1. khloe and lamar

this is a secret obsession of mine, if you asked me if I watched this show in real life I would definitly deny it but theres something about it that just draws you in! Used to be a huge basketball fan (back when the raptors were good….) so with lamar being on the show it’s kinda gotten me back into the game.

2. outsourced

the show about a call center in india. I’m REALLY hoping this show doesn’t get cancelled, I will admit that the last couple episodes haven’t been as good as when the show first started (which is a bad sign since this is still the first season) but gupta  alone makes me tune in every week

3. Top Chef

I’ve watched top chef, top chef masters, top chef just desserts and a bit of top chef canada. I love this franchise but it definitely has its highs and lows. Was a big fan of the top chef all stars season that recently ended but was it really necessary to START masters that same night?!?!? Hate the new format of masters though and not really a fan of curtis stone as a judge. I feel like he’s on the verge of over exposure with the apprentice, biggest loser and now this. Plus the new format of the show is not one i’m really a fan of. I liked watched a different set of top chefs compete for the first couple weeks and I learned about some great new chefs because of that, with the new format that isn’t really happening.

4. How I met your mother

I only really caught on to this sometime last year, pretty sure it was while I was procrastinating studying for fall finals but I really enjoy this show. I’m not exactly sure where the writers are headed but theres something I like about that, especially since theres also an overall lack of spoilers so you really just have to trust where they’re headed.

5. Grey’s Anatomy

Really its only a habit for me to watch it now. It’s not a show that I need to watch every week but I’ll watch it if its on or if I’m bored or something. There are just too many characters and too many story-lines that nothing is really substantial anymore. This is the exact opposite of how i met your mother. Everything has become so predictable that you can basically predict future story-lines based on the re-occurring lines/arguments/discussions the characters have. Plus I miss george

6. Breaking In

This is a new show and one that I’ve only gotten into very recently but I can see the potential in the show. There are some casting choices that I think could have been better but the overall cast is decent. How sad is it that I couldn’t even recognize that it was Michael Rosenbaum on this show!?!?! But to me he will always be Lex Luther, he was completely perfect for that role and I’m planning on catching up on Smallville just to watch him in the finale.

7. Gossip Girl

I’ve never watched this show regularly, ironically the only reason I watch the show is because of Blair’s new love interest. The first time this happened was with Blair and Chuck (before Jenny….you know) and now with Blair and Dan. Something about them is so wrong its right. Plus Dan and Serena?? Aren’t they step siblings now? I know they aren’t blood related but still, that stuff is nasty! Your parents married each other so please move on and find new people! But I am also loving the lack of Vanessa; something about her just irks me.

8. The Game

Yeah so the season already ended but throwing this in there since a) I did watch it every week when it was still on and b) I need to fill up my top 10. I sincerely hate how they didn’t even any reference back to how the show ended. It was all of a sudden let’s start over and not mention any of the lose ends we had in the last finale. The show did a complete 180 going from a light comedy to something a lot darker. At first I hated it, than I liked it and now I’m just on the fence.

9. The Big Bang Theory

This show isn’t as good as it used to be. Amy Farrah Fowler was good for a story arc but now I just find her played out and boring. The reason Sheldon is so popular is because Jim Parsons is so charismatic and perfect at playing him which doesn’t seem to be the case here. Bernadette is adorable but even she is getting a little tiring, and don’t even get me started on Preeya. Its sad how a show can go from a ‘can’t miss every week’ to a ‘meh’

10. Extreme Couponing

How could I forget this!! This is just one of those show’s I can’t understand. They save SO much money yet do they really have a need for all of that stuff?? Especially since their ‘stock-pile’ will get bigger and bigger every week/month. But its just one of those things where its so unknown and weird that you just have to watch it.

Not going to lie but I didn’t think I would get all 10! Anyways that’s what I’m currently watching, I am looking for a new series to watch so I’ll do a post when I find that.

check out my tumblr! inthenameofbeauty.tumblr.com

If anyone out there is interested I started a tumblr that I’ve been updating regularly. Somehow Its a lot easier to post a picture or a thought rather than an entire post! Anyways my tumblr is:

inthenameofbeauty.tumblr.com

Its a blog (if you can even call a list of pictures a blog?) about fashion, food, interior design an random things.

