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Monday Movie – You’ve Got Mail

Posted on April 20, 2009April 18, 2009 by lizjohnson
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On Saturday I woke up from a lovely afternoon nap and flicked on the TV while I made a wonderfully delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I flicked channels a bit until I landed on a classic favorite: You’ve Got Mail.

youve-got-mail

This is one of my family’s favorites. I remember going to see it in the theater years ago with my parents. My dad and I especially love Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movies. (Have you seen Joe Versus the Volcanoe? It’s a classic!) Anyway, if you’ve been living on the moon for the last ten years and haven’t heard of You’ve Got Mail, it’s the sweet story of Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox who meet in an online chat room (yea, it totally dates itself) and don’t have any idea who the other is or even their name as they e-mail back and forth.

Kathleen owns a small children’s bookstore that her mother opened years before. Joe is the owner of Fox and Sons Books, a chain mega book store. When a Fox and Sons opens across the street from Kathleen’s store, she goes “to the mattresses” to fight the big, bad mega store. As they fight in person, Kathleen and Joe continue e-mailing each other, each unaware that their online penpal is their nemesis.

My favorite part of the film is when Joe discovers that Kathleen is his e-mail buddy and he realizes that he’s in love with her. He messes with her just a bit as he woos her. It’s my favorite!

Oh, also, it’s filled with great one-liners. Like when George, one of Kathleen’s employees, says, “I’m off to by a eucalyptus candle, because it makes my apartment smell moss-ay.” My dad and I always quote this line to each other, and it did prompt him to buy me a eucalyptus candle when I moved into my first apartment. After four moves, I still have it. Thanks, dad!

This movie is so fun, and after re-watching it this weekend, I’m inspired to read Pride and Prejudice, which is Kathleen Kelly’s favorite book. I love when Joe Fox tries to read it at her suggestion but keeps putting it down because it doesn’t entice him in the least. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely a must.

Loving great rom coms until next time. -LJ

Oh, dear! I’m a fangirl!

Posted on April 18, 2009April 16, 2009 by lizjohnson
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fangirl (plural fangirls)

(fandom) Someone (a female) who is utterly devoted to a single subject or hobby, often to the point where it is considered an obsession.

Holding my breath until July 15. -LJ

Friday Favorite – Castle

Posted on April 17, 2009April 17, 2009 by lizjohnson
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While I am a fan of castles in general, this is not a blog all about old-school housing structures. Nope this is about one of my other favorites: Castle, the TV show starring Nathan Fillion.

I think ABC is trying to redeem itself in my eyes after cancelling Pushing Daisies. Of course, nothing really compares to the Pie Maker, Chuck, and Olive on PD, and Castle isn’t exactly a similar show. But it is quite amazing!

Castle, which first aired in March of this year, follows Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion, who is one handsome man, if I do say so), a best-selling mystery author who has just killed off his main character. In the pilot he is called in by the police chief to investigate two murders that copycat killings in his books. He’s paired up with Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), who quite obviously can’t stand having him around. But by the end of the pilot, Castle has sweet-talked the chief into letting him tag along with Beckett, who he is basing his next character on.

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While the relationship between Castle and Beckett is amusing and so obviously going to turn romantic at some point, the really amazing part of the show is Castle’s relationship with his mother–an immature partier, who spanned the globe looking for a bad review of her son’s book just to make sure he stayed humble–and his daughter Alexis–a non-angsty teenager, who really has her life together, despite a weathly father, absent mother, and crazy grandmother. Castle and Alexis together are the most fun to watch. I loved the episode about nannies in which Alexis asks her dad why he never hired a nanny for her. He tells her he was her nanny and the episode ends with him looking at a picture of them at the park when she was young. But they’re not always sentimental moments. There’s laugh out loud ones like the laser tag game they shared in episode 5.

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Jess B. asked me if I wanted to watch this with her when the first episode aired. After all, we already get together every Monday night to write. Now we write from 8-9 and watch Castle from 9-10. It’s become a tradition rather quickly. One I don’t want to end, even for the summer hiatus.

