Month: August 2014

Three sentence movie reviews: Guardians of the Galaxy

I’ve been a fan of Chris Pratt since he was the loser boyfriend of Rashida Jones on the television series Parks and Rec. His boyish slacker/charming vibe was perfect for the role of Peter Quinn and  the rest of the cast were top-notch as well.  The movie was funny, had a great soundtrack, whisked along at a very good pace and for once, a completely CGI animal character did not at all annoy me.

Cost:  $6.00
Where watched: at the St John’s cinema with Matt

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2014/guardians_of_the_galaxy.html

Moneta Dress. Finito!

Man, this was a sewing win.  Big time.

I’m 39 years old with a BMI that puts me in the obese range.  I dress nicely when I am out and about because I think we should all dress nicely when out and about.  Still, after a certain age/weight, a female is pretty much invisible.
Not in this dress. The first day I wore it I got seven compliments.  SEVEN COMPLIMENTS!  From people I encountered along the way, from random passers-by in the street, seven people told me how much they loved this dress.  And I love it too.  The cut and the colors.  And the compliments.

Three sentence movie reviews: Just Friends

I hated this movie.  Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated it.  I watched it for Anna Faris, because I enjoyed her so much in What’s Your Number and I thought she acted up a storm, but the movie itself was a trial.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2005/just_friends.html

Moneta Work Uniforms. Tricks with the clear elastic, attaching it to the skirt.

I found it helpful to mark the stitching line on the top of the skirt where the elastic will be sewn. It was too hard for me to try and manage stretching elastic and keeping track of where the elastic should be sewn on the fabric.  Drawing in that stitching line gave me a guide for this.
In the Moneta sew along, the instructions are to divide the elastic into five parts.  I think that is fine if you have a relatively small waist, but mine is not and so I had to stretch the elastic over very long distances, which resulted in some uneven elastic attachment in the first dress I made.  So I did the five marks and then found the middle of each of the five segments and marked them.  I found the middle of the official anchoring points and marked them. 

So here we see I have less length to stretch the elastic.  This was quite successful.

I also found it easier to not sew the elastic in a circle before pinning it to the skirt.  Here’s one end here.

Then I just pinned the other end over the first, matching my ending places.  This way I could start at that point and do some firm back stitching to join the circle of elastic right to the skirt.

I have no idea if this is a correct technique, but I found it easiest to stretch my segment out so the elastic pulled tight against the fabric and then plop my fingers down on the sewing machine, keeping the elastic taut.  I then sew until my fingers hit the presser foot and repeated the stretching process.  Because I have more than five points of contact between elastic and skirt, this worked well.

Three sentence movie reviews: Girls Season 2

Dissatisfaction is the word that sums up my feelings about the ending of season two with almost every character in a place I am not really thrilled with. Our main girl Hannah had a big change during this season which I didn’t buy because if it had been part of her life since high school, why are we just finding out about it mid-season?  Still, I had fun watching it and I love how actresses of a certain age rotate in as mothers and other older women.

Cost: free from libary
Where watched: at home with Matt.

poster from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723816/?ref_=ttep_ep_tt

Postcards from Kansas and Kansas

These are from H., who is luring me to Kansas.  Here are some Oregon Trail immigrants, which is fitting since those immigrants likely started their trip in Missouri, not far from where I am visiting.  So I’m doing the reverse commute.  But in an airplane, not a covered wagon.  I don’t have THAT much vacation time.

And here is one of the sights at Fort Leavenworth that I might get to see.

Three sentence movie reviews: Runaway Bride

part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival

Julia Roberts is so damn likable that I didn’t mind watching this fairly mediocre movie that was completely predictable.  I just love to watch the various emotions spool across her face.  Plus, Joan Cusack was in this, which is always a treat.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1999/runaway_bride.html
I loathe this poster.  It’s so obvious. Not unlike the movie.

Three sentence movie reviews: Boyhood

Sometimes I read something written by someone from the past and they mention, just in passing, that they saw Oscar Wild give a talk or went to a reading with Mark Twain and I think, “Do you realize, random person from the past, how incredibly cool it was to be there  in that moment?”  And so it is with this movie, getting to be there in the theater seeing actors age in real time as they tell a story that is both specific and universal.  I can’t recommend this movie enough meaning, it’s not the be all, end all of film making, but there was a time before someone made a movie over 12 years with the same actors and there is a period where that concept now exists, and I’m happy to have experienced the changeover.

Cost: $9.00
Where watched:  at Cinema 21 with Stephanie North.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2014/boyhood.html

Three sentence movie reviews: The Goodbye Girl

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival.

