entertainment

My Week in Books, TV and Movies 8/14/20

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I almost didn’t have a book finished this week. I read the last page last night. I also almost forgot what movie I watched this week. I really need to start taking notes. Here is my recap.

Movies: We watched one movie this week(that I can remember) – Jumanji: The Next Level. I really liked the first movie and was looking forward to this one. It didn’t disappoint. It was fun watching The Rock channel Danny Devito an Kevin Hart channel Danny Glover. It was fun to once again watch Jack Black play someone who is disappointed to be Jack Black. I liked that they changed the game so that they had to adapt and figure it out again. If you liked the first movie you will definitely like this one. If you didn’t, you likely won’t care what I thought of the movie.

TV: Once again, nothing groundbreaking in this area. We watched all of our regular stuff. The season finale of Stargirl was this week. It was as good as expected. We love the show and can’t wait for season 2. We still watch multiple episodes of The Next Step every night. We are in season 4 and at a point where half of the regular cast has moved on and the dance group has a lot of new dancers. I’m not sure if if I will like it as much now. We have switched back to old Survivor for my evening viewing with my daughter. We are watching the season that introduced us to Tyson, Coach, JT and Fishbach. It’s a good one.

Books: I finished one book this week: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse. It is the sequel to Trail of Lightning. The series is a post-apocalyptic story that takes place in Dinetah(formerly the Navajo reservation) after most of the rest of the world has flooded. In this one Maggie is asked to help when Kai and Caleb Goodacre have gone off with a mysterious cult. I loved the first book. I liked this one, but not quite as much. I found myself putting it down often with no urge to pick it up again. I think it was a combination of the story and my frame of mind. I would say if you read Trail of Lightning and like it, read this one as well.

On Deck: I hope to watch Bad Boys for Life, but that would require convincing my daughter to watch it or convincing my wife to watch it with me in the morning. Neither is likely. I am off for the next three days. I hope to find some random old movies to watch while I try to do as little as possible and try not to think about how much I hate my job. We need to watch whatever we have for my daughter to watch on TV before she moves to her apartment next week. Not that DVR space will be an issue. We still have a lot of hours of TV to catch up on that she doesn’t watch and nothing new will be on for a while. I am currently reading The Bursar’s Wife by EG Rodford.

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My Week in Books, Movies, and TV 8/7/20

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I can’t believe it is already August. Seems odd to type that date. Here is my weekly recap of what I’ve read and watched this week.

Movies – We watched two movies this week. One was 1917. It is the story of two soldiers who are sent across enemy lines in WWI to deliver a message that will stop 1600 men from walking into a deadly trap. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had read some good reviews when it first came out but didn’t remember much about it. I thought it would be too slow for my wife. There was war action, but also a lot of time just walking. I think she might have liked it more than me. It was very tense and stressful. I would recommend it.

The other was the Disney original movie Upside Down Magic. I read and slept a little during it. What I saw looked OK. The actors were good. The story was good for a Disney movie. I’m sure the target audience enjoyed it.

TV – I have nothing groundbreaking to report on the TV front. My normal TV schedule these days looks like this:

If I wake up early on a non-work day I watch an episode of Shameless.

Watch an episode of The Gldbergs while eating lunch on work days.

After clocking out – watch old Amazing Race episodes with my daughter until Jeopardy. Watch Jeopardy

Watch The Next Step until I start to fall asleep and then doze on the couch while my daughter watches Criminal Minds.

That schedule will continue until she moves to her apartment in a couple of weeks.

Luckily, we have episodes of shows from last TV season still recorded so once she does move out we have some TV to watch. That’s good considering I don’t foresee any new shows coming this fall.

Books – I finished one book this week. It was Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith. It is a YA romance book. Louise is a high school kid starting her senior year. She is taking a class that means she is on the staff of the school newspaper. She has just broken up with her boyfriend who is the most popular athlete in the school. She meets a new boy in the newspaper class who has just moved to the area. Her little brother is a freshman who tries out for the school play, The Wizard of Oz.  He wins the part of the Tin Man, but there is controversy. A powerful parent group is upset that white actors did not get the parts traditionally played by white actors. Dorothy is black. The Tin Man is native. Louise is involved both personally and as part of the newspaper covering the story. I thought it was very good and would highly recommend it.

