Month: August 2012

Movie Talk – Is Meryl Streep as good as the critics tell me she is?

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In the last two weeks I’ve watched two of Streep’s latest movies –It’s Complicated (2009) and Hope Springs (2012).  Both are romantic comedies (although I’m using the word comedy in connection to Hope Springs very lightly).  I’ve never considered her a favorite and I’ve never quite understood what all the fuss was about.  Am I in the minority here?

I think my favorite movie of hers is Silkwood. I loved her as Karen, a plant worker bucking the system.  I also liked her in The Devil Wears Prada and It’s Complicated.  I’ve seen some of her classics, like Sophie’s Choice and The Deer Hunter, and they were fine.  She’s also had a few clunkers like She-Devil and Hope Springs (IMO).  Maybe I just haven’t seen her in her best roles.  She’s been nominated for 17 Oscars so maybe longevity is part of her appeal.

So, do you consider Meryl Streep the best actress working today?  What is your favorite Streep movie? 

America, You Sexy Bitch by Michael Ian Black and Meghan McCain

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America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to FreedomAmerica, You Sexy Bitch. Finished 8-14-12, rating 2.75/5, political travelogue, 309 pages, pub. 2012

Michael Ian Black, 40-something happily married father of two, liberal atheist, former Power Ranger

Meghan McCain, 27-year-old MSBNC contributor who likes her guns and alcohol, Christian Republican, current daughter of Senator John McCain

How’d they meet? Twitter!  Late one night over a few tweets they decided to take a cross country trip to talk to real Americans.

Where’d they go? California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Washington DC, Connecticut

Who did they talk to? Strippers, Mormons, Katrina survivors, military, congressmen, Muslims, random folks

What did they talk about? Guns, religion, health care, government, war, military, drugs, gay marriage

Who drank the most? Meghan

Who did I agree with more (but not always)?  Michael.  His opinions actually came with explanation and nuance.  It may have been Meghan’s age, but her opinions came with attitude and there were many inconsistencies.

What were the good parts? I don’t know.  I learned a little about the Mormons and some of the drug testing the government is working on.

Coolest parts?  Because of the McCain name they had access to Fort Campbell and it’s training programs and access to Congressmen.

Bad parts?  They had a hard time explaining the book to people and that’s no surprise.  I read it and am still unsure about the point.

Their conclusion?  Stereotypes are bad and opposites in the voting booth can still be friends.

My conclusion? Although I enjoyed the idea and Michael’s take on their travels I can’t really see much reason for recommending it.  I didn’t like the first half but the second half was better.  The less drinking, the better the writing.

I received this book from Mandy at The Well-Read Wife for her first ever book club.  I posted two earlier discussion posts (1 & 2) and if you want to find out what the rest of the 49 people in the book club are saying about it click here.

Thank you so much Mandy for inviting me to be a part of it!

Bouchercon 2012 – Cleveland Rocks – Wanna Come?

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Bouchercon is the World Mystery Convention.

“is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization which holds an annual convention in honor of Anthony Boucher, the distinguished mystery fiction critic, editor and author. It is the world’s premier event bringing together all parts of the mystery and crime fiction community, and is commonly referred to as Bouchercon. [bough’·chur·con]

Boucercon 2012 is in Cleveland!  It’s October 4-7 with the opening night event held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I admit that I didn’t even know about this convention before I saw that it was here but now I am psyched!

Here’s the list of authors that will be attending and handling the panels (although that info isn’t available yet).  Here are just a few of those I’m most excited about…

Linwood Barclay, Chelsea Cain, Lee Child, Mary Higgins Clark, John Connolly, Gillian Flynn, Heather Graham, Charlaine Harris, the list goes on and on.

It’s pricey at $175 BUT if you can get yourself here I can hook you up with a place to stay.  As long as you’re willing to give Gage a few hugs, put up with our furry kids, and be willing to carpool with me 25 minutes twice a day.  We have room for more than one 🙂

If you are going ot attend let me know so that we can meet up at some point.  I’m sure you’ll hear me talking more about this later.

Sundays with Gage – A day at the zoo? yawn

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This photo sums up Gage’s first trip to the zoo.  Ehh.  The Cleveland Zoo is free on Mondays so we thought it was a good day to try it.  We had NO IDEA how many families take advantage of this free fun.  It was raining strollers in there.  Gage was fine as long as he was running wild and free, but once we put him in his stroller (for everyone’s safety-the boy is fast) he was not happy.

He did get to visit the petting zoo, but again running wild and free straight for a donkey got him snatched up by mom pretty quick.

So, it may be next year before we try the zoo again.  But, hey, at least it didn’t cost anything 🙂

This zoo had a lot of pink flamingos and they looked like cotton candy on a stick.  I usually like the penguins or bears best, both of which we missed out on this time.

Do you have a favorite animal at the zoo?

