Phil Villarreal's Blog, page 143
December 30, 2013
Top 10 Movies Of 2013
Before MidnightFrances HaSide EffectsAmerican HustleStar Trek Into DarknessPacific RimGravityCaptain Phillips12 Years a SlaveThis is the End
The worst movies were The Lone Ranger and The Hangover Part III
The worst movies were The Lone Ranger and The Hangover Part III
Our 2013 Christmas Letter
Hello, all. As you can tell from the crisp air, music on the radio, decorations in store windows and Cardinals' dwindling playoffs chances, it is nearly Christmas time once again. So now seems like as good a time as any to pretend that Facebook doesn't exist and send you a zany photo and an update about how we have been doing.
2013 has been a year of alarming and disgusting change in our household. The change we are referring to, of course, is that of Zack's diapers. Even though he is our third child, we had forgotten just how revolting a toddler's diaper gets when he begins eating solid food. But our memories are refreshed one or two times daily, when the youngster's drooping undercarriage serves a reminder.
Zack is the biggest mover and shaker among the household this year, having launched his own app on iTunes, launched his tech startup into an impressive initial public offering and launched an exploratory committee to gage his chances in the 2014 Congressional elections. Although he's only 1 year old, his accomplishments are remarkable. In addition to all that, he also learned how to crawl through the doggie door and spray fridge door water all over the floor, which he proceeds to lick up.
Luke, who is in first grade, is a thriving artist and musician. We see him becoming a one-man band who beat-boxes his own background music while also singing lead and backup vocals. If you think all this to be impossible, it's because you have never been serenaded by the 6-year-old.
Emma, who proudly boasts she is in 'Pre-K' and not just standard preschool, is also the artistic sort. She excels in the ancient, well-respected medium known through the ages as Grabbing Scissors Out Of The Craft Closet And Leaving Squiggly Pieces Of Construction Paper All Over The Kitchen Floor. Combined with her affinity for painting and drawing on several sheets of paper per minute, when trees see this girl, they cry.
Jessica continues to attend grad school, going for a master's degree because the master's she already earned has lost that 'new car' smell. She also continues to work part-time and rescue Zack from his minutely attempts at sending himself to the emergency room by BASE jumping off the dining room table.
As for Phil, he is still toiling away at the local newspaper -- poor guy, no one has stopped to tell him that newspapers ceased to exist in 2005 -- and passing his video game addiction on to his offspring.
That should about catch you up. We'll check back in at the end of 2014 -- another anticipated year of disgusting, smelly change until we can get that kid potty trained.
Sincerely,
The Villarreals
2013 has been a year of alarming and disgusting change in our household. The change we are referring to, of course, is that of Zack's diapers. Even though he is our third child, we had forgotten just how revolting a toddler's diaper gets when he begins eating solid food. But our memories are refreshed one or two times daily, when the youngster's drooping undercarriage serves a reminder.
Zack is the biggest mover and shaker among the household this year, having launched his own app on iTunes, launched his tech startup into an impressive initial public offering and launched an exploratory committee to gage his chances in the 2014 Congressional elections. Although he's only 1 year old, his accomplishments are remarkable. In addition to all that, he also learned how to crawl through the doggie door and spray fridge door water all over the floor, which he proceeds to lick up.
Luke, who is in first grade, is a thriving artist and musician. We see him becoming a one-man band who beat-boxes his own background music while also singing lead and backup vocals. If you think all this to be impossible, it's because you have never been serenaded by the 6-year-old.
Emma, who proudly boasts she is in 'Pre-K' and not just standard preschool, is also the artistic sort. She excels in the ancient, well-respected medium known through the ages as Grabbing Scissors Out Of The Craft Closet And Leaving Squiggly Pieces Of Construction Paper All Over The Kitchen Floor. Combined with her affinity for painting and drawing on several sheets of paper per minute, when trees see this girl, they cry.
Jessica continues to attend grad school, going for a master's degree because the master's she already earned has lost that 'new car' smell. She also continues to work part-time and rescue Zack from his minutely attempts at sending himself to the emergency room by BASE jumping off the dining room table.
As for Phil, he is still toiling away at the local newspaper -- poor guy, no one has stopped to tell him that newspapers ceased to exist in 2005 -- and passing his video game addiction on to his offspring.
That should about catch you up. We'll check back in at the end of 2014 -- another anticipated year of disgusting, smelly change until we can get that kid potty trained.
Sincerely,
The Villarreals
December 29, 2013
Book Report: The Witches
The Witches by Roald DahlMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fun book from beginning to end. Dahl's sense of wonder and imagination carries throughout the fast-paced tale. I like its bittersweet, darker-than-expected ending.
View all my reviews
December 27, 2013
How Cable And Satellite Will Go Down
The whole cable/satellite cabal will probably go down at some point because people are getting sick of paying for billions of channels they care nothing about.
Once the networks are able to break away from the cable/satellite money and start selling directly to consumers there will be a revolution. It sucks that you have to buy HGTV and a million reality show channels to get ESPN.