Ok so heres the deal, the house you are oh so in love with? its NOT FINISHED! and i don’t understand how i’m the only one that sees that a brand new house isn’t the greatest thing. The first year is an experimental year in a new house, you find out whats wrong with it and i’m sorry but when i’m in school i don’t to have to deal with anything like that if it ever comes up. And seriously where do you come off not understanding that WE STILL HAVE MIDTERMS. just because you don’t and your parents are just pushing and pushing and pushing since they obviously don’t understand that we have WAYYY more important priorities at the momment. Midterm BEYOND trumps house. If you wanted to talk so bad and SO much you really shouldn’t have gone home this weekend.

Plus another thing, the price. i’m sorry but how much is it anyways? 470 plus utilities. well how much are the utilities, he said it was 550 before total, 500 flat 50 utilities well thats about 520 now. And thats above the specified price range. And seriously I PREFERRED the bottom part. Is there a need for a dining room and a living room? No there is not. We’re not going to have enough furniture for that and i would personally rather have the bigger bedroom than have a dining room. Yeah theres the extra bathroom but necessary? i don’t think so. And no $20 isn’t a big diffence but per year thats $300 and since we’re gonna be there for 3 years thats $900. Thats another thing, just cause you might be staying for another 4 years on top of that, and that is if you even get it and lets face it you’re average isn’t even close to where it needs to be and you don’t have any drive to make it any higher. I would rather save that $1000 than to spend it on a house….and a student house. Also I’m not staying for any of the summers…..I’ve told you that already. So you better not be expecting me to pay for utilities during the summers when i’m obviously not there. Plus counting times when i’mm go home during the year i’ll only be there really for about 21 months so just under 2 years. It doesn’t have to be a fantastic place but you’re not the only one who needs to love it.

plus what was with that ‘i think we should still go for it even if _____ doesn’t like it’ well ____ was shot down twice….by you. We listened to you and we didn’t go for the other house even though ___ was SO in love with it and now you’ere just pushing this on us or its your parents but i find it very annoying. And than when i said i preferred having the bigger bedrooms there goes your mom all well the top is better you’ve got so much more room. Well is it better to have wasted room? I don’t think so.

You really ruined my study day yesturday and now with all this on my mind you’ve already ruined my study morning. so thanks, if i don’t do well on my midterms now its you’re fault so thanks for being the annoying unintelligent naive pushy little bitch with your god damn stage mom of a mother. I’m not looking forward to you coming back after this weekend.

But i do think i’m gonna keep doing movie reviews. I’ve seen quite a few movies since my last review and i’m planning on watching a few more in the near future.

movies you can expect a review on

- district 9
- precious
- the blind side
- sherlock holmes (?)
- the imaginarium of dr parnassus
- star treck

as well as my must-see tv shows which will probably be a top 10. I’m also thinking about doing a tv show spotlight or something of the sorts, i think this would be more for shows that i’ve just started to get into rather than ones i’ve been keeping up with but hey you never know.

So i’m guessing that this blog is moving more towards the movie and television side of things and i guess i’ll see where that takes me.

thanks for reading!

ok so first off i was actually a bit dissapointed in this movie, i dunno i think i was just expecting something phenomenal like coach carter (go back a few posts for my review on that movie!) or drumline or something. Unfortunatly for me this movie fell a bit short.

ok so this movie is about a dance teacher who comes in and teaches ballroom dancing to kids during detention pro bono. Yes i know thats more for a lawyer but hey it works here too. So he teaches ballroom dancing in an area where intense hip hop is cool and nothing else really makes the cut so going from the two extremes is quite a challenge. This is based on the true story of Pierre Dulaine which is always nice. It reminds you that there are good people in this world who are really making a difference in thier communities.

OK so enough with that lets get to why i was disappointed by this movie. I think the movie just didn’t go deep enough or far enough or maybe was long enough. I mean by the end of the movie i still didn’t know the names of everyone in the detention class and i consider them all to be ‘main’ characters so for me that was a bad sign. I think the entire movie just wasn’t strong enough. I think that there were too many people and too many backstories that each character couldn`t get the amount of screen time they needed inorder to make the character have any substance. Almost everyone in the movie seemed sort of wishy washy to me; not really needed and easy to replace. And another thing, how did the calc teacher get so much leeway. He kept disrespecting the principal and downright disobeying her yet no action was taken. I don`t know about anyone else but that just seemed off to me.