The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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The Great EscapeFinished 8-8-12, rating 3.5/5, romance, 418 pages, pub. 2012

I’m counting this as stop 5 1/2 on my Ohio tour since Susan spent time living in Ohio when she was first married (I think her husband might even be an Ohio State grad) 🙂

Lucy Jorik’s story has been told by Phillips in First Lady and last year’s Call Me Irresistable.  This time around she gets her own book.  What happened when she walked out of her wedding to the perfect man and jumped on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle?  It’s not easy for the daughter of the first woman President of the United States to disappear, but with Panda’s help she manages to do just that.

Lucy was a runaway child forced to take care of her sister in First Lady and a runaway bride in Call Me Irresistable but in this one she was more like a lost child instead of a 31 year-old woman of the world.  There was also a secondary story about redemption that was sweet and even a third story involving being happy with who you are.  All enjoyable, but maybe not all were needed.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is one of a handful of authors that I buy in hardcover.  I look forward to her wit and sass and characters with hot chemistry.   I liked Lucy, Panda and the surrounding characters on Charity Island, but none of them really had me wanting to read faster.  I did love the ending so that was a saving grace for me.  The story was fine, but I was expecting more because I usually love her books so much.

A nice escape to Michigan’s ‘Charity Island’.  My favorite part was the island iteself.  It reminds me of the island we go to every summer, but ours in in Ohio.

Bought this one for my personal library. And I’ll be buying the next one in hardcover too!  She’s still a go-to author.

Quiz winners and stuff

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The second round of 2012 quizzes has come to an end with a result that will surprise no one 🙂  With an almost 200 point lead over her stiffest competition, NISE (Under the Boardwalk) prevails again as the winner!  Congratulations on winning a $46 B&N gift card!! 

Nise won $46 because 46 of you participated in the second round of quizzes.  I like to reward participation and I love when you all come by and try your hand at my quizzes, SO Gage ‘chose’ a random winner for a special prize. He took his job very seriously.

And the winner is Staci (Life in the Thumb)!!!  Congratulations Staci!

I also want to send a special shout-out to Jill who went above and beyond a few weeks ago. Post here. Isn’t she awesome?

Thank you all for coming by every Tuesday and playing along with me.  I hope you will continue to do so when new and improved quizzes return next month!  Tell your friends 🙂

Final leaderboard here. Last week’s sports quiz here.

 

Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon, TLC tour stop

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Let the Devil Sleep (Dave Gurney Series #3)Finished 8-6-12, rating 4/5, mystery/thriller, 448 pages, pub. 2012

Book 3 of the Dave Gurney series. (Book 1 – Think of a Number) (Book 2- Shut Your Eyes Tight)

Dave Gurney, highly decorated retired NYPD detective, is in a funk after his last encounter with a killer left him with both physical and mental scars.  When the reporter who helped catapult Gurney to detective stardom asks him to help her daughter with a project he said yes and that’s how he got involved in a 10 year old serial killer case gone cold.  The Good Shepherd killed 6 Mercedes drivers, all the same way, and then sent a manifesto to the police railing against greedy, moneyed folks.  When Gurney challenges the FBI’s handling of the case he immediately butts heads with Agent Trout, an FBI guy who could do some damage to Gurney’s life.

I love all three of the Dave Gurney books.  He is a complicated man who knows his strengths and weaknesses.  He is a great detective, an average husband, and a not-so-wonderful dad.  In the past two books Gurney’s relationship with his wife Madeleine added dimension to the man and in this one we get to see the dynamic between he and his son first-hand.  I loved it.  I hope we see more of his son in future books.

I was a lukewarm to the mystery at first, but it grew on me (much better than the cringe-inducing details of the second book).  There was a large cast of characters and lots of overlapping storylines, but they all revolved around the Good Shepherd case and Kim’s interviewing the families for RAM-TV, kind of a cross between Fox News and TMZ.  There was so much going on and I loved the fast pace of the book.  I will say that I did figure it out somewhere past the halfway mark, well, I had two theories and one was correct 🙂  I wish there had been a little more wrapping up of some of the storylines at the end, but that in no way took away from my enjoyment.  I love this series and highly recommend it.

I received this as part of the TLC Book Tour.  Thanks for the book!  Check out what everyone else had to say…

John Verdon’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Tuesday, July 24th:  Wordsmithonia
Wednesday, July 25th:  Jenny Loves to Read
Thursday, July 26th:  Jen’s Book Thoughts
Monday, July 30th:  A Bookworm’s World
Tuesday, July 31st:  Sara’s Organized Chaos
Wednesday, August 1st:  Life in Review
Thursday, August 2nd:  Colloquium
Monday, August 6th:  Booklover Book Reviews
Tuesday, August 7th:  Stacy’s Books
Wednesday, August 8th:  Book Addict Katie
Thursday, August 9th:  House of Crime and Mystery
Monday, August 13th:  Crime Fiction Lover
Tuesday, August 14th:  A Novel Source
Wednesday, August 15th:  Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White
Thursday, August 16th:  Bewitched Bookworms
Monday, August 20th:  Girls Just Reading
Wednesday, August 22nd:  Thoughts of Joy
Monday, August 27th:  Musings of a Bookish Kitty

