Haven’t Been Out To The Movies In A While

Spring has definitely sprung around here, the grass is green and the shrubs have leaves. The trees are still hesitant to wake up from hibernation, but they’re getting there. It’s nice to have the warm weather back, even after the mild winter we had.

The car is finally running, with a few minor quirks to work out before I can say it’s totally fixed. I thought I was having serious transmission problems, but was assured by a shop that it’s just my traction control acting up. I’ll have to take it to a GM dealer to figure out what’s actually wrong with that, but for the time being when it rains I’ll just have to be sure to turn the traction control system off.

The air bag light also remains illuminated while I drive. I’m told that it’s warning me that if I were to get in accident, my air bag may not work. The shop reset the code for me, but after driving it a couple miles, it turned back on. Hopefully it’s coming on for the same reason my traction control is acting weird in the rain, because something got messed up in the computer when it got wet. I don’t know how serious of an issue that actually is, but as long as the car is going to run I’m not too worried about it for now.

So what’s up with there being no good movies in the theaters for the last few months? Usually there is at least something worth going to see on a monthly basis. Even when I wanted to go to the movies for the sake of going to movies, not caring if the movie wasn’t going to be that great or not, I couldn’t find anything I wanted to see. And it’s not just theaters, my Netflix list hasn’t had many new releases on it lately either.

The most recent new release movie I rented from Netflix was Fun With Dick and Jane. As a fan of Jim Carrey since his In Living Color days, I’d say it wasn’t nearly one of his best movies. But it was worth watching. The movie wouldn’t have been any good without Carrey, that’s for sure, because I usually can’t stand Tea Leone. Fun With Dick and Jane was pretty funny, but not in that gut-busting way. It’s definitely a smart, satirical, politically-biting movie. There is some interesting social commentary on materialism, standards of living and corporate greed, but there is also some good old slapstick. Jim Carrey’s better suited to the latter.

I also recently rented Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. I was surprised by how good it actually was. It started out feeling like it was going to be a cheesy children’s movie, but really caught my interest in the last half with the CGI creatures and the fighting scenes. The graphics were amazing, they really make me feel sorry for all my old classmates who were majoring in computer animation back at college. They really have their work cut out for them. Having read the book years ago, things were forgotten but came back quickly as the movie progressed. The scenes of the room with the wardrobe, and the snowy landscape with the lamp post were almost identical to what I had imagined the first time I read it.

This summer won’t be too bad for movies. A few I’m looking forward to are: Clerks II, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Break-Up, X-Men: The Last Stand, Superman Returns, and The Da Vinci Code. Not a bad summer for movies.

Well I’d better go catch the end of the F1 race and then I’m making dinner tonight. Which of course means we’re having something simple: Spaghetti. See-ya later!