My Month of Entertainment - January 2007

Books

Another bookless month. But that’s good...I’m actually starting to get through the ones I bought over the last 6 months.

Movies

This month’s Netflix rentals:

The Break-Up. Memo to any husband or boyfriend whose significant other is thinking about watching this movie. DO NOT LET THEM. It gets into female heads and messes with them severely. They cannot help but severely over-analyze it. Avoid it. You do not want them to see this movie. That is all.

Slap Shot (25th Anniversary Edition). I hadn’t seen this in a long while, and The Butterfly hadn’t seen it at all, so I stuck this one in the queue. This has long been regarded as one of the funniest sports movies of all-time, and all the Hanson Brothers scenes were as great as I remembered, but I’ve gotta say...it’s a lot slower than I remembered it. Lots more attempted plot than there needed to be, and in the end it just doesn’t flow as well as other great sports movies like Major League or Bull Durham.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. This is was actually a mutual selection—I’ve always loved The Butterfly’s sense of humor—and unlike a lot of comedies like this, the humor didn’t really slow down once the plot had to take over. A lot of recent comedies are like Wedding Crashers—hilarious premise and great comedic acting, but when the plot takes over, everything comes grinding to a halt. Ricky Bobby used a lot of the same actors as Wedding Crashers and Anchorman, but this one was more consistently funny. Actually, I should watch Anchorman again before I commit to that...anyway, we both enjoyed it quite a bit.

The Devil Wears Prada. It was The Butterfly’s turn to pick out a movie, so we went with this one. Obviously I haven’t read the book (and neither has she), but I had heard that this was pretty decent for a book adaptation. This was surprisingly watchable. Granted I was playing Spider Solitaire the whole time and wasn’t giving 100% of my attention to it, but it wasn’t painful to watch like some of the the chick flicks The Butterfly actually hates. We had a bit of a disagreement over whether she should end up with Rich Dude or Dude from Entourage (obviously I was in Dude from Entourage’s corner), and I guess I won. Though I have no idea why they would throw in the “he gets a job in Boston” kink if they really didn’t have plans to address that in the resolution, but whatever. I didn’t care all that much.

Happy Endings. Another indy movie I heard decent things about and stuck on the Queue. We were not impressed with this one, however. As I like to say about some movies, there was a good movie in this somewhere, but it never came to the surface. Interesting cast (Maggie Gyllenhall, Tom Arnold, Lisa Kudrow, etc.) and interesting plot points, but the end of the movie comes and you realize you don’t actually care about any of the characters (sans maybe Tom Arnold). That’s not usually a good thing.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. I’ve always loved Holy Grail and Life of Brian (and Spamalot, for that matter), but I’d never seen this one. Lots of laughs, as you would expect, but there’s definitely a reason this one’s not as highly-regarded as Grail and Brian. It’s just not quite as focused, though there’s definitely plenty to enjoy.

Cars. This was for The Butterfly’s parents...we never got around to seeing it. I’m sure it’s enjoyable.

Little Miss Sunshine. One of the 2-3 best Netflix movies we’ve seen to this point. I was dying to see this when I first heard about it, but as more and more people started piling on about how great it was, I got wary. I love it when movies like this are nominated for Best Picture awards because it acknowledges that you can have lots of comedy and still create one of the best movies of the year. You care about the characters at the end, and you can almost relate to them no matter how crazy their situation ends up...and the performances were fantastic. I’m not totally sure why the little girl got nominated for an Oscar (it led to a great moment in last night’s SNL “Dakota Fanning Show” skit, where Dakota Fanning talks about all the serious roles she’s played without getting nominated for an Oscar, and the little girl says “I ran around a lot.”). Honestly, I thought the best performances came from the Oath of Silence little brother (Paul Dano) and Steve Carell. Kinnear and Colette were both great, but you just expect those performances out of them.

All in all, a decent Netflix months, but there were some duds in there. Oh well. And DO NOT LET YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER WATCH THE BREAK-UP. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Music

Barenaked Ladies Are Me, Barenaked Ladies. In the last few months, two different artists who belong to my “When They Release a New Album, I Will Buy It Immediately” club released new albums...and I didn’t buy them immediately. I have a decent excuse for each one. First of all, soon-to-be Good Nonsense poster Shep (note to self: next time you introduce a new poster, make sure they’re not out of town all week for work...kinda makes the introduction anti-climactic) and I agreed to trade some music—he was going to get me BNL’s new one, and I was going to get him Guster’s new one. Great...except we kept forgetting to actually do that. So I finally sucked it up and used some eMusic downloads on it. I talked about it in depth here...not as good as Gordon or (especially) Maroon, but quite enjoyable.

True Magic, Mos Def. Mos Def is also on my Buy Immediately list, and I’d been trying as hard as I could to keep up with when this one was coming out. First it was the summer, then 2007, then December, then 2007 again...and then I checked and found it had been released to zero fanfare three weeks previous. Grr. I have an upcoming post about Mos Def and Talib Kweli, so I won’t speak much about this one now...other than to say that I like it because it’s Mos Def, but like his last album (The New Danger)...even moreso, actually, it does kinda feel like he half-assed this one.

Light Grenades, Incubus, and Sam’s Town, The Killers. I used some of my Christmas present iTunes downloads for these two albums...as much for The Butterfly as for me. I like good hard rock, and I’ve appreciated the works of these two groups in the past, so I thought I’d give these a shot. I think Incubus have been lumped in with the “RAWK!!” category with bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn, and that’s a bit unfair. They have more to offer than those groups, and while they wouldn’t get very high on any “Favorite Bands” list of mine or anything, they’ve made a lot of songs I really like...“Warning” and “Megalomaniac” being at the top of the list. There’s nothing that good on Light Grenades, but there is still some good creativity on display.

As for The Killers...you can definitely hear some U2 influences—both early- and late-U2. They aim for greatness and grandure, and while they don’t really achieve either, I appreciate the attempt. I’d always prefer that over “Hey, we sold a ton of records last time out, so let’s make the exact same songs this time.” The Killers are seen as pretty arrogant and self-important, and they probably are, but oh well. They’re a decent band.

All in all, January was a pretty slow Month of Entertainment, wasn’t it? Then again, nobody usually has much post-Christmas money to spend, do they?