By the end the impact just wasn’t as great as i had experienced for some other movies that i believe are in this same genre. And i don’t know maybe that had to do with the casting choices or that the script itself wasn’t strong enough or that the soundtrack wasn’t strong enough because lets face it a good soundtrack can make a good movie. But something was just missing, all the pieces just weren’t fitting together.

I will say that i think Antonio Banderos saved the movie, his charm and charisma basically made the movie tolerable to watch. Although i felt like the script was moving too slow for him. Expecially when he was first starting to teach the kids ballroom dancing it just dragged and dragged. I will say that i also enjoyed watching scenes with Marcus T. Paulk playing Eddie. His charisma really translated well and the scene with him dacing on the bus was one of my favourites of the film.

ok movie, good story decent execution. I wouldn`t watch it again 2.5 stars

ok so i watched the italian job yesturday for the first time and you know i wouldn’t really consider myself an action movie type person but i did like this movie. To me it had such a sense of the Ocean’s movies all of which i did enjoy.

The movie is about a group of thieves who have just gotten away with stealing 37 million dollars worth of gold bricks from venice when one of their own betrays them and murders their ‘head thief’ and repeatedly shoots the others (while they are in the water/ocean whatever it is) and when he believes they are dead/dieing leaves. And i believe this all goes down in the swiss alps so its cold, well more like freezing and they have no form of transportation. So the movie is about getting revenge on this guy and sort of avenging their fallen leader. Basically they want back the gold.

And in the movie each of the characters in the group, or at least i’m going to say in the remaining group since i’m still not too sure what the betrayed guy did. Anyways i’m rambling now, so there is the planner, the techno guy, the driver/ getaway car guy, the bomb expert and the actual thief. And you can probably guess who the head was, yup it was the actual thief that died and this is supposedly the best in the business so their thiefing ways were pretty much put to a standstill.

But then comes Stella, stella is the daughter of the john (the head thief), and of course shes in the same business expect shes like a good thief; breaking into safes for the police. However when charlie, the planner, comes to her with his plan to avenge her fathers death she becomes one of the boys and readily follows in her fathers footsteps.

I really enjoyed the casting job, i think every character was perfectly casted which doesn’t happen very often. I usually have a problem with a casting choice or two whenever i watch a movie. However in my opinion there was a stand out. And its not who i initially expected. I am a big Edward Norton fan but for me the stand out was Seth Green as Lyle, the techno guy. He just added this bit of light comedy flaire that in my opinion just gave the movie a little something extra. Again i am a Seth Green fan and i find he does steal many of the scenes that he’s in and this was no exception.

Good action movie, made me want to watch another action movie right after 4 stars.

ok so if i’m being perfectly honest I actually didn’t think I would like this movie. I rewatched the trailer before watching the entire movie and just chalked it up to another lame childrens movie. I was definitly wrong!

Adam Sandler is wonderful in this movie playing Skeeter Bronson. The big picture of the movie can basically be described through the journey song ‘don’t stop believing’ which captures the true essence of the movie. Fairy tales may be a thing of our distant past and the bedtime story itself may soon be forgotten in all the hannah montana, jonas brothers preschool hype.

To me this movie brought back all the joys of having a story told to you. You could imagine the characters and virtually play everything out in your head. Yet now with the computer and with more and more kids being brought up by the television that just isn’t happening anymore. And its not just taking the joys in the smallest things we are taking away their imagination as well. But now i’m just getting off topic and this should really be left as its own topic for another post. So back to the movie.

Adam Sandler is wonderful in this movie and brings joy back into these kids lives. They live in a world off dull and healthy, everything from the food they eat to the books they are read. It just shows their lack of imagination. Again to me this was an underlying message of how our society is today… wait no thats another topic. promise!

