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Books Lying
Open
Soul-Devouring Worry:
Answer of the Day:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment: It's fun to say, or at least think, in real life, when you or someone else drops something. Malaya enjoys it when I say it, and has taken to saying it herself, both when I drop things and when others, out in public somewhere, drop them. It helps your public declarations of this a lot if you're unconcerned by other people viewing you askance. -- May 31, 2004 |
Sunday June 6, 2004 |
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
"One reason the dog has so many friends: He wags his tail instead of his tongue." --Anonymous |
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So running is ruled out by my deteriorating body, biking bores me around here plus dangerous with too many narrow and too few sidewalks/bike lanes, and rollerblading lacks good terrain and it did me wrong body-wise. There's a small pool in our condo complex, and since it's been plenty warm I suppose I should go out and swim some every day. It's not much of a pool for it though; too small for laps that last longer than 10 seconds. Hard to get much of a work out going if you spend most of your time turning around. I suppose I could just swim side to side for a while, tread water a bunch, etc, just to keep in motion and burn some calories, but it's pretty unfulfilling. I want to do something though, since I'm not feeling very fit of late, and I'm heavier than I want to be. Which is why I'm hungry, since if I'm too lazy to go exercise at something less than enjoyable, I feel like I should eat less to at least stop getting fatter. I've never been good at not eating, (unless it's hot in which case I never feel like doing much of anything) but with any luck being hungry will make me unhappy enough that I'd prefer exercise I don't like to being hungry. Malaya's going to stay over at her parent's house tomorrow night, so perhaps I can get motivated to put some air in my bike tires and drive over to some of the mountain bike trail areas around here. None are close enough to be a nice ride there, and it seems unnatural to drive your bike somewhere to ride it, but it can't be helped. My bike doesn't live .5 miles from Mission Trails Regional Park anymore, after all.
If you have any sense of humor whatsoever, do click on this link to watch a short video. It's a compilation of wacky cat antics, Funniest Home Video style (though there's no soul-sucking Bob Sagat narration, thank God) and I laughed so hard I cried. I've seen it about half a dozen times now, and while I could do a whole blog talking about each of the scenes in it, I can't pick the funniest. Here are some nominees though.
Again, this video is a must-see, and thanks to Kim for emailing me about it.
¤ I don't pay any attention to hockey, but I thought this story about an ex-player was worth a mention. It's got nothing to do with the sport itself, of course, and it made me laugh.
Nice guy, eh? It's probably an isolated incident though. He was in a bad mood and his wife left him. Or perhaps not.
So first of all, with six DUIs, how on earth is this guy allowed behind the wheel of a motor vehicle, under any circumstances, and why isn't he in prison? Also, looking at his behavior and past record, is there anyone who wouldn't agree that he'd be better off dead, or permanently imprisoned? I mean really, what is he adding to society at this point, compared to the extremely high probability of him continuing to do horrible things?
