When the Captain America: The First Avenger film was released this year, I had all the intentions of watching it in the theater. Unfortunately, something or other came up, and I never got a chance. I ultimately ended up waiting for the home market release on October 25 2011. The wait wasn’t as interminable as I thought, and October 25th got here fairly quickly in my guestimation.
In case you didn’t know, this film is a prequel of sorts to the big May 2012 Avengers ensemble film. The film stars Chris Evans as the titular Captain America / Steve Rogers, with Hugo Weaving playing the Red Skull. There are, of course, other actors, but none of the supporting characters (Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Dominc Cooper) play very integral parts of the overall film. The film shows how a scrawny-but-good-kid like Steve Rogers gets selected as the first candidate for the U.S. Army’s Super Soldier program.
Unfortunately, the serum is lost, and Steve is the only person with it in his genes. The U.S. Army doesn’t know what to do with him, and he ends up shilling for U.S. bonds across the country in daffy musical shows. Eventually, he finds a way to prove his worth in battle, and he leads the offensive against the Red Skull’s HYDRA organization, an offshoot R&D group within the German army.
The audio and video were pretty good on this blu-ray disc. The video quality was good, but the colors were a little dull. Maybe this had to do with the war scenes. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 was fun, with lots of activity. The storyline and the action were entertaining, and I thought the acting was pretty good. Not the greatest superhero film, but I thought it was up there with Spiderman 1 and 2. It was 10x better than this year’s Green Lantern stinker.
I took Monday off to relax and get some cleaning up done at the house, and maybe even clean up a small degenerate slice of Gotham, which I did. I also sat and watched Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama Heat. If you haven’t seen it yet (though I believe I’m the only one who hasn’t), it features an all-star cast, written and directed by Michael Mann. The film stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro cast, but also includes:
Val Kilmer
Jon Voight
Tom Sizemore (pre-career implosion)
Amy Brenneman
Ashley Judd
Natalie Portman (small role)
Mykelti Williamson
Dennis Haysbert (small role)
William Fichtner
De Niro stars as Neil McCauley, who leads a professional criminal crew that scores on big money targets (banks, vaults, armored cars.) After a botched job, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and his team of cops in the Robbery/Homicide police division begin hunting McCauley’s crew. What I liked about this film was that both sides were very smart, and at times fairly likeable from a certain point of view. Both sides had families (except leader McCauley), and they were all pretty smart. Speaking of families, McCauley follows a dictum taught to him long ago by his criminal mentor — “Never have anything in your life that you can’t walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner.” However, he meets Amy Brenneman’s character, and falls in love. As the noose tightens on McCauley and his crew, you have no idea how the story will unfold.
I liked the plot as it was unpredictable. I liked the characters as they were very nuanced, and the dialogue was very great. I also liked how nobody was a fool in this story — both the criminals and the detectives were smart, so you had two worthy teams of adversaries squaring off against each other. I watched this film on blu-ray, and it was a pretty good transfer. The video quality was decent for a mid-90′s film, and the Dolby TruHD 5.1 audio was excellent — the dialogue was crisp, the LFE (bass) was big, and the rear speakers were surprisingly active.
Whoa, that was one busy weekend. I’ve had busy weekends, so I’m not gonna rate this one. I just know it was action-packed.
Friday night
After we got back from Avenue Q and putting the kids to bed, I stayed up until about 5:30am to play Batman Arkham City. Hey, I just got this game, and I’ve barely had any time to sit and enjoy the experience since Tuesday. I played it for maybe 30 mins Tuesday night, and that was it. Would I be tired in the morning? No doubt, but when you’re engrossed in a good game, the time can fly by.
Saturday
Saturday was a full day. Nums took Lily to dance class, while I cleaned up a bit and watched Josh. We took the kids to their respective soccer games, then we went home to take care of some more cleaning up. In the evening, we met up with some friends at Sigiri in Edison, which is a tiny Sri Lankan casual dine-in & carryout restaurant. One of our traditions is to meet up monthly (or when possible) to celebrate birthdays. After much eating and talking, we went back to someone else’s place to continue the festivities, like drinks, dessert, and some card games. The kids, of course, ran around like loons.
