This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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 This was Amy’s movie pick this time around. She watches a bunch of her Netflix movies by her self, but this time I was “due” to watch one with her again, so we all watched together. I’d watched the original Cheaper by the Dozen movie on DVD sometime way back when… in Florida I think, before I started posting the movies I watch on the blog. That one was cute I guess.
With this one my main thought the whole times were along the lines “Why? Why did they make this?” and “Is it over yet?” interspersed with, “Oh my god, Hillary Duff looks awful, what is wrong with her?”.
Sure, it had a couple cute moments. But they were not all that often and there were more parts that were just stupid. It did have a nice sentimental “Awww…” ending, but everybody knew that going in, right?
And OK, this movie is clearly NOT aimed at me. But still…
 I’ve for some reason not posted about this yet, but a couple of weekends ago Brandy and I watched the second disk of this three disk set. (Although Netflix is still confused and thinks this is the first disk.)
This is the second Doctor Who story ever shown. “The Daleks” is also of course the first appearance of the now iconic Daleks although their exact configuration and capabilities has evolved quite a bit from this first appearance at the end of 1963 to their most recent earlier this year in Evolution of the Daleks.
This one though is your typical First Doctor story meaning it is a bit slow, you laugh a lot at the “special” effects, and the Doctor himself doesn’t do all that much while his companions run around.
And this was also a pretty LONG story. Seven 25 minute episodes. I like this stuff, but even for me, 7 of these is pretty long.
Amy on the other hand long ago gave up joining us when we watch “Classic” Doctor Who episodes. They are just too slow moving for kids these days. :-)
 Earlier today the four of us finished up watching the first disk of the first season of Roswell. Cynthia had never seen it before, I’ve seen sporadic episodes as had Amy, and Brandy is a big fan. It is not the DVD I would have chosen, but Cynthia is here she gets to choose. And it fits into my “DVDs we own but I have not watched yet” category. So all is OK. (Although I really should have been watching a Doctor Who this time around.)
Anyway, as is typical for this type of show I guess, the DVD had four episodes:
“Pilot”: Introduces the concept of the alien kids in hiding at Roswell and puts them in peril by almost revealing their secret.
“The Morning After”: Um… I don’t remember much about this one. And I just watched it a couple days ago. Oops. Ah yes. They go breaking into the Sheriff’s office.
“Monsters”: Maria is scared of the aliens, but protects them in the end.
“Leaving Normal”: A grandmother dies, and Liz breaks up with the one guy, presumably so she can be with the other guy.
Anyway, it is a fun little series. So far from the first four I’m only at the “it is kind of cute” mode and not at the “I must watch all three seasons right away!”. But I’ll probably watch more at some point. After all, Brandy liked it so much she actually went to a Roswell convention at one point. Or so I hear.
 Earlier today we decided to watch a DVD. According to my current system, it was time to either watch a Doctor Who, or one of the DVDs I actually own but have never watched. Since Cynthia is here though, I let her pick from all the available DVDs in the house that I haven’t watched yet including all of the other Netflix ones besides the categories I mentioned. But she ended up picking one in the “Own but haven’t watched” category anyway. Not the one I would have watched next on my own, but that is OK. She’s a guest and all. :-)
Anyway, she picked Donnie Darko. Years ago I had seen it at a midnight showing in a theater with Rebecca and company in DC. A few years later it was given to me on DVD for Christmas or my birthday or some such, and I watched it fairly soon thereafter. I remember assuring Brandy that it was a family safe movie, but then five minutes in two of the main characters start using some highly amusing, yet not 8 or 9 year old safe language and Amy started hiding her eyes and covering her ears. Oops.
A little later they released a Director’s Cut version. I bought it as soon as it was available, but then it sat on shelves and in boxes for two and a half years until we watched it today.
First lets start with I liked the original quite a bit. The Director’s cut adds a LOT. The Donnie Darko page on Wikipedia has a listing of the differences. When we finished the movie I was saying that they must have added “about half an hour”. I was close. Turns out it was about 20 minutes of new scenes.