If you haven’t given this show a watch, I recommend you do! ABC on Monday nights. If you miss it now, don’t worry. It’s scheduled to arrive on dvd in September.

Of course, as a mystery writer, I have to love watching a show about another writer. But even if I didn’t have to love it, I probably would anyway.

Thinking that there will probably be more Friday Favorites about Nathan Fillion until next time. -LJ

Teaser Tuesdays – The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips

Posted on April 14, 2009April 13, 2009 by lizjohnson
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teaser_tuesdays1 MizB of Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event

Here are the rules:
* Grab your current read
* Let the book fall open to a random page
* Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12
*You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
* Please avoid spoilers!

This week’s teaser is:

“I told you how nervous we were about pinning the case on the testimony of an either-year-old kid. But the kid had to testify.'”
– From The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips by Stephen Baldwin and Mark Tabb, page 158

I devoured the first 2 chapters of this book. It’s a really thrilling read and told very uniquely through the eyes of the son of detective on the case. I can’t wait to see where it goes.

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Monday Movie – Inkheart

Posted on April 13, 2009April 12, 2009 by lizjohnson
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This weekend Amy and I drove up to Denver to visit my aunt and uncle. We’d been invited for the whole Easter weekend, but we already had plans on Easter Sunday, so we decided to enjoy just one night with them. After a lengthy round of Phase 10, a family favorite table game, we started discussing what we should do on Saturday. It was decided that shopping and a movie sounded like a good time.

The problem was that there aren’t very many interesting movies out right now that I really want to see. I’d be up for Slumdog Millionaire. My aunt’s already seen it. Amy was up for Duplicity. I’ve seen it. It went like that for a couple rounds until we finally landed on Inkheart, which none of us had seen. But it was only showing at one theater all the way on the other side of town. It was a place called Cinema Grill.

If you’re thinking this sounds an awful lot like a restaurant and a movie theater you’d be right!

So it turned out that the theater was showing mostly movies that had been out for a while, and tickets were only $2.50 each. Kind of like our dollar theater here in town.

But instead of having normal theater seating, there were tables and counters where we sat in comfy swivel chairs. We ordered food from the menu (it was pretty typical American style food) and they brought it to us while we watched the movie. It was a amazing! I’ve never even heard of a place like that. It was a dinner theater for lunch at the movies.

While I’m usually easily distracted and I did notice the servers wandering through the theater, it didn’t really bother me. Maybe it was the novelty of it all, but I had a blast. What a unique idea.

inkheart

I confess that the movie was completely secondary to the entire experience, but I did enjoy it a lot. Based on the the book, Inkheart stars Brendan Fraser as Mo, who has the ability to read characters from books into reality. But when a character is brought to life, someone from reality has to go into the book. That’s how Mo lost his wife nines years before.

He’s been looking for a copy of the incredbily rare Inkheart for just as long, hoping to read her back into reality. But when he finally finds it, he and his daughter are plunged into an adventure that could only come from the pages of a book.

It’s quite an imaginative story, and I definitely enjoyed it. I’ve heard that the movie is actually better than the books (which is so rare), but I haven’t read them myself yet. It was a blast eating my chicken fingers, fries, and sundae while watching a movie on the big screen. Quite a great weekend!

Thinking about opening up my own Cinema Grill until next time. -LJ

Friday Favorite – Louie Giglio and the Hubble Space Telescope

Posted on April 10, 2009April 8, 2009 by lizjohnson
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I first saw Louie Giglio speak in person on the Indescribable Tour with Chris Tomlin. As you will likely guess, Chris was singing his song Indescribable and Louie … well, Louie was speaking about the magnitude of who God is. He used pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope to talk about how huge God is. When we consider that God spoke the heavens into existence (according to Isaiah) and then think about how massive they are, it’s pretty incredible the size of the God who still knows us each by name.

