A week's worth of movie reviews

With Thanksgiving last week, I didn't have a ton of time to blog but saw quite a few movies worth mentioning. Here is goes:

In theaters, I went to see Megamind. Yes, it's a family movie but it was hilarious and had some adult jokes snuck in. I thought it was weird that it was released so quickly after Despicable Me. Both are great movies, but have similar plots following lovable villains.

We rented the older classic, Oscar winning Deer Hunter. It was interesting and I loved seeing DeNiro and Wakken as younger men. However, the movie was a little over 3 hours long. There were definitely some parts that dragged on, but overall I can see why it won an Oscar. Oh, and the always lovely Meryl Streep was in it!

Another rental was Splice. This is one of the most weird, fucked up movies I've seen in a long time. Adrien Brody and Sarah Pollock star as two scientists who are splicing different species of animals to discover a specific protein. The genre is "sci-fi horror," which I didn't understand until the last 20 minutes of the movie, which left me very, very disturbed....

Last but not least, I watched New York, I Love You with my parents on Thanksgiving. It's based off Paris, J'aime, which is a must-see. Both of these movies feature a series of vignettes of people who end up being linked together. The New York version was not as interesting as its Persian counterpart but featured a ton of stars such as Andy Garcia, Rachel Bilson, Hayden Christenson, Shia LeBouf, Natalie Portman, and Bradley Cooper.

A satisfying steak

Last weekend I went to Murray's in downtown Minneapolis with great anticipation and it lived up to the expectations. It may be expensive, but it earns its prestige. We got on the the "silver butterknife" steaks, cooked a perfect medium rare, that was well-seasoned and melted in your mouth. The calamari we had beforehand was well-seasoned, the creme brulee after was creamy perfection. If only I could afford to eat like a queen every week.....

Atmosphere come home

I went to the Atmosphere show last night at First Ave. It was a little rough, being as how it was a Sunday, but as always Slug brought it and made it totally worth it. The place was packed and the energy was electric. I've seen Atmosphere in several different states and it's never the same as seeing him at First Ave in Minneapolis. Every person in the audience knows every word to every song and he feels the love and returns it. Great show!

Loring Pasta Bar Review

Saturday I traveled to Dinkytown to dine at the Loring Pasta Bar. The ambiance of the place is always wonderful and I love the tie-in with the Varisty Theater and Kitty Kat Klub. I remembered it being super good food from college, but now that I've been expanding my palate, I have to say I wasn't that impressed. The food was not as flavorful as I remembered and it was extremely overpriced. We started with the calamari, which was subpar but came with a spicy dipping aioli. We split a chicken oscar, which has too much bland cream sauce on it and was in no way worth $23, and the cheese tortellini nuovi, which was flavored nicely with proscuitto, garlic, nutmeg, and pine nuts. I am a definitely sucker for pine nuts. Overall, I think there are much better places to dine for this amount of money. I would however go back with my a student ID card, which gets you 30% off your whole meal Sunday through Thursday!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1

I saw it on Friday. It was epic. I cried twice. It's the characters we've grown up with and they're almost all grown up. This is by far the darkest movie and definitely not meant for children. There are some super creepy parts and Voldemort is just pure evil. I won't go into anymore details but I don't think it's possible to spoil this movie! It opened to $61.2MM on Friday, making it the 5th biggest single day debut of a movie. Weekend estimates are coming in around $130-140MM. And it deserves it! I can't wait for the second part next July!!

O hai, it's almost Caturday.

The Social Network

I went to see The Social Network in theaters for the second time yesterday. This movie definitely exceeded my expectations. Director David Fincher (Fight Club) and writer Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men) are a masterful duo. Jesse Eisenberg is already getting Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, a socially inept future billionaire. Even Justin Timberlake does a wonderful job, as Napster's Sean Parker. If you haven't seen it yet, it will only be in theaters a little bit longer, so go see it!!!