Land of Make Believe

Driving my wife so nuts at the moment, it’s great. Not sure why but I am just 100% addicted to the song Land of Make Believe, cover by Bucks Fizz:

It’s my ringtone, my alarm clock(twice – dual alarms), and then I play it at least 3-4 times during the day. I dunno what it is but I just find it such a great song – such a happy tune, such a getting psyched tune too.

RIP John Grisham

No John Grisham isn’t dead – but he might as well be.

Years and years ago, a John Grisham novel was what really got me into reading. At that point all I read was Enid Blyton books and Archie comics.

I remember my dad giving me Grishams “The Client” to read, and I absolutely loved it. I remember then going to the movies to watch the movie based on the book the same day I finished reading it. I remember really fond memories of that day, as it was the first time I’d read a book then seen it on the big screen in action.

I quickly read every other John Grisham novel, and became a huge fan of his. I could actually tell you where I read each book for the first time. The Firm, for example. I remember reading that book on a Saturday evening while eating Chips & Curry Sauce. I stayed up all night till 8am to finish it. I went to sleep, then woke up around 5pm and went to the Abronhill Shopping Center, where I rented the movie, and also bought myself more Chips & Curry Sauce.

I go back and read that book at least once a year, and every time I get a huge craving for chips & curry sauce.

Unfortunately, John Grishams books have changed recently. Gone are the “thriller” parts to them, or stories that you can really relate to, or just can’t stop reading. Now every Grisham book quite honestly is a chore to get to.

His last good book was The King of Torts, which ironically was probably his best book. Just an amazing story that went at such a rapid pace.

Since then, things have gone downhill yet I have continued to purchase them and read them.

Bleachers: Just terrible.
The Last Juror: Average at best. Very bland for the most part.
The Broker: I don’t remember this one too well so will have to go back and read it. But one thing the early Grisham novels were – was memorable.
Playing for Pizza: Lame.
The Appeal: Nauseating as all hell. It felt like Grisham had a political opinion to tell and decided to write a book about it.
The Associate: NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED IN THIS. It just keeps building and then just fizzles out.

Finally, The Confession. I bought this on the day it came out, and started it a few days ago. I had to push myself through to the end. It was just dull as dishwater, and yet another book where you felt it was just propaganda for Grishams opinion on something. Just a boring boring book, all the characters are bland.

So with that, it’s time to take John Grisham off my “must buy” author list. Sorry John – but you’ve lost it.

For those curious, here’s my “must-buy” list – where I will have novels pre-ordered the second they are announced from any of these authors:

1. Joseph Finder
2. Lee Child
3. Linwood Barclay
4. Vince Flynn
5. Irvine Welsh
6. James Patterson(Womens Murder Club, Alex Cross only)

I’ve got a list of new authors to try, and I am going to start with Ben Coes, a new author highly recommended by Vince Flynn. His book is Power Down.

Also I convinced my wife to start reading Joseph Finder. She was finding Company Man slow for awhile then absolutely fucking loved it. Seriously Finder is the man and his stories are amazing. I just hope the creation of a repeating character like Nick Heller doesn’t hurt his future books, but I think it might.

Movied I Watched In February

Yet another “Christ where does the time go” post.  Just been doing work, playing xbox, spending time with the family and relaxing.  Not too much going on but I will try and actually write something!

TV shows I am going through right now is Becker and X-Files.

In the meantime here’s movies that I watched in February:

Saw 3: fucking amazing. Awesome story about the person that had to do the puzzles, yet it was a backdrop to the main story about jigsaw et al. Wrapped up a lot of stuff in the prev two, and was just really fucking good. ***1/2

So good it may make the prev two better on rewatch. As it is, hit blockbuster right after for saw 4 and 5, as well as saw 2 on xbox 360

Just Go With It: Very funny movie. Also holy shit is Brooklyn Decker smokin’. Story wise you’d what you’d expect, but it is very funny and very well done, paced well etc. Nick Swordson is also fucking amazing in it. ****

There was some weird guy in the theatre that every time he had to go, would announce it loudly to people. He’d say “I have to go to the washroom” then go – then he’d come back and be like “I’m back from the washroom”. Out of nowhere with about 15 minutes left he said “I have to go for a smoke!” then he never came back. Rather amusing.

Movies I Watched in January

Jesus where does the time go?  I kept meaning to write an update about how oh holy shit I am 30 and stuff, and its now like 2 weeks later.  Christ.  By the time I get round to writing it I’ll be 31!

