vel's journaly thing

This is SWEET! A collection of awesome American voice actors, including my favorite, Rob Paulsen, read Star Wars in the voices of their various characters. I've never heard of Emerald City Comic Con before, but based on this, I'm going to have to look into going next time around if this is the caliber of talent they attract!

I saw Inception last night and it was awesome! You know it's a good movie when you're still thinking about it for days afterwards. It's a little bit Matrix-y in premise, what with not knowing whether you're in a dream or the real world, but it is really way more mindblowing and confusing and complicated than the Matrix movies ever were. There are a lot of things I'm still trying to figure out about it, and I think it's one of those movies you have to see a few dozen times before you actually catch everything that's going on or that happened. Also the cast was really great. Two thumbs up!

( Spoilers under the cut )

Okay, pondering over. For now. See the movie!

I just finished up tagging all my entries, almost 900 of them. It just seemed like this journal has gotten to the point where I need them if I ever want to go back and find something.

I started on Sunday and didn't stop until 1am. I thought I might be able to get it all done, but I had about a year's worth of entries left to go and was just too tired to finish. Or so I thought. I went to bed and tossed and turned for hours, unable to sleep. I didn't want to take my sleeping medication because it was already so late, and if I did that I wouldn't be able to wake up for work. So then I got back up and tried to sleep on the couch with the tv on, because I often fall asleep this way when I'm really tired. Nope, nothing.

I ended up awake all freaking night for no reason at all, and it caused me to watch one of the most awful movies ever created, I Know Who Killed Me. I thought it'd just be a lame horror movie, but it went WAY beyond that! How can something be both predictable (I knew who the killer was within the first ten minutes) AND make no sense at all?? The "plot" was so full of holes and mixed up that it was impossible to follow, and the whole movie was really nothing more than an excuse for Lindsey Lohan to parade around in stripper outfits. Ugh, I think this was even worse than Batman Forever! Still not quite as bad as Kazaam, my ultimate worst movie ever, but it sure came close!

Anyway. I got no sleep at all, and hence felt horrible, stomach aches, sneezing and coughing fits, so I ended up calling in sick to work. Felt like crap all day and still couldn't get any sleep until it was late enough for me to take my medication and knock me out for the night whether my body liked it or not. Can I not sleep without medicinal help now? I wouldn't think so, I still fall asleep for naps all the time. It was just really bizarre.

ETA: Since all I did over the past few days was tag my own entries, I'm now waaaay behind on reading all of yours. If I comment on something a few days late I'm sorry, I'm trying to catch up on everyone!

Just got back from seeing Star Trek. I really enjoyed it! I thought it was fun and funny and has just enough action and really did a good job of introducing the characters. I thought all the new young actors did a great job; Spock and Scotty were my favorites. Overall a very entertaining movie.

Thank you to everyone for your opinions! I'm not big into the Star Trek tv shows or movies and would have passed this one right up if I hadn't heard so many great things about it. So thanks for that! =)

Everyone's saying the new Star Trek movie is awesome. I only ever watched DS9 and Voyager. Should I go see this?

Nabbed from offside_element

( This is long! )

Entertainment Weekly released a list of the top movies of the last 25 years.

1. Bold the ones you have watched.
2. Italicize the ones you love, and will watch over and over.
3. Strikethrough the ones you will never watch or sicerely wish you'd never watched in the first place.

( The List )

It's fricking HOT here. This heat wave is breaking temperature records and everything. I haven't ridden for the last four days because it's just too hot to move; I barely have the energy to clean Jackson's stall. The power went out at work for about an hour on Thursday probably from all the increased energy demand for A/C. Our townhouse is actually too warm upstairs even though it's almost always too cold in here, although the downstairs stays cool no matter what. Unfortunately both bedrooms are upstairs, and the master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, so there's no good way to cool it down. We put out A/C unit in the much smaller guest room and have been sleeping in there.