I do have to say the stand out was definitly Russel Brand. I know i know i’m not really a fan of his, mostly because of how he appears in public rather than his actual talent, but i did like him in this movie. He had an almost Ricky Gervais like essence to him which pleasently surprised me. Brand plays MIckey, Skeeters best friend. He was a perfect casting choice and really added to the movie.

The two children in the movie were also fantastic. I find there isn’t really much to comment on child actors as young as this since really they are just playing cute, but these two were wonderfully cute and the little boy expecially captured my heart.

Wonderful family movie, great casting good message. Nice movie for a casual family movie night, 4 stars.

wow. that’s all i can say about this movie. I didn’t read the book so I can’t compare the two but i’ve heard that the movie was quite a let down if you had read the book. But having not read the book i thought this movie was fantastic. 10 minutes into the movie and i was already crying. And i don’t usually cry during movies, i may get teary eyed and my throat may get dry but i don’t actually cry. but by the end of this movie i was actually blubbering.

I think it mainly has to do with the subject of this movie. Its about the youngest daughter who was a designer baby. Born to save her sisters life. By designer baby it means that she was concieved in a petri dish, scientists mixed her fathers sperm and egg to get the exact combination of genes so essentially she (Anna) would be spare body parts for her sisters (Kate) life. She now wants medical emancipation, meaning that she can make the decisions on whether or not to have the surgeries for Kate.

Kate has leucemia. She is now 15 and has had it ever since she was a child. Shes had numerous surgeries and just by looking at her you can tell shes been through the ringer. The actress who played Kate is phenomenal. She brought a light and a voice to such an intense character and it is certain that this girl will have a bright future.

Abigail breslin did a phenomenal job as well. I will say her performance could have had a bit more emotion, it seemed as though she was just a bit distant however that distant quality also added to the movie. Sort of as though she was distancing herself from the world knowing what she had to do and carrying that burden on her shoulders. The character of Anna was portrayed quite well. That little girl had been through everything! In surgeries for her sister by the age of 5, being hospitalized a total of 8 times by the time she was 11. She had been given growth hormones, her stem cells were removed, she had given bone marrow, blood and at the time of her medical emancipation she was to give 1 of her kidneys.

It is so difficult to even imagine what a child like Anna may go through. To wonder if you would even be born had your sister have been healthy. To wonder if your parents think of you as spare parts or as their daughter. How difficult that must be, to be forced into sedation for surgery after surgery. The topic alone gets my eyes teary.

Cameron Diaz was fantastic in this film. She showed her acting range for sure and was brilliant in the process. Playing the mother of Kate and Anna, she definitly wasn’t the most likable character yelling she wanted her out of the house and didn’t want to see her again when Anna said she didn’t want to give her kidney away. But you can tell she is just doing this because she loves Kate so much. Kate is the apple of her eye, you can tell she gives Kate the most attention out of the 3. She claims it is because Kate is sick and the other 2 (Jesse and Anna) are healthy. But you can imagine how that must feel for a child, To know that whatever you do, whatever happens, you will always play second string to your sister.

Alec Baldwin was also incredible in this movie. It was moving when he was in the court room questioning Cameron Diaz’s character. The one scene, the one line that stays stuck in my head is when he says well my real question is than, who sticks up for Anna. She literally has noone to stick up for her. She was brought into the world to save her sister. That scene was so powerful and really added a new layer of depth to the movie.

The movie is a selection of memmories told through each of the family members. It is perfect for this story and would actually make a fantastic play. The way the story is told would translate very well to the stage.

This movie had an underlying sadness to it. Even through the happier memmories the sadness was still there. It is probably because as an audience we knew just what was going to happen. we knew how it would end, even during the previews you can feel the ending. If i had one objection it would be that we didn’t get enough of Jesse’s character. He hardly got any lines and at the end it says he was troubled and he went back to school but as an audience you never got the sense that he was both out of school and was troubled. I know it would have made the movie much longer but without that background his character just seemed unnecessary and just dead weight in the movie.

Even without Jesse’s back story this movie was incredibly well done and a definite must see, and one i will be buying. I will say that you will definitly want to have a box of tissues ready, i can’t imagine how you could watch this and not feel the emotion of the movie. Wonderful movie; 5 stars.

so this is a cute movie. But wow some scenes were just painfulll to watch. And of course it starts at the beginning with Ginnifer’s character, Gigi, giving an out to her date incase hes sick of her. ouch, painful! ugh i really should’ve written this yesturday when everything was still nice and fresh but oh well i’ll do the best i can.

