What he said

I went to see Push last night, and it was just as terrible as the previews made it seem. You may wonder why, going in to this film suspecting that it stunk to high heaven, I would even bother. The short answer is friendship, and the long answer is, “Because I absolutely refused to see He’s Just Not That into You or Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” My friend R has truly horrific tastes in movies, and Push is where I drew the line. Please remind me next time to draw it a little lower.

Here’s what one review of this film said:
“I thought Hayden Christensen in last year’s Jumper would be as bland a mutant as the screen would ever give us, but that was before I saw Chris Evans in Push.”

Ouch

Here’s a blurb from a review of Renee Zellwegger’s new movie, New in Town:

“There have been a lot of bad romantic comedies that have come along in recent months but this one really takes the cake–it is so condescending, so stupid and so utterly devoid of laughs, charm or recognizable entertainment value that I kept waiting for Kate Hudson to show up at some point to relieve Renee Zellweger of her duties and take over the lead role.” Peter Sobczynski of efilmcritic.com

I sort of imagine Bradley Whitford saying that, and then it’s even funnier.

I had no intention of seeing this, so I can revel in the halfheartedly wretched reviews and 12% fresh rating that it has garnered over on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m going to see the new Elizabeth Banks movie, The Uninvited tonight. That movie got a 41% fresh rating, which is kind of worrisome, but I haven’t read the reviews, so we’ll see tonight whether I agree!

Jeez

I go away for a few days and WordPress goes and changes everything…including my avatar, which was formerly a photo of my adorable nephew. Weird. I’m still angry with the Mets right now, and do not prefer to have their logo represent me on WordPress.

I haven’t been doing too much lately. Except for knitting. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting. And frogging. I’m never so OCD as when I’m knitting, and then I get this perfectionist streak that is completely at odds with the fact that I still don’t pay as much attention as I should to what I’m making. That’s because I need to watch something when I’m knitting.

Recently, I’ve seen 27 Dresses, Enchanted, Step Up (I’m a bit ashamed about that one), and I started Made of Honor, but I find the pratfalls a bit much and haven’t yet resumed from Dempsey’s second face plant in a single scene. I finished up the third and final season of Veronica Mars, and I’ve now moved on to Cupid, which I just learned is on youtube. How awesome. I remember loving that show, but the details are blurry at this point. I’m pleased that it’s as smart and funny as I remember, and that the wardrobe and hair isn’t so dated as to be a total distraction. I’ve also been really into Chuck lately, and it’s gotten so good that I even watch it before Gossip Girl! Heroes is still stupid, but not as single-mindedly moronic as it was earlier in the season, so I’ve resumed watching it on Monday, instead of allowing several episodes to pile up and then watching them all at once.

I’m about to be single single again (as opposed to mostly single), so that should leave me even more time to 1) make socks and 2) not make any of the Christmas presents I intended to knit.

I cannot believe how quickly summer/autumn happened, and that it will be winter in just a couple of weeks.

Oh, to have a Johnny!

I’m off of work today, and I’ve spent a large part of it working on the baby blanket I’m knitting. I like to have something on the TV when I’m knitting, so that I don’t get completely bored during the repetitive parts of the pattern. So I was flipping channels and came across Dirty Dancing. Dirty Dancing!!! I love this movie so much, it doesn’t even make sense. It’s one of those movies, like The Cutting Edge and The Princess Bride, that I will watch whenever I come across it, no matter how far in the movie is. Patrick Swayze was amazing in this movie. I mean, I have to give Jennifer Grey her due, too, because her baby is so moving, but this was all about Swayze. He’s tender, hot, tough, and pretty much the reason that good girls go after the bad guys. We’re looking for Johnny Castle.

This movie is so amazing. It seems like a bit of fluff, but if you stop to think about it, Dirty Dancing tackles issues such as class and gender issues, generational changes, AND has a kickass soundtrack. I actually stopped knitting a bunch of times to sigh, smile, squee, and then get up and dance my butt off. SO GOOD. Here’s what I’ve been working on today:

Seriously?

There is not, in this day and age, any good excuse for not understanding the theory of evolution. Even if you don’t believe that evolution is a satisfactory explanation for how we came to be here, you should at least know what it is that you oppose. I thought that misunderstanding or misrepresenting evolution was a particularly American thing to do, but I guess that’s not true. I was reading an article in England’s Daily Express about several actors (Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Rosamund Pike, and Joseph Fiennes) who are gearing up to do films about Charles Darwin’s life, and I was horrified to read this sentence: All four Hollywood stars are lining up to appear in films about Darwin, who developed the controversial theory of evolution, which argued that humans descended from apes.

Really? That’s it? Evolution is a rich, complex theory based on observation of the natural world, living species, and the fossil record, and all they can boil it down to is that it says humans descended from apes? AND THAT’S NOT EVEN WHAT EVOLUTION SAYS. So I’m disappointed. By the way, the theory of evolution states that humans and apes descended from a common ancestor, but in no way says that humans came from apes. If we had, why would apes still exist? Stupidity like this is frightening.

I wrote the editor an email about the story, not that I think it will help. I’m familiar with the Daily Mail, which is roundly mocked because it is rather right-wing and not usually terribly concerned with the accuracy of the articles it publishes, but I didn’t know that the Daily Express was the same way. I guess I learned something today, even if it’s not what the Daily Express thought it was teaching me.