BREAKING NEWS

Just bought tickets to the Boston premiere of Where the Wild Things Are on October 5th! HUZZAH! It also includes a Q&A with director Dave Eggers...awesome! Here's the link:

Where the Wild Things Are premiere

Also, watched In the Loop today. Not a whole lot happened, but the script was unbelievable. I need some time to digest and thing about it, but my initial reaction is - awesome. It's on IFC onDemand until October 27, check it out.

Taking Chances

I've decided, the best new show of the 2009/10 season is Glee. Something about it (the musical numbers sure do help) has me hooked. The writing is a little uneven, but I think it's just because the show is trying to find it's voice; there are parts that are totally cliche - but then also parts that are incredibly real. See last nights episode (1.4, "Preggers") as a case and point. The guest stars are outstanding (Mike O'Malley was heartbreaking in last nights ep, and I cannot wait for Kristin Chenowith next week), the writing is (usually) razor sharp, especially Cheering coach Sue's rants, and the performances from the members of the glee club are spot on - Lea Michele is giving a career-making performance, even though she's had fairly good success on Broadway in the original casts of Ragtime, Spring Awakening and the revival of Fiddler on the Roof - and the musical numbers are fantastic.

My biggest complaint? The lip syncing is terrible. Seriously, you know it's the cast actually singing, but the sound designers and director need to figure it out and fix this ASAP. It's horrendous.

I've been a nerd and downloaded all of the songs from iTunes, they're all excellent. Current favorite is a cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love", from next weeks episode. Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, check it out. Previous episodes are on iTunes (and maybe hulu) and it airs Wednesday nights at 9 on Fox (this will become a problem when Lost comes back in January/February). Does this make me a gleek?

Magnificent

U2 Sunday night. Incredible. I'd never seen them live before, and I'd been wanting to see them for quite some time. Everything about the afternoon/evening was excellent. Miss Alison Hay, Katie, Nick and I had a great tailgate session in the parking lot (even if it did cost $40), and had great seats for a great show. The set was crazy, it was like this giant spaceship thing, with tons of lights and a crazy video screen that moved around and expanded and contracted. The set was ridiculously high energy, with Bono, the Edge and Adam Clayton running all over the stage and the bridge/catwalk thing that went out over the audience. Larry Mullen got to move around a little bit too, but the drum set was on a rotating platform, so that was kind of cool. Here's the set list:

09/20/2009 Gillette Stadium - Foxboro, Massachusetts, USA
Breathe, No Line On The Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Mysterious Ways, Beautiful Day / Blackbird (snippet), Elevation, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Stand By Me (snippet), Unknown Caller, New Year's Day, Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of, The Unforgettable Fire, City Of Blinding Lights, Vertigo / She Loves You (snippet), I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet), MLK, Walk On, One / Amazing Grace (snippet), Where The Streets Have No Name / All You Need Is Love (snippet)
encores: Ultra Violet (Light My Way), With Or Without You, Moment of Surrender

Was super excited they played "City of Blinding Lights", which is probs my favorite U2 song. It was a great mix, especially for a relative U2 newcomer like me who is familiar with most of their new stuff and their hits, and there were some of their other, older songs in there too. All in all, a great experience. I hear they're much better at indoor venues rather than stadiums, and if that's true, I can't imagine what they'd be like at the fleetcenter, because this was pretty awesome.

Not awesome, however, was trying to leave after. I figured that we'd wait an hour or so to get out of the parking lot...we got in the car at 11:45 and pulled into the hotel parking lot in Norwood at 2:45...yep. 3 hours to get out of the parking lot and 7 miles up rt 1. I can't believe that people do that every weekend for Pats games. The traffic I guess was much worse Monday night, 95/128 was backed up for 27 miles trying to get to the show. G-ROSS.

Saturday night Miss Alison Hay and I went and saw The Informant!, the new Steven Soderbergh/Matt Damon flick. I had initially heard mixed reviews, saying that Matt Damon was excellent but the movie itself was kind of blah. I concur with that sentiment. Matt Damon was indeed sensational, possibly giving the 2nd best performance of his career (his best? Good Will Hunting, he should have won an Oscar for that role...but that's another post for another day) as Mark Whitacre the pudgy, executive at the Illinois based Archer Daniels Midland(ADM) in the early 1990s who wound up blowing the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics, only after his wife forced him to. For the first 1/2, the movie is fairly straightforward and is basically The Insider meets Erin Brockovich, and has these great inner-monologue voices overs by Damon. The best one by far is about Polar Bears. Just as he's about to bring down ADM, Witacre and the film go in a completely different direction, becoming more and more convoluted, and, quite frankly, difficult to follow, thus making me lose interest. The one saving grace? Marvin Hamlish's great score, harkening back to the cheesy game-show themes of the 60's and 70's. The film had a slick look to it, and it looks like they had a great time making it. Too bad it didn't translate that well on screen. Grade: C

NYC this weekend to see A Steady Rain, Bye Bye Birdie and Memphis. Sox/Yankees series in the Bronx this weekend too, maybe I'll see some players? That would be awesome. Speaking of baseball, New York, and the Yankees, they're the first team to clinch a playoff spot...the NYTimes twitter feed said "Yankees headed back to the post season" as if they were there last year...uh, they weren't. They're probs going to play Detroit in the ALDS, and the Sox will probs play the Angels. They lost their 2nd straight to Kansas last night, hopefully they can bounce back today and tomorrow.

Came across this last night online:

Have I said how excited I am for this?

Lose My Breath

I finally have a chance to stop and think for a second - this past week has been absolutely crazy. Started out last weekend with my first trip to UMass of the new year. Saw a bunch of the bros, went to the football game and saw the band (this year's show: Pirates of the Caribbean and a Barry Manilow medley, my mom is pumped). Got a little nostalgic for the band and the bros, but I digress, my college days are behind me...or so I thought. Saturday night was a trainwreck, but an enjoyable one none the less.