I will say that Drew Barrymore had a very minor part in this movie. And i think that was my problem with this movie, the movie had too many minor storylines going on that each storyline didn’t really get the attention it deserved expect for Gigi’s and Anna’s. The thing that kind of surprised me about this movie was that 3 people were left alone at the end. Although i will say just as with coach carter (which was reviewed in my last post so go check that out!) i love how they say you don’t have to win in the general movie cliche sense in the  order to really win. I loved that they said that Janine didn’t have to be with someone inorder to have won. Although i was kinda shocked that Anna and Ben didn’t get back together. No offense but they were trashy enough to do so. I will say i definitly felt bad for Anna when she had to listen to Ben and Janine getting it on. I read this online and i think it totally summed up my feelings for that moment. I mean what an epic FML moment! (fmylife.com) really just imagine [taken from another website]

“today i was at my boyfriends office when his wife came in to ‘spice up their relationship’. now, im locked in the closet and forced to listen to them get it on. FML.”

seriously sums it all up quite nicely. I was really really disgusted with Anna though. Once a cheater always a cheater and i still don’t know how she justified being a homewrecker. Although i will say i wasn’t really a huge Janine fan either. I’m definitly not saying it was her fault that that slimy Ben cheated on her but if you give a guy an ultimadum in order to get him to marry you, its going to bite you in the ass. She should’ve just broken up with him and let him realize if he needed her or just waited till he was ready. Marriage isn’t something you should be pressured into.

The other thing i didn’t like about Janine was how she wanted to stay with Ben. I know some couples want to make it work and can make it work but in this case it just didn’t work. It was obvious when Ben told Janine about the affair that he wanted out, Janine probably knew it but it is a lot to take in at once and I’m guessing she wasn’t ready to let it go. That scene I didn’t have a huge problem with, i got it. But when She was talking to Gigi and saying how Ben wasn’t just this guy that didn’t call it came off as really desperate to me. More like she just didn’t want to be alone and single and therefore would rather stay in this unfaithful relationship that to succumb back to that. Expecially with her single frinds having such trouble. Came off as really desperate to me.

I will say i was definitly shocked when it was revieled that Ben was smoking. You could tell that took Janine over the edge but as a viewer you can’t get over that. It kinda makes sense. He’d gotten so used to lieing to his wife and living in a what you could call a love-less marraige that cheating didn’t really have the safe effect as it would’ve. He was already keeping secrets from her that this was just another secret.

This movie was so incredibly predictable though. From the moment Ben said he was married you knew he would have the affair, from when Gigi and Alex first talked in that bar you knew he would be her happy ending, from when Neil said he didn’t want to date anyone else you knew he and Beth would eventually get married by the end of the movie. Incredibly predictable with some very painful moments. I mean its painful to watch someone get rejected or a conversation that just puts an ouuuuuuuuuu that wasn’t the right thing to say sort of vibe.  Plus of course you have those incredibly cheesy moments like when Ales says ‘you’re my exception’ i mean come on so scripted so not reality very movieland. Thats what this was, a romcom with a twist but then not a twist at all.

It was an ok movie. Definitly a girl movie, wouldn’t buy it but i’d watch it again for a cute feel good time, maybe it’ll be less painful when i know whats coming? Overall decent i’d give it an ok-good rating.

and of course i realize that this review makes me seem so cynical and i’m talking about these characters like their people and what they mahy secretly be thinking which may be a bit..strange. haha hopefully I watch annother movie today and get another review up but if not there will definitly be another up tomorrow.

ok so coach carter is another movie about overcoming where you came from in a way. Its about these teens on their high school basketball team at a school rated 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. Richmond, the name of the school, has an INCREDIBLY low graduate rate. I believe the movie said 50% of the students graduate with the higher percent being females although i’m not 100% on that statistic. I love feel good movies like this, based on a true story about a true hero.

