The Lego Movie (Review)

The Lego Movie is one of the most ambitious films I’ve seen in awhile, and it delivers on the promise of a lot of laughs. It’s a dystopian sci-fi movie, a Western extravaganza, a good old fashioned romance, and just plain funny. The ‘funny’ part cannot be understated.

The beginning starts off a bit awkward. It was focused on showing how completely all the citizens were being manipulated, and that even among all these blank slates, the main character is even blanker. 

Chris Pratt voices the main character, Emmet Brickowoski. He’s a regular construction worker whose favorite song is Everything Is Awesome, just like everybody else. 

Chris Pratt manages a fine performance in the portrayal of the blank hero. He does a believable job of an Everyman, but manages to avoid sounding dull or fake throughout the entire film.

The beginning may not be funny, but it’s the setup for a lot of great lines. After five hours of singing his favorite song, Emmet hears a strange noise, and he goes in search for said noise. He finds a hooded individual, and consults a manual telling him that he should report any mysterious people. He’s about to sate his intentions when the hooded individual removes the hood, and exaggerated slow motion ensues as Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) shakes her hand to straighten her head. 

Elizabeth Banks delivers a great performance in the “insecure” Master Builder with the name of a DJ.

She leaves, and when he tries to follow her, he falls into a ditch. He sees a strange object, and slowly moves to touch it. Below him, we can see the page in the manual specifically advising against such a thing, but completely entranced, he grabs unto it. 

Different images intercut together follow, and he’s woken up by a gruff Liam Neeson playing the Bad Cop who is in the middle of interrogating him, apparently.

Emmet points out that he is a real expert from watching cop shows, and notes the absence of a Good Cop. Bad Cop then swivels his head, and the “Aww-shucks” Good Cop appears. This is an example of the directors (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – the makers of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) using their subject matter to its utmost advantage. Sure, it’s not the most innovative thing in the movie, but it was a nice touch. It showed self awareness that these characters were all legos, and that unlike with a lot of toys, you can do plenty of different things with them.

The interrogation is interrupted when Wyldstyle rescues Emmet, and tells him about a prophesy naming him as the Greatest, Most Talented, Most Specialest Person Ever. Yeah. At least they aren’t simply using the Chosen One, I guess… There’s a really cool chase with Emmet and Wildstyle on a makeshift motorcycle while cars and helicopters tail them.

The action sequences in this film are really good. There are a few issues here and there, such as the fact that certain characters move too fast. You get used to it, but it’s initially difficult to track them across the wide screen. (Especially if their attire blends into the background.)

They escape through a tunnel, and enter The Wild West. Apparently, there are other realms in the Lego World, and it was a real treat to see images of the actual box sets of the different “realms”. Ah, childhood. They track down Vitruvius, the blind Master Builder as portrayed by Morgan Freeman. 

Vitruvius feels like Morgan Freeman’s way of poking fun at his “wise, practically omnipotent” characters in the past. Shows that even someone with the perfect voice for narration can have a sense of humor.

They perform something similar to a Vulcan Mind Meld, and enter Emmet’s mind. Which is… completely blank. When asked to envision something he always thought was good, he conjures up an image of a Bunkbed Couch. Wyldstyle promptly tells him that it’s a bad idea, but Vitruvius interrupts her. 

Instead of saying that it’s just an abstract idea, he actually says much harsher words than her, calling it the worst idea ever. I’ll stop describing everything in detail here. I just felt it was necessary to describe the beginning because the potential for so much more is apparent from just these scenes. Don’t even get me started on the rest of the movie. (Unless you REALLY want to, because I’ll be happy to oblige.)

The villain is portrayed by Will Ferrel. I don’t how he does it, but he can mispronounce the most simple words, and make it seem completely unintentional and natural. He does it in such a convincing way that when he calls a Nail Polish a “Na-eel”, it seems completely normal. You begin to start asking yourself the question, “Why would I think he’d pronounce it that way?”

As he’s shown in Megamind, Will Ferrel can play a really funny, great sympathetic villain.

