The Crud [And Some Movie/Book Reviews]

Things I learned this week:

• If your child picks up a stomach virus at daycare, don't delude yourself into thinking you won't get it. You will. And, your husband will too. The cats will not. [Why is that anyway? I've never seen these cats get sick. Which is all well and good because Cheli pukes enough on her own. Must Google that.]
• Don't be afraid to ask for help if you get aforementioned crud disease. I have the best mom ever. Truly. I called her from my sick bed couch, and she popped right over to pick up Dash. Thanks, Mom. I also had several offers of help from friends (thanks, everyone!), but didn't want to risk infecting anyone who wasn't related to me. And, would still love me if they got the crud.
   
• After you recover from All the Evil, you will find you only have energy enough to lay on the couch and click the remote buttons. Which brings me to a recap of the movies we watched. So, here you go.

First up was No Country for Old Men. I'll just admit it. I don't get it. I don't get the hype (it won Best Picture 2007) and I don't get the movie. I guess there was a slight point. Maybe. But, it was loooong and basically everyone dies. (That really won't ruin it for you, even if you go against my advice and spend two hours of your precious time watching it.) Tommy Lee Jones had a great character, but other than that? Blah.

Mr. Incredible took a computer break as his crud started before mine, and he could sit up at this point. Instead of lying like a heap of wet noodles on the couch like me. So, on to Mamma Mia. Hmmm... how do I put this? No one in the movie can sing. And, it's a musical. I take that back. Amanda Seyfried can sing. That's it. Meryl Streep: steller actress, beautiful, amazing, lovely, great dancer, can't sing a note. Colin Firth, my main man. Pierce Brosnan, Bond hottie. Why? Just why? If you can get past all that, it's a cute story (do I really have to tell you that it's based on the Broadway show based on the songs of ABBA?) with beautiful cinematography.

At this point, I crawled back into bed for a few hours and Mr. Incredible watched Dragon Wars. He said it was bad. I can't even find it on imdb.

We were still making our way through the stack of $2 movies we picked up at Blockbuster. Can you tell? Next up was In the Name of the King. This movie is much like The Lord of the Rings, but not as good. Burt Reynolds plays the king, but doesn't seem to have an accent, while everyone else does. Ray Liotta (whose best role of course was Henry Hill) is, well, terrible as the evil Gallian. Matthew Lillard (Scream, Scooby freakin' Doo!) plays the king's nephew and is also terrible. Jason Statham is awesome and his sidekicks to a good job. But, unfortunately, the good does not balance out the bad. Stick with The Lord of the Rings series.

I also watched Passengers with Anne Hathaway (who is gorgeous as always and one of my favorites). I'd never heard of it--did it go straight to DVD? It was pretty good. Not very original, though. It reminded me of a few other movies, but I won't list them as not to spoil it for you. Oh, and David Morse was in it too. Why don't people play Six Degrees of David Morse because holy crap, he's been in a ton of movies and TV shows.

I finally finished Careless in Red by Elizabeth George. It's probably bad that I picked this book up first instead of starting at the beginning of the series. I knew that it was a series, but didn't realize that this book was the last. A friend told me that this book was not her favorite in the series, so I may start at #1 and see how I like them.

I was not a big fan of this book. First off, it's huge--over 600 pages. There were too many characters and it took way too long to get interesting. I would say I finally got into it around page 250. If you are going to write a 600 page book, it better be good amazing!

I don't think I would recommend this book. But, I will probably start at the beginning one day to give Elizabeth George and Inspector Lynley a chance.
 
I'm now about a third of the way through Bel Canto, which I'm reading for my book club. So far, so good. I'm eager to see what happens next.

This post is linked up to What I Learned This Week at Musings of a Housewife.