Golden Age

The Golden Age of Hollywood wasn't so golden for it's stars.  It was rough.  But it was an age of great movies and actors.  Rock Hudson is someone I didn't know much about until news of his contracting AIDS came around when I was 14.  All the Heaven Allows:  a Biography of Rock Hudson was a fascinating read from start to finish.  I like this man.  Highly recommended for anyone interested in Hollywood's great stars, Hudson or just a great biography. 

Incredible

The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction was not INCREDIBLE as in 5 Star, but it was good.  I enjoyed it because I really resonated with Laura's worry about the nuclear war.  I was 13 in 1984 and she is 16 (although she does seem a lot younger than 16 in some ways, but it might just the narrator).  I remember the fear!  I remember talking to my dad about it all.  I remember War Games and I remember learning about MAD and I remember the Doomsday Clock but most of all, I Remember...Mama.  I AM SO POP CULTURE HIP! 

Ahem.

Anyway...I liked this.  It was weird and a little hard to follow on audio and I would like to see the book to see how it is laid out, but it was enjoyable.  I just don't know how enjoyable it would be for someone who did not live through the 40s, wait, I mean the 80s! 

Hilarious!

Being so behind the times, I didn't know who Tiffany Haddish was when this book, The Last Black Unicorn was recommended to me.  This is NO reflection upon Tiffany Haddish, as you know, I am the person who said last year, "The kids were so excited, it was as if Peggy Lee had walked into school." The point is that even if you live in 1954 like I do, you will love TLBU.  This book was laugh out loud funny.  Excellent read!  AND if you get the audiobook, listen to the song at the end!  AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One Day

LBGTQIA relationships will be written about like this.  You know, where the LBGTQIA part of it is not THE part of it.  Where it is just part of who the characters are.  Where all will realize that love is love is love is love.
Everything a Leads to You was just a really, really, really good story and love story.  Really liked this a lot.

Jonathan Stride

is one of those real characters.  I mean, the guy has made mistakes.  He is human.  I love him.  I also love the series because it is set in Duluth, of course!  Alter Ego was very good and it completely kept me guessing.  Great characters and a truly great mystery here.  If you haven't read a Brian Freeman book, I feel envious because now you MUST read them and you will love every minute of it. 

Twinkle, Twinkle, She's a Star

From Twinkle, with Love was super enjoyable!  While this doesn't take place in the summer, it is a great book to read if one is looking for a summer romance.  It's light, but not stupid.  Sandhya Menon also wrote When Dimple Met Rishi which I read last year when we were on vacation in Salt Lake City.  So almost a year ago!  Too bad there is a good chance I will have to wait another year for another book from Menon! 

Tom Petty

I bet I am not the only one (of a certain age) who hears Tom Petty singing when he or she thinks of this book.  American Girls is on some Printz buzz lists.
I did like this book.  I gave it four stars which probably isn't fair.  I mean, if it wasn't getting Printz buzz, I probably would have given it five, it was just that I am not that completely excited about it.
I did learn a lot about the Manson family, though.  And it was very different to actually think of the people who committed those crimes as people themselves.  And I think it is very thoughtful and thought-provoking.  I also liked that Anna's new stepmom is married to Anna's mom!  All kinds of love, all kinds of families!
I did love the very real relationship between Anna and her sister.  And I also thought the characters were very, very real and deep.  Good, good book.  Very good and well worth the read and I will recommend it.  But I don't know if it is THE Printz.

More LBGTQNTSB

I can never get the LBGTQ thing right.  I always mix up the letters!  And "Q" is kinda new, isn't it? And I hear there are even more letters that people are wanting to put in, so that will confuse me even more!
Tim Federle has written another book about a LBGTQ kid, a G kid, more specifically.   He is the author of the Nate books, which I really enjoyed as well.  But this is way more than a G book.  This is also about loss, the loss of a sibling.  And about an absent father and about Pittsburgh and about friendship and about a lot of things, but not too many things to make it confusing.  This was just a thoroughly good book.  I am sure it would bother David Levithan though, because it is not very anti-fat!  Highly recommended.

A Sequel that Didn't Disappoint!