On Deck – I hope to watch the new Jumanji movie this weekend. TV will likely be more of the above. I’m reading Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse.

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Saturday Rerun – Music

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Two thugs in my life that have always helped me when I am down are TV and music. I’ve written a lot about music. Lists of favorites, what comes up when I shuffle the music on my phone, songs that get stuck in my head, fake band names, back stories for the fake bands, etc.

I decided for today I would share the link to the posts I have tagged music. Go back and enjoy some of my random music posts.

Tater on Music

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My Last Two Weeks in Books, Movies, and TV 7/31/20

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I don’t have a lot of note to report in regards to TV and movies. I spent a lot of time outside over the past two weeks. I did actually finish two books since my last post.

Movies – I’ve been trying to remember if I watched any movies over the past two weeks. I’m sure I watched at least part of some random old movie at some point. I don’t think I have actively watched a movie since the last post. I could be wrong. I just don’t remember. We did watch Hamilton again. It’s still very good. I have an old Frankie Avalon movie, Ski Party, playing in the background as I type this. I’m trying to turn the news off once I get the highlights in the morning. I usually have The Today Show on in the background, but these days I need less news in my life.

TV – We have been watching two new shows recently – United We Fall and Tough as Nails. United We Fall is a dumb sitcom with an annoying laugh track. It is a standard family sitcom. Nothing special, but my daughter kind of likes it so it is a good change of pace from our regular shows. Tough as Nails is a reality show hosted by Phil from Amazing Race. It has a group of blue-collar workers competing in challenges. There are individual and team challenges. The overall winner gets a big prize, but each week the winning team gets money as well. When you are eliminated from the individual competition you stay and work with your team in the team challenges so you still have a chance of winning some money. We like it more than we expected to like it.

Books – As I mentioned above, I finished two books since the last post:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins – This is a prequel to the Hunger Games series with a young President Snow as the main character. It takes place when he is a student and acts as a mentor during the 10th Hunger Games. I thought it was an interesting look at the early games and how they evolved to what they were in the original book. She did a good job of getting me invested in the characters, even while I knew the main character would become a villain. I think we need more of the story to really understand how this version of Snow became the villain he was in the original book.

The Poppy War by RF Kuang – This is the story of Rin, a war orphan in the poor Rooster Province, who aces the test to go to school and is sent to the most prestigious military academy in Nikan. The first part of the book is her experience at the school. The second half of the book is her experience during the next war. I really enjoyed the school portion of the story. How she goes from the poor kid who looks different than the rest to the star of the class. Her work with eccentric lore master Jiang. The first part of the war story was decent. By the end of the book, I felt like I was reading just to finish. I likely won’t read the next book in the series.

On Deck – I have 1917 and the new Jumanji movie from the library to watch. My family wants to watch the new Disney Channel movie Upside Down Magic, so I am recording that. The newest season of Shameless is now on Netflix, so I have something to watch when I am the only person awake in the house. I am reading Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith.

My Week in Books, Movies, and TV 7/17/20

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Here we are once again at the time of the week when I recap what I read and watched since the last post. Is it just me or did this week seem to take forever?

Movies – We watched the new Andy Samberg movie Palm Springs on Hulu. It’s not the type of movie my wife would generally agree to watch, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the one TV comedy she likes so she was willing to watch a Samberg movie.  The movie takes place at a wedding in Palm Springs. I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that it is a Groundhog Day type plot. The wedding day is lived over and over. It is a comedy, but there is more to it than just cheap laughs. We all really liked it, even my wife who would usually not watch this type of movie. I’m pretty sure that is the only movie we watched. I might have watched pieces of old movies here and there, but this is the only one I remember actively watching.