Once the networks are able to break away from the cable/satellite money and start selling directly to consumers there will be a revolution. It sucks that you have to buy HGTV and a million reality show channels to get ESPN.
December 20, 2013
Book Report: 1984
1984 by George OrwellMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An alarmist thinkpiece and word of warning to humanity. A dark and terrible read, but illuminating while terrifying. Some of its dreary projections seem farcicle, and some have come alarmingly true. The book bludgeons your mind and soul. I was glad when it was over.
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December 12, 2013
Review: Saving Mr. Banks
Ever since I first heard of it, I dreaded Saving Mr. Banks, pegging it as a dopey Disney self-congratulations job. A pomade-slicked Tom Hanks would be the hokey, do-no-wrong master of the universe Walt Disney, Emma Thompson would be unreasonably uptight Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. Using his trademark Disney charm and whimsy, Walt would break through Travers' defenses, make her see the error of his ways and...
Consent to wild sex with him?
That impossible historical stretch, I figured, was the only hope the movie had of being entertaining in any way. The trailer even played up this possibility, intentionally or not, with a scene in which Disney looks suggestively at Travers and asks her what he'll have to do to get the rights to her book.
The movie doesn't go that way, but it does skew far darker than I ever could have hoped for, and in that way ends up becoming something halfway profound. Although Hanks' Walt is just as much a hagiography as you'd expect, but Thompson has found a spoon-sugared plum of a role in the furiously demented Travers.
What the movie truly turns out to be is a dark flashback-laden biopic on Travers, describing in painful detail how exactly she turned out to be as coarse and brutal a caricature as she turned out to be. Her past was filled with shame, abandonment and disappointment, much of it at the hands of her well-meaning grease fire of a dad, played by Colin Farrell.
Director John Lee Hancock spins the tale with equal doses of Disney charm and indie-flick grit. The movie amuses, terrifies, intrigues and fascinates at nearly every moment, infusing suspense into a story that everyone already knows the happy ending to. After seeing the ugly, painful way the sausage was made, I'll never watch Mary Poppins the same way again.
Starring Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson. Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Directed by John Lee Hancock. 125 minutes. Rated PG-13.
December 2, 2013
Book Review: The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The pacing is incredible, and the writing is forward-driven, unpretentious and dripping with suspense. The detail is necessary and sticky rather than superfluous, flower and forced. Fitzgerald makes Gatsby loom as a dynamic phantom, as full of enthusiasm and purpose as the pages themselves. This is an amazing book. One of my very favorites. A true inspiration, both emotionally and technically.
View all my reviews
November 12, 2013
Giveaways: BioShock Ininite DLC and Final Exam
I have a couple extra Xbox Live downloadable codes for BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 and Final Exam. If you want one of them, leave a comment on this post with your email address. I'll choose the winners at random.
October 30, 2013
Review: 12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is one of those movies you have to see, almost as though a penance or homework assignment. It's a work of magnificence that you need to have experienced if you want to expose yourself to the best that moviedom has to offer. You know that you are in for an uncomfortable experience from the get-go, and just have to deal with that reality, wince and deal.
Based on the 1853 Solomon Northup memoir about a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, the film is out to reveal the grotesque realities of human subjugation. The grime, crushing workloads, barnyard-like living conditions and cruel mental and physical tortures. It's one thing to see an innocent man whipped to a bloody pulp by a sadistic master, but quite another to see the master force another slave to elicit the whipping. Forced participation in cruelty is an ongoing theme in the movie, which explores the social strata of the slave and the interwoven levels of injustice and abuse of power all the way down through the chain of misery.
Chiwetel Ejiofor thoroughly owns the film in the lead. I hate to be one of those guys who is so stunned by a performance then runs out and declares that he absolutely needs to win the Oscar, but I have to do it here. Sure, there are about 20 or 30 movies yet to come out that I need to see before I can say such a thing with any kind of authority, but Ejiofor is so amazing here that it's almost impossible to imagine anyone out-doing him. So either he will win the Oscar or he will be robbed.
Brad Pitt pops up in a minor but crucial role late in the film, and Paul Giamatti makes a mark as a slimy slave wholesaler, but the real work comes from Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender as a disgustingly vindictive master and Lupita Nyong'o as his unwilling mistress. All three performances are enthrallingly awards-caliber, and while it's trite to boil down artistic work to that level, I want them to be recognized so badly that I can't help myself.
The movie is well paced, devastating and eventually uplifting in its strange, harried ways, but it's not quite worthy of its performances. Like The Passion of the Christ, there's a disturbing obsession with flesh being ripped from the bone. The graphic cinematography leaves no detail to the imagination. Reaction shots accompanied by sounds, which McQueen uses sparingly, are more effective at showing the devastation of lashings and lynchings, but he sticks to the gory, incredibly realized details.
