The Universe and Me

Sunday, February 28, 2016

What can I give you in return?

Movie: Bridge of Spies. You can always count on Tom Hanks to give a solid performance. Because of the serious subject matter, this didn't leap off the screen like the "thriller" the box proclaimed it to be. They seemed to enlist the talents of the Coen Brothers to make it more exciting but the material they added was fiction so that rather messed with the historical accuracy they might have wanted to keep. Mentioning Abel's accent a couple times as being not Russian but rather English was strange because it was so obviously Scottish. All they had to do was say he was born in Northern England but attended school in Scotland. Maybe because the world was bigger then, Americans didn't know what a Scottish accent sounded like? Pre-Lulu and everything. I don't know. One thing that was really noticeable was Donovan calling home from overseas with what appeared to be a quarter or two. When I was in Scotland in the late 1980s, I thought about calling home but knew I would need a lot more coins than I had in my pockets and I had a lot of coins in my pockets. The photographers flashbulbs really brought one back to a different time (although personally I wasn't actually in that time.) Seeing them on the floor made me wonder whose job it was to clean them up. Hello to Bono's daughter Eve Hewson who plays Donovan's elder daughter. And Sister Bernadette who sure looked like the wife but wasn't
ETA: Congratulations to Mark Rylance for winning best supporting actor at the Oscars. 

Friday, February 26, 2016

C'est Banana

Movie: The Minions. I'm not a fan of animation, but this was so huge and my little great nephews love the minions, so I thought I'd give it a try. Best thing about it: killer soundtrack since it was set in 1968. Happy Together, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Break on Through to the Other Side, Hair, You Really Got Me, Purple Haze, The Letter, My Generation, Got to Get You Into My Life, Mellow Yellow. Always an Ab Fab fan, I appreciated Jennifer Saunders voicing the Queen. I kept waiting for The Beatles cameo and was not disappointed. They were partially seen crossing Abbey Road, albeit a year too soon. Unless they used this zebra crossing regularly. I didn't find the Minions voices irritating. It seemed nice that Cousin Itt and the Jawas from Star Wars have found some voice over work after all these years. I'm not sure what this movie and its sequels in the Despicable Me series mean to children, though. Searching for an evil ruler to serve seems odd.
ETA: I let the ending go for a few minutes and caught a few extra scenes but once the credits started, I stopped the DVD. My mistake. After the credits finish, they return with one final song, The Beatles Revolution. Don't miss it, as I did.
 

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

I've been hanging around libraries

What is your library worth to you? Head on over to I Love Libraries to calculate how much. Just enter how often you check out or use any of their library materials or services per year and the site will add up what it would cost you without the library. My total was over a thousand dollars. To me, the library is invaluable. If you think so too, consider making a donation to your local library.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

There's a Starman waiting in the sky

Movie: The Martian. One of the best movies I've seen in months or longer. When last we saw Matt Damon, he was a nasty slime bucket in Interstellar. In a dramatic role reversal here, he plays a motivated, logical, enterprising MacGyver type protagonist. Well done, sir. Technology aside, I didn't understand why or how a woman crew member of this day and age (probably in her late 20s) would be into disco music but was grateful that they played mostly good disco songs from the likes of Vicki Sue Robinson, The Hues Corporation, Gloria Gaynor and Abba compared to some of what my ears had to live through in the late 1970s. The council of Elrond inside joke with Sean Bean was funny but I didn't like Kristen Wiig's disparaging lines about it because it reinforced stereotypes often found on The Big Bang Theory that women do not like and/or are not interested in and/or can not possibly comprehend science fiction. Minor gripes. Nice to see such good usage of duct tape: "The handyman's secret weapon." Next trip: bring lots!