Movie Mania

Paul and I have been to something like five movies in the past few months. Maybe not a big deal to most, but we generally go to one movie a year, so this is a big deal for us. It's not just because my nephew works at the movie theater, either, although that does provide its own entertainment.*

Anyway, we're happy to finally have some shows worth going to see! What is it with Hollywood, anyway, that they can't come up with original, good, clean stuff? Makes me want to go write for Hollywood, except that I'm not that creative. (Except for a few nightmares I could write up as screenplays, but they'd be rated R, so I best not pursue that idea.) Anyway, that's why I'm not getting paid to write movies!!! I sometimes wonder why some of those people ARE getting paid. Today we saw a preview for a movie about Chihuahuas. Hello -- I know of a few writers you can fire!

We enjoyed Get Smart (which had real humor -- not the potty or crude humor you see a lot these days), Iron Man, and Incredible Hulk (although it wasn't as good as Iron Man). We enjoyed Kung Fu Panda more than expected, which I suppose balances out Wall-E, which was not nearly as much as I expect from Pixar. (Kung Fu Panda was from Dreamworks so I had much lower expectations, and yet I enjoyed it more than I did Wall-E. Uh, oh ... does this mean I can no longer be a Pixar snob?) The short at the beginning of Wall-E was funny and much better than Wall-E itself.

We only took the kids with us to Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E (oh, and Horton Hears a Who at the dollar theater), but we have decided that Shayla is not allowed to join us at the movies again for another year!!!

Happy 4th of July! I hope your day is better than warm, buttery popcorn at an awesome movie. THAT would be a great day, huh? :)

** Entertainment mentioned above: The first time we ran into my nephew he was at the ticket counter. We got into the line that then splits between two tellers. The other teller got done first, so we let the people behind us go ahead of us. (Turns out they bought the last two tickets to the show we wanted. Oh well ... that gave us time to go catch some Panda Express.) Anyway, the lady with my nephew was apparently asking for some strange stuff, so the other ticket agent finished first again. When I let the people behind me go ahead again, the other ticket agent said, "I really can help you." I think she was getting offended/worried about why we weren't willing to go to her window. I went over and told her we were just waiting to buy tickets from my nephew, which I think made her feel a bit more relaxed about our strange behavior.

The next time we went to a movie he was taking tickets from people and telling them what direction to go to find their theater. He wasn't really paying attention and didn't see us, so we started running like we were going to try to get in without giving him at ticket. He didn't realize it was us until we were right next to him. We got a kick when we looked over and saw that his manager was standing nearby and saw the whole thing. At least Andy tried to stop us instead of just letting us in. He didn't get nearly as big of a kick out of it as we did, but we're "old marrieds" who don't get out as much as he does. :)