He is President Business, and he wants to use the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with the Z, Y, and U scratched off) to permanently keep everything in place. He wants to bring order into chaos. Honestly, it’s a rather good evil plot. To demonstrate this to Bad Cop, he uses the Kragle to glue the feet of Bad Cop’s parents. When prompted to glue them completely, the Good Cop refuses to do so, and that’s when his face is brutally erased. 

The Lego Movie, on the story and characters alone, would be considered imaginative and creative. However, it took it to a different level with their use of stop motion animation (probably thanks to their recruitment of Robot Chicken veteran, Chris McKay), and other cool stuff that I won’t spoil. 

Considering the reception Ben Affleck received, Warner Bros. might want to consider Will Arnett as a replacement.

At the end of the day, this movie is funny, charming, and something that the whole family will enjoy. Sure, the parents will have to deal with being pestered to buy more legos, but that’s a risk they’ll have to take for some really good entertainment. Frozen deservedly received a lot of fans and critical acclaim, and the Lego Movie feels like a fitting followup to that great animated movie. 

I think that children should have more movies like the Lego Movie and Frozen, and that’ll only happen if we make the effort to tell people to watch them. (Although, at this point, Lego Movie and Frozen are huge successes. And Lego Movie isn’t even out of the theatres yet…)

Watch this for the quirky characters (Unikitty. All I’m saying), the hilarious superheroes (the love/hate relationship between Superman and Green Lantern, the brooding artist that is Batman), and legos. Watch it for those reasons, and you won’t regret it.

4.5 out of 6

American Hustle (Movie Review)

 

American Hustle is David O. Russell’s newest movie, and stars Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jeremy Renner. It is a movie about two con artists (Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld and Amy Adams as Sydney Prosser) who are forced by Detective Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to help him catch other criminals in the act of bribery. The plot is actually a lot more complicated than that, made all the more complicated by the eccentric characters which populate the movie. 

Let’s talk about the characters, then. Christian Bale has always dedicated himself to his movies… to the point that it’s rather unhealthy. In the Machinist, he lost sixty pounds for the role, and then gained it all back within a year for Batman Begins. 

Yeah, looks pretty drastic to me. In American Hustle, he’s taken to gaining a lot of weight. And unlike in Batman Begins, he did not use that weight to build muscle. That isn’t the only thing he does in this movie, of course, and his acting here is just amazing. Sure, it can feel a bit fake at certain points in the movie (mostly during the beginning), but you’ll forget all about that when you watch a scene of his with Jennifer Lawrence, who plays his crazy wife. 

I know, people overuse that word nowadays. But she is crazy, and Jennifer Lawrence pulls it off magnificently. It’s so believable, which is why Christian Bale’s performance is enhanced whenever they’re in a scene together. It’s hard not to believe that this woman isn’t nuts, so his own reactions seem authentic and… rather comical with a dramatic overtone. 

You’ll know what I mean when you watch it. Let me talk about the plot again for a moment. The movie begins with Christian Bale making an elaborate combover, and immediately throws you into the middle of a sting operation. Oh, and Bradley Cooper messes up Christian Bale’s combover.

 

David O. Russell is nothing, if not brave. It takes a lot of guts to just do that, and trust that whatever you’re watching is interesting enough that you don’t shrug and walk away. 

It’s here that you truly see Martin Scorsese’s influence on David O. Russell. The beginning reminds me of Goodfellas, although a lot funnier, and pop songs from the 70’s undercut a lot of emotional scenes. This can get a bit annoying, if I’m being honest. At times, it’s really awesome. Especially if you like the song, and think, “Exactly! That’s what I would’ve chosen!”

But, the soundtrack feels… impatient. There are plenty of scenes in the movie where you felt like an emotional punch was delivered to your gut, but the scene was disturbed by some obnoxious song. Why not let Amy Adams just act? The actors are too great to be dubbed over with music, and it brings me to my next point. American Hustle is entertaining, fast-paced, dramatic, and funny. 

And a little empty. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try to do my best. Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell’s previous directorial feature, was an amazing movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It was simple, really. It was about a guy that beat up his boss, who was having an affair with his wife. He gets out of a mental institution, and ends up training for a dance competition with a nymphomaniac. (In retrospect, it doesn’t sound that simple.) It also cost very little to make (especially in comparison to American Hustle’s budget), and garnered some awards. (Jennifer Lawrence got an Oscar for it.)

