Monthly Archives: June 2009

Away We Go

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Like I said before, Alli and I went to see Away We Go at the 9:50 a.m. showing at the Fork & Screen on Saturday.

Even though our food was seriously lacking, we absolutely adored the movie.

The screenplay was written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, a real-life couple who also have a child together. The story is about Burt (John Krasinski, aka Big Tuna/Jim from The Office) and Verona (Maya Rudolph from SNL), who are expecting a child together and are trying to find a home where they can settle down.

They begin traveling across the country to different places (Phoenix, Madison, Montreal, Miami) where they have friends and family to try out each place to see if it feels right. The very concept of the movie is indie in nature and will gain Away We Go comparisons to movies like Juno and Little Miss Sunshine. The comparisons are valid — Away We Go contains the same quirky characters and sharp dialogue and disfunction that has become commonplace in indie films.

The thing that I loved about this movie was how real the characters seemed. Krasinski and Rudolph are so natural and their chemistry is terrific throughout — you can tell that they are really enjoying each other’s company. The supporting characters — and they are many: Catherine O’Hara, Jeff Daniels, Alison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey and Paul Schneider — are all wonderfully cast and provide just the right amount of silliness to make you smile and push the movie forward. Maggie Gyllenhaal particularly shines as a hippie mother who doesn’t believe in strollers (among other things I won’t mention).

But the real stars are Krasinski and Rudolph, who bring such wonderful life to Burt and Verona and deliver Eggers and Vida’s lines with such earnestness that it will be difficult to ignore them when Oscar time rolls around.

All these terrific actors are directed by Sam Mendes, whose take on family up to this point in films has been…a little, um…jaded is perhaps the word I’m looking for. For the guy who directed both American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, Away We Go is a serious departure and could be considered flat-out uplifting. He gets fantastic performances out of all of his actors and the movie is accompanied by an absolutely perfect soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch. (For those who go to the movie and are looking to buy the soundtrack, just buy Murdoch’s Time Without Consequence…it’s the same thing.)

My favorite thing about this movie was that it shows that one person’s version of happy can be completely different than another’s. As Burt and Verona travel around the country looking for “their place”, they begin to realize that it can’t be defined by the lives of others. “Their place” is wherever they make their home as long as they are together. I am not ashamed to admit that I teared up during the scene on the trampoline. But they were tears of joy accompanied by a smile and squeeze on my arm from my wife and best friend who I’ve found “my place” with.

Away We Go may not be for everyone, but it was wonderful for me.

Breakfast at the Movies

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Alli and I went to see Away We Go at the 9:50 a.m. showing at the Fork & Screen on Saturday.

We’ve been trying to find a time to hit the breakfast option at the Fork & Screen since it opened and with the release of Away We Go (FINALLY), we were excited to give it a shot.

I’m going to cover the movie review separately.

The Fork & Screen needs to stick what it does pretty well, which is bar food. Their breakfast was pretty bad. The portion sizes were decent and the potatoes were OK (fries and homemade chips are what the Fork & Screen does best at lunch and dinner), but my biscuits and gravy were average at best.

While the biscuits were pretty good, the “sausage” gravy was flavorless and seriously lacking sausage. I got it with a side of scrambled eggs with cheese that was just a really bland, boring, dry version of truck stop eggs, except not as good as I’ve described. No amount of salt or pepper could salvage this plate of MEH.

Alli didn’t have any better things to say about the French toast, saying:

The French toast was almost certainly frozen at sometime. I couldn’t even cut it with my fork.

I don’t think we’ll head back to the Fork & Screen for breakfast anytime soon. While I love that the movies cost only $10 that early in the morning on Saturday (with $5 towards your food), the food just wasn’t very good.

Transformers: Revenge of the Giant Robots

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I will make no bones about the fact that I absolutely adored Michael Bay’s homage to the Hasbro toys of my youth. The original Transformers was everything that you could want in a popcorn flick:

  • explosions
  • tons of action
  • and giant freaking robots that transform into cars.

So. Awesome.

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Look, if you pay to go see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and expect anything else than 2 ½ fun-filled hours of some combination of those three things, you will be seriously disappointed. Don’t expect a rock-solid plot. Don’t expect great acting. Don’t expect perfect logic. You won’t get any of those in this movie.

However, if you enjoyed the first movie for those three things, you  will be entertained. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the flick. It’s a ten tons of explosive, effects-laden fun. There’s a typical Armageddon/Pearl Harbor love-story-buried-in-an-action-movie (Bay can’t seem to help himself). There’s an opening action/effects sequence in “Shanghai” that gets you ready for the rest of the movie. And there’s a lot of Shia Lebeouf and Megan Fox running. Running from robots. Running from explosions. Running from exploding robots.