¤ In other sports news, the NBA finals begins tonight. I've not written much about basketball this post season, since I don't feel like I have much to say that's original on the subject. I was pessimistic about the Lakers' chances this year, and thought they'd lose miserably to San Antonio. And when they got waxed in game one, I made my only post-season prediction, back on March 5th, by saying:
Not my best prediction ever, given that LA lost game 2 as well, then came back to improbably win 4 straight against the defending champs, knocking them out of the playoffs. I figured LA would clean house with the Timberwolves, 4-0 most likely, and was wrong there as well, though not as dramatically. Minn just played out of their heads with frantic energy and won game 2, then staved off elimination in game 5, before succumbing to the inevitable. Now the finals are about to start, LA is playing Detroit, and no one outside of a few Detroit faithful give the Pistons any real shot at winning. The most common prediction seems to be LA in 5, I.E. they'll win 4 games to 1, in the best of 7 series. It doesn't figure to be a real entertaining series either, since while Detroit has the best defense, a lot of that is just because they're slow on offense, so there are usually fewer possessions per game. They win a lot of 75-68 type games, which are usually unwatchably-ugly. For the playoffs Detroit is averaging about 75 a game, and LA scores 90 a game. LA has at least as good a defense as the teams Det has beaten, with a far better shot blocker and inside force, and they've got no one who matches up evenly with Shaq or Kobe. Of course, who does? It's hard to see LA scoring less than 85 a game, no matter how well Det plays, unless Shaq produces one of his 4-19 type free throw efforts, and Det needs to shoot far, far, far better than they have in any other series to put up even 80 a game. Basically, Minnesota had far better offensive talent and a much better game to go against LA with, since they could run, pass, scramble, score from all five positions, and shoot from the outside. Det doesn't have any shooters as good as the top 3 or 4 guys on Minn, and they need to go to their bigger guys in close to ugly out the baskets. And against Shaq that just can't be done. So, by all analytical analysis Detroit shouldn't even win a game. Strange things happen though, with good players getting fouls and having to sit, missing shots they'd normally make, injuries, mediocre players having amazing games, etc. So I'm hesitant to predict an LA sweep, especially as inconsistent as they've been for much of the year. You'd think Detroit would try super hard and win at least one out of five, and maybe even two, but at the same time, this is the finals. Surely the gravity of the situation will produce LA's maximum effort in every game, and if they do that there's no way Detroit stays within 10 points. Either that or LA will get up 2-0 and then come out sluggish while Det gets super fired up being back home and facing the inescapable 3-0 hole, and plays hard enough to steal one game. A theft that only serves as a wake up call to LA, as they stop their way to large victories in the last 2 games. In fact, I like that scenario so much that I'll just make a reckless and probably entirely inaccurate prediction. After all, I've never actually seen more than about five minutes of Detroit at any time all season.
And there you have it. Check back later this week to see me pretend I never made these predictions at all, given how utterly inaccurate they'll probably turn out to be. |
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Malaya and I saw it Friday afternoon, in an 80% full theater, though no one talked too annoyingly, and only one idiot's cell phone went off, so the crowding in the theater didn't make for much difference one way or the other. It does bode well for the movie's box office prospects, since the theater was much more crowded than it was when we saw The Day After Tomorrow or Shrek 2, both of which opened huge. Of course we saw Shrek 2 on Thursday, and it wasn't really profitable until Fri-Sun, but TDAT we saw on a Saturday afternoon, so that's a valid comparison. The weekend estimates aren't available yet as I'm writing this, but HP seems to have a good shot at breaking Spider-Man's all time record. It's already broken the record for all time biggest opening day, and it's on more screens than Spider-Man was. That record might not last very long though, given the way ticket prices are ever increasing and theaters are willing to show more and more prints of the movie. Hell, if Shrek 2 hadn't opened mid-week, it would probably be the record HP3 was shooting for, since it's opening weekend was only a few million short of Spider-Man's, and that was after over $21m in tickets in the two previous days. Most of the critics seem to like HP3 more than the first two, and in fact there's been a steady upward trend. I don't remember any differences between 1 and 2, but I certainly agree that 3 is the best of the lot. HP1 is at 78% positive on RT. HP 2 is at 82% positive on RT. HP3 is at 89% positive, with 129 out of 145 reviews recommending it. Before I discuss the film further, here's my categorized rating:
I enjoyed this one perhaps the most of any summer movie I've seen yet this year, and yes, the whole "expectations" thing ties in. I didn't think much of HP1 or 2, and though most of the early reviews said HP3 was a better film than the first two, I was going to wait and see before I believed. Well actually, I believed as soon as I heard that, since I thought the first 2 were quite mediocre films, so if HP3 was even average it would have been better. And when it turned out to be much better than average, I was pretty happy with it. Malaya has read the series of books, but has never seen either HP1 or 2, and she liked HP3 less than I did. her reasons for disliking it were pretty much identical to what I didn't like about it; she just felt more strongly about it than I did. She felt the movie required you to have read the book in order to enjoy it, and she didn't think it was a very good adaptation of the book, since it left out so much stuff, mostly character-based. I never did a categorized rating of HP 1 and 2, but just for the sake of comparison, here we go. The movies really blur together in my memory, so this is a rating for both of them, since they were nearly identical in style and form and content, and have become completely identical in my memories.
