This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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 A couple of weekends ago now we went to see Happy Feet. I’d been wanting to see it since I saw the first trailer for it. It looked really cute. And well… it was cute. There were a few points where I was like “Hey, that doesn’t make sense!” But then I remembered… it is a movie about singing penguins. And, when you have happy singing and dancing penguins, can you really complain about little plot holes here and there? No, not really. Just look at the happy singing dancing penguins and shut up.
I had fun though. Liked the movie a decent bit. I must say it didn’t quite live up to expectations. But it was fun. I might even see this one again someday. But not this year.
 Not this last weekend, but the weekend before, Brandy, Amy and I went to see this. I had no real interest, but both Brandy and Amy are into this kind of movie and really wanted to go. So we did.
Short summary: This thing is mostly out of the theaters by now, but even if it wasn’t, don’t bother. And no real reason to Netflix it either. It was just sort of a big nothing. I mean, perhaps if it is hot outside and you need the AC in the theater or have a craving for popcorn with unidentifiable yellow goo on it.
Longer version: It was just missing something. It started out with the feel of a suspense horror type thing. Things in the shadows just out of sight that were going to get you. And it was starting to build up in that direction. And then it decided it wanted to be more like a Buffy/Charmed/Dark Angel sort of thing with teenagers with special powers trying to work out how to live life with those powers. And then it decided to be a big battle with a bad guy, and try to do Matrix style fight things. With one scene where the one guy throws CGI spaghetti at the other guy. Um… yeah. It just never came together, and you never really cared at all about any of the people. And then after the big battle, in the part where the cliche says that everybody is feeling safe, so there must be one last attack coming, or at least a glimpse of the bad guy crawling away to set up the sequel… there just wasn’t. Not saying that cliche is always needed, it is a bad cliche after all, but given that it was NOT there, you just kept feeling like things had built up, and then it was just over in a way that was so predictable you couldn’t quite believe that was REALLY how it ended.
Lets put it another way… Amy fell asleep during the climactic fight scene.
Amy and Brandy wanted to go to another movie tonight. I pointed out that we had gone to one pretty recently. Brandy said “But that sucked so much, it doesn’t count!” And that was that. I stayed home cause I had some things to do. But they went to another movie tonight. The Guardian. I hear that sucks too, so they will probably want to go to another movie next week.
 So… the day after we watched the DVD of the last Pirates movie, we went to the new one in the theater. That would have been back on the 9th. I’ve gotten a bit behind due to this whole moving thing. In any case… I liked the movie. In some ways I liked it better than the first one, but for the most part I would say it was a wash. Fun movie. Worth the 2 hours and the buttered popcorn. But nothing I’ll remember much about in the long term. It was fun though, and I’ll see #3 when it comes out.
I really should write these right after I see movies, cause two weeks later I basically don’t remember all that much. There were pirates. There was a dog. You need to stay to the end of the credits to see the last bit with the dog. There was also a girl and some people made out of fish. People made out of fish. How can you go wrong with a movie that includes people made out of fish?
 While Amy and Brandy were in town, we went to the movie theater right across the street from the apartment and saw the 2006 version of the Pink Panther. I had previously added all the movies from the old series of movies… eight movies from 1963 to 1993… into my Netflix queue, but of course they are way down the list and I won’t be seeing them for years. Five of those had Peter Sellers for real, 1 more used old Peter Sellars footage after his death and the other 2 were attempts to keep it going without Peter Sellars that from what I heard pretty much failed and sucked pretty bad. But I haven’t seen those, so I shouldn’t judge…
In any case, I’d seen some of the original Peter Sellars ones many years ago as a child, or maybe as a teenager, but certainly not since. I think I saw some of them with my dad. So while I have some vague memory of them, I don’t have any specific memories, so I wasn’t really doing much comparison against them on this new version.
Anyway… I am not generally much of a fan of physical humor, but Steve Martin is really good at it and this was a funny movie. I found myself not wanting to laugh, because it was just plain stupid, but laughing anyway… because it was just plain stupid. I thought Steve’s accent could have been better. But it was played for laughs, not reality, so OK.
This was not a movie about plot or characters or anything like that. Just a continuous series of sight gags and physical humor and the like. It had me chuckling, Brandy laughing and shaking her head that it was just wrong, and Amy laughing uncontrollably for 90 minutes straight. So I guess it did its job. I think though that it definately was that kind of comedy that is aimed at kids and such.
It was an OK time. It was funny. I laughed. But it wasn’t particilarly memorable. I am alrerady having trouble remembering too many of the details and it has only been a few days since I saw it. And my main thought at this point is just that I really want to watch some of the old ones to compare.
 When I was back in Florida this weekend one of the items on the agenda was a movie. Frankly, all three of us were too tired for much else. I had not slept on the red eye on the way to Florida. Amy had been bad and stayed awake too. And Brandy had only managed a few hours of sleep herself. We didn’t know what was on, just headed to the theater and saw what was on. Two other prospects were not starting for more than 90 minutes. Hoodwinked was starting in about 40 minutes. So Hoodwinked it was.
When it started my first frustration was that there was a spot in the middle of ths screen that was a little out of focus. Not so bad that it was impossible to watch, but enough so that you (or at least I) constantly noticed and was distracted by it. I yelled (well, muttered under my breath) “FOCUS!” a few times, but it stayed messed up.
Then the movie started. After about the first 20 minutes I was thinking “ARGH! This is horrible! I wish I could drive a spike through my head!”. It seemed like every joke was falling completely flat. The animation was not impressive. The plot seemed to not be going anywhere. Etc.