Sundays with Gage – the Beach edition

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Jason and I have lived in Cleveland for 12 years and we’ve never visited a Cleveland beach.  We visit Kelley’s Island every summer and that’s Lake Erie, but it’s also over an hour from Cleveland.  It was beautiful day yesterday so we trekked to Edgewater Beach (about 30 minutes away) and let Gage have some fun.  My favorite is the last one.  No child was injured during this photo shoot 🙂

America, You Sexy B, discussion two

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Mandy (The Well-Read Wife) started a book club and I am happy to participate in reading the book America, You Sexy Bitch by Michael Ian Black And Meghan McCain.  Here’s a link to my first discussion post and here’s one to the discussion over at Mandy’s.  I’m going to list all of Mandy’s questions just to give you a sense of the book but I’m only going to answer 5.

The following questions cover pages 32 – 134 of the book:

  1. In the Las Vegas chapter Michael and Meghan tour the Zappos headquarters.Would you like to work there? Why? Why not?
  2. While in Vegas Micheal, Meghan, and co. go on a strip club tour of Vegas. Michael points out that in Vegas exotic dancers actually pay a fee to the clubs where they work for the opportunity to dance at the clubs. What do you think of this system?
  3. What did you think of Michael’s sneak attack lap dance from Phoenix?  Gross.  As was Meghan’s obsession with getting a married man and father of two out of his comfort zone by buying lap dances for him. 
  4. Towards the end of the Vegas chapter Meghan writes: “”would it be necessary for strip clubs to even exist if there were less rampant repression in this country?” Sexual repression in the U.S., thoughts? 
  5. In the Salt Lake City chapter Michael writes the following: “I would prefer that my political leaders practiced their religion however they see fit in private and shut the hell up about it in public.” Agree? Disagree?  I don’t have a problem with politicians talking about their faith, it does speak about the person they are and we all want to know who we’re getting.  I have a huge problem with the way that churches are preaching politics from the pulpit.  Preach your beliefs and let the people figure it out for themselves.  God gave us all free will.  Encouraging congregations to buy chicken sandwiches to ‘vote’ makes me sad.
  6. In the Austin chapter Meghan’s friend Cargill calls himself a philosophical Republican and says that he does not support any of the current Republican candidates. Cargill remarks that he will probably vote for the president in the next election. Michael writes. “Yet he would never call himself a Democrat.” Do you agree with Michael that people are afraid of being labeled a “liberal” or a “Democrat”? Do you think people are also just as afraid of being labeled “conservative”?  I find the way that those on the right side (and Fox News) spit out the word liberal disconcerting.  It’s like it’s a bad word or something. I don’t get it.
  7. Cousin John. Discuss.
  8. In New Orleans, Meghan and Michael argue about health care. Whose side are you on? Meghan? Michael? Neither?  Their ‘argument’ wasn’t really a reasoned discussion.  Meghan stomped off when she couldn’t get Michael to agree with her.  This happened a lot.
  9. Meghan and Michael smoke marijuana during one of their nights out in New Orleans. Meghan even writes that she believes marijuana should be legal. Do you agree? Disagree?
  10. Were you surprised that Meghan, a Republican thinks marijuana should be legalized?  This issue never really seemed like a partisan one to me, so no.
  11. What are your thoughts concerning the section in the New Orleans chapter where Meghan writes about her tour of the Lower Ninth Ward?

July’s 5 Word Movie Reviews – Join in and win $ for Charity

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Jason’s reign as theater king as ended.  He chose 5 movies per his March Madness win so the next one is mine.  Any good romantic comedies coming out?

Every time you add 5 words of your own to one of my reviews then you donate $1 to charity.  What charity, you ask?  The charity is chosen by the person who has the most reviews once we reach 100. (Last charity here)  PLEASE leave a clear 5 word comment so I can give credit for it.

You can add reviews to any of my past movie posts AND see who is in the contributing lead here.

Dark knight rises poster.jpgBatman Dark Knight Rises, 2012 (Cast-Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph-Gordon-Levitt)   Grade B

Very Dark But Satisfying Conclusion

Totally epic loved every minute (Teddyree)

Amazing ending to fave series. (Kay)

 Intense, dark, fitting series end.  (Heather)

Tom Hardy outsmarts a gag.  (Tony)

War and Peace, 1956 (Cast-Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Mel Ferrer)   Grade C+

Better Choice to Read Book.

Ted, 2012 (cast-Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis)    Grade D

Druggie Teddy Bear Funny? Nope.

 The best part was trailer. (Kathy)

Great Animation. Amusing but vulgar. (Leslie)

I am Number Four, 2011 (Cast-Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Teresa Palmer)                   Grade D

Tiresome, Laughable and For Teens.

Save money read the book (Teddyree)

Just another lame fantasy movie.  (Heather)