Ken Carter litterally changed this teams life. In the United States sports is given such a high standard that you can get a full ride sports scholorship to some top schools even if your grades are below par. However thats an entirely different topic and not one this movie addresses nor one it should. This movie is about one coach who believes the student should have a greater priority in the term student athlete. Making the basketball team maintain a higher GPA than is required by the state of California. However he doesn’t inforce this out of some vindictive measure to stop the basketball team from playing; he does this so that the teammates will require a significantly lower SAT score in order to go onto higher education. In a place where many turn to violence and drugs one man wants to make a difference and it is inspiring.

I loved the concept of this move and i thought the script was incredibly well written. However some casting choices were a tad questionable in my opinion. First off the casting of Robert Ri’chard as Damien Carter, the coach’s son basically the prep in a city full of hardcore gangsters. Good concept, not so great casting. I had a hard time believing Robert to be that smart preppy boy having transferred from one of the top high schools to Richmond just to be coached by his father. Maybe its because i was so used to him playing Arnez in one on one that thats all i can see him playing, but he just looked uncomfortable in the clothes and to me it felt like he was playing the wrong character. Maybe with a script change it could’ve worked better for me. If he had more of a military vibe (and i’m saying the script should’ve forshadowed Damien’s future career) i feel like it would have made it more believeable. The other casting choice i had a problem with was Ashanti’s. It felt awkward watching her play kyra. She had these random heads bops or awkward body grooves, whatever you want to call them. But that is what kind of put me off this casting choice. I know its just a small mannerism but it just looked awkward to me.

I must say the one that stood out to me in this movie was definitly Rick Gonzalez playing Timo Cruz in the movie. I don’t know if it was just his stage presence or the fact that he was so different from everyone else on the team that made him stand out but he did. He seemed to steal every scene he was in. And it felt like out of all the teammates his character showed the greatest range of emotions. Two key scenes that stood out to me both had to do with Timo wanting to rejoin the team. The first time coach carter really put him through the ringer. Making him do ridiculous amounts of pushups and suicides in a certain am,ount of time  inorder to return. It was a feel good momment (albeit an expected one) when Timo stood panting in his sweat stained shirt was told he hadn’t completed the required conditions. You could see how hard he had worked and you could see the sadness in his face at the thought that he had failed. However than his team comes in because as coach carter says when one member of the team fails, we all fail. So they come and help Timo finish the remaining pushups and suicides. Its exactly what coach wanted them to do and you can see it in Ken Carters face, he feels like his words are finally getting into their heads and maybe he can make a difference in their lives.

The second scene is after Timo’s cousin is shot. He comes to coach Carters house trying to hold it all in beginning to come back to the team. He offers to do the insane number of pushups and suicides again and after seeing how much he gave the last time and how much pain he must’ve been the audience can tell just how much this team means to him. When Timo finally breaks down to coach you can tell he’s changed and he’s on a path in the right direction. Timo may’ve been the one that stood out to me but through0ut the movie you can tell how much this team means to all of them. With Lyle finally going to school everyday and Junior having the prospect of attending any sort of post secondary its clear that Ken Carter had an impact on this team. The feeling is only intensified at the scene when the entire team studys in the library after coaches lock out of the gym is forced to end by what looks to be a board of trustees. I don’t recall who said the words but it went along the lines of they can reopen the gym but they can’t make us play. In some strange way this movies reminds me of drumline. I know its not the same profession and definitly doesn’t take place in the same setting but the message remains the same. When a team fails we all fail and we all need a team to fall back on.

A great thing about this movie is that it doesn’t have that cliche happy ending. The team didn’t win their final game, they didn’t win the championships and i love that speech coahc gives at the end stating all of that. But each of those players had their own happy ending. They got a better life, a new start. I love when movies aren’t so cliche although since this is based on a true story i guess i can’t really give the props to the script writers but that speech was wonderful.

Another great thing about this movie was its soundtrack. The songs really captured the mood of the scenes while the lyrics remained seperate therefore it didn’t come off as cheesy or similar to a musical. With songs like ‘let the drummer kick’ by citizen cope. A fabulous song and one that just stays in your head, whoever chose the music for this movie has a great ear for catchy songs and timing them to the right places.

 Wonderful movie, great message definitly one I would buy and re-watch.