Last movie you watched......

Watched The Neighbors featuring Zach Efron and Seth Rogen last night and didn't hate it. Laughed out loud a bunch of times and didn't have to pay attention to every word to enjoy it. Not bad.

 

Saw The Heat, Bullock sucks, has played the straight-laced chick way too many times. McCarthy is fantastic, maybe I haven't seen her enough times to be sick of her.

 

Cinderella.

I really enjoyed it*.

*I have never seen any of the original versions, so I didn't really know the story, believe it or not, beyond the prince-and-the-slipper thing. Mrs. TV says it followed the original very closely, so I was happy to learn how she go her name, and I really enjoyed the uplifting message. Ironically enough, even though at the end of the day the story is about women-can-be-shallow-bitches and women-need-a-man-to-rescue-them, I found Lily James' attitude to be uplifting and even feminist.

 

I was really under-whelmed by 'Boyhood,' too.
But I didn't see any theme about poor choices.

 

Who's blowing a fuse after this one, left or right?

 

Watched the 30 for 30 "I Hate Christian Laettner." So much respect to the guy for:

1. Participating in a show that has that title;
2. Who simply ignored for the most part the vile hate that was directed toward him; and
3. Persevering through the hate.

Many thought he was born with this silver spoon and stereotypical prep school privileges when in fact he grew up lower middle class in Buffalo with a dad who was a printer in the newspaper and a grade school teacher mom.

To me, he owns everything about his career. He knows he wasn't the greatest pro but never blames anyone (even though he had Sidney Lowe as a HC who says "Laettner's spoiled") and just says he's happy with everything.

Laettner was the greatest college player since Walton. Duke's victory over UNLV was a great victory, the biggest upset by an apparent good team (which turned to be a great team) against a great team in my lifetime (excluding the 'Nova, Chaminade type wins). Laettner dominated guys like Mourning and O'Neal in college. Great career.

 

I haven't seen the entire Laettner doc, but I did catch about 25 minutes of it at the gym when it was on the TV right in front of my stationary bike.

At the time, I was always on the fence about him, though I thought he deserved all the criticism he got for stepping on the Kentucky guy's face. But, yes, I gained a lot of respect for his participation in this.

What I took away from the portion I saw was the sound bites from the dude who was billed as the author of "Duke Sucks," sitting there whining about the Blue Devils and griping about Laettner making the Dream Team, and Peter Rosenberg bragging about that amateurish anti-Laettner video on YouTube, and thinking to myself "You two are much bigger douchebags then Laettner could ever have possibly been."

I will see the whole thing, eventually.

 

The Iron Curtain. Want to say it's from 1948. Dana Andrews, Jean Peters (Howard Hughes wife at one time, IIRC), Thelma Ritter. Pretty good Cold War story apparently based on actual events in Canada. Lots of suspense.

 

Get Hard is everything you'd expect it to be. It's not going to win any #Oscars, but you will definitely laugh a lot. My favorite line of the movie was followed by, "(That) doesn't like sound a significant improvement over..." Seriously guys, see this movie. It's got a euphemism as its title and the entire premise is based on racial stereotypes, so the humor is crude and offensive, but damn is it funny.

 

I haven't seen it yet, but I imagine Ferrell is one of the few actors right now who can pull off such a role. His likable, clueless dope routine is phenomenal and makes racially insensitive gags more palatable. The same gags spoken by BJ Novak, Seth Rogen or Kevin James would probably not work as well.

Steve Carell might be able to pull that off. Anyone else?

 

I've been reading how the movie is getting some heat for being racist and/or homophobic (someone wrote the whole "scared of having sex with men in prison" thing was being beaten like a dead horse in the movie).

My take on that is I try to be sensitive to other people's opinions on this, but always come out on the side that a lot of people try too hard looking for something to offend them.

 

The Judge. Really liked it. Thought Duvall was outstanding. And the cameo by Leighton Meester was a welcome sight as well.