The film wants to hurt you, knows you are terrified of what it will show you, then shows you way more than you bargained for. Two critics I watched the film with stormed out in disgust, and I suspect many audiences will do just the same. It normally bothers me when people do that, but I can't really blame them. I just happen to be one of the people who was stuck to his chair, unable to move even if I wanted to.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti and Sarah Paulson. Written by John Ridley, based on the Solomon Northup book. Directed by Steve McQueen. 113 minutes. Rated R.
Based on the 1853 Solomon Northup memoir about a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, the film is out to reveal the grotesque realities of human subjugation. The grime, crushing workloads, barnyard-like living conditions and cruel mental and physical tortures. It's one thing to see an innocent man whipped to a bloody pulp by a sadistic master, but quite another to see the master force another slave to elicit the whipping. Forced participation in cruelty is an ongoing theme in the movie, which explores the social strata of the slave and the interwoven levels of injustice and abuse of power all the way down through the chain of misery.
Chiwetel Ejiofor thoroughly owns the film in the lead. I hate to be one of those guys who is so stunned by a performance then runs out and declares that he absolutely needs to win the Oscar, but I have to do it here. Sure, there are about 20 or 30 movies yet to come out that I need to see before I can say such a thing with any kind of authority, but Ejiofor is so amazing here that it's almost impossible to imagine anyone out-doing him. So either he will win the Oscar or he will be robbed.
Brad Pitt pops up in a minor but crucial role late in the film, and Paul Giamatti makes a mark as a slimy slave wholesaler, but the real work comes from Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender as a disgustingly vindictive master and Lupita Nyong'o as his unwilling mistress. All three performances are enthrallingly awards-caliber, and while it's trite to boil down artistic work to that level, I want them to be recognized so badly that I can't help myself.
The movie is well paced, devastating and eventually uplifting in its strange, harried ways, but it's not quite worthy of its performances. Like The Passion of the Christ, there's a disturbing obsession with flesh being ripped from the bone. The graphic cinematography leaves no detail to the imagination. Reaction shots accompanied by sounds, which McQueen uses sparingly, are more effective at showing the devastation of lashings and lynchings, but he sticks to the gory, incredibly realized details.
The film wants to hurt you, knows you are terrified of what it will show you, then shows you way more than you bargained for. Two critics I watched the film with stormed out in disgust, and I suspect many audiences will do just the same. It normally bothers me when people do that, but I can't really blame them. I just happen to be one of the people who was stuck to his chair, unable to move even if I wanted to.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti and Sarah Paulson. Written by John Ridley, based on the Solomon Northup book. Directed by Steve McQueen. 113 minutes. Rated R.
October 9, 2013
Ruminations On The Direction Of New Girl
I think I'm ready for Nick and Jessica to end their relationship. We'll see if the writers can continue to explore the relationship for humor. They are doing a good job but it's getting strained.
I am at the point where I think they have accomplished brilliance and doubt it can stay this good, unless there is another dynamic shift. And there have been quite a few of those over the two-plus seasons. The writers have proven that they are not afraid to shake things up and change paradigms.
Usually, a sitcom will wear out the platonic romance thing for the whole run of the show, Who's the Boss style, or the four or whatever seasons of Pam-Jim in The Office.
I think they ended the Schmidt-Cece fling too early. He did not deserve her, so it's only fair. And in a way she did not deserve him, for nearly going through with the whole wedding charade just to please her family. But still, it hurts that he screwed up his second shot with her.
But he kind of has to be a doofus who messes everything up. A Schmidt who acts rationally and makes good choices is not a funny Schmidt.He has to be an overzealous wannabe bro, who never quite knows how to bro it up properly.
Nick, in the long run, has to be an untame-able manchild, and Jess has to be someone amazing for whom love never quite works out. Eternally nearly missing out on the romance she so badly desires.
One of the things I like about Nick-Jess is how screwed up and awkward their relationship is. If they can keep that going, and keep them always hanging by a thread and never blissfully at peace with their love, then the relationship can continue to be funny.
I am at the point where I think they have accomplished brilliance and doubt it can stay this good, unless there is another dynamic shift. And there have been quite a few of those over the two-plus seasons. The writers have proven that they are not afraid to shake things up and change paradigms.
Usually, a sitcom will wear out the platonic romance thing for the whole run of the show, Who's the Boss style, or the four or whatever seasons of Pam-Jim in The Office.
I think they ended the Schmidt-Cece fling too early. He did not deserve her, so it's only fair. And in a way she did not deserve him, for nearly going through with the whole wedding charade just to please her family. But still, it hurts that he screwed up his second shot with her.
But he kind of has to be a doofus who messes everything up. A Schmidt who acts rationally and makes good choices is not a funny Schmidt.He has to be an overzealous wannabe bro, who never quite knows how to bro it up properly.
Nick, in the long run, has to be an untame-able manchild, and Jess has to be someone amazing for whom love never quite works out. Eternally nearly missing out on the romance she so badly desires.
One of the things I like about Nick-Jess is how screwed up and awkward their relationship is. If they can keep that going, and keep them always hanging by a thread and never blissfully at peace with their love, then the relationship can continue to be funny.