TV – Nothing groundbreaking on the TV side. We watched our regular shows I’ve listed before. This was the week of the Snowpiercer season finale. I really enjoyed the show and I’m glad there will be a second season. The first season ends with a game-changing cliffhanger. It sounds like they finished filming season two and just have editing work to do so we might get a second season faster than we will get new episodes of other shows. We finished season 5 of Amazing Race and started season 9. This is finally the season my daughter wanted – a season where the team she likes wins. I finally settled on The Goldbergs as a show I can watch when I am alone. It’s funny and short and something I can watch without too much focus.

Books – I finished reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. The basic plot – it is set in the ’80s and ’90s. A woman joins a book club to make friends around the same time a man moves into his aunt’s house across the street. Strange things start to happen that she believes are connected to the man. She has trouble convincing anyone that he is not who they think he is. The book spans around a decade. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it. I would recommend his book Horrorstor if you are going to read one of his books. This one was good, but Horrorstor is so much better.

On Deck – I’m reading the new Hunger Games book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I need to figure out which books I plan to take when we finally escape our home bubble for our vacation bubble. Movies and TV will be hit or miss as we just watch our regular shows and random movies. There is nothing groundbreaking on the horizon.

I will likely not have a recap next week as I plan to go radio silent and shut myself off from the world starting Tuesday.

 

My Week in Books, TV, and Movies 7/10/20

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Here, once again, is my weekly recap of what I read and watched since last week’s post. I never remember to take notes, so it is a memory exercise for me.

Movies – The big movie for us this week was Hamilton on Disney Plus. We were lucky enough to see the play in person on Broadway, but the original cast was already gone at that point. It was nice to be able to see it with them in the roles. It is still very good, but I don’t think I will be one of the people who will watch it over and over again. I had a three day weekend last week so I had plenty of time to find random movies to watch alone. I watched part of There’s Something About Mary since it was on, I was bored, and I had not watched it since the first time years ago. I watched Friday Night Lights. I think I had watched it before but remembered nothing about it. I was surprised to see two of the actors from the TV show in the movie. I never realized there was carryover. I think that is all of note. At least it is all I can remember.

TV – We watched episodes of our regular shows: Stargirl, Snowpiercer, Yellowstone. I watched more old Amazing Race with my daughter. She wanted a season where she would like the eventual winners. I couldn’t guarantee that so I looked up lists of what people considered the best season, thought the winners there were decent and we started season 5. It is a fun season. We started and almost finished Love, Victor, the spinoff of Love, Simon It was OK. It is only 30-minute shows so it is easy to binge. We watched the first three episodes of Next Step on Hulu last night because my daughter has watched it and really liked it and thought we would. It is a Canadian show about a dance studio. It was better than I expected. We watched a couple of episodes of Warrior Nun on Netflix. We do plan to watch more.

Books – I finished Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells. It is a YA fantasy book. It has dragons and prophecies. The basic plot: when her girlfriend is taken by the Aurati on their visit to town, Meren plots to infiltrate the dragon fortress, steal a dragon, and rescue her girlfriend. I enjoyed it but was disappointed as I always am when it ended without an ending and I have to wait for book two to finish the story.

On Deck – There are three new movies streaming that I want to watch. Andy Samberg has a new movie, Palm Springs,  on Hulu with a Groundhog Day type plot. He has been stuck living the same day over and over. It takes place at a wedding. On one of those days, the maid of honor gets stuck in the loop with him. I like Samberg and the premise sounds promising. Charlie Theron’s Old Guard is on Netflix today. It is an adaptation of a graphic novel. Theron plays a member of a team of immortal mercenaries who are suddenly exposed and must fight to feel their identities secret. My wife will like that one. The new Tom Hanks WWII movie Greyhound is on Apple TV. I’m still in my one-year free preview, so we will be able to watch it. We will watch more of our normal TV. I still need to find a show I will watch alone when I am awake for hours while my family is still asleep. I am reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

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My Week in Books, Movies, and TV 7/3/20

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Here we are at the end of another week. This time it is the first day of my three day weekend. I can spend the day reading and watching TV so I will have new stuff to post about next week. Here is my recap of the last week:

