Taken

In the movie Taken, Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills who is a retired special ops agent who's daughter is kidnapped by a human trafficking and prostitution ring while she is visiting Paris. He is forced to put his skills into action as he attempts to locate and rescue her before a 96 hour window closes. Since much of this movie takes place in France it has the same European feel as the Bourne series. I also could have sworn it had the exact same sound track during the many action scenes.

If you like seeing middle aged men beat the crap out of bad guys then this movie is for you. It is very intense and violent and it has been quite a while since I found myself so riveted to a movie. This was written by Luc Beeson but has a much more realistic feel to it than his Transporter movies. There is the obligatory inability of bad guys to shoot the hero at close range with machine guns, but I have given up on this criticism since almost every action movie I have ever seen if guilty of it.

Maggie Grace was very convincing as the clueless 17 year old daughter, but Liam Neeson steals the show. During some moments he is cool headed and calm as Quigon Jin, but at other times he unleashes his fury in a precise and controlled fashion. The main thing I learned from watching this movie is that you don't mess with Liam Neeson's daughter. I could relate to his vengeful anger. He gives John McClane, Jason Bourne, and Jack Bauer, a run for their money This was one of the better movies I have seen in a while. I give it 8.2 out of 10 stars.

Old Movie Review: “Jaws”

(Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a Peter Benchley novel)

I saw the movie “Jaws” a couple of nights ago. It was the first time I’d watched it beginning to end in years. The first time I saw it I was in 1975. I was 9 years old and I stood in a line with my folks and 7-year-old brother that stretched around the block of the theater. It was the movie everyone saw that summer and everyone talked about, and it spawned the summer blockbuster. (Caution: more fish metaphors ahead.)

Even if you haven’t seen it, you probably know the plot: a 25-foot great white shark menaces a New England island resort during the peak fourth-of-July tourist season. (Are you sure you want to go to the beach this summer?) You probably also know the iconic scene of fisherman Quint (played by Richard Shaw) scraping his fingernails across the chalkboard to get the attention of the squabbling town folk and the unforgettable duh-dun duh-dun dudududu music that cues the shark.

It doesn’t take much for director Steven Spielberg to hook the audience on the story and reel them in. Suspending disbelief is easy because everyone knows that sharks do, on occasion, attack ocean swimmers and surfers. (Hey, what was that touching your leg in the water? A rope of seaweed? A jellyfish? A shark fin?)

The story is more than a two-hour feeding frenzy. A new sheriff fresh from New York City confronts an entrenched town council more concerned with making money over the July 4th holiday than the safety of the mainland tourists descending on the island. Trying to do the right thing when you are a fish out of water isn’t easy. Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) is swimming upstream; the mayor wants to keep the shark attacks quiet; no one wants to starve in the winter because the tourists stayed away all summer.

Yet Brody persists and Spielberg builds the suspense. Brody calls in a nerdy shark specialist, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and hires Quint to track down the shark and kill it. During the voyage, and while the shark stalks the three men, Quint captivates Brody and Hooper with his gruesome, first-hand account of sharks devouring his crewmates of the sinking U.S.S. Indianapolis, the ship that delivered parts for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. It is as spooky as any ghost story you’ve ever heard and all the more frightening because it is true.

Stomach-churning gore is kept to a minimum. Spielberg accomplishes the storytelling mostly by hinting at the shark’s location and through the controlled terror of Brody, Hooper, and Quint struggling to keep a leaky boat operational long enough to kill the monstrous predator before it kills them.

I’m sure part of why I like the movie is remembering the experience of seeing it for the first time, but if you like suspense or Spielberg, you’ll likely enjoy it, too. Put it in your cue, if you’ve got one, or find it on HBO during the month of February 2009.

The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck

Just a little warning that this is a SPOILER REVIEW!

If you think there is any remote possibility that you will ever, at any point in your life, read this book, please stop reading IMMEDIATELY!

There.  Now I don’t have to feel guilty.  You’ve been adequately warned.

 Let me just start by saying that this was my first exposure to Glenn Beck.  I’m not even really sure what I’ve heard about him, except that he seems to appeal, on purpose, to LDS audiences.  I got the book for Christmas and thought it looked like something I might actually make it to the end of, so I read it.

First of all, there are about 500 blurbs all over the book that tell you what it’s going to be about.  Eddie wants a bike for Christmas.  Eddie gets an ugly sweater instead.  Eddie is mad and his life is somehow changed forever.  So, the fact that I was told this scenario 500 times before I started reading made the first….oh, about 50 pages really boring.  It wasn’t until after he got the sweater that I actually became somewhat interested in what happens next.

Second observation: Glenn Beck’s writing style is really repetitive.  There is a flashback on every page.  No, that’s not an exaggeration.  Granted, he’s trying to tell a story by describing what Eddie’s life was like before THE CHRISTMAS SWEATER.  But, I’m pretty sure that a mark of a good writer (which I do not claim to be) is to vary the style or at least write in a way that is not a distraction.  I was distracted many times by the constant flashbacks.

