Movie reviews and a TV tragedy

First, the tragedy. This past week has been filled with season premiers on NBC. So I set up my DVR to record everything so I could watch the shows later at my leisure. You see, this past week has also been insanely busy. I was out of the house every single evening and was unable to watch any TV at all. So yesterday I sat down to finally go through everything that had been recorded and decide if there were any new shows worth watching and, much to my shock and horror, I discovered that instead of recording everything on channel 16, NBC, I had instead recorded 20 hours of MuchMusic - channel 18, as that was the last channel I had been watching last weekend.

I blame the HD box from Shaw (remember the chaos in my life surrounding getting THAT set up???). The DVR will record whatever channel the HD box is on and I can't program it more than about 10 hours ahead of time to record a certain channel. It says I can record the same program daily or weekly but that can't be true or I'd have NBC shows to watch now (I had previously asked it to record The Office and Jay Leno on a regular basis). Maybe it resets itself for the new season? Who knows and who cares. All I can say is that this is another strike against Shaw. I honestly can't believe I give them money every month for service/products that I'm unhappy with.

And now for the movie reviews. Recently I have seen Crank, The Illusionist, and The Last Kiss.

Crank - 4 out of 5. Although I knew what the story was about before I went to see it, the tone of the movie was a surprise. I was expecting a Die Hard feel and I got a Pulp Fiction feel. There were some funny parts and overall I liked the story but it gets marks taken off for excessive violence (hey, it's my rating system. I can rate it based on whatever I want LOL).

The Illusionist - 5 out of 5. I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. I hadn't heard of it until Brad mentioned he wanted to see it. With Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti I expected good acting. But with Jessica Biel, who I had only seen as the oldest daughter in Seventh Heaven, I wasn't sure. However, I am happy to report that the acting was great throughout and the story was interesting. It won't change your life and you never learn how the illusionist does his tricks, but it's a good way to distract you from your everyday life for a couple of hours.

The Last Kiss - 4 out of 5. This is a powerful movie about relationships and the ups and downs within them. It was almost too real in its examination of the conflicts that can arise and the temptations to cheat. Definitely a good movie to see if you have cheated on your spouse as forgiveness is a big theme. There were a couple of stories with unclear endings and the director should have put a scene in at the beginning that showed the turmoil within Zach Braff's character instead of just saying he had turmoil. Blythe Danner's acting is outstanding... she stole the show for me.