Movies – We watched two new streaming movies this week. Netflix released Will Ferrell’s new movie Eurovision: Story of Fire Saga. Ferrell plays a man from Iceland who has been obsessed with competing in Eurovision since he saw Abba perform on it when he was a kid. Rachel Macadams plays his friend and singing partner. Circumstances give them the chance to actually go to Scotland to compete in the competition even though their audition was not very good. All three of us enjoyed it. My wife says she would have liked it more had it been anyone but Ferrell. She does not like him at all. We also watched My Spy on Prime. It stars Dave Bautista as a CIA agent who is demoted after an incident and is assigned to surveil a single mom and her daughter because they are related by her late husband to the bad guy they are tracking. The daughter discovers the cameras and blackmails Bautista into getting involved in their lives. It was a cute family movie. We all really enjoyed it. I also watched Doctor Sleep while I was off on Wednesday. I don’t really remember the book enough to say if it was a good adaptation, but I did enjoy the movie.

TV – We watched all of our regular shows: Stargirl, Snowpiercer, Yellowstone, Perry Mason. We finally finished Community. We watched come of The Floor is Lava when we didn’t want to get involved in a scripted show. We finished the Rob and Amber season of Amazing Race. I started rewatching Skins after struggling to find a show to watch alone. I only watched the first three seasons the first time, so I thought I would start again and watch the entire thing. My daughter finished rewatching Zach and Cody on Disney and has started a rewatch of Wizards of Waverly Place.

Books – I finally finished reading Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh. I have had this ARC for a couple of years. I finally looked through my collection of ARCs and decided to read it. It is about a young woman who is dealing with the grief of both of her parents committing suicide who then gets a card implying they it was not suicide. She goes to the police and a retired detective who is working as a civilian front desk person decides to investigate. It was not a terrible book. There were some interesting twists and I did finish. I am still in the mode of not knowing if the issue is the book or my state of mind. It might have been a little of both.

On Deck – The big thing on tap is watching the Hamilton movie. We were lucky enough to see the show on Broadway, but I’m excited to see the original cast perform. Also, we like it enough we will probably watch it multiple times. I’m not getting DVDs from the library again. I have Richard Jewell and Queen and Slim. We might watch one of them. Midway is on HBO tomorrow so that is an option. TV will likely be watching the new episodes of the shows listed above. I am reading Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells.

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My Week in Books, Movies, and TV 6/26/20

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This week we continued our trend toward watching movies rather than TV shows when we are all done for the day. I wrote about the old movies we watched in this post so I won’t include them in this post. I find that when I am alone I struggle to find something that holds my attention. Here’s the week:

Movies – In addition to the movies in the post linked above we watched two newer movies that I can recall, both on Disney Plus. They were Onward and Stargirl. When my family said they wanted to watch Onward, I expected to spend that time reading or playing a game on my iPad. I was not excited about the movie. It turned out that I spent more time watching the movie and less time doing other things. It was much better than I was expecting. The voice cast was very good. It was funny and had a good story. I don’t know why I was surprised. I had heard good things about it. Last night we watched Stargirl. It was my pick because I loved the book. I don’t think my family liked it much. It had a good cast and was a good adaptation. It was much slower and more dramatic than my family is used to watching. I do think it could have been a little shorter, but I did like it.

TV – Since we have been in movie mode, we have not started any new TV shows. We did watch the new episode of Star Girl. We watched the season premiere of Yellowstone. We all still really like it. I lied above about new shows. We did watch the first episode of Perry Mason on HBO. It was good, but I’m not really sure why the character needed to be pre-lawyer Perry Mason. We will probably watch more. My daughter and I finished watching Survivor season 2 and then decided to finally watch the final season of Community instead of starting another Survivor. I struggled to find a show to watch when everyone else is still asleep. I don’t want anything too serious, but I’m also not sure I want a sitcom. I will try again tomorrow morning when I have several hours of non-work time awake when they are asleep.

Books – I did not finish a book this week. I still sometimes go through phases of not being able to focus on a book. It’s just easier to do crosswords and watch TV. It might be the book as well. Probably a combination.