And it’s better than American Hustle. Yes, I normally like movies with some violence, some intrigue, and some con men. The Sting is one of my favorite movies of all time, but American Hustle just feels hollow in comparison to Silver Linings Playbook. I feel like David O. Russell was pressured to up the stakes, rightfully so. But the music, the unreliable narration, the elaborate outfits… They’re all supposed to be icing. They’re not supposed to make up the cake entirely. 

That isn’t to say that this isn’t incredibly entertaining. Like I said, the acting here is incredible. Bradley Cooper essentially plays the villain, and I’m not going to say: “But he makes you feel sorry for him.”

Not at all. He wasn’t written to be sympathetic, or even realistic. Almost none of these characters are realistic, but he plays his role with such relish and unpredictability that I can’t help but hope that he was the protagonist. Louie C.K. plays his superior in the movie, and you’ll see in their scenes together why I think that.

When Bradley Cooper asks for 2 million dollars, his boss tries to tell him an ice fishing story from his youth. He interrupts him halfway through, and guesses what the ending is. Flustered, his boss tells him that he’s wrong, and he doesn’t deserve to hear the story. Later on in the movie, Cooper asks Louie about the ice fishing story, and again, interrupts him to make up his own ending for the story. It tells you everything you need to know about this character. He’s a control freak, and with his fast-talking personality, he gets away with it most of the time. He can’t stand it when someone else is talking, and he tries to show that he’s smarter than everyone. 

If you’re looking for a sympathetic character, you could look to Jeremy Renner. His character is one of the more realistic portraits of the movie. He plays Mayor Carmine Polito, and Christian Bale is tasked with the difficult job of piling evidence against him to put him and his colleagues behind bars. He’s a corrupt politician, but he does what he does for the city of New Jersey. It made me think of something Christian Bale’s character said to Bradley Cooper. 

I’ll paraphrase, since my memory isn’t good enough that I can remember it perfectly. But, it went something along the lines of:

“The world isn’t black and white. It’s extremely grey.”

Pretty much every antihero in movie and television shares the same view (I do, as well), but I think what makes this morality speech stand out from most is that it doesn’t really refer to Bale. Or Adams. Or Lawrence and all the others. It refers to Carmine Polito. He’s a good guy that does illegal things for good. He’s a big slap to the face of Bale, and I thought it’s one of the smarter things in the movie. All these characters are grey, but Polito’s character is the only one that seems realistically so. 

That’s probably the downfall of this movie, but don’t let this movie’s little faults scare you away. It’s ridiculously entertaining, and I was laughing throughout the movie. If Cooper, Bale, Adams, and Lawrence win awards for it – I won’t be surprised in the least. They acted their asses off, and they deserve them.

But I just don’t think the movie really deserves any more awards than Silver Linings Playbook received.

~Jian

 

Saving Mr. Banks (Movie Review)

Saving Mr. Banks is amazing. I know that, as a reviewer, I should first summarize the whole thing for you, and then tell you my thoughts on it in a detailed and intelligent way. But, there’s just no denying that – for me – this movie is awesome. 

So, now that we have that out of the way, I’ll summarize the movie for you. Saving Mr. Banks is a behind-the-scenes biopic of how Mary Poppins was made. P.L. Travers (the great Emma Thompson), the author of the Mary Poppins books, received offers for the movie rights of her beloved books for twenty consecutive years until she was finally convinced by her agent to give Walt Disney (the brilliant Tom Hanks) a chance. That’s the basic plot of the movie, and with those two actors working together, it was already a guarantee for me that it’d be a great experience.

However, one of the biggest surprises was Colin Farrell’s performance as Travers Goff, P.L. Travers’ father. Her childhood is told in a series of flashbacks, normally starting when P.L. Travers is annoyed by a section of the script, and the flashback then shows why she’s annoyed with it. It’s pretty interesting, and it’s easier than some voiceover narration or a lengthy conversation where Emma Thompson is forced to explain every one of her choices. The rule, “Show, don’t tell,” was clearly taken to heart by the writers and director.

