Quick Hits – April 2016

I was really hopeful that I would be ready to blog in force this week.  However, things are still bumpy at work with the year-end close.  My weekend was not so great, and I did not get much done at home or work.  Therefore, this week I am still struggling to catch up on things and am forced to be a little light on the blogging again.  The good news is that I have kept a list of things that I watched and read during the month.  The bad news is I am only going to do half of the mini-reviews I stated I would do each month.  I am aware I have a lot of movies on here, but most of them were watched during the flu week when I had no energy to do anything else.  The rest of the month I have been too busy to watch, read, or write about movies and books.

Warning:  Although I tried not to delve into plots too deeply, there are potential spoilers in the reviews below.  Read at your own risk.

TV Series:  Accidentally on Purpose:  Season 1 (2009)

I picked this TV series, because I noticed it had Jon Foster in it.  I really liked his character in the 2004 series Life As We Know It and I wanted to see him in something else.  The premise of Accidentally on Purpose seemed funny, so I gave it a watch.  In Accidentally on Purpose, Billie is a thirty-seven year old single woman who ends up pregnant with twenty-two year old Zack’s baby after a short fling.  Billie and Zack decide to keep the baby and try to make some sort of co-pregnancy/parenthood situation work.  The series runs the length of the pregnancy, ending with the birth of a healthy baby boy.  There is no second season, but honestly I think this show works better as a stand-alone series.  A lot of the interaction between Billie and Zack were predictable in both the humorous and the touching moments.  I found the method of comedy acting used by the performers, particularly Jenna Elfman as Billie and Lennon Parham as Abby (Billie’s sister) to be very unnatural and distracting which decreased my enjoyment of it.  I found Zack to be much more likable than Billie.  The interaction between him and his best friend Davis provided much more entertainment, even though that had more to do with stoner humor than the May-Dec relationship the show is based around.  Overall, it was an easy watch with many moments of laughter, but do not expect it to be anything particularly original or spectacular.

Movie:  Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

This has been on my playlist for a while.  I think I saw a preview for it at some point and thought it looked good.  This film was an incredibly touching story about a high school boy Greg who is forced by his mother to hang out with Rachel, a neighbor girl who has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Leukemia.  Prior to this forced interaction, Greg has very little social life and only really hangs out with Earl.  He does not even refer to Earl as his friend, but instead calls him a coworker because they have made forty-two films together, all parodies of famous movies.  Although the meetings with Rachel begin very awkwardly with it apparent that neither appreciates the forced interaction, it evolves into a genuine friendship.  Greg even makes a special movie for Rachel to show how much she means to him and everyone around her.  The film was incredibly sad and touching and wonderful all at the same time.  It is a fantastic truth about how little we know each other and ourselves, and how the interactions with those around us can teach us so much more about ourselves than we can ever learn on our own.   I very much enjoyed the movie.

Book:  First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen by Charlie Lovett (2014)

I am a fan of Jane Austen.  I have read her books.  I have watched many movies based on them.  I have consumed various spin-offs (both book and movie) of her material with much amusement.  So when I heard of this one, I put it on my To Read list.  It turned out to be one of the most disappointing Jane Austen tributes I have ever read.  The book is split into two stories, one about Jane Austen and one about a modern Jane Austen fan.  The Jane Austen story is a fictionalized account of her first efforts of writing with the help of an elderly neighbor, another writer, Richard Mansfield.  The modern story focuses on Sophie Collingwood caught in a love triangle between two men, Winston Godfrey and Eric Hall, while trying to unravel a mystery surrounding whether Jane Austen actually wrote Pride & Prejudice or whether the unknown Richard Mansfield did.  Neither storyline is well written.  Both stories treat the heroines as dimwitted women incapable of surviving without the men in their lives.  Jane Austen is portrayed as rather unconfident in her writing abilities and constantly relies on Richard to provide her with important plot points in her novels.  Sophie is apparently so sheltered and naïve that a simple garden kiss upends her world and sex with another man turns her into an impulsive mess who runs around stealing things from Oxford libraries.  The mystery fell flat because you never realistically believe Richard Mansfield could be the true author of Pride & Prejudice.  I waffled between bored and frustrated throughout the book.  I definitely do not recommend, especially to a Jane Austen fan.

Overflow:

TV Series:  Supernatural:  Season 7 (2011) – Yes, although this was not one of their best seasons.

TV Special:  Jen Kirkman:  I’m Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine) (2015) – Yes.  I like funny stories much more than punchlines, and she was relatable.

Movie:  The Intern (2015) - Yes

Movie:  Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) – Yes.  I had to watch it again after reading the book.

Movie:  Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - Yes

Movie:  One Day (2011) – No.  I wanted to like this so much, but it just felt flat.  The characters had no chemistry together at all.

Movie:  Boys Don’t Cry (1999) – Yes.  It starts a little slow, but if you can push past the beginning it is worth it.

Movie:  Despicable Me 2 (2013) – Yes.  I love this movie for family fun.

Book:  Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (1996) – Maybe.  I think the movie is better, but maybe that is because I saw it first.  Also, I read the whole thing with Renee Zellweger’s narrating it in my head despite not having seen the movie in years.

That wraps up this month’s entertainment blog.  Hopefully next month, I will watch fewer movies but provide more reviews.  Does anybody have any good recommendations for what I should watch and/or read in May?

See you next week!