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This is the review graphic for Johnny’s Royal Tennenbaum review in the post below.
Hello All!
I have been utterly inspired by the comment we had on our site from somebody named Andrew. Andrew thanks you and congradulations, you are the first person we did’t know who posted on our site. You are a crazy genius and have accomplished the considerable feat of getting me to post before Bob has to threaten my life and limbs. You are truly a man among men Andrew.
Well as you can probably gather from my title, I watched some movies recently… and it was at night. Last night to be exact. I started off with “The Royal Tennenbaums” at 9:55 and let me tell you, I thoroughly enjoyed that movie. Not as much of Bill Murray in the show as I would have liked, but Gene Hackman was as outstanding as usual. For those of you who may not be aware, this show starred Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Angelica Houston, Ben Stiller, Gwenyth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, and Kevin Wilson. Overall a very remarkable cast. Aside from Hackman’s performance as Royal I would have to say that my favorite performers were Paltrow as Margot Tennenbaum and one of the Wilson boys as her brother (I have trouble remembering the characters name and I can never keep the names to faces straight with the Owen brothers.. I am talking about the one without the screwed up nose) quite a delightfully mixed up comedy. I give it a 8.5 out of 10.
After this movie got over I wasn’t yet very tired, and as coincidence would have it I am also a loser who had nothing to do at midnight on Saturday, and the Reel was also playing several movies at that time. The additional incentive of watching another movie for the price of one was just to great and I decided to stay over for “The Queen of the Damned”. It started off not so good, not the movie itself, but the waiting-in-the-theatre-for-the-movie-to-start experience. First of all these two obnoxious teenagers came in (I’m starting to sound like an old man) who sat several rows in front of me and had the courtesy to blast their crappy music on their headphones loud enough that I could hear it quite clearly. Sure it was an inconvenience for me (and the others who came in after), but it had the benefit of not making the lazy little jerks actually put the headphones ON. This quickly became the tone for the audience, loud and obnoxious teenagers, most of whom seemed to be already acquanted (sp?) with each other. I guess if I had brushed up on my powers of deduction I would have realized that this would be the key audience to a midnight viewing for a movie entitled “Queen of the Damned” but Sherlock Holmes I’m not.
Anyway, the movie eventually started and by some miracle of nature the sacks of skin in front of me decided to turn off their cd player and the rest of the crowd was reasonably quiet for the duration of the movie, which by the way turned out to be remarkably better than I had anticipated. The premise of the movie sounds stupid enough. A vampire wakes from a long sleep and starts a hard rock band which in turn awakes Akasha queen of the vampires… ect, ect. But I guess there is something to Ann Rice’s popularity afterall. Stuart Townsend played the lead role of the vampire Lestat, and was in my opinion quite convincing. He hasn’t starred in to many movies to date, but I predict big things in his future. Also, the late Aaliyah played Akasha quite seductively and once again proved what a great actress she was. The soundtrack was excellent. I generally more or less abhor hard-rock, but this was different, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Overall I give this movie a 8 out of 10.
If you enjoyed this and other posts by John McDonald please continue to leave comments on our site (both those of you I know and particularly those of you that I don’t). This is the best way to inspire me to write both more frequently and in greater length. If you find my writing to be senseless drivel and prefer that of my more accomplished brother Bob then screw you! Just kidding, in THAT case post and let us know! We want to hear whatever you have to say.
Since I got my Sony Clie, I have become aware of, or at least sympathetic with a whole new group of viewers: those who read their favorite sites via their handheld device.
In the interest of making this possible on our page, I have created an Avant Go (not sure about other handheld browsers, as I haven't used them yet) accessible Top Page for our site. I will soon be adding access to our archives as well. To view our site from your handheld device, please point your browser at www.dynamicduo.info/avant.shtml. It's nothing special right now, but just like the site has, it will steadily improve as I experiment. As always, please let me know what you think via the comments or via e-mail.
Yesterday was my last day at the old job. Saying goodbye was a very emotional experience for me, but I tried not to let my face be a mirror of my feelings as it usually is. I wonder though what kind of face I would have made were I not thinking about it.
I was ecstatic to be leaving the company, and had a huge grin on my face all day long. When I said goodbye to all of my former co-workers, this feeling was still there and not at all diminished. Along with that, and nearly as strong came the urge to cry. I did meet some people at this company who were dear to me in one way or another, and it was tough to say goodbye.
Johnny, call in our crack research staff, and set them to work right away at investigating what facial expression results from this type of situation. Have them work around the clock. They may have to coin a new term for this one. I am thinking frile for the facial expression, and maybe ecstaloncholy for the feeling that it represents.
This may look like a story that you would read in The Onion, but it, frighteningly, isn't.
The gist of the story is that a Japanese couple away on vacation walked into the middle of the armed conflict between Israel and Palestine without, apparently, having any idea that there was an armed conflict going on. They were informed of their peril by some jounalists who will, if there is any justice in the world, be arrested for interfering with the laws of Natural Selection.
Johnny,
Would you like to do your movie ratings on your side menu or on a seperate page. People are more likely to go rent the movies you mention than buy them, but we can always hope.
Also, I need your ratings for the books that you’ve finished already.
I’ll see what I can do about submitting the website to ask.com, dogpile.com, and lycos.com
Bob good work on the site. I will post a little later today with any luck and just wanted to say I appreciate the work you put into this. I would like to do movie rating, not necessarily reviews, although I would perhaps review a movie if I found it to be particularly exceptional in some regard. I would rather like to just rank movies according to my preferences (by stars, number, or what-have-you) in the hopes that some poor misguided fool might buy them and get me some Amazon partner points.
-John