Back to Colin Farrell. I thought he was great in In Bruges, but it wasn’t one of those mind-blowing performances that you tell your friends about for months until they forcibly stop you from telling them any more. His performance in Saving Mr. Banks, however, is one of those performances. He plays an alcoholic that dotes on his daughters very much, but seems to be unable to escape the urge to drink. The character is both haunted and happy, angry and contemplative. 

There’s a great scene in the movie where his children are chasing a hen, and he tells them, jokingly, that it’s no hen. It’s their evil Aunt! Later, when he’s about to go to bed with his wife (Ruth Wilson, Luther), it’s revealed that she’s been pleading for him to let her ask her sister for help. There are a few more surprises in the movie, but I won’t spoil them for you.

Back to the present. (Or the 1960’s.) The first scene where Walt Disney appears in the movie is a favorite of mine. The scriptwriter, Don, tells Travers it’s not a good idea to call him Mr. Disney. He likes to be called Walt. Disney then rushes out of his office, and in the background, you can see an entire shelf of oscars, polished as can be. They go out of focus, and you see Tom Hanks’ best smile. 

I think it was then that Travers decided to do her best to make his life miserable. She calls him Mr. Disney, and continues to do so even though he keeps insisting he call her by his first name. In a masterful scene, Travers lists her demands, and you can see the look on Hanks’ face as she insults his life’s work. Tom Hanks version of Mr. Disney is very interesting. Unlike a lot of actors, he never overdoes it. When he becomes angry near the middle of the movie, you know it. But he doesn’t fly off the handle. After all, you don’t get your own theme park if you throw a temper tantrum every time someone is being unreasonable. 

Emma Thompson, however, has the most difficult role of all. She has to play a difficult, cold… hag. There’s really no other way to put it. I mean, even Emma Thompson admitted that Travers was a bit of a hag in an interview on Graham Norton. But, despite that, she manages to put a lot of heart into the performance. This is a woman that’s seen things, as a child, that she never should have seen.

As such, she spends her life writing books for children so they won’t have to see the horrible things around them. She uses the joy and wonder that she still possesses in her heart on her books, while putting on a facade of detachment and bitterness when interacting with other people. There’s a wonderful scene in the movie where she starts letting her guard down around her driver Ralph (Paul Giamatti). 

When she first met him, she made it very clear that she did not want to be there. When they see some beautiful scenery on the way to Walt Disney studios, Ralph cheerfully says: “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“If you like that sort of thing,” she replies promptly.

“Well, I do,” he says slightly crestfallen.

But he ends up her only friend, anyhow. I can talk for much longer about this movie, but to do so would mean telling you about some really interesting scenes and I want you to discover those scenes for yourself. The score is beautiful, and the main song is both happy and somber, just like Disney and Travers.

 

~J.A. Romano

Movie night!

Went to a movie theatre today, after ages of not seeing a movie on the big screen. Which is ironic since people say the biggest difference between movies and shows is: “the big screen” and the “small screen.”

What did I see, you may ask? I saw Warm Bodies. I was a big fan of the book, as I’ve said in a review. And I loved it. My sister and I kind of got annoyed at a few changes from the book. (THE MONSTERS!)

But it was still very good. I liked the ending. Of course, with the ending the way it was, it’s doubtful there will be a sequel. Fortunately, the author has said that there will be a definite sequel to his books. Whether or not there will be a movie sequel is unlikely, but hey. Who knows.

Ah, I really love watching movies in movie theaters. A lot of people think that just watching them on the computer is better. It’s not that watching new movies in the comfort of your own home isn’t good. It’s just that I have a bit of ADD. (More like a lot.)

I quickly pause movies if I have the option to do so, and forget to press play for the rest of the day. In movie theaters, I can’t stop watching. Some may say that the ability to stop a movie whenever you wish is a benefit… In which, I say, pick better movies. When I go to the movies, I make sure it’s the greatest movie ever.

Or at least very, very entertaining. It’s quite expensive, y’see. I think, however, that I’ve waited a long enough time since my last visit. I think it’s been six or seven months.

All in all, it was a great movie. Entertaining, funny, and all that. If anyone is afraid of it being a zombie equivalent of Twilight, I disagree. First of all, this was enjoyable to watch. Not in a, “THIS IS SO HORRIBLE THAT I AM LAUGHING” sort of way. This was very fun to watch.

