Live Free, But I Paid To Watch

I went with Ben to see Live Free or Die Hard tonight. Originally the plan was that while Ginger was in Richmond I was going to go see a movie with Ben, but he couldn't make it earlier in the week (and I got busy making the Batbrick movie anyway), hence why we ended up seeing it tonight. What follows will be spoiler free info about the film. Let me just get this out the way first, I found this to be an extremely enjoyable movie. Easily the best movie I've seen in a theater all year. And yea, I know I've probably only seen a handful of movies at best in theaters in the past year, but this beats all of them hands down (it's way better than Spider-Man 3). It's hard to say what exactly is so good about the movie, but it just sort of hits all the right notes. The positives are it's all action with just the right combination of funny, witty and very fast paced scenes. While it's not a hard and fast rule, normally sequels just aren't up to the same level of quality as the original (much less a sequel to a sequel to a sequel). The movie has a few negatives which are hardly worth mentioning (but I will anyway). There's a scene near the end that's so over the top it's crazy (but it's a big budget action movie, over the top is what these things do these days). Another negative is there's a literal crap ton of previews before the movie starts (felt like 20 or more minutes worth of previews). I guess they know this is a tent pole movie and are looking to market as many other movies as they can. Can't say I cared for any of the previews except for The Simpson Movie ("release the hounds" is just always funny) and maybe the upcoming one with Ben Stiller (The Heartbreak Kid). Other than that the only down side was I ended up playing "where do I know that actor from" as the movie was going along. It took me two scenes before I realized I knew the one guy from the "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercials. The other guy that bugged me was the guy who played the lead male role in Catch And Release, which even though I just saw that recently I was never able to place where I knew him from until after the movie (that ended up bugging me throughout the movie since I *knew* I had seen him recently in something). And I can't help but mention Tuvok's scenes where I keep hearing a Vulcan talking as he was delivering his lines. Overall though I thought this was a great movie that doesn't take itself too seriously but delivers in just about every scene. And for a benchmark, I say this even though we were in the super expensive theater that cost $13.50 a seat (which I think is highway robbery for a movie ticket), but I felt like it was worth the price of admission.

So what were Ginger and Catherine doing while I went to the movie? They played the Wii some before Catherine went to bed. And then when I got home and Catherine was in bed asleep, where was Ginger? That's right, downstairs playing the Wii. The bad news is that I think one of the controllers has already broken (it no longer seems to turn on), so that's disappointing, but better that it happen now when it can be returned and replaced I suppose. Unfortunately this meant that once I got home I wasn't able to play against Ginger (so she played it by herself until bedtime). Which meant I wasn't able to break out the Zelda game I picked up for the Wii today. What can I say, evidently we love the Wii.