But then, luckily, it started picking up. Basically the transition came after Red stopped telling her tale and it moved on to the wolf. Then it started getting better. I started laughing at some of the jokes. I started being more interested in what was happening. By the end of the movie I had switched my opionion to it having been a strange little movie, but amusing and fun. So I’m glad I went. But oh my did it start slow!
 While Cynthia was visiting she wanted to see a movie and one night we did. Of the available movies that we could see that evening that we hadn’t already missed, this is what she picked. Amy got VERY upset that it was a school night and she had to go to bed but Cynthia and I were going out without her. It was not a pretty sight. But Cynthia and I went anyway.
I don’t have any really strong opinions of it. It was fine. Some of it was very pretty. The story was OK. But it never really fully grabbed me. It sort of washed over me and was fine, but I never really got in so deep that I cared too much what was happening. It was good to go and spend the time with Cynthia, but the movie itself, eh… Like I implied, my rating would be neutral. Didn’t like it. Didn’t hate it. It just sort of existed for me.
 We waited a couple weeks after it came out for various reasons, but last weekend we managed to get it in before I had to leave town again for work. This is of course the latest Harry Potter movie. Big hit. Everybody knows about it I would imagine. Checking my records I read the book from 25 Feb 2001 to 14 Mar 2001. So I remembered parts of it, but really not all that much. At least not coming in. Walking into the theater if someone had asked me about the plot, I probably could have remembered close to zero. I did remember bits as the movie progressed, but not enough that I was comparing it to the book in my head or anything.
Anyway, I definately walked out of this one thinking it was the best fo the four so far. A little less “kiddie”. Had some humor, but a lot of stuff going on as well. And it was fun and kept my attention. It had the usual sort of Harry Potter thing where everything gets wrapped up right at the end and tied up in a bow, but that is just what these are. And that is OK.
Harry does look more and more like Frodo as he ages though.
Oh, and it kinda annoys me that his scar isn’t a little more visible.
But other than that… excellent Harry Potter movie.
 As folks might have guessed from what I said about the Firefly DVD, we went to see Serenity, the Firefly movie. I’m way late posting again, we didn’t see this over the weekend that just ended, but rather the weekend before.
In any case, it was awesome. Took everything that was good about the TV series and upped it a notch or two. It tied up some things from the series and threw in a few surprises. I had manger to stay almost spoiler free, and at least one thing really caught me by surprise. In any case, all three of us really enjoyed it.
The theater we saw it in, at the time we say it, was actually pretty crouded. But apperantly that was not average. The word was that if this grossed $80 million at the box office, there would be sequels. Things do not look good. As of it’s third weekend, it dropped off the top 10 down to 12 and had only made $22.1 million. The number of theaters it is in is dropping rapidly. So if you want to see it, you’d better go NOW! Or you’ll have to wait for the DVD in a couple months.
Anyway, even allowing for international box office and DVD revenue, looks like the chances of a sequel are dim. Which is a shame, cause it is a great series. [By the maker of Buffy and Angel, blah, blah, blah.] But he did get a chance to wrap up a bunch of what was brought up in the series, so if this has to be it, at least there is a feeling that between the TV show and the movie there is a begining, middle and end and you are not left hanging.
But sequels would be nice.
So go see it damn it!
If this guy can buy $2,500 tickets to this movie to help the quest for a sequel, you can all go out to buy three or four, right?
 Last Saturday afternoon, I printed out the showtimes for March of the Penguins and took them over to Brandy with a begging pouting face. I’d been talking about wanting to see it since I first saw the poster. It just sounded cute. And different. Brandy said OK. Amy was amd though, cause she wanted to go over to a friend’s house. A little later, clsoer to time to go, Brandy and I had a little brushup about the tadpoles. Then Amy got more mad about having to go and slammed doors and such. And I started saying I didn’t want to go if nobody else wanted to go. Then Brandy insisted that we were all going to go, and we would have fun damn it!
So, we all packed into the car, grumbling all the way. But by the time we got into the theater we mostly felt better (all of us) and then the penguins started being cute. And then that was that.
So yes, the penguins were cute. And there was drama and death and life and all that. It wasn’t exactly what I expected, but then again, I didn’t know exactly what to expect other than a documentary about penguins. And it was that. And it was a good one. Lots of cute penguins. It didn’t blow me away. I wasn’t quite in the mood for that. But I did like it. Definately worth a viewing.
And in the end, depsite her protests… Amy liked it and thanked me for having us go. So good.
 To distract ourselves from the events earlier, and also because we had promised Amy we would the weekend before and hadn’t, we went to the movies Saturday afternoon. I really wanted to go to the penguin movie but War of the Worlds was the one we had promised Amy the week before. And she wanted to see either that or Must Love Dogs. Brandy and I were less in the mood for that. So War of the Worlds it was.
As for the movie itself… well, lots of things got blown up, lots of people got killed. Pretty much what you would expect. The main characters were for the most part pretty stupid though. Strange things from space are systematically destroying all the major cities in the world. So when you miraculously escape the New York area, where do you try to get to? That’s right, Boston! Cause of course that will be fine! And in the meantime, try to stick close to the large congregations of refugees fleeing on highways and major roads. Head for the middle of the woods as far away from civilization as possible and try to camp out? No, never even consider that… And then the ending… not the part that everybody knows from the book, but the part they made up for this version… What they found when they got to the end of their journey should not be what they found. And we’ll leave it at that.
Worth watching? Eh, sure. Once. But I probably could have waited to see it on DVD. It didn’t need the whole extra theater thing. At least we went to the matenee… matanee… matanay… manatee… oh, whatever. The cheap afternoon showing.
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