You could draw some comparisons, of course, but it is head and shoulders above Twilight. So. If you want a romantic comedy/zombie horror flick… Here’s your movie.

 

This isn’t really a review of the movie… I’m just writing about how my day went. But, I guess, if I were pressed to give this a rating, it would have a solid 7.8.

It is a very good movie.

 

~J.A. Romano

Smash (Season 2 Premiere)

What? A man can’t review a show about singing anymore? Oh, you’ve never heard of this show? Well… It’s about this elite Navy SEAL team that sing while parachuting into hostile territory. Obviously, there are new characters each episode because they don’t last very long… seeing as how every enemy literally knows where they are because they’re singing Yellow Submarine while trying to rescue some PoWs.

Are there still PoWs?

-coughs-

Moving on. Smash made a big WAVE. Get the pun? Oh, damn. I meant SMASH. Yeah. It’s funny now.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825133/

There’s the IMDB page. It’s honestly one of my favorite shows. It’s completely manly, don’t worry. Steven Spielberg produces it. So, I have a perfectly good reason as to why I watch it. Loophole~

Anyways. You’re probably only reading this if you’ve watched the first season already and you’re wondering if season two is just as, if not more, good. I’ll start with the story. Slight spoilers, if you haven’t watched the entire first season.

Karen’s become ‘harder’ in a way, because of all the things Ivy had done in the first season that so affected her. In the previews, a lot of people mentioned how she seemed like a bit of a bitch. To be honest, I think it was the right and logical move. She started out a naive girl, and she’s simply become stronger. If your main competitor for the biggest role in the first musical you’ve ever been in slept with your fiancé, wouldn’t you be a bit of a bitch toward Ivy? You wouldn’t? Wow, you’re a really nice person…

Skip the last two sentences if you would. They’re for the good people reading this, not the…

Ahem. Moving on. Bombshell’s funds have been frozen because Eileen’s ex-husband exposed her boyfriend Nick’s sordid dealings. Apparently, he was a drug lord. Yeah. He’s not a very good one, to be honest. Ivy’s character has improved a lot, actually. She’s sympathetic, and she actually looks like she feels bad about what she’s done to Karen. She may even be likable.

The reviews have come in, and the critics loathe Julia’s (Debra Messing) writing, while loving her partner Tom’s musical numbers. To be fair, what can you do with a Marilyn Monroe story? It’s not really something you can make a comedy out of, and if you do make a drama out of it… Pretty much everyone already knows her story. (If everyone is an American Theatre critic, of course)

So, in all fairness, she’s doing the best with the cards she has been dealt with. There’re no scenes involving her son, by the way. I think the writers realized that they didn’t want to make her any less sympathetic by showing how bad of a mother she is… I mean, dude, she was part of a list called, ‘Television’s Top 10 Worst Mothers.” You would HAVE to be horrible to be on that list. One of the women on the list tried to kill her own son. So, yes. Horrible.

With Bombshell frozen in stasis, Karen ends up drinking at the local watering hole. Well, not really. In the words of one of the characters, “You’ve been watching your ice melt for the past twenty minutes.”

But anyways, she gets kicked out by a bartender after he gets her to sign a pamphlet from his collection of failed musicals. Yeah, I thought it was both inappropriate and amusing at the same time as well. She leaves, but returns because she forgot her phone. The first bartender (who was so rude to her near the beginning of the episode) is playing a song he wrote, and damn. It is good. He’s playing it on the piano. She calls Derek (or is it Derrick? I can never tell with the Brit spelling of things) and lets him listen to the song.

I won’t spoil the rest of the 1 hour episode (Yes, one hour), but you can imagine the drama and all that come after that. The show succeeds in putting the right amount of comedy, as well. It’s surprising, actually. Most shows I see either devote themselves completely to comedy or completely to drama. They’ve achieved the right balance considering the stuff they’ve been dealt with.

Now, the singing… I play the piano, and I like music. But I’m not a musical genius, or anything, so I can’t tell you if Karen was a bit flat thirty seconds into the song, or if Ivy was sharp at the one minute mark. By the way, those two musical terms are the only things I know.