Tuesday night I went to the Sox game with Andy - it was good to catch up with him, since he'd been in Manchester since the end of last summer. Sox won - it was a pretty good game, and Dice-K made quite the comeback performance and got a great ovation when he left in the 6th. They had been on a hot streak, 7 wins in a row, but they lost to the Angels 3-4 last night. Still, they're 6 up on Texas for the wild card and 7 behind the Yankees for the AL East. October baseball in Boston seems all but certain.

Wednesday was a mess trying to get home from steering committee. There was a fire at South Station AND Chinatown, effectively shutting down the red and orange line throughout Boston proper. For the red line (which I take to Davis), I got on a bust at park street and took that all the way to JFK (complete opposite direction of where I needed to go), and then was able to get on a red line train. All red line trains were running express from JFK to Harvard on some tracks that hadn't been affected by the fire...which I'm still not sure why/how that worked. Anyways, it should have taken me about 20 minutes to get home, and it took about 2 hours. Thanks again MBTA...

Exciting weekend (well, Sunday at least) on tap. I'm going to see U2 at foxboro with Katie, Miss Alison Hay and Nicholas. I've been waiting since, probably forever, to see them in concert, and I got these tickets in APRIL! or maybe March, but I digress...I was on their site yesterday looking at some of the set lists and came across a photo of the stage

photo courtesy of U2.com

If that's any indication of what the rest of the show is going to be like, I might pee my pants. You can bet that I'll post a review on Monday at some point, and also complain about the $40 (!!!) to park. Gross.

I have a major conundrum, two of my most anticipated movies of the fall An Education and Where the Wild Things Are open on the same day, October 16. Which one to see? I've posted both trailers below...I'll let you help decide...

An Education

Where the Wild Things Are


I mean, I plan on seeing both, but which one to see first...

Ok friends, that seems to be it for right now - leave opinions about An Education/Where the Wild Things Are in the comments. Oh! And don't forget to support me in the B.A.A. Half Marathon - 3 weeks from Sunday til the race!

I'm still here...

Yes friends, I'm still here - it's just been an incredibly busy month, mainly because I'm still in the process of trying to find roommates for the College Ave....I've got 2 and need one more. Anyone looking to move? Or know anyone looking to move? Let me know ASAP! This is the most difficult and stressful thing I've ever done - I really didn't think it would be this hard to find roommates...

Anyways, other than that minor (ok, major) inconvenience, life has been pretty much status quo. Seen quite a few movies lately, all of them good - here's a quick recap:

District 9 - I had heard all kinds of buzz about this during the summer from all of the movie/Oscar blogs that I read, but I really had no burning desire to see it. Basically, it was about the relocation of an alien community in JoBurg (that's Johannesburg, South Africa to all you newbs), District 9. Shot in a documentary style, and a slight allegory of the apartheid struggles of South Africa, it was slick, had a breakneck pace and was incredibly engaging, thanks in most part to an magnificent break-through performance by Sharlto Copley. Definitely a major surprise, and this could easily be one many critics top 10 lists. Grade: A-

Inglourious Basterds - Any film that has the names Tarantino, Pitt, Roth and Kruger on the bill immediately makes me want to see it, no matter what the subject matter. When it happens to be about a rouge branch of the Army charged with killing and scalping Nazi's and a Jewish girl seeking revenge for the death of her family? Even better. The reviews out of Cannes on this were so-so, and word on the street was that there was some minor edits between Basterds Cannes screening and the domestic release, and they were apparently for the better. Interestingly, the storyline that the It was a little long, and at times a little tedious to sit through (running time is over 2:30), but there were parts of it that were absolutely stunning, mainly the last 40 minutes. Christoph Waltz walks away with the film, expect a Best Supporting Actor nod for him. Basterds is one of those films where I walked away thinking...hmm, I don't know if I liked it, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I think this is one that definitely needs a second viewing. Grade: A

9 - Saw this last night, mainly because of the novelty of the movie 9 being released on 09/09/09. All I knew about it was that it was an animated movie about rag dolls (which I later learned were called Stitchpunks) who are "the last remains of mankind" on the Earth and their quest to save humanity. Whoa. That's pretty deep for an animated movie...and I was totally blown away. The imagery that it created, the story that it told - all of it was top notch. Essentially, the 9 Stitchpunks spend half the movie trying to figure out what they are, and they other half trying to save mankind. A little far-fetched, I know, but trust me, in context, it works. Beautifully. There were quite a few spectacular moments, especially towards the end. Go see this. You won't regret it. Grade: A

In other, non-movie news, Katie and I have gone kayaking quite a few times on the Charles, and it's been a lot of fun. It's also less than 6 weeks til my next half marathon - the B.A.A. Half Marathon to be exact. I'm running for Dana-Farber, and have to raise $500 - help me out by clicking here! You'll even get a personalized thank you from me!

Molly and I saw Jersey Boys a couple weeks ago...and I didn't like it as much as I did 3 years ago in New York. Maybe it was the casting, maybe it was the fact that I forgot almost nothing happens in the first 20 minutes, something was just kind of meh. I still do, however love the epilogue, I have a new soft spot for "Who Loves You".

Tickets for The Addams Family went on sale yesterday and we got tickets for May. We're going to take mom for her birthday since she's been talking about wanting to see it for months. Bye Bye Birdie and A Steady Rain, two of the most anticipated shows of the fall, start previews tonight. I'm anxious to see what people have to say about the first performances.

ok - I think that's a long enough update for today. I promise that I'll try and get back into a regular updating routine. Once this roommate thing goes away....