For the most part I like the additions. There is an argument that can be made that some of the appeal of the original version was just how confusing it was, whereas some of the things added are attempts to clarify what is going on… especially the places where the text from the time travel book is shown… and that this takes away from the “WTF just happened?” feelings that leave you talking and wanting more when you are done. Like too much explanation spoils it.
Having said that, it isn’t like they end up spelling it out cleanly. You still get some of that effect. And for the most part I liked the additions. But I think I am glad I saw the original version first.
Cynthia saw it for the first time in extended form. I’m thinking it was still odd and disturbing, but perhaps not quite so odd and disturbing as if she’d seen the original version.
Oh yeah, right as the dramatic tension was building near the end, Roscoe started baking uncontrollably from the back yard. He had treed some sort of animal that hissed back from above. We couldn’t see it because it was dark, but we had to pause for about ten minutes to get him back inside and stuff. Threw things off a bit. But not too badly. Then the sound got messed up (by my needs to be replaced A/V system) right at the end when Mad World was playing. Hated that. HAd to keep getting up to kick the system to fix the sound. Grrr…
 Given the week, we thought it was a good time to watch this movie. Um… OK, that’s not true. It just happened to be the next Netflix movie on my queue, and I’d had it on my desk for quite some time. But earlier today we decided to watch it. I had never seen it before.
I’m not sure how exactly I went more than a decade without actually seeing this, but I did. As it turns out, I enjoyed it. It was fun for that sort of movie. Amy also had never seen it and was getting quite into it and very animated. Thus, it was a good family movie night over all.
Brandy needed to point out all the inaccuracies about the planes of course. I refrained from mentioning the whole virus into an alien ship with a couple of hours of analysis thing. But it all really doesn’t matter, cause technical accuracy is certainly not something this film was interested in at all. You don’t need to in order to have an aliens attack, they are winning, then we fight back movie.
Worth a watch. Fun. Will probably never watch it again.
Oh yeah, we watched the Special Edition, which had something like 10 minutes of extra footage, apparently mostly character background development near the beginning.
![image]() So I realized that while I had been watching DVDs from the various Netflix queues we have set up (one for each of us, and one with old Doctor Who episodes) it had been a long time since I had watched one of the DVDs I actually own but have never watched. So I’m trying a new way of determining which DVDs I watch at what times, and it now includes DVDs in that category, and it was time for one. So, the next DVD “in line” in that category was the 4th disk of Buffy Season 2. (I watched Disk 3 in March of last year.)
This disk has four episodes on it, I’ll say a little bit about each individually:
Surprise: This is the episode where Angel gets turned evil by his moment of happiness and all. This is one of the episodes I think I’d never actually seen on TV. Although I think maybe I’d seen the relevant parts of it. It was good to fill in that gap.
Innocence: This is the one where everybody actually realizes that Angel is now evil, and you see all their reactions to it. Kinda sad for Buffy. Poor Buffy. Oh well.
Phases: Now Oz turns into a werewolf. Cause of course Willow can’t have a normal boyfriend. Of course, the most striking thing looking at it now is just how bad the werewolf costume was. It was almost Doctor Who quality (old Doctor Who that is).
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: Xander causes a spell to be cast that makes all women (except Cordelia) want him and then Buffy gets turned into a rat. I actually found this one to be very amusing. It was the comedy of the four. I laughed.
Anyway, it was an OK four episodes, but not thrilling. Even though I’m not sure which of these episodes I’d seen before and which I hadn’t there was a familiar feel to them… rather than the fresh feel you get when watching something for the first time.
But they were OK.
 I’m going to start linking to Wikipedia for these instead of Netflix. Just more info there.
