Upcoming Movies I Really Want to See in Theaters

I'm a massive movie buff. I will watch just about anything as long as it isn't incredibly offensive or crazy. The other thing with me is that I absolutely love going to see movies in the theater. The big screen is where it's at for movies. If I was a millionaire tomorrow one of the first things I would do is find some way to procure or construct my very own private theater. One with actual full size movie screens, not some private screening room in a basement with a wall-sized projector.

If I never had to watch a movie again on anything other than in a theater I would be in heaven. Seriously. I'm not making this up. I love movies in the theater. Which, of course, means that 2012 is going to be a big and exciting year for me movie wise. This year is going to be huge for movie releases and I won't be surprised if several records are broken in the process.

While my list of movies I want to see is far longer than these few, here are the trailers for a couple I want to see in the next couple of months:







All three of these movies look awesome to me. I love movies with airplanes and dogfights, I'm a huge Gina Carano fan from her time on the American Gladiators reboot a couple years ago, and the John Carter movie just looks epic on the scale of something like Avatar in my opinion.

Cannot wait to see these!

Atlas Shrugged May Have to be the Next Book I Read

Alright, let me say something first. I don't read things like the "classics" very often in my free time. It's just not my sort of thing, nor is it really my cup of tea to say the least. As a matter of fact, I think that the only classic literature I've read in my life was a direct result of being required to do so for some sort of class in high school or college.

Except one. The Fountainhead  by Ayn Rand.

When I first met my wife, we went on five dates in six nights the week before winter break at BYU. On one of the last dates that week we went to the local Barnes & Noble bookstore because she wanted to show me some book known as the The Color Code and I needed to pick up something to read during the break while I was at home.

Long story short, I thought I would be pretty smooth and told her as we walked in to go get me a copy of a favorite book of hers. She did, and I bought it along with the book I was there for, promising to read it over the break so we could talk about it when I got back. In my mind it was a pretty slick way of setting myself up for another date when we both got back to campus.

The Fountainhead was pretty good. It's long as hell, but the story was pretty good, and I liked a couple of the characters a lot. Blah, blah, blah, we wound up married. Cool, eh?

Anyways, a few days ago, my wife and I went to the Redbox down the road and grabbed the Atlas Shrugged movie to watch. It's her favorite book of all time, hands down, and she was intrigued to see how the low-budget film that was released in 2011 stacked up as far as character depiction and so forth. I, having absolutely no clue what the book was about except that it involved trains in some fashion, had no sort of preconceived notions as to what was going to happen.



Yeah... shouldn't have watched that movie.

No, the movie wasn't horrible. As a matter of fact, as someone who had never read the book or had any idea what the story was about I was quite intrigued and enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to. The problem lies entirely in the fact that now I'm obsessing over two things:

Who the hell is John Galt?
What the hell does he have to do with Atlantis?

I'm not kidding. I've thought about it every single day since we watched that movie, and if I hadn't just started reading Fate of the Jedi: Conviction the day before I probably would have downloaded Atlas Shrugged to my Kindle immediately that evening. For all I know, the movie is completely off-track from the actual book. I won't allow my wife to tell me either way as I have a burning desire to discover for myself.

As a result, I did have plans to read the other Fate of the Jedi books and then finish the rest of the Millenium series books, but now those plans may have to change. My only hesitation is that Atlas Shrugged is long, and I worry I may lose myself in it if it really does have anything to do with Atlantis for some reason.

My wife should know better than to expose me to these things.

57% Finished With "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," and Loving Every Bit

There has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere and entertainment news outlets about the recently released movie entitled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Since seeing the first previews a few months back I have been trying to decide if I wanted to see the movie in theaters, or wait a little longer and grab it from the local Redbox at some point.

Normally, if a movie looks like it is probably going to be pretty good I will just go see it in the theater, but this one has had some interesting news surrounding it. According to internet rumor, the movie originally received an NC-17 rating, which while I'm definitely not opposed to seeing R rated movies, NC-17 is pushing it even for me, and I likely would never have seen it if that were the case. The reasoning behind the first rating was apparently due to a specific rape scene found in the book, which has a pretty dramatic impact on the story as a whole.

So, instead of going to see the movie when it first came out, I figured I would read the book it is based upon first, and then make my decision. I grabbed the Kindle version of the text with some money from a gift card I received for Christmas and have been working my way through it ever since. I've been reading for about four days now, and while the story started a little bit slow and took a little getting used to it has begun to pick up quite a bit.

Stieg Larsson, the author, has a very interesting way of telling his story. The prose isn't quite like anything I've read before given my background in science fiction and fantasy novels, but despite that I've found that I'm riveted. The easiest way to explain the prose is to imagine someone is trying to tell you a very, very good story, but is doing so while trying to read you an essay at the same time. It's quite fascinating really. The dialogue between characters is minimal at best, and the type of prose I'm used to where the author depicts the various actions of the characters from moment to moment seems almost nonexistent, but I have yet to feel like anything is being left out.

It's definitely a writing style that is different from most, and the only way to appreciate it would be to read it for yourself, which I highly recommend, and I haven't even finished the book yet.

At some point I knew I was going to reach the rape scene that has caused so much conversation about the movie, and when I did it was pretty tame to be honest. Not that rape is a "tame" thing in any fashion, but as far as the depiction of what was happening is concerned it was done in a very non-graphic manner that said just enough to make it clear what was happening, but never crossed the line into making the reader uncomfortable. In fact, I happen to know some fairly innocent minded folks who tend to shy away from books and movies that depict anything remotely taboo and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the book to any of them.

As a result, I think I will see the movie whenever I have the chance, but I probably won't rush it. Right now the book has me hooked well enough that when I get it finished (probably in the next day or so) I will likely jump directly into the second book of the series before I do anything else.

It isn't often that I stray from my science fiction/fantasy background for pleasure reading, but I'm glad I did this time because the result has been extremely good.