All movies seen since Christmas, reviewed.

Preface
Unbeknownst to you—and for that matter—me, I am also a movie critic.  And you can’t spell criticize without critic!  I think some reviewers forget this, but not me.  It’s pretty safe, since I will admit up front that most movies are awful and I wish I didn’t spend so much time watching them but I blame it on society and the devil so I am exonerated from all charges and can now freely watch all the movies I possibly can with the caveat that I will snarkily comment on all their perceived failures and denigrate their creative time and effort!
To rate movies I will use my patented “outrageous number/ridiculous movie-related object combo” which will absolutely not stand up to any scrutiny or comparison.

(Theater)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
At first I was bitter at seeing another “kid’s movie” in the theater, because the last movie I saw was Where The Wild Things Are.  I enjoyed the former movie more.  It is funny.  It is cool looking.  In fact, it reminds me of how a Roald Dahl book should look.  The humor is an acquired taste, but I had already acquired it half of the way in.
Rating: 56 Boggises, Bunces and Beans

(on video)
The City of Ember
Again, another kid’s movie.  And again, I was pleasantly surprised.  The premise reminds me a lot of The Giver (which for some reason hasn’t been made into a movie) although there are some cheesy parts.  It is kinda creepy, which I don’t think a lot of movies can do to me. 
Rating:  200 Builders

After the Wedding
This is a Danish foreign film that reminds you how good non-Hollywood movies can be, just by mixing in something different like—I don’t know—an unhappy ending and morally ambiguous characters!  You know characters you can’t tell if they are good or bad, then they are good again and I’m all like huh?  Kinda like real life.  That is, if I lived in Denmark and I went to a wedding party and found out the bride was my daughter and her stepdad was dying and wanted me to marry his wife (your ex-lover).  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  Oops.
Rating:  1,024 Honeymoons

Ivanhoe
Sheesh, all that introductory rambling and I still haven’t excoriated a movie!  Sorry, Mom, but this movie is downright silly.  And I think unintentionally so.  It was a TV movie, granted, but I’ve seen better.  I hope the book isn’t this bad. 
Rating: 2 lances

Twilight
If there is any more written about this movie or these books, the Internet will literally need to have a stake driven through its heart or be shot by a silver bullet or else it will start to suggestively force adolescent sex on you.
Rating: 9 man vampire infield and outfield

(already seen, but recently reseen)
Breach
Rating:  $3-4 billion lost in Government Intelligence
Catch Me If You Can
Rating:  3,000 bounced checks
The Three Amigos
Rating:  20 plethoras of pinatas

My formula for deciding when I can put down a book

How accessible and attention-grabbing do books need to be?  My personal theory of literature (credentials, B.S. in English, BYUI; future prolific author; extensively read--including War and Peace, James and the Giant Peach, and Reader’s Digest) dictates that the very best works would of course have interesting openings.  In practice, however, how many times do I nab a supposed classic and find myself snoring through hundreds of pages of absolutely unADHD-friendly delayed gratification?  Look, if we want and expect kids to keep reading for the sake of reading (perhaps a faulty premise), we need to feed them more saccharine laced fluff more along the lines of Twilight, Goosebumps and Everyone Poops! 
I have extra power such as pride and guilt that gets me through some of the most mundane novels, but we all know kids nowadays (and adults too) can’t be trusted to possess such valuable attributes.  It would be nice to know that you gave a book your best effort and at the same time remove the stigma of leaving a  book unfinished.  Therefore I determined that I personally would develop a formula for when I could put down a novel with a dragging plotline and still maintain a modicum of respectability. 
At first I thought I might settle on an arbitrary number, such as  one-hundred pages in.  But that is unfair to longer books, so then I decided that it must be a percentage.  Of course there are books that reward you for sticking around, but there are also clunkers that leave you scratching your head, wondering why you wasted so much time.  I feel that if you read half of a book, you should be moderately far into a plot by then, so that would be too far and too much reading to set as a benchmark.   A quarter of a book is more reasonable, but I am a literary snob so I will err on the side of the author and compromise with 33%.  Think it out:  if a book does not speak to you on some level after a third has been read, you can safely put it down.  It’s fair.  It’s only right.
Then I got to thinking that I need to have a reason to put the book down, more complex than that it is simply too boring.  So I devised this protocol:  after 11% of the book has been read and there is any tangible feeling that I do not want to continue (manifested by yawns, periods of two days or longer of inactivity, or rampant debauchery) I will draft a first warning that details the setting, plot and characters; after 22% of the book has been read and the feeling continues I will draft a similar warning along with any additional developments, and then at the 33% mark I will write a third and final summary, after which I can safely determine that the book is too boring and I can move on.  Now, if the first feeling that I want to quit is after the 33% mark, only one report is needed.  The same rule applies if the first feeling of quitting is between the 22% and 33% marks, except only two reports are needed.  If these rules are followed, all feelings of guilt will be expunged and all pride will be upheld.  If these rules are broken, guilt shall be doubled and pride will be taken away, even that which I already have.