I’ll be back with a proper blog update later this week.  For now here’s the list of movies I watched in January and my reviews, as I know a lot of people enjoy these:

The Lookout: I only downloaded this because Isla Fisher was in it plus my friend Preston recommended it to me. Isla actually wasn’t even in it that much but that’s okay – the movie was well worth it. Great performances by Jeff Daniels and the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, and overall a nice story with a rewarding ending. ***1/2

Dinner For Shmucks: Yeah, this was bad.

I think what was so bad about it was just how much potential this had, but the writing just felt so half-assed and the jokes were so weak.

Also holy GOD Steve Carell killed this movie. Any other actor in that part and it was a bad movie but a few laughs because Zach G was solid, and Paul Rudd did good for what he had to work with. But oh holy holy holy holy fuck Steve Carell was WOEFUL. His character was the most nauseating character I’ve ever seen. Just so over the top bad.

* at best and that’s just due to my Zach G/Paul Rudd love.

Three Days of the Condor: Was decent enough, and it was good that I finally found out where Newmans sidewalk warning in “The Junk Mail” in Seinfeld was from.

I mostly enjoyed it just for Robert Redford. ***

Surrogates: fucking awful. Complete dud.

The Social Network: I don’t say this often, but this movie was too short! So much more to the story that could have been told. It was very good however and I’d recommend it. ****

The Silence of the Lambs: Almost 20 years later, and still a classic. I barely even remembered this movie so had to watch it again. Hopkins never ceases to amaze me. No matter what role he is in, he is always just fucking awesome. And obv he brings it here. *****

Reign Over Me: Great performances by Sandler and Cheadle, and a really good story overall which provides the mixture of laughs and sadness perfectly. Also a movie that really makes you think about how strong friendship can be(love you Taff) and opens your eyes to how people would and could react after their family gets wiped out. ***1/2

Collateral: Really enjoyed this up until the last 20 minutes, which became WAY too contrived/convenient. Ending was enough to knock it down a full star. ***1/2

CopyCat: Been awhile since I seen this one. Good movie, although it’s funny how weird 90s movies can look at times, especially when it involves computers. ***

Cast Away: The premise of this is so awesome, but the execution – meh. Felt no emotional attachment to Tom Hanks character at all.

Plus holy shit did they ever fly over the island stuff. “Heres 20 minutes of Hanks on the island”. “Okay heres FOUR YEARS LATER where you get to see him crazy and talking to a volleyball for 20 minutes before getting off the island”.

Props to Tom Hanks and the production of this movie though. Hanks put on 50lbs pre-production, then they stopped it for a year so he could lose the weight and grow his hair & beard. That’s fucking impressive when they could’ve just used effects for it. Plus one of the screenwriters actually stranded himself for one week as well.

Thank god Lost did the Island stuff a lot better. **

The Interpreter: Totally forgettable movie, and I can state that as utter fact, because it took me until the last 20 minutes to realize I’d fucking watched this movie! 3 years ago at that!

Anyway, *.

For Queen & Country: Does a great job of showing how gritty Ireland was during that period of time, but man it was super slow paced, boring and one of those movies which just doesn’t stand the test of time. Plus Denzel’s accent is lol. *1/2

Devil: What the FUCK were they thinking with a runtime of about 1 hour and 10 minutes??? This could’ve been epic, instead everything was just too crammed in which made some things, like the Mexican security guard, seem ridiculously forced. **

Guess Who: Solid comedy. All the actors have good chemistry, and there’s a lot of good laughs. We miss you Bernie Mac ***1/2

Three Kings: Great movie. Just the right mix of humour, action & drama. ****

Exam: Fucking amazing psychological thriller. Don’t read up about it or watch any trailers – just see it. Not a “background” movie though – must focus. *****

Green Zone: Just wasn’t hooked by the story at all. *

Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth : The tagline on the DVD kills me – “If you liked Scary Movie, You’ll Love This!”.

It’s actually not that bad. The jokes come fast and furious – and many of them are a huge miss, but there’s so many of them that some work well, and you get a good few laughs out of it. The Chop-Up Video segment was great too. **

Saw: Oh man, this is one movie I woulda loved to have went into the theatres knowing nothing about it. Being part of the theatre audience during the foot sawing scene woulda been fucked up.

As it is, I thought it was average at best. A bit chilling in parts, but felt like it tried too hard to be something epic and failed. I’ll give Saw II a try though. **

Saw II: First, was very nice seeing the chick from Becker(Shawnee Smith) in this. Holy shit, she has beautiful perky tits.

As for the movie itself – meh. It was alright I guess. But didn’t really hook me, didn’t really care about the characters or the story, the gore does nothing for me, and the omg big reveal at the end was eh.