Look, Transformers: ROTF won’t win any Oscars (maybe one nomination for effects, which are terrific), but it’s going to make Spielberg and Dreamworks a crap-ton of money.

This is the type of movie that is made for summer. And if you don’t enjoy movies like this, there’s just no talking to you.

Hit and Miss

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I recently completed two books that I’ve been reading for a while, Mike Gayle’s Turning Thirty and Nick Hornby’s Slam.

I’ve long been a fan of Hornby’s. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that his book High Fidelity (yes, the same book that the movie starring John Cusack is based on) is one of my favorite ever, up there with Catcher in the Rye and The Lords of Discipline.

I’ve only been introduced to Gayle in the last couple years. He’s one of the many authors that emerged as a part of the Hornby movement, guys who write stories about guys who are relationship-phobic and completely flawed, but lovable. These authors are almost all British as well, although accents don’t really translate into print. I’ve read a couple of Gayle’s earlier novels…really enjoyed My Legendary Girlfriend but not so much Dinner for Two. Turning Thirty seemed an appropriate read for me (at least a couple years ago when I bought it) and I enjoyed it well enough, but not sure if I’d recommend it. Thirty-year-old unmarried males might find it a good read and it has some decent characters, but it’s just lacking somewhat.

As far as Slam goes…this book represents Nick Hornby’s first foray into the world of “young adult literature” as it centers around a 16-year-old kid who is interested in skateboarding and Tony Hawk and ends up getting a girl pregnant. I actually started reading Slam about 6 months ago and put it down with less than 75 pages left. It’s been sitting on my nightstand as a reminder for the past several months, but I’ve never been motivated enough to finish it until this week. If that’s not a condemnation of my feelings for the book, I don’t know what is.

I shouldn’t be that surprised. Slam was, afterall, written for the “young adult” set and I’m not really in that target demographic. However, I’ve always felt like Hornby’s ability to describe characters could supercede the genre and still manage to be compelling. Unfortunately, Slam really comes off more as a public service announcement against teenage pregnancy than anything else. I just want to junk-punch the main character Sam (another reason why I’m unlikely to be a dad) because all he does is make one bad decision after another. I suppose that’s the point, considering that is what most teenagers typically do, but at the same time, it just annoyed me.

My penchant for reading has really gone in the crapper lately, but I’m trying my best to get back into it. With a vacation coming up in July, it will be to my benefit to have some good stuff to read. I’ve got a stack of books about 2 feet high on my “to-read” table…now I just have to put them in order.

What are you reading?

Giving Until it Hurts

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Today, my employer held a blood and bone marrow registry drive in honor of an associate who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. I volunteered for a couple hours at the bone marrow registry this morning and then took the five minutes to swab my cheeks to get on the list.

I took a quick lunch then headed down to make an automated blood donation, which is different, offering more flexibility to the blood center to respond more effectively to hospitals. As I understand it, the machine separates the blood into plasma, platelets and red blood cells as a part of the process. Obviously, it takes more fluid from your body than normal blood donation, so they put back saline in intervals during the process.

In addition, they use a needle the size of the tip of a pencil in order to keep from damaging the cells. It sucks. A lot. Especially when they struggle to find a vein, fishing around inside your arm.

But I got it going and was rocking through the donation, occupying myself by playing poker on my phone. The nurse came by to tell me that I was almost done.

Then it all went very very wrong.

First, on the saline return, I started to feel some pain. I looked down at my arm and realized that something was off. I was starting to get a bit of a bubble near the place where the needle was inserted. I called the nurse over, she did something on the machine and then hurried off. The pain subsided a little, but not completely. Another nurse came back with my original nurse and began fiddling with the machine and my arm, chiding the nurse for the amount of tape that she used on my arm. Not a good sign.

The fiddling with the machine and my arm went on for about 6-8 minutes. It ended with my nurse telling me that my vein had clotted up (not as bad as it sounds) and that I wasn’t pumping blood anymore.

This is what we in the business call: FAIL.

There are many things that suck about this.

  1. The extra time I took was useless.
  2. I am a universal donor.
  3. The extra pain wasn’t worth it.
  4. My 90%-full pint of blood, plasma and platelets: completely useless.
  5. The nurses did not try to finish by pricking the other arm, instead they gave up completely.
  6. I wasn’t able to help someone.

Honestly, #5 is the worst one. I feel like I really let down the anonymous person who would have received my blood. It sucks. But honestly, all of those things suck, most specifically #4 and #5.

Who wrote the rule that states you have to provide a completely full pint in order for your blood to be used? It is a dumb rule and really hurts everyone. Can someone explain that to me?

At least I managed to get on the bone marrow donor list, which is really what the drive was all about. Still, it would have been nice to be able to give blood as well.

And technically, I did. Just not enough.