One of the things that Louie said that really stuck with me was that the heavens are created to bring glory to God. That the starry hosts tell His story and declare it to us. In honor of Good Friday and Easter this Sunday, I thought I’d share a couple pics from Hubble that tell the story of Jesus Christ.

But first, a quick note about Hubble and where I found these and you can find other amazing pictures of God’s creation: According to the official website www.hubblesite.org Hubble Space Telescope’s launch in 1990 sped humanity to one of its greatest advances in that journey. Hubble is a telescope that orbits Earth. Its position above the atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes. It has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, shedding light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy.

Officially this is called "X" Structure at Core of Whirlpool Galaxy (M51). Unofficially, I call this amazing!

NASA, ESA and W. Harris (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada) FoxNews.com called this the Crown of Thorns Galaxy. Wow!

That Christ suffered the crown of thorns and the cross so that we could have forgiveness and life amazes me. I hope it amazes you this Easter too.

And because I love Louie too and he speaks truth, here’s a clip of the end of his Indescribable talk. It’s available on dvd along with several other great talks by him. Check out his cool Passion ministry here.

Just thankful for grace until next time. -LJ

Where I Was

Posted on April 9, 2009April 8, 2009 by lizjohnson
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So as I mentioned, I was in Estes Park last weekend on a mini writing retreat. I decided I needed to get away from all of the distractions at home (yes, even blogging) and set about the task of finishing my second book. But after booking a cabin near Rocky Mountain National Park, I suddenly worried that it might not be any fun going alone. So I asked Jess B if she wanted to join me.

She said yes, and the rest is history! We tooled on up to Estes Park (I made her listen to the Dr. Horrible soundtrack no less than 3 times) and arrived at our cabin. It was beautiful. It was inspiring. It was FREEZING! Here’s the story of our stay in pictures. (And because I know you’re going to ask as there are no pictures of us writing, I did get 14,000 words written in 3 days, and finished my rough draft of the next book just 2 days after we returned. Jess finised her work in progress, and now we’re both in the rewrites stage. Ugh!)

Oh, and we had one mega Spider Solitare tournament. I lost. Badly!

picture-024 — we whipped up some amazing(ly quick) meals in this kitchen

: our cabin from the outside

: the creek behind the cabin

: Jess standing in the creek in her new wellies

: the funny sign about not standing in the creek

: me and Jess (not standing in the creek)

: Rocky Mountain National Park – sans elk

: Beautiful, but where are all the elk?

: Ah, yes. They’re in my parking spot.

Teaser Tuesday – Miss Match

Posted on April 7, 2009April 6, 2009 by lizjohnson
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teaser_tuesdays1 MizB of Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event

This week’s teaser is:

“‘So I assume that purple thing over there is yours?’ Derek asks, his truck chugging into the student parking lot.
‘Yeah. The other cars are intimidated by it.'”
– From Miss Match by Wendy Toliver, page 101

I think I should confess that while I can’t seem to finish the Newberry Medal-winning The Graveyard Book, I had no problem at all sailing through this YA in one night. Lost out a bit of sleep, but it was a cute story. Fun little read.

miss-match

Monday Movie – Dear Frankie and The Miracle Match

Posted on April 6, 2009April 5, 2009 by lizjohnson
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Since I missed my Monday Movie segment last week, I thought it only fair to offer you two movies this week. I watched them both a couple weeks ago. Got them from the library. They star … big shocker here … Gerard Butler. 🙂 Without further ado. My thoughts:

Dear Frankie

It’s a sweet story of a mother’s love for her son and the lengths she’ll go to to protect him. To save him from his abusive father, Lizzie tells her son Frankie that his dad is a sailor and at sea. But when the ship he’s on docks in Glasgow, the kid makes a bet with a school bully that his dad will show up at the football tryouts. So Lizzie hires a Stranger (seriously, in the credits, he’s called “The Stranger”) to pretend to be the Frankie’s dad. Gerard plays the Stranger, and he forms this bond first with the son and then with the mom.