Anyway, Amy wanted to watch a DVD last night. I looked at the last 10 DVD’s I’d watched… 4 of them were Brandy picked movies, 2 were Sam picks, 2 were picked by my mom when she was visiting, 1 was a Doctor Who, and 1 was an Amy pick. So it was either time for an Amy pick or a Doctor Who. So Amy had her pick, and this was it this time.
This is a remake of a 1968 movie by the same name. I’ve never seen that version, but I of course added it to my ever growing Netflix list. This version was another typical Amy chosen movie. A family romantic comedy sort of thing. Brady Bunch meets Cheaper by the Dozen plus a dose of the Odd Couple. One family is a bunch of disgusting slobs, the other are what seemed to me to be good well behaved kids, but I think were supposed to be a little too uptight. In any case, they clash they plot to break up their parents, they succeed, and then they are sorry, and in the end everybody is one big happy family.
The movie was cute if formulaic. I didn’t regret watching it. No need to see it again though.
 Brandy picked the last DVD we watched and it was The Man With Two Brains. She was very excited to have me see it, as she thought I would love it. I told her before hand that I have never really been too fond of Steve Martin’s humor, but that was OK, I’d watch with an open mind. I had not see this movie before as far as I knew. I kind of actually had it confused with All of Me, another Steve Martin movie. It wasn’t that movie though. BUt I haven’t actually seen either of them, so it didn’t really matter.
And well… it was OK. But I didn’t laugh all that much. Like I said, I’m just not that into Steve Martin’s style of humor. I mean, it wasn’t a bad movie or anything. I wasn’t anxious to have it over, it just didn’t really do anything for me. Brandy was very disappointed that I didn’t like it all that much.
Meanwhile, she fell asleep two thirds of the way through.
Oops. :-)
![]() So, having watched Disk 1 previously it was now time to watch Disk 2, which had the 3rd and 4th parts of this 1994 miniseries. The 3rd part was OK although not as good as the first 2. But then, to me at least, it just seemed to completely fall apart. Brandy says it is because they abbreviated a bit too much in comparison to the book. To me it just seemed like it was a whole lot of buildup to not much at all, and a conclusion that made the efforts of the “good guys” completely and totally pointless. Basically, the “bad guys” self-destructed in a way that seemingly was not influenced by the actions of the forces of good at all. It would have happened exactly the same way if the good folks from Boulder had just stayed home instead of going through many trials and tribulations, including the death of a variety of them. And this doesn’t even mention the completely cheesy glowing hand that had a part in the climax. Uh huh. Whatever.
Anyway, Disk 1 was OK. Disk 2, not so much. Perhaps it would indeed have been better if they had taken more time and made it an even longer mini-series. Or maybe even just spent less time on the setup and more on the resolution. I don’t know. I have not read the book, so I can’t really compare and say if I’d think the book made more sense. But the conclusion here was just sort of a head scratching “huh?”.
I usually link the pictures on this to Netflix, but this time I’m linking to Amazon. Why? Well, cause this is a three disk boxset, and Netflix has it all screwed up (or at least they did). That is, what they think is Disk 1 is really Disk 2, what they think is Disk 2 is really Disk 3, and what they think is Disk 3 is really Disk 1. So when they sent me the “first” disk it really wasn’t, and I had to go through a couple of returns before they gave me the right disk. Of course, I sent the others back sight unseen and will watch them later.
Eventually though I finally got the real Disk 1, which contains the first four episodes of Doctor Who ever, which collectively are known as the story “An Unearthly Child“. The first episode aired on 23 Nov 1963… a date also known for other things.
Anyway, this episode is mainly of interest for completeness and all. It is interesting to see “how it started”. The actual story, with cavemen saying such insightful lines as “Za make fire!!” isn’t all that compelling. Everything is pretty much laughable. But that is OK. The second story which is on Disk 2 of this series, is what caught people’s attention and started the series toward still being on the air 44 years later. Even so, watching the first episode is interesting to note all of the “firsts” and also to note which things haven’t changed very much too. So watching it from that point of view is good. Just don’t come in expecting a riveting story or anything.
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