Peaches Prattlings











{July 26, 2010}   The Replacements

I love this movie. I say I’ve watched it over a hundred times, it may not be that many, but it’s probably close, feels like it anyway. I watched it again today and remembered why I love it so much.

Admittedly, I don’t know much about football, don’t understand a lot about it, but that’s alright, that’s what makes the world goes round. I have been to a few football games, professional, high school and college, people have tried to teach me and it doesn’t seem to sink in, I’ll live. But… I can tell when a team is about to score and occasionally when a play is good and I’m good with that.

I do enjoy football movies, not all and mostly the comedies or at least the ones about the underdog team or player. This is one of them. The bulk of the movie is a comedy, but it’s all about the underdog[s], the replacement players they bring on.  The lead is Shane Falco, “Footsteps Falco”, played by Keneau Reeves, who had ‘that disastrous showing at the Sugar Bowl’ and has plenty of heart, as Coach Jimmy Miginty says the team needs to win.  I was watching the behind the scenes or making of the movie, as dvds have now and one of the football coaches who worked on the movie said, it’s important to make the football moves real, let the comedy come out in the actors and their characters, and he was right, the plays are real and look it and the funny stuff could come out while they’re on the field, but it’s in the huddle or the side lines, not in the plays.

This was just a great feel good movie, you get sucked into their stories, which luckily revolve mostly around their time on the team, but there are some moments in movies that I think they miss, cut out story lines, there are scenes when they focus on a player and you don’t know why, this had one or two, but it didn’t detract from the overall feel of the movie.

I find that it doesn’t matter who you root for in life, when you’re watching a movie, you can’t help but root for the team the movie is about, you might be torn, but in the end, the movie is about them…

So, as I am apt to do, I give this movie four thumbs up, my highest praise, and I will watch it with anyone anytime. Enjoy.



{March 22, 2010}   Cop Out

To say nothing at all about this movie would be a cop out… ha ha, i couldn’t help myself, sorry.

I love Kevin Smith movies and I know that he directed it, but whoever wrote it should have taken some lessons from him. The direction was fine, the action was fine, the dialog was so-so. It had cops and robbers and gang-bangers, what more could you want? Some of the torture methods used by both the cops and bangers were different. The cops had a goofy scene in the beginning, Tracy Morgan used every movie line he could think of to get a suspect to confess while Bruce Willis was on the other side of the glass listing off the movies, joined by his fellow officers and they watched while eating popcorn, that was funny. The Head Banger, as it were, would tie people to a chair, tie their arms to the chain link fence in his basement batting cage and practice his swing! That was something to see!

It had quite the cast list, some major players in some minor roles.

I think Bruce Willis was great, he was funny in an off beat quirky way, if you could call Bruce Willis offbeat…. He was tough, yet sensitive and goofy as all get out when it came to his daughter, as all good fathers are apt to do. It didn’t seem to far a stretch for him, he reminded me a little of Corbin Dallas in The Fifth Element, kind of laid back, sit back until he needs to jump up, then he jumps into action.

Tracy Morgan never shut up. I will state right here and now, I am just not a Tracy Morgan fan, I don’t think he’s funny and if you do, that’s quite alright with me, I’ll still respect you in the morning. He was annoying when it came to his, well, everything. I have nothing more to say.

Sean William Scott, again, another actor I really don’t groove on. I’m sorry, I might get kicked out of some clubs, but I am not an American Pie fan and Stifler just doesn’t do it for me. He never shuts up either, what is it with these guys?

Michelle Trachtenburg was in it for a minute as Bruce Willis’ daughter, nothing to report, she really didn’t have much of a role.

Jason Lee’s character was his typical arrogant, obnoxious self, need I say more?

Kevin Pollack was a detective, not sure if he was trying to channel Columbo, but it might have been coming through a bit, that’s one impression he seems to love to do. He was just annoying.

Adam Brody, another detective, just looked him up, he’s from The O.C., Gilmore Girls and a few other shows, what an idiot his character was.

Guillermo Diaz, now here was a bad ass Head Banger. Stereotypical to say the least, but it was fun to watch the wheels spinning as he was working out a way to torture or kill someone. Then, there was his sensitive side, with his love of baseball, bizzarre!

All in all, it had it’s good moments and it had it’s bad moments, the bad outweighed the good, really… outweighed the good…

this movie will be in the $2 theaters VERY soon and should be on DVD right after that…

sorry, just my opinion and i’m sticking to it!