Not that I am usually disappointed by sequels.  In fact, I thought The Wind in the Door was even more amazing than A Wrinkle in Time.  And I thought that P.S. Be Eleven was just as amazing as One Crazy Summer!  But with movies, the sequel is usually a disappointment, especially with the ones that named as the original with "2" stuck on the end.  Now Playing:  Stoner and Spaz 2 has that title because movies play such a major part in the story, but this is definitely not just a "2." It's one of those second books that picks up right where the first one left off, and I had read Stoner and Spaz very recently, but I think that the story is so memorable, that even if you hadn't read them back to back, you would remember.  Trust me, once you read the first S and S, you will want to go immediately to this one and you will not regret it. Great stuff.

Stoner and Spaz

 Stoner and Spaz is the first book in maybe just a two book deal about a girl who is a "stoner" and a guy who refers to himself as a "spaz." And I didn't chose it because of the cover, because I can't quite figure out what that IS on the cover!  I picked it up because of Ron Koertge who wrote books I have very, very much enjoyed. And I did enjoy this one, very much, too!  Koertge must be brilliant. He sure writes like a genius.
Ben is a WASP who lives with his VERY WASPy grandmother and he also has CP and for that reason, he considers himself a "spaz" and has always been a loner.  One of his favorite things to do is go to an old fashioned movie theater and see old movie, by himself.  One night though the very controversial and very drug-addicted Colleen starts talking to him.  They start a complicated friendship.  What a great, great book.  I can't wait to read the second one.  It is set in LA, which always adds something awesome to a book.

Paranormal Sleep

The first three Paranormal Activity movies were awesome!  I loved them and they had some great, scary moments.  But PA4, really fell short on scares and on storyline.  We did see it at the drive-in, so that was cool, but it was pretty darn boring.  

Looper, on the other hand, was a nice surprise!  It was the second film at the drive-in and I had no idea what to expect, but it was a different and fast-moving and well acted!  So it was totally worth a trip to the drive-in!  I am starting to like the drive-in again, after having bad memories about it before, and keeping away from it for a long time.  But I am glad to be back to the drive-in!  

Scary Double Feature

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark confused us at first, but once we realized that Guy Pearce wasn't Mark Wahlberg we were left to just be confused about the rest of the movie. Which was a little confusing, but it was pretty good. The movie title is confusing, though, because I don't know how ANYONE couldn't be afraid of the dark if they were living this movie. The monsters, based on Arthur Machen's fairy creature-types can only be stopped by light and are pretty much free to maim and kill when it is dark. I didn't know who Arthur Machen was before this movie, I just wanted to say that. That last sentence made it seem like EVERYONE should know who Arthur Machen was. Maybe they should. But I didn't know who he was. I just wanted to be honest.

Sally is ten or eight years old and her mom has sent her to live with her dad and his new girlfriend. Dad and girlfriend are renovating the mansion of an artist who disappeared mysteriously many years before, but dad and girlfriend don't know that. Even though they are renovating the whole house, they don't know about the huge, secret basement until Sally finds it on her first full day there.

Once the basement is discovered the evil fairy dudes that feed on the teeth of children are full-on ready to get to Sally. No one believes Sally when she tells them about the dudes, but oh man, they eventually believe!

The movie was a little far-out there but it was beautifully filmed I thought. It was produced by the AMAZING Guillermo del Toro who also wrote the screenplay, so you know it is well worth watching. He's the executive producer of one of the best movies I've ever seen, The Orphanage. If you haven't seen that, you should probably see it right now!

Pre-creepy

I loved Paranormal Activity 1 and 2 but I never got to the movies to see PA3 because it came out right in the middle of haunted house season. As much as I love scary movies, I couldn't give up a night of haunting. FINALLY it came out on DVD last week and my buddies Sharon and Theresa and I watched it on Saturday. It was quite good! We all agreed that we'd like to see all three in the order in which they "happened" so that we can get the whole story. There's no gore in the PA series, but there is a lot of suspense and a lot of impending and full-on terror! This movie gives the back story to the first and second PAs, and explains why the demon(s) haunt these two, otherwise normal, sisters. A must-see if you enjoyed the first two movies. If you haven't seen them, I do think it would be cool to watch this one first, then 2, then the first, because then you'll be truly surprised. Not that knowing what is to come takes anything away from the scare-factor of the series, it is scary enough not matter what!