If I ever see them on DVD at the library I'll grab them and perhaps write up a longer review after I refresh my memory, but I've only seen them both once, in the theaters, since my mom wanted to go.
As for the HP movies, I saw the first 2 before I read any of the books, and found them both relatively boring and mediocre. They were well made, the sets were gorgeous, most of the acting was fine, etc. But the movies were just lifeless, with nothing really exciting or moving in them. Most viewers and reviewers seemed to like them a lot more than I did, and I've not watched either of them again since I read the books, so I can't compare how that knowledge changes the experience. I do know that it changed the HP3 experience greatly, since while I would have thought HP3 was the best of the movies thus far, and enjoyed it, I would have had great issues with several plot developments and character actions if I hadn't read the book. I would have thought some things made little sense, numerous character behaviors and attitudes were unjustified, and wondered how physical realities were working. All of those things are artifacts of the screenplay being perhaps 1/3 as long as the novel, since there's just not time to cover everything, short of turning the movie into a mini series. And really, that's what would have been best for this series of films; if they'd been a miniseries, with 6 or 8 hours of film per movie. Or perhaps two, two-hour films per movie, like Kill Bill. I also missed a lot of stuff in the movie that's in the book. Subplots, background info about character interactions that were entirely removed from the movie, etc. There's nothing about the house cup battle in the film, only one brief bit of a Quidditch match, far less of the fun stuff in Hogsmead, nothing about Harry getting into trouble for using magic away from school, less dramatic and suspenseful build up to the discovery of Sirius, much less of Harry's anger and feelings of isolation, almost nothing about Ron and Hermoine's argument over Scabbers' disappearance, etc. Reading the books didn't really seem necessary or important for the HP 1 and 2 films, but with #3, you'll get a lot more out of the movie if you've read the book in advance, and I'd strongly recommend reading the book anyway, since with #3 and beyond the series really improves past simply kid's literature. On the other hand, the movie/screenplay did improve several things a great deal. The ending especially, since it was painfully complicated and the time travel elements looped back and forth all over the place. I had trouble following it all logically in the book (and there are some mistakes; things that Rowling didn't think about, which you can read about on HP fansites) and imagined that about 90% of younger readers were completely confused by it. In the movie that stuff is very streamlined and makes perfect sense, even if it lacks most of the emotional heft that it had in the book.
Still, I found the movie fun, and a faithful-enough rendition of the book to recommend it. I can't recommend either of the first 2 HP movies, even to book fans, since I didn't think the movies really added anything, or improved anything. However, I've never seen them since I read the books, so perhaps I'll enjoy them more then. Or at least be able to kill some time comparing what was changed or removed or modified. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
nother
week gone, and damn I'm hungry. My exercise programs have pretty much
ground to a halt, since I sprained my knee in early April. The knee is
all better now, as far as I can tell, however every time I've gone
jogging since then I've had shooting back pains and shin splints. So I
tried rollerblading, and that was okay but the local reservoir is the
only semi-decent place to blade around here, but it's only open to bikes
or things on wheels (besides baby strollers) two days a week, from noon
'til closing, and a lot of the pavement is pretty rough. There are also
a painful amount of short, steep hills, just the sort you don't like on
rollerblades, given that their breaking mechanism is woefully
inadequate, and they are painful to work your way uphill in. Capping off
the rollerblading fun, I felt okay that day, but for the next two days
my hips were so sore from being used in such an unexpected way that I
could hardly walk.