{March 2, 2010}   Edge of Darkness

This movie gets two thumbs up for suspense, action and some violence. Mel Gibson was at the top of his game as Boston Detective Thomas Craven, who’s daughter is killed in front of him when she comes home to visit.

There is intrigue, suspense, guns, car chases, car crashes, nuclear weapons, chemical warfare, poisoning, tree huggers, activists and a few good punches thrown in for good measure, what more could you want?

There were a few lines that you just couldn’t understand here and there, due to accents, and it was a little slow in the middle, but then they throw in some stuff that that you didn’t see coming, the bad guys get theirs and the good guys win,sort of.

All in all, making it a good movie.



{February 24, 2010}   From Paris with Love

Two, three, four THUMBS up! eeewww, that would be gross if I had four thumbs, but I’d put them all up for this movie!

This was a great movie, so much fun to see John Travolta in this role. When I saw the preview for the first time, I was wondering if that was him and it is! He is sharp and funny and no-nonsense and a regular, all around good ole’ fashioned bad ass!

I know, we all thought he was a bad-ass in Pulp Fiction, and there is that great reference to his famous line “Royale with Cheese”, but that is the only nod. I think Vincent Vega was a very laid back, yet dangerous hit man, but Charlie Wax [Wax-on/Wax-off] was just a hard hitting, quick firing, quick thinking on his feet operative working for the US government and could visualize his way out of any situation.

The movie was funny and violent all in the same breath, someone said I said the magic words on that one. I love a good action movie and throw in some comedy, how can that be bad? I admit that I spent a few of the scenes covering my eyes, sometimes the sound and view of a fist connecting with a person, kind of grody [yes, I used the word grody, I wanted to see who was paying attention], but it was still good. The dialog was clever, the acting great and come on people, it was John Travolta and Jonathyn Ryhs Meyers, yummy city! come on, I’m still a girl!

And it took place in PARIS people! Anyone who knows me knows I LOVE Paris! It’s so cool when you recognize certain bridges, buildings, sigh…

Bottom line, when I saw the preview, I knew it was a movie I would take my dad to see and you guessed it folks, he loved it and so did I! [I wish i could say that I got to take him, but alas, i did not]. I believe this movie will be in the movie theaters for a wee bit, not slated for DVD too soon!



{February 3, 2010}   The Sculptor by Gregory Funaro

WOW!

I think that about sums it up! This is a very intense murder mystery/thriller/suspense book. I saw it at Borders at Logan Airport as I was walking by, I was just going to read what I had on my iTouch and I could not pass it up after I read the back cover.

Dr. Cathy Hildebrant, or Dr Hildy as only one is allowed to refer to her, is an art history professor, the preeminent authority on Michelangelo and is called in to consult on a case involving The Sculptor. He is making new masterpieces of his victims, preserving and posing them as Michelangelo’s most famous works.

Agent Sam Markham is the FBI’s special agent who’s specialty is tracking serial killers. He is the one who brings Cathy on to the project to help him understand what The Sculptor is trying to say, trying to get the world to understand his special gift.

I could not put this book down, a definite page turner that I would recommend, only to those who can handle this type of book.



{February 1, 2010}   The Book of Eli

Not a fan.

I know, that didn’t tell you very much. I didn’t really enjoy the movie as a whole. I found it to be a very long and slow film, longer than it really needed to be. It was very dark, of course it was apocalyptic as so many movies with religious under/overtones are. All for the recovery of a book for a madman, thinking that he could bend the world to his will if he could just read this book to the masses.

The villain was played, quite well, by Gary Oldham, typecast, and rightly so in this movie. He is ruthless, intelligent, self-serving and downright evil, a typical mob boss in getting his goons to do his dirty work for him. I always find it interesting that the smaller guys are usually the ones in charge with the bigger guys doing their bidding. Our hero, played by Denzel Washington is pious, righteous, mind your own business, sometimes help the underdog when you can’t walk away type of guy. He doesn’t want trouble, but, when backed into a corner, can remove a hand quicker than you can say go.

He is driven by a task, believed to be handed down to him from above and will not waver until he gets to his final destination to deliver what he has been commanded to and nothing will stop him.

There were several famous faces in supporting roles. Mila Kunis being one that is popping up in different movies recently, roles that are a stretch, helping to get her out of the more known annoying character Jackie that she played on “That 70’s Show” and Jennifer Beals, who I haven’t seen in a movie in a while.

As I say to my dad when I don’t think  a movie was very good “don’t bother, it will be on DVD soon”



et cetera