Movie review- Kung Fu Panda 2

Heather, Sky and I went to see Kung Fu Panda 2 in 3D over the weekend and it was awesome. Heather was a little iffy as she hasn't historically liked 3d but it didn't bother her and some of the scenes were amazing in 3D, especially the water scenes. The story itself was really good, basically Po figures out he was adopted and finds out where he comes from. The voice work was great with all the major characters returning, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogan, David Cross, Jackie Chan & Lucy Liu as the biggest stars. The new villian Shen a Peacock who was exciled for creating an unstopable weapon voiced by Gary Oldman. I liked how they went with a faster, graceful villian in the sequal rather than trying to one up the toughness & brute strenght in the original. I also like how they decided to make him a white peacock rather than greenish blue, not really sure why.



The flashbacks were also done really well with a completely diffent anamation style that I enjoyed a lot contrasting with the rest of the movie.

17 of 30- McSweeney's 36

It's been a while since I've read a McSweeney's and it's a bit like coming home. This issue was extra ingenious as the issue comes in a box that looks like someone's head that you open up and pull out all of the contents. The concept is that they wanted to represent what it would be like to look into someone's head.

The book of short stories began with a letter section that was amusing. Jessie Eisenberg's was funny about wanting sleep medicine. John Brandon wrote Occurrences a story about a town with a lot of abductions that was well written and interesting. The other story that stood out was The Street by Colm Toibin that was about a couple of male Pakistani immigrants living in Spain who fall in love. They face some pretty severe consequences and one of the characters struggles with his homosexual feelings.

I enjoyed Michael Chabon's unfinished story Fountain City as we wrote a lot of interesting notes as to why it didn't work and some insight into why he wrote certain things he did. The story itself was pretty dull.

An except from The Instructions By Adam Levine was ok. He gets pretty good reviews online often drawing comparisons to David Foster Wallace but I'm not interested in pursuing the book after reading the chapter.

An oral history of Ma Su Mon recorded and edited by Maggie Lemere & Zoe West was interesting as she told her story of political resistance in Burma which I know next to nothing about.

I love a quick story by Sophia Cara Frydman that had drawings done in red ink. The sketches were amazing.

Tim Heidecker and Greggg Turkington wrote a fake screenplay for Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey that made fun of all those stupid comedies. Smart and well done, it ripped on all the corny jokes and was an excellent parody.

I was really excited to read Jungle Geronimo In Gay Paree as it looked like another amazing story making fun of those old campy novels and shows about Tarzan but it was just ok. It felt like they were trying a little too hard, a near miss to be sure but still a miss.

I ended up really liking a play The Domestic Crusaders by Wajahat Ali about a modern middle eastern family living in the US. It was realistic, made fun of how most middle easterners are portrayed as stereotypes in a smart way and didn't pull any punches. Great ending which I didn't see coming that made it really memorable and my favorite piece in the issue.

Ok on a side note, I'm boring the shit out of myself. I like writing a review but I'm sucking ass here. I need to step this shit up.

Audio Book- Black House by Stephen King & Peter Straub

I just finished listening to Black House by Stephen King & Peter Straub. It was read by Frank Muller who did a fantastic job. The story was 21 discs and I'm not sure how many hours but I've been listening to it on my daily commute and it's taken just over a month. Black house is a sequel to The Talisman one of my all time favorite novels about a 12 year old boy Jack travels on an epic cross country adventure flipping between 2 worlds in a quest to save his mom. Black House is a story in which an adult Jack helps end a crime spree of a particularly nasty serial killer of young children which gets more complicated as it is connected to the other world he traveled to as a kid. Both books are heavily connected to the Dark Tower series which centers around Rowland trying to save the Black Tower which is the nexus connecting all the different worlds in existence. I first read the books when I was in my late teens, reread The Talisman a couple of years ago and was surprised when I liked both stories just as much as I remembered. Jack is such a great character and it was fun to read a King book where the hero is heroic rather than his normal use of atypical heroes. My only slight knock on the book is that the final showdown with the bad guy was a little quick and somewhat less challenging than I felt like it should have been but that's probably because the lead up was so good.