On Deck –  We will likely watch some sort of older movie this week. My wife just went through all the Disney Plus movies and added a bunch to the watchlist, so I assume I have some Disney type movies in my future. The Will Ferrell Eurovision movie is on Netflix now and Dave Bautista’s My Spy is on Prime so we might watch one of those. We still have the latest episode of Snowpiercer to watch and we will have new episodes of Yellowstone, Star Girl, and Perry Mason. We will probably finish Community this week. My daughter will probably finish her rewatch of Zach and Cody and has said she will move on to Hannah Montana. I will hopefully finish reading Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh this weekend and will then browse my shelves at home to find something new.

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Old Movie Mode

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We have reached the point of the quarantine where we have turned from random TV shows to old movies or our after-work entertainment. We are figuring out which older movies our daughter has not watched and finding them on streaming. We had already watched some of the classics with her: Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, etc. Here are what we have watched so far:

Clueless – It had been years since I had watched this one. I still enjoyed it. My daughter seemed to like it.

The Back to the Future Trilogy – I still say the second movie was not good. My daughter disagrees. She liked it. I can’t believe we got this far without her watching these movies.  My son just watched them recently as well and it was his first time. I feel like a failure as a parent.

Some Kind of Wonderful – mainly because it was one that was available and my wife didn’t remember watching it. It was OK. More boring than I remembered. It was nice to have a John Hughes movie without any of the brat pack in it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark – I bored my family with the story of how Tom Sellek could have been Indiana Jones if he was not contracted to the pilot of Magnum PI. I’m sure they wish they had chosen another movie. I read during this one as I’ve watched it several times.

We will likely finish the Indiana Jones series by the weekend. I recorded Doc Hollywood when it was on HDNet over the weekend. I need to make her watch the Lord of the Rings movies before she goes back to school in August.

Any suggestions of old movies for us to make her watch? Leave them in the comments!

 

My Week in Book, Movies, and TV 6/19/20

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Here we are. The end of another week. Only 10 hours until my sweet freedom of the weekend. Here is my recap of what I’ve watched and read this week.

Movies – We watched several movies this week as we did not find a new show that we all loved enough to watch every night after work is over. We focused on old moves that my daughter had never watched. It started with Clueless last weekend. As suspected, she really liked that one. We were shocked to discover that she had never actually watched Back to the Future. She blames our parenting skills. So, we watched all three of the movies over the week. She disagrees with my assessment that the second movie was not very good. She seemed to like all three of them. It’s possible we watched something else over the week, but those are the only ones I can remember.

TV – I finally finished the latest season of On My Block. I’m glad there will be another season. I would hate for it to end the way it did. We are now watching Survivor – Australia. It’s still weird watching the old seasons. So much has changed over the years. We watched the latest episodes of Stargirl and Snowpiercer. My daughter continues to watch Zach and Cody on Disney Plus at the end of the night while I sleep on the couch. I started to watch Castle Rock on Hulu but discovered it started me on season 2 for some reason. I will have to go back and start over now. I still see parts of old Grey’s Anatomy in the afternoons while I work and my daughter watches TV.

Books – I finished two books this week. I finally finished Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland after putting it aside several times to read books for work. It is the sequel to Dread Nation. It is set in post Civil War America that is overrun with zombies. The first book started in Baltimore and ended in Kansas. In this one, they head to California It is a long book and it took me a while to get into it since I kept having to put it aside but once I got back to it I liked it as much as the first. I also read The Art of War after I was asked to fill in for the person who does the nonfiction book club at work. It was a quick read, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much. I’m not sure I really retained any of the text.

On Deck – We will likely keep looking for old movies to watch with our daughter. We need to watch Jest Mercy while it is still free. Selma is on TV tonight. I will probably record it since we all mentioned that we never watched it when it came out. TV will depend on who is awake and free when. I will probably watch Castle Rock this weekend when I am inevitably up hours before everyone else. Yellowstone comes back Sunday, so we will watch that. I will try the new Perry Mason show on HBO.  We will watch more old Survivor. The Belmont Stakes is tomorrow. It will be nice to have a live sporting event to watch. I need to find a book in the house that will hold my interest. The ARC I started this week is not compelling me to read.

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