 Then there was the resolution.  

Excuse me while I flashback here for a minute.  Any time I start to read a book, my husband, Weston, finds it and reads it all the way through before I do.  He read this one in about an hour.

When I got about three-fourths of the way through I started to wonder how this story was possibly going to resolve in any satisfying way.  I don’t like sad endings.  Neither, I suppose, does Glenn Beck’s audience at large.  I wondered out loud to Weston: 

“How is he going to resolve this?”

This was followed by my husband trying to tell me that Eddie gets involved with drugs.  And he reiterated the fact that the book is intended to be something of an autobiography, and Mr. Beck was apparently involved with drugs.  I didn’t believe him.  And he was totally lying, anyway.

Then I said, with sarcasm oozing out of every breath:

“I suppose he’ll get to the end and wake up and realize it was all just a bad dream.”

Silence from Weston.  But he gave me enough of an unassuming smile that he didn’t give away the fact that I was right.

I WAS RIGHT!!!!

I was totally kidding.  To me, that is the archetypical cop-out ending.  You just DON’T write a story and have it resolve with the main character waking up from a bad dream.  You just don’t.

Well, I guess it’s not so bad when you read the epilogue and realize that the entire book was written for the purpose of Mr. Beck trying to find another outlet to describe a vivid dream he once had.

Still…..anyone want a copy of The Christmas Sweater?

The Transporter 3

I liked the first Transporter movie. The second one was almost like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Within the first few minutes I realized I would have to suspend my sense of reality and turn off my "that's totally fake" meter if I was going to enjoy the movie. I had to accept the fact that wooden doors can shield you against close range machine guns, and if a speeding jet crashes into the ocean you will only get wet. Once I made these adjustments I was able to enjoy it as a fun and mindless action movie. The third movie continued with this same trend as the second.

I was anticipating a movie full of totally fake stunts and I was right. Even Stratham's car window healed itself after he did a flying dragon jump through the glass and kicks a bad guy out the other side of the car. I'm not going to pick apart all the goofs in this movie, I understand it is stylized and has Luc Beeson written all over it so I will stop criticizing the fakeness of it now and move onto different criticisms.

I like Jason Stratham, but is he trying to overtake Matthew McConaughey's coveted position as king of the shirtless scenes? There were four or five scenes where he took his shirt off in the movie. Oh that's right, he has to out of necessity, because he uses his shirt as a weapon when he fights. My bad. Another pattern I've noticed is that he keeps getting put with unknown female leads or newcomers in these movies. The Ukranian chick in this movie played by Natalya Rudakova bugged me. There are plenty of beautiful women in the world to choose from, so why was she picked? She reminded me of Jar Jar Binks each time she'd open her mouth. I was seriously just waiting for her to say "Meessa luva you" at some point.

This movie has an exciting premise and I enjoyed the action, but I missed the humor of the prior movies. I only give it 5.9 out of 10 stars since it was the weakest of the three in the series. If you are a woman you can go ahead and take 2 more points off that rating. That being said, if The Transporter 4 ever comes out I will gladly go see it at the dollar theater with the guys.

Coldplay "Glass of Water"

This is a great song. I don't think I could ever get sick of it. The lyrics might not make perfect literal sense when you read through them, but that's great because then they might mean something different to you each time you listen to it. Actually, maybe you shouldn't read the lyrics the first time you listen to it.

Also (speaking as a musician, or a musical snob as my hubby likes to call us) I think this song is musically stimulating. More so than...a lot of songs. (You know how some pop/rock songs make you want to bang your head against a wall because they're so repetitive and numbing? Okay, so maybe that doesn't happen to you.) Anyway, you've got to check this song out. It's on the player to the right. Great lyrics, great music.... love it.

Glass of Water Lyrics:
Scared of losing all the time
He wrote it in a letter
He was a friend of mine

He heard you could see your future
Inside a glass of water
The ripples and the lines
And he asked
Would I see heaven in mine?

That is just the way it was
Nothing could be better
And nothing ever was

Oh they say you can see your future
Inside a glass of water
The riddles and the rhymes
Will I see heaven in mine?
Oh Oh Oh Oh I

Son, don't ask
Neither half full or empty is the glass
Cling to the mast
Spend your whole life living in the past
Going nowhere fast

So he wrote it on a wall
The hollowest of halos
Is no halo at all
Televisions selling plastic figurines of leaders
Saying nothing at all
And you chime
Stars in heaven align
Ohhhhhhhh I

Son, don't ask
Neither half full or empty is the glass
Cling to the mast
Spend your whole life living in the past
Going nowhere fast

What are we drinking when we’re done?
Glasses of water