When my friend and I were getting ready to leave the stable on Friday, I heard a loud screech and turned to see Duchess, the barn cat, running by with a struggling bunny in her mouth. We followed her into the barn where she had dropped it; apparently it was still alive enough to run and hide. We caught it behind some feed bins and were going to give it to our office lady since she likes to take in needy wildlife, but she wasn't home. I took the bunny home and figured I'd bring it to her the next day, assuming it survived the night. It was alive early the next morning, but when I was ready to leave later I found it had died. =( The cat must have landed a good bite, in which case it had no chance to begin with; we'd been hoping maybe she'd just grabbed it but didn't break the skin, since we couldn't find any fang marks. Poor little thing.

Saturday night Josh and I went to see Iron Man. I was hesistant, although I'd heard nothing but good things about it. I didn't know what it was about really other than some comic book movie, which for the most part I am not a fan of (like the Spiderman movies? Ugh). I didn't know what the Iron Man comic was or what it was about; from the little I'd seen of it I thought it looked sort of like Robocop. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was actually a very entertaining action movie! I love action movies. It had a lot of amusing parts as well, which was cool, because I didn't expect it to be funny. Robert Downey Jr. also turned out to be a great actor, another surprise to me because the only thing I knew about him is that he's some drug addict who's been in and out of jail a lot; I'd never seen him in anything before. I'm now looking forward to the sequel. The next movie on our list is Indiana Jones; I just seriously hope George Lucas didn't fuck up another great movie legacy like he did with Star Wars.

The movie turned out to be pretty long, so I didn't get much sleep last night before going to work early this morning. It was hot and awful, but at least that meant we weren't busy. And we were having a vaulting show, so there was something to watch. Also, there was a lady from a magazine called Horse Connection there who was doing an article on wine and horses, so she came to a pretty appropriate place considering we're both a stable and vineyard. Anyway, she wanted to get some pictures of someone riding by a plaque we have next to one of the barns (I've never read it, actually...I think it says something about the history of the farm maybe). All the other staff were already out on trail rides, so I agreed to do it. I jumped on our most "photogenic" (i.e. spooky; his ears are always pricked forward!) horse and posed for a few pictures. Don't know if they'll use any of them, but she said she'd let me know if they did. So maybe I'll be in a magazine, haha. Later in the day she came back again to talk to us and took a few notes. I'm curious to see what she writes.

Just got back from finally seeing The Golden Compass. All I can say is it was FANTASTIC. This trilogy is bound to be my Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.

They managed to do a truly amazing job adapting it from the book; I was really, really impressed. This is probably the best book-to-movie I've ever seen. Pretty much everything important was in there, the things they changed and/or left out were insignificant, and I could easily understand why they changed the things they did. It did not piss me off the way book adaptations usually do, at all.

Like most movie adaptations of books, I was afraid they were going to totally butcher it and get all kinds of things wrong or leave out all kinds of important things. Plus there's everything I've heard about purists being mad that they removed too much of the Church-bashing to appease a wider audience, but I didn't see this at all. There are more than ample references to the "Magesterium" and how they tell people what to think and how they fear free will/thought and any authority other than their own. There's really nothing subtle about it, so I don't see where the book purists are getting the idea that it's been toned down too much. And as an agnostic I obviously don't care what religious folk think of it. I think that part of it they got just right.

What I'm not sure of is why they switched the order of two major scenes in the book, and I wish they had told the story of Iorek's banishment better. Those are about my only big complaints, though. That and the guy playing Lord Asriel needs to be meaner; he didn't strike fear into me the way he should. On the other hand, Ian McKellan did a better job than I expected as Iorek (he's so not at all how I imagined his voice), and Nicole Kidman is absolutely *perfect* as Mrs. Coulter. Lee Scoresby and Hester are totally perfect as well, exactly as I imagined them!

All in all this movied gets a huge THUMBS UP! from me. I can't wait to see the next one!

Everyone go see Live Free or Die Hard RIGHT NOW. It is AWESOME!!! I already want to go see it again. Easily one of the best action movies ever, and possibly a contendor for best Die Hard movie. I loved every second of it! ^o^