Joel's consumer power, vol. 23: Overcoming planned obsolescence in your life

 

You know planned obsolescence.  It’s everywhere.  You need to buy a new computer every two years.  You need to get a new cell phone every two years.  It’s when designers intentionally limit the effectiveness of their products so that you will buy more of them.  In the case of technology, they are supposedly getting better and better so that when you buy a computer it is quickly obsolete.

The worst culprit of all:  disposable shaving, and more specifically, the Gillette corporation.  They had me duped for years, buying their el cheapo Mach 3 starter kits and then stealing out of my back pocket with their replacement blades that are so expensive even companies that sell bottled water think they are out of line.  And then, do you know how long those blades last?  Guess.  They are scraping the very skin off of your face on the fourth day. 

The worst part of this whole thing was that I used to be a champion of the Mach 3.  I remember singing its praises:  “Those three blades are so smooth when you haven’t shaved for a few days”  and “I love Mach 3 so much I would literally shave myself while flying a fighter plane that was going Mach 3, in a World War II dogfight.”  I was in bed with Gillette, in bed!

It might have been my imagination, but I think the folks in Gillette’s uber-secret design department gradually cranked up the planned obsolescence over the last few years, so slowly that no one would notice.  You know, like the frog in boiling water.    “Maybe we can get it so that they will buy a new blade every day,” I imagine them saying.

Now, people have been shaving for centuries.  They have not always used Mach 3 blades.  I started looking into alternative shaving methods, which abound on the Internet.  Just Google it, there are a lot of cool ideas, like towel-blotting the razor so it doesn’t get wet (which supposedly stops the blades from going dull), to dipping your blade in rubbing alcohol or mineral oil, to using a double-edged straight razor old school style.

I tried keeping the Mach 3 from getting wet, and I tried dipping it in rubbing alcohol, but for me, it just made me feel like a bigger fool.  I still would cut up my face until I would give in and put on a new razor.

In short, life was miserable, and it was because of shaving.  Now, some of you may be wondering, why doesn’t he get an electric razor?  Well, I had some long standing biases against electric razors, but as you will see, they ultimately become my salvation.  They don’t have as close of a shave as a new Mach 3, and it doesn’t feel as effective at first, and of course they are a bigger up front cost.

My wife, much smarter than I, purchased one for me for Christmas.  I immediately loved my new toy.  It’s so sleek and sexy.  I don’t need to shave in the bathroom.  I don’t need to get wet to shave.  It doesn’t hurt to shave.  The blades (so far) still work after a couple of weeks, and they supposedly will work for an entire year.  Yes, it might take a bit longer to shave than it used to, but that is totally cancelled out by a completely unforeseen factor:  I look forward to shaving!  It is so fun now!

And thus we see that by clever design Joel was able to overcome planned obsolescence in his life through the providence of his loving wife, which is truly “the best a man can get.”