Movie review - Rio

Heather, Sky and I went to see Rio this weekend for something fun to do on an otherwise rainy day. I'll have to say I'm not a huge fan. The movie looked good, with the animation really well done and they made Rio look amazing. Especially the Carnival parade. The story itself was a classic love story/coming of age that I won't rehash but the real issue with the movie was that it just wasn't all that funny. Jesse Eisenberg bumbled his way through, Anne Hathaway was technically good but not very memorable & George Lopez was himself as a Toucan that was so himself I thought you could see his eyes bulge. The best actors were Jermaine Clement who was pretty epic as a villainous cockatoo, Will I Am & Jamie Foxx were great as a duo of wise cracking/singing side kicks & Tracy Morgan was amazing a bull dog, unfortunately he wasn't in the movie much.

It's also bugged me for most of the movie who the main female & male characters were based off of. I think it was the mom from the Invincibles and the dad from Coroline but I'm not sure. It makes sense that the animators wouldn't start from scratch but it was still pretty distracting

16 of 30- 20 Under 40: Stories From The New Yorker

As the title eludes to 20 Under 40 is a collection of 20 short stories by authors all under 40. I've read a couple of them before so I'm pretty sure at least some of them have been published in the New Yorker. I was pretty excited to read this book when I downloaded it onto my kindle but got distracted with McSweeney's then kind of forgot about it. This along with moving my book collection this weekend really drove home why I did the pinkie swear to begin with as it's disgusting how many books I own that I haven't read. I could probably read for 3 years from just what I own. Anyways back to the review. The authors were all amazingly talented and the stories were diverse. The editor Deborah Treisman did a great job of picking stories & authors rather than shaping the book by picking themes in the stories.

Karen Russell, Tea Obreht & ZZ Packer are authors I've read before and love. I'd read the Russell story before but luckily had forgotten a lot of the details. Tea Obreht is just amazing and her book will most likely be the first I buy when the time comes to expand my collection. ZZ Packer's story was phenomenal and one of my favorites from the collection about a young brother and sister who have recently been freed from slavery and are on a journey to their aunt in New Orleans.

Nicole Krauss & Jonathan Safran Foer I've been wanting to read since reading a review of Nicole's new book in the NY Times. There's something intriguing about the young married couple raising literary fame. I'm curious to see what will be bigger, the story of their marriage or their writing.

Wells Tower is a contributor to McSweeney's who I'm sure I've read but can't remember any specific stories and Joshua Ferris sounds familiar as well. Besides them, I think everyone else was new to me which I enjoyed. On a side not, reading on the Kindle was a little harder with this type of book as I found my self going back to the table of contents a lot. Not a huge deal but I never realized how much I go back to look at the authors or look at a previous story.

15 of 30- Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Halfway through the pinkie swear I decided to reread one of my favorite books. I've been a huge fan of both Pratchett & Gaiman and have read the majority of their novels. This book is about the apocalypse where the anti christ was lost and raised as a normal boy in rural England. There's an angel and demon who are both trying to thwart the apocalypse as they've been on Earth for 6k years and rather like it. The book is hilarious and fast paced. If you like Brittish humor you'll love this book.

14 of 30- What-The-Dickens by Gregory Maguire

I picked this book up at a used bookstore because as I'd read Wicked as well as Mirror, Mirror and liked both. The book didn't have it's dust jacket so I didn't know what the story was about and when I learned that it was about a rogue tooth fairy I thought that it might be pretty good. A tooth fairy who snaps and goes all commando would be fun. Loaded up with more guns than can reasonably be carried with some sort of twisted agenda or out for vengeance would have been amazing. Instead, what it really was about was an orphan tooth fairy who didn't know he was a fairy & tried to lean/fit in as he went along. It sucked. Story was boring and never picked up. Seemed disjointed and unorganized. The only good thing was that the actual writing was fine, my criticisms are all about the shitty concept not the execution. Too bad too because Wicked was great.

To sum up, Yay Wicked, boo What-The-Dickens.