I hope you dine well tonight, Hitler. For soon, you shall die.

So hey, courtesy post.

Bridge to Terabithia
An excellent family film and had I children, I would most certainly take them to it, as it contains a message I think most children would benefit from. The ads make it look like a Narnia rip-off, but there's only about ten minutes of what the trailers show you. Faithful to the book, to the best of my memory. The child actors are far better and more memorable than most of the adults and the little CGI work is well-done. As the film skews towards a different audience, I'm using a slightly different scale, but the movie definetely pleases for all ages.
Rating: A-

Rehearsal for my eighth and final play has begun in earnest. In DI's production of The Man Who Came To Dinner I play Banjo, the goofy Hollywood actor who's basically an amalgram of all four Marx Brothers. Well, maybe not Zeppo. It's going to be great.

Star Wars Allegiance is pretty good; Timothy Zahn manages to nail all of the main characters for the time period and Mara Jade's sidestory isn't the groan-inducer I was expecting. By far the most interesting side plot was the one involving the renegade stormtroopers. At any rate, Exile is out next week, and I'm expecting good things from Aaron Allston.

Um, the Turnabout dance is tomorrow. Unless we get all the snow we're supposed to have. Which I doubt will happen for some reason. The dance is totally on.

Call it a hunch.

Hot Double-Posting Action

In case it's not obvious, I screwed around with Blogger's new templating interface. I'm still perfecting all of the colors. This makes either the third or fourth layout redesign, I can't remember which. Banner change to come at some point in time.

That is all.

The Hot Needle of Inquiry

Heh. The Ringworld Engineers is a nifty book.

And speaking of books, here's a list of everything I read last year. I have no life, so I record this sort of thing. It's in no particular order, and the ratings are pretty arbitrary and I tried not to think too hardly about it. Stuff with an asterisk was read for school.

Star Wars – Legacy of the Force I: Betrayal by Aaron Allston – 4/5
Star Wars – Legacy of the Force II: Bloodlines by Karen Traviss – 3.5/5
Star Wars – Legacy of the Force III: Tempest by Troy Denning – 4/5
Star Wars – The Dark Nest: The Swarm War by Troy Denning – 3.5/5
Star Wars: Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover – 3/5
Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn – 4/5
Star Wars: Survivor’s Quest by Timothy Zahn – 3.5/5
Star Wars: Darth Bane – Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn – 3/5
1984 by George Orwell – 4/5
Animal Farm by George Orwell* - 4/5
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller* - 3/5
The Crucible by Arthur Miller* - 2/5
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe* - 3/5
Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman – 3/5
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova – 2.5/5
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Gutterson* - 3.5/5
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley* - 4/5
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare* - 4/5
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare – 3.5/5
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – 4.5/5
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman – 4/5
American Gods by Neil Gaiman – 3.5/5
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman – 5/5
Stardust by Neil Gaiman – 2.5/5
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – 3.5/5
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski – 4/5
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski – 2/5
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown – 3/5
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown – 3.5/5
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 5/5
Ringworld by Larry Niven - 3.5/5
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton* - 2/5

It occurs to me that I forgot to review Night at the Museum when I saw it. That should tell you my opinion of it pretty well. It was all right, but forgettable. In contrast:

Little Miss Sunshine
A charming little flick, if slightly overrated. Steve Carrel is fun to watch in his role and the rest of the cast performs admirably; Abigail Breslin as Olive is simply adorable. A great movie for those who like their comedy edging on dark, dealing with suicide, drugs and such. The moral of the story is simply to be yourself, a message I can really get behind. I wasn't bored with a single character and the story sets itself at a nice constant pace. Worth seeing.
Rating: B+

For those with a free half hour ahead of them, might I suggest viewing the first episode of Le Chevalier D'eon for free?

I don't really have anything else to say here.

Shoo.

But we're teenagers! You'd think we'd know this sort of thing!

It's a lot harder to find stuff to do when you're in Germantown and it's a zillion degrees below zero outside than you'd think.

Exams came and went. Aced World Lit, Pre-Calculus and probably German. Looking forward to next semester, which has Sociology and Advanced Composition. Rad.

Auditions for The Man Who Came to Dinner start next week, now that Trolls is over and done with. I'll be very happy to put it to rest myself. I'm very much looking forward to this, my last play with Dramatic Impact ever, so I'm looking to go out with a bang.

If I could get away with just sitting around my house watching Scrubs all day, I think I would be pretty content. For you see, I've recently become addicted to this hilarious dramatic show featuring wise-cracking doctors and zany non-sequitor jokes.

I'm getting sick of people calling me asking if I would like any more information on [random college]. I'm quite happy with the oodles of paperwork thank you very much. Jeeze, getting a decent education shouldn't be this time-consuming.

You're all liars! How dare you lie in front of Jesus!

So, you're probably wondering what I've been up to for the past month. If you're really a regular reader (har), you already know what I did. Very little of interest, that's what. Once In The Time of Trolls opened and nothing particularly noteworthy came of that. It wasn't a total disaster and we've really gotten our act together for the kids. The spring production is The Man Who Came To Dinner and I'm hoping for a fairly noteworthy role.

But you don't care about that. You want to hear about... Christmas presents.

The Nintendo Wii with copies of Red Steel and Zelda. Nothing to report that you haven't heard a million times from the average gaming site. I like it, and you should too.

Gundam SEED Destiny DVD 5
Hellsing Ultimate DVD 1
Samurai 7 Final DVD
Scrapped Princess Final DVD
Fruits Basket Vol. 15 (With that prick Akito on the cover)
SWM: Starship Battles stuff (so glad I didn't pay forty bucks for that starter)
Neverwhere (from mother)
House of Leaves
Anansi Boys and Good Omens (from the gf)
1/144 Destiny Gundam model kit
1/144 Palace Athene model kit
Cybertron Menasor (RARGH)
An electric shaver (from father)
20$ Best Buy gift card (from relatives)
20$ Borders gift card (from the awesomest English teacher in the world)
Some money (also from relatives)

Yes, I know I'm a spoiled brat. (Did I use that in last year's Christmas post? I think I did.)

Anyway, onto movies.

Eragon
I went into this not reading the book, and the movie has done a very poor job of convincing me to do so. A plot that flows like bricks, characters that could have come off an assembly line and directing that could have been some other negative simile. The special effects are pretty though, and its reasonably entertaining if you go in with low expectations. Still not something I'd pay to see again.
Rating: C+

The Boondock Saints
I can't believe I never watched this before. I finally saw it in its entirety, barring a few edits for cable television, and I was rather impressed by it. Witty dialogue and entertaining action make this an exciting romp through blood, explosions and mutilated bodies. Willem Dafoe steals every scene he's in and the other actors are fun to watch. Too short, though and the rules of physics as well as plot are sometimes thrown out the window, however.
Rating: B+

Inuyasha the Movie 4: Fire on Mystic Island
If you have to watch an Inuyasha movie, go watch the third one. The second is passable and first and fourth are terrible. This one basically amounts to a 90-minute TV episode, with the usual stunted character development and lack of plot movement. Avoid.
Rating: C-

Hm, no A grades. For shame, Hollywood.