Minnesota has them. Doublemint has them. Jennifer Lopez has them. The Olsen family has them too. And in March, so will my sister and brother-in-law.
That’s right: I’m going to be an uncle again — and again — because my sister is pregnant with twins! Identical ones. Continue reading
I finally finished reading Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires last week.
I say finally because it only took me, oh, about a year to do so. That’s not indicative of how much I enjoyed the book. Rather, it’s just that the book fell victim to my lack of reading time and my laziness about finding time to read.
Actually, this summer, as I got more and more excited about seeing The Social Network, I made the time to read, and I spent a number of Sunday afternoons outside reading the book.
And I’m glad I did. Continue reading
Six weeks before she’s due to move back to San Francisco, Erin (Drew Barrymore) meets Garrett (Justin Long) in a New York bar, and instantly they hit it off.
They promise not to get too attached, but of course, they can’t help it, and when Erin crosses the country to go back to journalism school, the two decide to give the whole long-distance thing a try.
And that’s what gives the new rom-com Going the Distance its double entendre title.
Real-life on again/off again couple Long and Barrymore have a warm, believable chemistry, and they make this challenged relationship (and film) worth rooting for. Continue reading
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but if you ask me, there’s only one word that comes to mind when I see this photo: Happiness, both in front of and behind the camera. Continue reading
Not much happens in The American, and for a while, that’s alright.
George Clooney’s Jack, in Italy to take care of one last job, is a man of few words and even fewer personal connections. We watch as he befriends a priest and a prostitute, and builds a customized weapon for a client, but so little is known about Jack, and about his assignment as a whole, that it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on. Continue reading
I never thought this day would come.
My friends … today, September 1, 2010, marks the fifth anniversary of my very first blog post. That’s right: I’ve been blogging on Martin’s Musings for five years. Never thought I’d get past the first year or two, much less five. But here I am, still writing. And more impressive, I still have people reading my blog posts. So before I go any further, let me take a moment to say thank you for that.
I’ll accept your wood and silverware now.
If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, then you’ve no doubt noticed the changes that have occurred. And you’ve probably also noticed that in the last year or so, posts have gotten less frequent — and more often than not, they’ve been movie reviews. For that you can probably thank my activity on Facebook and Twitter and the blog I maintain for work for giving me other venues to do my thing. But I’m not making excuses. Rather, let’s spin this and say my blogging here has been so successful that I’ve branched out, and am now communicating in multiple places.
Or, let’s just say that passing the five-year mark is a good reminder that I should do what I can to keep this blog going strong. After all, this is where it began. This is my communications hub. So as I start my second half-decade, I make this promise to you, dear readers, that I will try my best to keep this blog active and enjoyable. I’ve written a total of 1,407 posts so far. If you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.
I don’t in any way pretend to be a social media expert.
Sure, I’m an active user of Facebook and Twitter, I have a blog, and now I’ve even started checking in everywhere on Foursquare.
And sure, some people I work with think I’m an expert.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned when it comes to social media, it’s that nobody knows anything (to borrow the phrase from William Goldman), and we’re all making it up as we go along.
So I’ll let other people label themselves as social media gurus, experts, ninjas, or whatever word they’re using these days. Me, an expert? I’m not ready for that kind of label just yet.
When you go see a movie like Piranha 3D, you don’t go expecting it to be good.
You go hoping it’ll be so bad that it’s awesome fun, that the filmmakers and the audience will be in on the joke just as much as you are, and that you won’t regret the past two hours when the lights go up. (You know, like The Expendables or Snakes on a Plane.)
Unfortunately, Piranha 3D is just bad. (Keep your “I told you so”s to yourself, please.)
It’s not funny, it’s not silly enough, it’s misogynistic, sexist, gratuitous, ridiculous (not in a good way), and it features some truly bad special effects and lots of unnecessary 3D. Continue reading
You might think that after seeing a movie called Eat Pray Love, that I’d want to do one of the above.
Or, that maybe I’d want to hop online and plan a trip to Italy, India, or Bali.
But that would imply that said movie was any good, and portrayed the activities of the title and showed the places where they’re undertaken in attractive, tourist-friendly ways.
Unfortunately, EPL is not the kind of movie that would inspire such a reaction. Continue reading
The first five minutes of The Expendables tell you everything you need to know about the movie: A group of mercenaries bust up a kidnapping aboard an ocean vessel not by killing the pirates, but by destroying them. The mercenaries’ firepower is just too robust for the pirates’ bodies, and the kidnappers explode in blood and guts. The audience erupts in cheers and applause, and we’re off and running. (Actually, at the screening I was at, people were cheering from the second Sylvester Stallone’s name first appeared on screen.) Awwwww yeah!
Yes, The Expendables is that kind of movie. It is to action flicks what the Oceans series was to heist films: That is to say, it boasts an all-star cast (Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crewes, Steve Austin, Dolph Lundgren, etc.) and it’s great fun. But whereas the Oceans films were big on style, The Expendables is big on, well, size. There’s a ton of explosions, a ton of action, a ton of muscle and testosterone. The plot’s nothing to get excited about — really, it’s just an excuse to get these guys all together blowin’ sh!t up — and neither is the screenplay. But if you go to the theater simply expecting a good time, then you won’t be disappointed. Nearly every member of the cast gets his image tweaked (including the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who joins with Bruce Willis for a quick cameo), people get beaten up and blown away in increasingly more amusing ways, and 110 minutes later, you walk away with a big smile on your face.
Dismiss it as a big, loud summer action film if you will, but don’t deny that The Expendables is one of the more enjoyable movies of the season so far. I’m giving it a B+.
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