Category: Movies

Categories
Beer Movies Work

Weekend Update

Good weekend so far (now that it’s almost over). Kelly made it back Friday, about mid-morning. We met up at Rose & Thistle after I got off work and had a couple pints and caught up on each other’s week. Afterward we left and buzzed up to Moon & Sixpence, Kelly wanted a particular beer (Hale’s Cream Ale) which I swore they had, but was mistaken. We stayed anyway, and I was glad we did… they now have (and it may be a regular beer, apparently) Old Speckled Hen! It’s a beer I have whenever I go to Horse Brass, and I had loads of it on our last trip to London. Had a couple pints of it and some food before we went home. Kelly was exhausted as she didn’t sleep well while at her sister’s place.

Saturday we went out to my folks place for a belated birthday dinner for my kid bro (Happy Birthday C!). We both ate WAY too much, but it was all good. Got home early (around 9:30) and decided to stay in. We both ended up dozing off in the living room watching Psych off of our DVR.

Slept until 10am today, surfed the web for a bit and then played a few hours of Call of Duty 4. Now I’m at Kennedy School (Kelly just met me here after working out) and we’re going to go see The Golden Compass at the theater here (can’t beat a $3.00 movie, and beer, and pizza). I just finished reading the book last week, so the timing of it coming to Kennedy School couldn’t be better. Might write something about it afterwards.

Categories
Entertainment Movies Television

Cloverfield

Today Kelly and I went to see Cloverfield. It was good, though be sure to bring motion-sickness pills. And maybe ibuprofen. I think I will enjoy watching it again on a smaller screen, but even with the constant shaking camera, it was a good movie.

Today I also watched this interesting History Channel show “Life After People‘, which followed nature’s resurgence if, hypothetically, every human vanished tomorrow. The CG wasn’t movie quality, but it was still pretty cool.

Categories
Beer Food Movies

Alameda Brewhouse & Little Miss Sunshine

Tonight Kelly and I decided to go out for dinner. We’d looked up a bunch of restaurants near our house, thinking we were going to try Amalfi’s finally, but as we drove by the Alameda Brewhouse (site seems to be down at the moment) and noticed how pleasantly empty it looked we decided to stop in for a beer. We got sat down in a booth, got pints of their delicious, chocolaty Black Bear Double Stout on nitro, and after looking through the menu decided to stay. The previous times I’d been there it had been so full (it’s a very family friendly brewpub, which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not what I tend to gravitate towards) that it had turned me off from going there completely. Love their beers, but just not the atmosphere. Tonight was very different though, and it was nice to spend a bit of time there. The service was great, the beer was great, sadly my choice of meal wasn’t fantastic. I’d gotten this chicken kabob greek salad and it was pretty bland. I left wishing I’d gotten a burger, or nachos, or onion rings… all of which passed me by while I sat there chewing on my relatively flavorless low-cal meal. Mocking me.

We got home and decided to pop in one of our Netflix movies, Little Miss Sunshine. Pretty good movie, though it had the same awkward and quiet tone that Napoleon Dynamite had. Some really funny moments, some really touching moments, and some really sad moments. Probably worth seeing, unless you hated Napoleon Dynamite.

Categories
Beer Entertainment Movies Work

Middle Earth at Kennedy School

Gondor warrior and an Elven maidenToday is Kennedy School‘s annual J.R.R. Tolkien Birthday Celebration, and I met my friend Snooks in the Cypress Room bar around noon so we could sit with our laptops, sip on beer, and do some work. I managed to get a few hours in before a combination of low battery power and low brain power (probably due to the beer) forced me to call it a work day.

GandalfThis was the second time I’ve been at Kennedy School during the Tolkien celebration, and it’s definitely a family affair, with “hobbits” in the hallways making balloon animals for the kiddies, a few people dressed in costume wandering around, the Willamette Radio Workshop performing segments from the Rings books in the gymnasium, and the theater running all 3 Lord of the Rings films. They also serve some food specials for the day: My Precious Onion Rings, Return of the King Burger (which sounded really good), Shire Stew, Middle Earth Pizza, and the Cracks of Doom Molten Lava Cake.

I only managed to snap a few photos, however, the two I’m posting are of the more impressive costumes (note, the appropriately jolly Gandalf, with his glass of wine in hand). Last year there was a really good Ring Wraith, sadly I didn’t manage to spot him this time around.

After leaving Kennedy School, Snooks & L, and Kelly & I went to Concordia Ale House for some dinner and a couple more beers. I had the fantastic Irish Cheese Steak sandwich, and a Hales Cream Stout. Mmmm.

Categories
Entertainment Movies

Good and Bad Movie Review

Watched a couple movies this weekend, as Kelly and I had some Netflix starting to pile.

The first was Shoot ‘Em Up, which was, well, very disappointing. I understand what the film was going for; a cheesy, over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek action flick with silly one-liner’s and lots of gun fighting and car chases. Shoot ‘Em Up had all that, however it failed to pull it off. Clive Owen‘s delivery of the one-liner’s just didn’t work (I imagine the film would have been much better had Bruce Campbell been cast as the lead character), and I groaned out loud more than once at how stupid the film was.

The other movie we watched was Cinderella Man, the story of Great Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock directed by Ron Howard. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. The story, sets, costumes, and acting were all good, and it was just enough to practically erase Shoot ‘Em Up from my brain. Almost.