A Yawner and a Shameful Experience

Another pair of romantic comedies are playing at the drive in this weekend. Don't ask why I put myself through this because I don't know. The first one, The Back-Up Plan, staring Jennifer Lopez really isn't so bad yet. J-Lo is a woman who decides to get artificially inseminated because she believes she'll never find Mr. Right. Of course, as soon as she gets pregnant, she thinks she's found him. So far it is kinda cute even though the supporting characters are the typical cardboard characters a J-Lo is acting as the same character she has been in the past one million movies. One great thing about the movie is that Linda Lavin is J-Lo's grandmother! How cool is that! Okay so J-Lo just told the guy she's pregnant. He was so mean! I heard the guy in the next car say, "What an a--hole!" Whoever is with that guy in the next car should think about hanging on to him! That was a pretty cool reaction! Well now he just burped really loud so I'm guessing they are pretty serious or even married! Okay so now the couple is breaking up. Hmm...I wonder if they will get back together in the end, once they realize they really do love each other. Just once I'd like to see a realistic ending, like maybe they will realize they really aren't meant for each other- like 50% of couples do. I guess it would be good for me to put SPOILERS on this review, but come on, does anyone really expect a romantic comedy to NOT have a happy ending? Oh well yeah, so much for a spoiler. Yes, they got back together. Danger. Shark jumping zone.

Up next is Dear John. I know nothing about it but a couple is falling in love already and the guy is in the Army. Oh my gosh. After a quit Google search I have discovered that this is a Nicholas Sparks movie. I feel ill. There is nothing more I can say. This review is officially over.

At least it was only 6 bucks for both!

Don't you hate it when you see a movie preview then see the movie and realize that all of the funny stuff was given away in the preview? That is what happened in Date Night. I knew it was a romantic comedy but I went anyway. It was a pretty original, but it really wasn't that funny. Sure it had enough funny moments in it to fill the preview but that was about it. Everyone knows what 's about because the previews are on all the time, everywhere and they give the whole thing away. Skip the movie and youtube the preview. Then you've seen the best of it.
Watching Bounty Hunter now. It looks like Midnight Run redone. The bounty hunter guy, Milo, had this other guy after him in the first scene who looked just like Marvin Dorfler from Run. Okay so this might be a Run rip off, but it is a truly terrible one. I'm sorry I even mentioned Run in the same review. This movie isn't worthy of having it there. The only good thing about this movie is the music. Who doesn't love Sinatra's This Town? And Jerry Reed's She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft, well that song has always had special meaning for me. Again, like Date Night, it seems like the best parts were in the trailer. And also, It's Tricky! Wow!
Oh man this is bad. There are so many sharks in the water that have been jumped. I think this is some kind of record or something. I need to check on this.

Movies?

Yeah, why not? I wrote these while I was watching them at the Drive In.

So I figure since I am reviewing stuff, I might as well review movies as well. Right now I'm watching Hot Tub Time Machine at the drive-in. It's the story of three guys in their 40s who head back to the ski resort they visited when they were teens in the 80s. It is pretty funny so far, especially for someone who grew up in the 80s like me. It's definately not a family movie. There's a lot of sex and nudity and drug use. There's no romance at all so far, so that is great! The big problem the three friends face is that one of the guys, John Cusack, has brought his 20 year old nephew with him on the trip. He's gone back in time, too. If the guys don't do everything just as they did back in 1986, the nephew won't even be born! The guy so far are having a hard time recreating their past as it happened. Uh oh. Leave it to the John Cusack character to start up a romance. Ugh. Well it's not too bad yet. The movie almost over and so far, though it comes dangerously close with this weird theme of the 80s ski preps thinking that the time travelers are Soviet spies, it hasn't jumped the shark. And there it is! A good ending and not one shark was jumped! Now on to the second feature, the name of which I cannot recall!
Okay I have no idea what this movie is but its set in Pittsburgh! They are in the Warhol now!
Now they are talking about the Penguins!
There's the Mellon Arena! Okay I looked it up, it's called She's Out of My League and it is a romantic comedy but so far it is good! It's about this dopey sort of guy who is starting to date this really amazing girl. None of his friends think it will work out because she seems to be, well, out of his league. So far no shark jumping, although the lovely couple will probably break up and yes, probably get back together. Okay the movie jumped the shark with one of those 'catch the plane! We're really in love!' Moments, but still, all in all, good, funny and sweet movie and it was really nice to see Pittsburgh featured!