I play the piano, but I didn’t really listen to all of that other stuff. Anyways. The music is honestly AWESOME. Love it. It’s not just the singing by the characters, even. In an earlier post, I talked about how old movies used music to enhance the apprehension of a character when a suspected murderer is climbing the stairs.

Smash uses it to lighten the mood, and it succeeds. It’s pretty awesome. I would watch it based on the music alone, honestly.

My sister doesn’t care for the show much… and I’m trying to convince my parents to disown her for her blaspheme. But, yeah. The show isn’t perfect. Some characters (Karen in season 1) were a bit daft here and there. It’s still a great show, though. Give it a shot.

To Smash fans feeling a bit hesitant about watching season 2, you will not be disappointed. It’s suuuuuper great.

If I were forced to give a rating to this show, it would have to be an 8.7/10. Pretty great.

 

Warm Bodies ( Book Review)

Here’s the synopsis of what I’m about to talk about:

R is a young man with an existential crisis–he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, noidentity, and no pulse, but he has dreams.

After experiencing a teenage boy’s memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and stragely sweet relationship with the victim’s human girlfriend. Julie is a blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead, and the blurry line in between.

Some of you may have heard of this upcoming zombie romance called Warm Bodies. Actually, in the U.S., it just came out yesterday. Unfortunately for the good people of whichever country I’m in, it will probably be a week or so before the theaters get the DvD and start rolling the tape. Do they still have tapes?

I did, however, go and read the book. Yup. Owned them. They thought they HAD me, they thought they were SO smart… Well. TAKE THAT. So, anyways. I read it yesterday, and I was a bit surprised.

I really liked it. Why am I surprised? Lately, I’ve been having trouble finding a good book that fits my current mood. Warm Bodies, incidentally, fit my mood. I mean. Let me tell you how I came upon the book. I was at the bookstore, and I picked up It, by Stephen King, The Walking Dead: Road to Woodbury, and Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. It and Road to Woodbury didn’t seem to fit my mood, but when  I started Warm Bodies, I couldn’t seem to stop. It was really good.

Interesting thing – for a romance… The protagonists are really not perfect. Of course, that’s already a given considering the male protagonist is a zombie… but the heroine is surprisingly unique and different. I’m not saying that’s really something new. It’s just that she wasn’t really emo or depressing. Most heroines are. Sad, but true.

The writing is actually pretty good. It’s told from the perspective of R, and it’s primarily first person perspective. Zombies, in this story, eat brains because they get to experience the emotions and memories of their victims. R happens to eat the brain of this soldier, and gets caught up in his memories of his ex-girlfriend, the heroine of the story.

The inner thoughts of R, the zombie, vary greatly from what he actually says. Zombies can barely get a few syllables out, but his ‘voice’ is surprisingly intelligent and interesting. This is a pretty adult book. I mean, considering the stuff the characters talk about, everything that’s happening… Yeah, I’d spoil it for you, but I’m told that’s not a reviewer’s deal-io.

Anyways. I’m actually worried about how the movie will handle this. The movie is PG-13, and the trailer already shows a lot of different stuff. That’s not necessarily bad, but like I said, the heroine is kind of… well, unique? Oh, that isn’t the word for it. I mean messed up. R – somewhere near a quarter through the book – notes she has scars on her wrists that could not have been accidents. She also used to do some pretty hard substances, etc.

Long story short, it’s stuff that PG-13 probably would not allow. Get my drift? I also notice that the narration has been sort of toned down in the trailer. I’m not saying I want R to narrate throughout the entire experience (Dear God, an entire movie of narration?), but I mean that his great knowledge of the English language is not so obvious. From the first four pages of the book, you immediately realize, “This guy was smart in his past life.”

From the trailer, you immediately think, “This guy was a stoner in his past life.”

Hey, we’ll see from the movie. I may even review that a bit. Anyways. This is a very good book. It’s rather short, but it’s lots of good fun. And fun’s always good. (Unless you hate fun… In which case, it’s always bad for you.)

I would suggest you read an excerpt of it, see if the style is to your liking. One thing I did not really care for where the memories of the guy R killed. I understand it delivered some more insight into the world, yeah, but the entire time… All I really wanted to do was get back to R and Julie’s story. I’m a bit of a romantic like that. I don’t want to read about the ex-boyfriend, I want to read about the New guy getting the girl.

