the post-holiday disaster that is my home and decided to clean up and find the floor again. 6 hours later, I've done 2 loads of laundry, gone through all the closets and hauled out 3 bags of trash, brought the Christmas storage boxes in from the garage (I have yet to fill them) and managed to clean the kitchen. The end result? The house looks exactly the same as it did this morning! Oh well, there's always next weekend to try again!

The last movie of 2004 and the first of 2005

2004 went out with " The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", the Bill Murray oceanography movie styled after Jacques Cousteau and the television series that made many of us want to explore the ocean. The movie is getting poor reviews from the critics and after watching it, I understand why. "The Life Aquatic" is far from everyone's cup of tea. The movie is just too quirky, has too much dry humor, off-beat sealife, plot twists, and one fantastic group of actors all thrown together for a straightforward movie. If you're in the theater watching this one, then on some level the trailer appealed to you and you belong there. The 8 of us in the theater last night enjoyed the movie. The other 10-12 that arrived at various times throughout the movie, I'm not sure about. We had quite a few movie hoppers last night. Many of the reviews have compared it to previous films directed by Wes Anderson, notably "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums.
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The first sunset of the new year in Carlsbad!