John's DVD Pick of the week (July 12th 2011)

Hey guys it's Tuesday again and therefore it's time for my dvd pick of the week. This week we had a surprising and shocking film from this year its.

Insidious

That's right the indie horror film is my choice for the week. Other films out this week are The courtroom drama The Lincoln Lawyer, the animated flick Rango and the Russell Brand remake of Arthur, the last two don't come out until Friday.

My vintage pick is: In honor of this week's release of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 I recommend that you have a marathon of the first seven movies even if you are not a megafan of the franchise.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES POSTER IS HERE!!!!

Thoughts?

Blog Much?

A few semi-recent posts on blogs that I regularly read and admire have gotten me to thinking about blogging in general.

Why blog?  What's the point?  How do you classify blogs?

I have to say that Specs Appeal is, admittedly, somewhat random musings.  I started it back when I was still living at home, finishing up grad school.  Oddly enough, I had much more time then to blog and to read other blogs than I do now.  I had tried to post every day, or at least every other day.  Now it's more like once or twice a week.

I mostly blog when the inspiration strikes, and if you have been reading my posts for very long, you know that you're likely to see book reviews, things that I'm lusting over, or my latest trophy.  It started with this title of Specs Appeal because my friend Joe Y. said that phrase to me a long time ago, and it just cracked me up.  Now I sort of operate with the idea of what appeals to me through my own specs.

Blogging for me is fun, and I'm constantly looking for things to post, being careful not to copy/paste the same things that make the rounds everywhere else.  If I do post something, it's because I think it's either valuable or funny or informative or some combination of these things.

And my opinion of ads on blogs is not very positive.  That's why you probably won't see any here.  Well, that, and my blog is rather small.  Scratch that.  We'll say intimate.  Yes, intimate.  That is why I do appreciate every visitor, follower, and comment.  Thanks for your support.

Which blogs do you regularly visit?  What are your thoughts on blogs?  Life in general?  Puppies?

Review: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (**)

Transformers Dark of the Moon is the third installment in Michael Bay’s film series. It takes place a few years after the last film where Sam (Shia Labouf) is living jobless with his girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whitely). She manages to get Sam a job in a mailroom. Bumblebee is working for the government and has a crappy old car. Carly’s boss (Patrick Dempsey) gives her a brand new nice car, but it isn’t what you expected.

The movie started good but went downhill when they destructed Chicago. Josh Duhamel, Tyrese, and John Turturro reprise their roles from the first two movies, new additions to the cast include John Malkovich as Sam’s boss, Frances McDormand as a CIA worker, and Ken Jeong of The Hangover fame as a worker for Sam’s company.

Review: Cars 2 (***)

Cars 2 is Disney/Pixar’s new film. It takes place a couple of years after for the first one, and Lightning Mcqueen (voice of Owen Wilson) won his third Piston Cup and plans to spend some time with Mater (Voice of Larry The Cable Guy). While relaxing at a bar a World Grand Prix would be going on Lighting chooses to compete in the competition. There are three races one in Japan, one in Italy, and the final one in England. During the first race Mater working for Lightning’s pit crew is targeted by a spy agency Finn Mcmissle (voice of Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (voice of Emily Mortimer). They reveal that Mater is a spy therefore leaves Lightning’s crew.

In the end this movie was good however this was Pixar’s worst. But the filmmakers should not beat themselves up over this because everyone is entitled to a bad movie.

Await Your Reply

It seems that I've been on a roll with some fairly good books lately.  And this one is certainly no exception.

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon is really hard to classify.  It's fiction, yes.  But it really seems like so much more.  And I realize how hokey that sounds.

This is a story of twin brothers (check!) and identity theft (un-check!), but it's engrossing from the very first page.  Each chapter focuses on different characters and the intrepid dynamics between them.  The story definitely has some twists and turns, and it made me think about things in this modern world that had not yet crossed my mind.  I pulled a few references from my banking days, and I made other connections just from being an American consumer. 

And this Dan Chaon knows how to turn a phrase, let me tell yaz.  Every page was rife with lush imagery and plain ol' addictive storytelling.  Example from page 65:

Nebraska was even worse than Ohio--if such a thing were possible.  There was a soundlessness about this place, she thought, though sometimes the wind made the glass in the windowpanes hum, the wind running in a long exhaled stream through the weeds and dust and dry bed of the lake, and sometimes unexpectedly there would be a very startling sonic boom over the house as a military plane broke the sound barrier, and there was the rattle of the grasshoppers leaping from one weed to the next--

But mostly it was silence, a kind of end-of-the-world hush, and you could feel the sky sealing over you like the glass around a snow globe.

Review : Super 8 (***1/2)

 

Super 8 is the new movie from director J.J. Abrams, and Executive Producer Steven Spielberg. It’s about Joe (Joel Courtney) who lives with his widowed father (Kyle Chandler). His father wants him to hang out with normal kids instead of making monster movies with his friends Charles (Riley Griffiths), Alice (Elle Fanning), Cary (Ryan Lee), Martin (Gabriel Basso), and Preston (Zach Mills). One night they are shooting the movie at an abandoned  train station where a pick up truck and the train collide. They realize that there is an alien in one of the carboxes, the military is notified and evacuations are underway, the kids on the other hand try to find and defeat this thing.

              Overall there are twists and turns in this film some you may not even expect. Super 8 is nothing like ET but is still a great film. I recommend it.