Despite that there’s something about the movies which keeps me interested a bit. I have Saw III on the PVR so will watch that. **

The Town: Felt very disjointed, one of those movies where scenes don’t blend in well and just seem to jump around. I also didn’t get into the characters at all – as in I didn’t really care that much about how it all ended up.

Despite all that, it’s still worth watching. Satisfactory enough ending, decent enough story, also some solid humour too. Another movie though where you get the feeling they are trying to come off as “epic” and because of that, fall short. ***

The Happening: Oh jesus this was bad.

It started off good as all these types of movies do. Intrigue, mystery, no idea WTF is happening. Then it all went downhill.

Just so many things wrong with the movie. The pacing was all off, all attempts at humour were woeful, it awkwardly jumped from scene to scene. It stopped being suspenseful and became just woeful.

Also holy shit are the acting performances POOR. The girl from Elf was bad enough, but why oh why oh WHY did they cast Mark Wahlberg in this movie? One of the worst casting decisions I’ve seen. Dude has no depth to him at all – not that a better actor would’ve turned this into a five star classic or anything, but it would’ve made it more bearable to watch. God he was woeful.

It was so disjointed it felt like 5 different people wrote/directed 5 different parts of it, without knowing what the others had did. Or maybe it was like one of those forum threads, where everyone collaborate to write a story, with the first poster writing the first paragraph, the second poster writing the second paragraph and so on. And then you have the 57th poster in the thread, going “Why the fuck did the 56th poster have the dad leave the little girl behind? Now we gotta include this shit for the rest of the movie”. Dud

Sleeping With The Enemy: Clocking in at just 99 minutes, it has absolutely no substance to it at all. *

Cop Out: Yeah this is fucking woeful. Gave up about 60% into it. Tracy Morgan needs to die. Half a star for Seann William Scott.

The Other Guys: I kept waiting for this to get funny. It never did. 1/2*

Out of Sight: With clooney and lopez. Just boring as shit. Gave up about 40 mins into it. Dud.

Case 39: Not AWFUL, but ugh.

It uses every cheap horror trick in the book. First of all, everyone WHISPERS. What that means is you have to listen real closely as they’re all talking quietly and then WHOOSH some random dog starts growling and barking super loud to scare you. That kind of shit.

The musical score is way off too, and a lot of the FX just seemed fake. Felt very sloppily put together.

Scared my mum and Janise at times. The cheap shit just put me off though, and it’s something that’s been done before many many times. Give me The Good Son or Orphan over this any day. *

Kill Bill Vol 1: I was all set to turn this off about halfway through. Just wasn’t into the story at all, despite it being a revenge flick at its core which I love.

Very glad I stuck with it. It really turned around in the second half, and that fight scene with the 800 dudes was fucking epic. Also loved how it ended, “Is she aware that her daughter is still alive?” which hooked me and made me want to see the sequel right away.

I’d say it went from 1/2* to a whopping *** in the final 30 minutes. Brilliant.

Also I gotta say that Tarantino is a fucking genius. Everything is just so beautifully shot and well done – even though I didn’t enjoy the first half of it at all, I still really appreciated the movie as an art form.

Flightplan: Heh.

So I’m watching this. And I’m right into it. About 30-45 minutes in maybe, fucking loving it.

Then I start thinking “Uh oh, where are they going with this?”. That feeling you get where you start to realize that there might not be a satisfactory ending, where they basically write themselves into a dead end.

The rest is all spoilers but I refuse to spoil it. Read this and save yourself.

So at this point, Jodie Fosters daughter has disappeared from the plane, but no-one can remember her being on the plane and they can’t find her on the plane. Then they find out via documentation that the daughter actually died with the husband(who threw himself off a building), and so Jodie Foster is crazy. And then an air marshal arrests her and stuff as she’s going crazy.

Then the most preposterous fucking thing ever happens – even Vince Russo hasn’t fucked up storylines this much.

Suddenly out of nowhere the air marshal is actually a bad guy! Let me try and write this out. He’s a bad guy, who is working together with one of the stewardesses.

What they did was kill Jodie Fosters husband, so she’d have to fly a casket home to New York. Then in the casket, he’d plant C4 right? So then Jodie Foster falls asleep on the plane, and the air marshal and the stewardess kidnap the little girl, and put her in the cargo hold along with C4.

So then the air marshal tells the captain Jodie Foster is a terrorist! And he has to land the plane and deboard everyone and transfer $50 million to a specific bank account or she’ll blow everyone up.

Yeah. One of the most nonsensical twists I have ever seen in my life. An absolute complete and utter fucking dud. Dear god. I still can’t believe it actually happened. The last movie I watch as a 29 year old. I may not even make it until 30 as there’s a good chance I’ll be blowing my brains out tonight.