Paul Blart- Birthday Ruiner

It being a Sunday and having gone out the night before, the roommates and I opted to go to the Harris Teeter Redbox to rent a movie (for $1 I might add). When we got to the front, a line had formed and so after once through "Comedies" I said we should get Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Regular readers know that I'll give almost any movie a fair chance. I like Kevin James: King of Queens and what stand up of his I have seen. Bucking the critics, Paul Blart was a smash success at the box office, I figured, why not?

I'll tell you why not: people are idiots. It is terrible. It is completely predictable and not funny. When the bad guys take over the mall (am I ruining anything? no- this movie sucks) I thought I had fallen asleep and woke up to Home Alone 4: Kevin Really Let Himself Go. No redeeming quality to watching this movie.

Creamy Goodness

For all of you DC FroYo connoisseurs out there, there's this article on the best places to get frozen yogurt in DC. My vote is Mr. Yogato: free chocolate sprinkles and Seinfeld trivia/tetris/challenges/doing embarrassing things will get you free/reduced yogurt. Plus, they let max chill inside when we walked him there one day.

Soccer and more, lots more

ESPN gives soccer the short end of the sports stick a lot of the time, so I'm glad that the did this little feature on US soccer this summer. The pictures are great. The bad thing is that its a features article and not about soccer. Boo on that.

For those not soccer-ly inclined here is an article from my hometown press outlet. Its sort of about human rights but mostly just a human interest thing.

Upon a time

After hearing NPR stories and reading a lot of good reviews about Once, I was excited to watch it, but after such buildup I didn't want to dash the hopes I had for it.

Once is great. It is very touching, and I feel like it needed to be done because it is a low-budget indie-ish film that goes a different way than Hollywood romances. It is VERY cute: in one early scene the girl- whose name we never learn- brings her "Hoover sucker" (vacuum) to the guy- whose name we never learn- to fix it, and she ends up rolling it around town. At points its got a cerebral "what is love" sort of feel like Before Sunrise, but those moments do not dominate and are outnumbered by the number of times when the guy and girl share love.

Oh, plot summary, yes. It is about a guy and girl who meet while he is playing his heart out via guitar on the streets of Ireland. Her insistence at him acknowledging her (not in a romantic or sexual way, but more like "I'm not going to take the hints that you want me to leave, lets establish a platonic relationship because you are interesting.") eventually leads to them forming a romantic bond through music and off the movie goes. She helps him make the leap of faith and act on his dream of being a professional musician.

I loved the art of this movie. Multiple scenes are shot like a music video or a reality TV show. It made me want to go out and shoot a movie (I started playing around with the video editing software pre-installed on my computer after watching the movie). In the special features they talk about it being shot like a movie someone would make and that gives it a very real and approachable feel. The style enhances the simplicity of the story, sucking you in as a participant- sort of like being in the audience at a show- rather than as someone merely watching a movie. The principal actors have great chemistry. Lastly- and I hesitate to make this the last word, because music is a central part of the story-, it goes without saying that the music is fantastic (the most popular song from the soundtrack here).

Watch it.

Mala Hierba Buena

Season 4 of Weeds is completely different. The leave Agrestic/Majestic (or what's left of it) and "transplant" to San Diego. Nancy gets deeper than she ever wanted to and the family grows up a little bit more (Shane and Silas especially).

I'm not sure if I liked it. Nancy's conscience grows but there are not really any new frontiers on her personal troubles. She's still a crappy mom, a crappy friend, and has a messed up love life. The funniest story line of the season is Doug and Andy's coyote-with-a-heart-of-gold business. Because this aired last year, the commentary on the border seems a little stale (the major immigration reform dust up bruhaha was 2006).

Also, it sucked seeing Guillermo (Guillermo Diaz of "Half-Baked" and "Wrap it up B!") go from an affable if not a little scary guy to a complete villain. I like him and his comedy, so seeing a bad side of him was disappointing. Also, no Simon. Although, maybe the commentary on race and class had run its course.

The real slum, dog

One of the things that bothered me about Slumdog Millionaire was that it didn't explore the depths of poverty in India. It sort of glossed over it.

Born into Brothels does not. I'm not sure who recommended it or if I just heard about it because it won the Oscar for Best Documentary (?) in 2004, but it is fantastic. Not that long, but pretty powerful. The story follows a group of 9 children in Calcutta who live in a brothel in the red light district. An American photographer ("Zana Auntie") teaches them photography and gives them little cameras to go take pictures. Besides taking brilliant pictures of their little part of the world they are also dealing with some pretty real stuff. About half-way through the movie, it starts to focus on the American woman's attempts to intervene into their lives to get them into school. Scenes of the Indian bureaucracy messing up the kids names on their forms, rejections from schools, and resistance from the families and the kids send this story into some sad moments. Not going to ruin the ending, but I think its worth the watch.

Movie-wise a couple of things bothered me. First, the music is melodramatic and kind of diminishes what is an otherwise powerful film. Take away the music and there's a whole new ball game. Second, and maybe I'm comparing it too much to Mad Hot Ballroom (a MUST-see documentary about an inner-city ballroom dance competition in NY public schools) but the drama and intrigue are not strong. The kids are very sympathetic and their stories are compelling and heart-wrenching. But, the film tried to make it into a drama and not an expose on their lives. I think it could have done with less work in the editing room.

I think its available online (Netflix has it to stream or rent) and maybe at the video store. Check it out.

The most trusted name in news

I get random bits of information from Yahoo! because it is my home page (for now- read below). When I saw this article/blog post I was very appreciative of its timely relevance to my life.

As for Yahoo! being my home page, that may soon go by the wayside for several reasons. First, they change the layout so much that I'm tired of it trying to figure it out every so often. Not a big deal but its annoying. Second, I don't use their mail that much any longer (the funny e-mail name isn't as cure when you're 26 as it is when you're 13- when I got it). Third, the things that Yahoo! has been the most useful for- checking to see if I have an e-mail or not- is no longer available. I can't go to yahoo.com and see that I have (or don't) a new e-mail so, why not just go directly to mail.yahoo.com or to games.yahoo.com to play a crossword? Fourth, as my ironic blog title indicates, I get my "regular" news from other sources: NYTimes, WaPo, Chron.com, etc. so why flip through to Yahoo's webpage to see what they're saying?

The previous paragraph probably should be filed under the category of gratuitous posting of life's minutiae that maybe should be left to one's self. But, whateryagonna do.