I wanted so badly to love this movie. I had heard great things about it, and I wanted it to be everything I hoped for. I was disappointed. It was an independent movie, which was great. But it lacked something in the story. Mostly, a conclusion. It just sort of ended. There was no wrap up or hope. Just mom and son sitting on a dock with no idea if the The Stranger will return.

Also, I had a lot of questions that were never answered. At the end we find out that Frankie has been harboring secrets of his own, but we have no idea for how long he’s been keeping them from his mom. Will the Stranger return and find happiness and love with Lizzie? Will Lizzie allow herself to find roots? I find questions like that frustrating, and it really detracted from the acting and imagery of the movie, which were both top-notch. With high hopes I was disappointed. the-miracel-match

But then came …
The Miracle Match

Low expectations meant the movie didn’t even have to be mediocre to meet them. And it was far better than that. The true story of the 1950 US Soccer team’s defeat of England in the first round of the World Cup was truly inspiring. It wasn’t perhaps the same caliber of movie as many of the Disney true sports stories over the last several years, but it was a good story nonetheless.

A hodge podge of soccer players–half from St. Louis and half from New York–are thrown together 10 days before they’re to fly to Brazil for their first game. They’re expected to lose, especially when their few practice games are disasters.

And then the day of the first game of the World Cup, they stand on a US Army base in Brazil and are informed that the US has just entered a conflict with Korea. And as the men of the team, most of them veterans from WWII, accept their uniforms, they also accept that they’re playing not for themselves but for an entire country, which they serve. Very patriotic moment. It’s a great underdog story as this rag tag bunch of men go head to head with the team that was considered unbeatable.

It was missing a stirring voice over at the end telling us how they did in the overall tournament, as we only get to see the one game. But it was still a good story with some really fun characters that I enjoyed rooting for.

Looking for other good Gerard Butler flicks until next time. -LJ

Friday Favorite – My Boys

Posted on April 3, 2009April 2, 2009 by lizjohnson
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First off, my apologies for being very unfaithful in posting this week. I will blame it on my writing retreat to Estes Park this last weekend. As previously confessed, I usually write my posts on the weekends, and I didn’t do that this weekend. So I missed my Monday Movie and a lot of really fun stuff that happened this week. But I’ll try to catch you up over the next several days.

Anyway, on to my Friday Favorite – My Boys!

If you think I’m talking about some guys friends, you obviously don’t know me very well. I haven’t had good guy friends since college. Man I miss having dudes around …

Anyway, My Boys is a sitcom on TBS, which just started its third season on Tuesday. It’s all about P.J. Franklin, a sports columnist in Chicago and her boys. There’s Mike, the guy who has no furniture in his home and strikes out with women at every turn. And, of course, Bobby, the adorable and very down to earth millionaire who happens to cover the Cubs for another Chicago paper. Brendan, who went to college with P.J. and is a recently fired DJ trying to open his own club. P.J.’s brother Andy, who is the only married one in the group finally fessed up in season 1 that his wife isn’t a domineering jerk–he just likes going home at 9 to spend time with his family and get to bed early. Last there’s Kenny, who we want to succeed so much, but he too has no luck with women or most things in life.

my-boys

What could be just another show about sports and just hanging out is instead the story of friendship at every level and the love between those friends. When they’re on a high, they celebrate together. They help each other out. And at the weekly poker game, they begin to take chances by opening up.

The third season opener started with a bang and probably one of the funniest contests yet (even better than when the boys decided they would make their own shirts). While standing around at Bobby’s wedding, Mike and Kenny and Brendan decide to have a mustache growing contest. When Andy learns that they’re each going to grow a ‘stache, he says, “Interesting … So even if you win, you lose.”

Amy and I started laughing so hard we had to pause it because we were missing some really great parts. Anyway, don’t miss this show! It’s great and so deserves a strong fan following. It has at least one. Me!

Until next time. -LJ

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