Ice John's World

 It has been a very busy summer so far. Outside the daily work, there are lots of yard works and volunteer works for the local Red Cross chapter. Even so, I still got to see lots of summer movies. Finally, I got a little bit time to spare to write reviews about some of them. Let's talk about the action packed one first, that is, "Wanted". I actually really enjoy this action movie directed by the Russian director who made the "Day Watch" and "Night Watch". It is full of the strangest stunts (CGI) you have never seen before. The fast-paced plots and interesting visual composure make this one even better than the "Hellboy 2". Now we talk about "Hellboy 2". It continues the monsters creation trend from the first one and some humor plots. However, the script seems to be tired and just not quite there. Some part of the movie actually is a little bit slow.

Now we come to some comedies. The first one is the bad "Love Guru". Even with the shameless promotion in the American Idol, its box office still tanked. It was one of the worst movie I have ever seen. Don't even waste your time to rent the DVD. Enough to say about that one. "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" is much better. The typical Adam Sandler comedy similar to his early work like "Big Daddy". It contains lots of sex related jokes. Don't expect too much from it then you will enjoy it. The last one is "The Dark Knight". There are lots of reviews out there already. As everybody else mentions, Heath Ledger did an incredible job to make "the Joker" very realistic. It is such a dark movie that you will be hardly to feel happy after seeing it. The only problem I have with it is the way they deal with the character, "Two-Faced". The character is rushed through and completely wasted. However, the movie has already reached the length of 2 hours and 32 minutes so I guess the director has done his best. Hope these help if you have not seen any of those movies yet.

 

Today is the first day back to work. After one week vacation at home, it does take some efforts to go back to the normal work. Surprising, not a lot of e-mails, guess everybody is still on the holiday recovery mode.

The snow finally stopped yesterday and it was actually a decent new year day. I did not do anything crazy on the new year eve. Just watched TV to see the time square ball drop at home. A friend and I went to see the "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" on new year day. It was a quite entertaining movie. It uses a lot of interesting facts to make up the clues for treasure hunt. !!!Spoiler Alert!!!

Of course, it is hard to convince anybody that a Maya Gold temple hidden Mount Rushmore. And that the bad guy eventually turns out to be not that bad is just too Disney movie. And the obvious "page 42" clue for the sequel is just a little much. Well, back to work, happy new year!

 
The long Labor Day weekend was over too soon! It was a very long relaxed long weekend for me. Got a family friend came in town to visit. So we just hanged out a bit. We finally got around to see the "Bourne Ultimatum". It is a very good movie. Fast pace, great fighting, incredible car chasing and amazingly, almost no dialog for Mat Damon's Jason character in the first 15-minute of the movie! And they took the scenes all over the world without using CGI. Really cool stuff. As a matter of the fact, we watched the first two Bourne movies on DVD again at home after that movie since we forgot quite a lot of clues/details mentioned in those two previous ones.

The weather was actually quite nice: sunny and around 85F. However, the mosquitoes were just terrible. Everywhere we went in the garden or the park, a swarm of them just attacked. I am a nature-born mosquito magnet so I get almost 10 bites every single time when all other people around absolutely bite-free. And my skin is sensitive to the mosquito bite so the bite area usually will swell into a nickel size. Really itchy and annoyed. We ended of not going to the Highland Game in Wisconsin due to that. So we stayed home and fixed some ceiling lights, etc.

I made several dishes such as "Apple Maple Turkey Burgers with Maple-Dijon Sauce", which is the turkey burger with maple syrup and applesauce, grilled and topped with maple syrup/Dijon mustard sauce. In addition, "Roasted Shrimp and Orzo", which has shrimp mixed cucumber, red onion, dill and orzo with lemon juice sauce; and a potato salad with two kinds of mustard, red onion, celery, mayonnaise, and dill. Of course, the dessert, a flour less chocolate cake. Quite a lot of chopping, cooking and dish washing for sure. Basically, just a quite relaxed long weekend.

Finally got sometime to watch the Simpsons movie. It is a fun movie to watch, especially, if you are a Simpsons cartoon fan. The story line is quite simple (or silly for some parts of it). Basically, the Springfield was under pollution crisis, and Homer messed up with it even more and caused the whole city to be quarantined by a crazy government official. Eventually, the Simpsons family resolved the problem and saved the town.

My favorite scene of the movie is the part that wild animals help Homer and Marge strip off the clothes so they can be happily to get on bed to have some XXX. It showed that Homer and Marge kissed then switched to those wild animals watching on the side. Their expressions of seeing the human sex were so funny that it was worth the price of the movie ticket. I would definitely recommend it for sure.