Sunday
Church in the morning, followed by a hasty exit mid-service to grab a quick lunch in the car, before the next two soccer games. At least it was a nice day. In the late afternoon, I went to the Freehold Raceway Mall to select some much-needed medium-sized shirts, plus clothes for Joshua. He and I seem to have outgrown out fall/winter clothes. I’m smaller and less bulkier than I used to be, and Josh is taller than he used to be. I didn’t find everything I needed, but at least it’s a start.
Friday night was this month’s “date night.” We have a friend who was a cast member of NENA Productions, performing in a local production of Avenue Q performing down at the Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, NJ. I’ve wanted to take my wife to see a NYC Broadway show for a while now, but timing and exorbitant prices for good seats have held us back. Tickets for a show = $20 each, and a friend in the cast? Sold!
I got home as soon as I could from work, picked up Joshua, and we dropped off the kids for the evening. We had a fairly tight timeline before the 8pm curtain went up, so we barely had time to make it to Ocean Grove, grab a slice of pizza, then head across the street to the Jersey Shore Arts Center to buy tickets and find seats. We did just make it, so we lucked out in a way. The show was great, and we both had a great time. The finale ended right around 10:20pm, which gave us 40 mins to exit, walk to the car, and drive quickly and expeditiously back to pick up the kids by 11pm.
Did we make it? Yes. Another day in the life of the Ipes. If you’ve been thinking of seeing the show, and live in NJ, now is a good time to see the show. It’s a limited run, so go see it if you enjoy watching a good musical, even if it is with puppets.
Winner of the Tony Award “TRIPLE CROWN” for BEST MUSICAL, BEST SCORE and BEST BOOK, AVENUE Q is part flesh, part felt, and packed with heart. AVENUE Q is a laugh-out-loud musical that tells the timeless story of a recent college grad named Princeton who moves into a shabby New York apartment all the way out on Avenue Q. There, he meets Kate (the girl next door), Rod (the Republican), Trekkie (the internet sexpert), Lucy the Slut (need we say more?), and other colorful types who help Princeton finally discover his purpose in life!
Anybody using Hulu Plus? I’m testing it out this week during an initial 1-week trial. A year later, why am I finally trying it? Well, my wife and I want to catch up with episodes from this season of The Good Wife. We don’t want to purchase more episodes from Amazon.com, so streaming from Hulu seemed like the best solution.
We normally use the PlayOn media server client to stream my the desktop PC to the PS3, but I couldn’t get it to work last night. I figured to use the trial version of Hulu Plus, since we could then stream directly from the Internet to our TiVo Premiere.
Well, setting it up was easy enough, but here comes the rub. No Good Wife. Apparently, from what I read online, content available for Hulu is separated for PC, Mobile, and TV. Content that is tagged for PC-only won’t be available for watching in your living on your tv.
That blows. I’m canceling this Hulu Plus trial. If I’m going to pay $7.99 a month, I want all the content available to be through any medium.
I gotta hand it to them — Amazon.com is truly amazing. There are four games that I need to get this year:
LittleBigPlanet 2 — I picked it up Jan 21st. (It’s been on loan to my sister, and I just got it back. I should go back to playing it.)
Batman Arkham City — Released October 18th, and I have it in my hands right now.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception — Releases November 1st, and I wait with baited breath. I love that franchise.
Star Wars: The Old Republic — Releases sometime around December 20th. This is for Josh and I to play together.
I wasn’t sure when I was going to pick up Batman Arkham City, but when some friends of mine mentioned yesterday that they too had preordered it, and expected it to arrive on release day (Tuesday, Oct 18th 2011), I was bummed. The early reviews were positively glowing. And Amazon is offering a preorder bonus — you get $10 credit to most future purchases.
Now this was just too much for me, so I preordered it late yesterday afternoon. The website was still promising to deliver it tomorrow, but I was still incredulous. Lo and behold, UPS shows up at my house less than 24 hours later, and drops this off.
Unbelievable.
I made a little time to play the game after I picked up the kids this evening. I played for maybe 30-45 mins. Wow, a great looking game. I hope I get some free time on Saturday to play some more.
I wrote a science article back in high school about Tay-Sachs disease. As a parent now, this article gave me a whole different perspective.
Emily Rapp is the author of “Poster Child: A Memoir,” and a professor of creative writing at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means “little seal” in Irish and it suits him.
I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He’ll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.
How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?
