"Now You See Me", Unless You Don't

If you think "Now You See Me" is a heist movie, think again. If you think it's a supernatural magic movie, you're also wrong. I can explain the whole movie in just a few words. 

• Magic: There are some very cool illusions in the movie, though, for my money, not nearly enough. I actually enjoyed the four performers' solo stuff at the beginning more than most of the big spectacles they put on later. And the goal the four are working towards by putting on their big, amazing shows is a bit of a letdown at the end.
• Revelation: The magic debunking/explaining by Morgan Freeman was kind of cool, but I felt like there wasn't enough of it. I wanted to know how they pulled off all their crimes.
• Plot Holes: Just be careful you don't fall in; they are everywhere and quite gaping. 
• Acting: Mark Ruffalo is okay, but not great, Jesse Eisenberg is annoying and never redeems himself, and Isla Fisher is the weakest of the lot. I don't know whether to blame the writing, the directing or the acting, but something went wrong here. Both Freeman and Michael Caine are really under-used, and frankly, Caine seems bored. Just collecting a paycheck, maybe? 
• Also underused: David Franco (younger brother of James Franco) is good as the youngest of the 4 young magicians, but he hardly gets any screen time or dialogue or anything. I was afraid the writers were setting him up to do a "You can't keep ignoring me" tantrum or something, which, thankfully, didn't happen, but it would have been nice to see more of him. 
• Ta-Da! A big "reveal" at the end makes the entire movie less believable. It just doesn't work. And it doesn't GO anywhere. 
• Confusing: Toward the end, the sudden romantic behavior of Mark Ruffalo's FBI character, and the french INTERPOL lady are completely unbelievable. I'm using that word literally. 
• Meh: The way the movie wraps up left me feeling disappointed. What happened to the four magicians after all that crime? The secret society "The Eye of Horus" is barely mentioned; exploring that would have made a much more interesting movie. 

To sum up: Wait for the DVD. "Now You See Me" is just okay. It's not a horrible movie. It's just not nearly as good as I wanted it to be. The story falls flat, the characters are not interesting (I lost track of their motivation early on) and it just felt weak. It would have been much better if it had been science-fictiony ancient magic and breath-taking illusions, like the trailer teased it might be.

The Trouble With Doctor Who

Dang dang dang.

I did it.

I got hooked on yet another British TV show.

"Doctor Who" regenerated in 2005, after a very long time off the air. It was completely off my radar. I had heard of the show, but had never seen any episodes, and didn't know anything about it.

Until now. 

My son has been watching lots of "Who" lately, particularly the episodes with Matt Smith as The Doctor, but when I started in, I wanted to go back further and start near the beginning. I wasn't especially impressed with the first few episodes (or the first Doctor) of the resurgence, so I jumped ahead to the point that David Tennant took over the role. Having skipped pretty much a whole season, though, I think there are some plotlines I missed, but it doesn't seem to matter much. I'm still hooked.

What You Need to Know About "Who"

So, you want to watch "Doctor Who", but you don't know where to begin? Here are some basic things you might want to know:

Blu-Ray: Warm Bodies

After reading my dad's article, I decided to watch "Warm Bodies", even though it's a decidedly different movie than my normal selections.

"R", the zombie telling his story through voice-over narration, doesn't know what caused the zombie apocalypse, but there are 3 distinct versions of people left on Earth-- the humans, the "corpses" (zombies as we know them) and "boneys", which are corpses that have given up and rotted into evil skeleton creatures.

Book Club Book: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen

My sisters and I all like love to read, and we all enjoy similar books (mostly), so we decided to start our own little book club. Plus, it gives us an excuse to get together each month and eat food and chat-chat-chat, which is the best part. Aside from the reading. 

Our first two books were blah-to-terrible. We read (well, I think I'm the only one in the group who finished both books... so... yeah... girls-- get reading!!) "An Uncommon Reader" and "Gone Girl". 

Book: Inferno by Dan Brown

I made the mistake of reading this article: a parody of Dan Brown's writing style, shortly before reading his newest Robert Langdon adventure, "Inferno". While it couldn't sour my taste for Brown's storytelling, it did point out that he uses some obvious and over-used (almost cliche) writing choices. The point here is, I may have gone into "Inferno" slightly jaded. That may have colored my experience in reading the book. Maybe not, though...

Flaming Passion

My daughter and I just had a funny conversation:

Katie: Mom, what does "flaming passion" mean? 
Me: Where did you hear that? 
K: I didn't hear it. I think I read it. 
Me: Where did you read it? 
K: I don't know. I just know I read it somewhere. 
Me: It's like a really strong feeling of love, affection and attraction. 
K: Hm. I bet they say that in "Twilight", huh? "My heart was filled with flaming passion!" 
Me: Well... sort of, but not in those words. 
K: Are you going to make me read those when I get older? 
Me: (laughing) No. It will be your choice.
K: I bet she says all kinds of things like that in "Twilight". It's probably stupid.

My daughter is nearly 11 years old, and pretty innocent. She only watches pre-approved, clean shows and doesn't read anything written for older people, so I think she's just not remembering. I suspect she heard it on the BYU-TV show "Studio C", used as a joke and without any innuendo, really (in the clip below). She is just smart enough to pick up an unknown phrase and pocket it away for later. Still, I hope this isn't one I hear her use later...

Ender's Game

It's been many years since I first read "Ender's Game", which is kind of nice, because I had forgotten nearly everything about it, except the big reveal at the end (how could you forget that?!) This is a book that holds up very well, in spite of it having been published originally in 1977. I loved it as much this time around as I did the first time I read it. Ender is the perfect leading character-- he's lovable, but flawed. He's an unwilling hero, a natural leader and soldier and besides being brilliant, he is very sympathetic. We all know the feelings such as not being as "good" as some might think we are; feelings of shame or discouragement, loneliness and despair. 

The story is exciting, compelling and fascinating. There are many books that I would recommend you read without first reading a synopsis. Just trust me. It's worth your time. This is one such book. The science is believable, the aliens and space battles and technology aren't so far-fetched that the sci-fi-ness takes over the story and distracts you by making you realize that you're reading Science Fiction. Which, as we all know, only nerds do, right? Riiiiiight....

Book Review: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (and Various Authors)

"The House on Maple Street"

25 years ago Harris Burdick walked into the office of a former children's book illustrator, Peter Wender,  handed him 14 incredible, seemingly unrelated, black-and-white sketches with cryptic titles and captions. Wender loved them. Burdick promised to return the next day with more illustrations and the stories to go with all of them. He was never heard from again. Years later, Wender's children began writing stories to go with the illustrations, and that spread into schools, where teachers assign their students to write stories to accompany the pictures, too. Recently, the pictures were shown to Chris Van Allsburg ("The Polar Express", "Jumanji"), who recruited 13 other well-known authors, including Stephen King, John Scieszka, Louis Sachar, Kate DiCamillo and Lois Lowry (among others) to write stories for the pictures. They are all included in the volume "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick". 

Star Trek: Into Darkness- Brilliance on the Big Screen

I really liked the 2009 Star Trek film, and knowing this was the same cast and director, with the perfect addition of Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain, I expected to like Star Trek: Into Darkness just as much. I was not disappointed. I seldom see a movie that I walk out thinking, "I would go see that again." Even when I really like a movie, I very rarely want to go again. But this one? Yep. I would go again. It was that good.

From Empire Online

I am also unusually being tempted to write SPOILERS online about the movie!! Which I try to never do.