There was a lot to like about this movie and it has aged quite well.*  I also appreciated how it incorporated many things that could  have gone off the rails,** but never did and it says a lot that the movie is 111 minutes of mostly fighting, but still very fun to watch. However, I found Marsha Mason’s voice grating (unfortunately) and has an uncanny resemblance to someone in my life, so that was incredibly distracting.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

Poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1977/goodbye_girl.html

*Especially considering there’s a subplot with a gay Richard III, which manages to be funny and not offensive, at least in my mind.  Other people can feel free to weigh in about this.
**For instance, Quinn Cummings as Lucy McFadden could have gone the way of grating, abrasive child, but instead she managed to perfectly walk the line between world-weary and innocent.  Also, there’s something inherently creepy about random dude moving into an apartment with a little girl living there and the movie managed to not venture into that territory.  Plus, I could have completely become judgmental of Paula McFadden’s quick attachments with (and subsequent dumpings by) men, but for all her grating voice, she managed to charm we away from that line of thinking.

Books read in July 2014

With only eight books read, this month, it’s clear summer projects have taken over.  I also enjoy how I read two of each category listed.  Symmetry appeals to me.

Recommended:
None of the middle readers blew me away.
YA:  Fly on the Wall (making this month three of E. Lockheart being on the top recommends list).
Adult Nonfiction: Wild
Adult Fiction: Landlines

Middle Reader
The Thickety
J. A. White
Read for Librarian Book Group
I wasn’t sucked into the world building of this world and thus never really took a liking to this book. It also did that thing that I hate where the book ends abruptly, trying to pull you into the sequel, rather than tying things up and getting you excited about what comes next.

The Great Greene Heist
Varian Johnson
Read for Librarian Book Group
This was hard to start, because of the constant references to this book’s predecessor, which I didn’t have time to track down and read, but once I let go of the fact I was reading the second book before the first, I completely enjoyed it.  It was not believable, in the super fun way that the Ocean’s 11 movies aren’t believable, but so, so fun.  Props for having so many distinct and well-crafted characters (and from so many different backgrounds).  A fun read for the middle school set.

Update!  The Librarians tell me there ISN’T a book before this one. What I attributed to references to the first book were actually a choice the author made to plop us down in the middle of the action and fill us in as the story continued.  Seeing as how I just assumed I had missed a book, I find this to not be a very successful literary method.

YA
Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything
E. Lockhart
Another good entry into the E.-Lockhart-can-really-write-a-good-YA-book pantheon. Gretchen wishes she was a fly on the wall in the boy’s locker room and gets her wish, learning much about the lives of boys, and her own life in the process.  It goes deeper than one might think from this description.

Sloppy Firsts
Megan McCafferty
I found this book odd, beginning with the title, which, I’m sorry, makes me think of the porn term “sloppy seconds” and seems an odd choice for a YA novel.  The main character is full of gripes for the entire book and also seems to hate all her friends but not have the ability to make new ones.  I did think the dialogue was pretty teenaged authentic, as was the level of angst.  Plus, I kind of liked that Jessica Darling was not really that darling.  Despite all these gripes, I was hooked by the end and have already ordered the next in the series.

An aside:  “Darling” as a last name is trending for me right now.  I think this is the third book in as many months using that last name.

Adult nonfiction
The Bookseller of Kabul
Asne Seierstand
Read for Book Group
Good for people who don’t mind reading about a big jerk of a man who rules his household as a tyrant.  Seriously, the bookseller himself was not a great guy, but Seirstand is quiet good at capturing details big and small of an Afghanistani family.  There were points where some of the family’s thoughts were recorded and I wondered how she captured those thoughts, but overall, this was an interesting read.  Although dispiriting from a female perspective.

Wild
Cheryl Strayed
People have formed their opinions and drawn their lines in the sand.  And now I’ve read it, so me too!  You can find me firmly on the side of: liked it!  I loved the writing (that horse scene will stay with me forever) and the pacing and the change and growth.  Though I think it was stupid to attempt a very long backpacking journey without once going backpacking, or even packing up the backpack with all the supplies, I also found that to be quite refreshing.  I myself tend to bog down in preparation mode and maybe I should skip or abbreviate that part of a journey now and then.  So count me as a fan.

Adult fiction
What’s Your Number (AKA 20 Times a Lady)
Karyn Bosnak
Oh how authors must despise the movie/book comparisons that appear once a book has been adapted into a feature film.  But I can’t help myself, I saw the movie first and adored it and could keep from comparing it to the book.

Firstly, let me say that the original title, 20 Times a Lady is so much better than What’s Your Number, which was the movie title.  However, the title was the only thing I thought was better in book form than movie adaptation. The two are very different.  I found the book Delilah (she was named Ally in the movie) to be unsympathetic and the things that I loved in the movie (the sister relationship, the interplay between Ally/Colin, the mother daughter relationship) to be almost entirely absent in the book version.  So this is the rare case when I recommend the movie over the book. But I thank Karyn Bosnak for writing the book that could then be adapted into a very good movie.

Landlines
Rainbow Rowell
Oh Rainbow Rowell, you are so brilliant.  Here I am reading a perfectly serviceable portrait of a marriage in trouble and then you go and layer onto that pleasant-but-familiar plot something rather unexpected that completely works.  I also appreciate how different your four books about relationships have been and can heartily recommend them to many, many people. I can’t wait for you to write another one.  Maybe for your next adult novel you will get a cover that is just as good as your YA covers, because this one is not really happening.