THAT is how it should be done. But then again, they were still entertaining. Like I said, I’m just biased. You should also check out Isaac Marion’s blog. He’s a pretty funny dude.

http://burningbuilding.blogspot.co.at/

And in case any of you are wondering, I’m not really a fan of zombies. I just read horror because it makes me feel better. How? Well, if you read about how a world has just gotten overtaken by zombies, and how miserable everyone is… You find that the stuff happen to you is relatively… normal. And that is comforting. Get it?

Also, I don’t watch horror movies. Not normally. They scare the living ********************************************** out of me. That was censored by the Internet because it was just so heinous. It was also in a foreign language, making it even MORE HEINOUS. Yeah, I’m SCARY like that. So. Yeah… Read this book. It’s not really packed with gore or action like most zombie books… It’s pretty funny, though, and I have to say… After reading Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, I like Warm Bodies more.

Final verdict – it is an 8.1/10.

I give books a bigger rating when they manage to pack it with some awesome writing, great action scenes, and hilarious moments. That’s what counts in my book.

Oh. Someone I know suggested I should give Amazon links or something? I won’t link to Amazon, but I’ll just link to Goodreads.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7619057-warm-bodies

By the way, Stephanie Meyer reviewed this book. NO. DON’T LEAVE. WHY?! Seriously. Don’t get scared away by that if you’re not a fan of her. I didn’t really see her review (on the back of the book) and I only saw it after I’d finished. It didn’t really affect me. The only thing I thought was, “Damn, hope she finally learns how to write a good story after this…”

Doubtful, but I’m an optimist like that. So, don’t get scared away by stuff like that, and just enjoy the book. Yeah? All right. REEEEAD IT.

1600 Penn (Tv show review)

This is going to be a short review. 1600 Penn is a new comedy about the life of a White House family.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2266639/

I’m going to start with the bad things first. We don’t know (for sure) whether or not the President in this show is a Democrat or a Republican (not that it matters), or how long he’s been President.

His son, Skip, returns to the White House after seven years of college. This may just be references to the fact that he did visit the White House during his summer breaks, but if he was already living in the White House before he went to college, that would mean the President would be on his last year serving as President.

This may just be nitpicking to you, but I prefer having all of the information laid out. I’m also curious about the wife of the President (who is the stepmother to his four children). On Episode 3, the President reminisces with her about the time when she was campaigning for his governorship, and I wonder how long they’ve been married. A President who is a widower marries another woman at great cost. In the American President, starring Michael Douglas, there was a lot of insight as to how hard it is for a President to be single and ready to mingle.

Like I said, nitpicking, but I prefer to have all the information.

Unto the good stuff, now…

The show is damn good. It’s hilarious, and it features some fine acting. A lot of people don’t really think much of the acting of actors in comedies, but it takes a lot of work and talent to make your character’s witticisms seem natural. Josh Gad as Skip Gilchrist is impeccable. If the show were a car, he would be the engine. He brings life to the show.

That isn’t to say that the other characters are bland or too serious, but… He has a certain “spark”. -wink wink-

You’ll realize what I mean once you watch the first episode. I implore you to give this show a try. Why? The ratings are not good, although there are a lot of viewers online. What matters to the network, however, is television ratings. So, if you can, watch it on your Tv. If not, then just watch it online for the sake of laughing for twenty minutes straight.

See? I told you this would be short. Final verdict – 7/10

~J.A. Romano

 

P.S.: Just in case you have any ideas about it being bad because it’s in danger of cancellation… The pilot episode of Friends was almost shot down because one of the producers didn’t care for the concept. It’s been years since the finale, and people still watch Friends. I’m not saying they’re equal; just giving an example.

Firefly is the favorite show of almost every SFF fan, yet it was cancelled after thirteen episodes by Fox. The outcry by fans was big enough that a film called Serenity came out to tie up all the loose ends. Those are just a few examples of good and successful shows that were almost cancelled because of a few naysayers. Don’t let the naysayers affect your judgement. Don’t even let the yes-men (like me) affect your judgement. Just watch the show for yourself, and see if you agree with the naysayers or the handsome yes-men.