I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

I may be 29 years old, but I love to watch animated movies. As the genre has evolved, the movies have become more clever, more snarky, and more appropriate for adults. Over the Hedge is based on the very funny comic strip of the same name, created by Michael Fry and T Lewis. I’ve been reading Over the Hedge for a while now (I love how dashboard widgets can deliver my comics to my desktop!).

It centers around a group of animals whose natural habitat has been infringed upon by suburban sprawl. Instead of leaving and going to the woods, they follow the lead of RJ the Racoon and learn to love the creature comforts that we as humans take for granted.

I was really hesitant about the movie because it seemed to me that it would be difficult to recapture the magic of a comic strip (see: Garfield). It’s why they have never made Calvin & Hobbes (the greatest of all comic strips)…it would have been a travesty as a movie. In addition, the attachment of huge names like Bruce Willis, Steve Carell, and others made me hesitant that the magic of the comic might not translate to the big screen.

However, once I heard that Ben Folds had 5 new songs on the soundtrack, I was totally in. Saturay afternoon, we had a little outing with the Arnold family and we saw it before our awesome trip to PF Changs (Kung Pao Scallops…YUM!).

I think that all of us were pleasantly surprised with the movie. Sure, we got a lot of funny looks from the other movie-goers because we didn’t have kids with us, but I enjoyed the movie as much, if not more, than the kids. It is funny and clever and there is stuff there for adults as well as kids (think William Shatner as a Possum faking death and blurting out “Rosebud”…funny stuff). I heard that they had originally planned to have Jim Carrey as the voice of RJ the Racoon, but I was glad that they landed on Bruce Willis because I think his voice translates better as a cartoon than Carrey’s might have.

The voices were all very well cast. Allison Janney as the Homeowners Association President trying to stamp out the rodents who live over the hedge was perfect and Thomas Haden Church returned his Wings-roots, creating a very Lowell Mather-like interpretation of the Verminator. Even Avril Lavigne was not a distraction as the daughter possum and it was great for Eugene Levy and Catherine Ohara to have some non-mockumentary work as a family of porcupines.

I don’t know what it was about the movie, but it just made me happy. It was about a thousand times better than that big piece of crap Madagascar and it really proved that good writing is universal…talking animals can be endearing and funny as long as the writers create them that way. Credit should be given to Fry and Lewis because it was their original characters that provided the basis for the voice actors.

Overall, I thought it succeeded pretty well and it is a good family flick.

I suppose this movie should be called X-Men III: The (Almost) Last Stand. (There are rumors that this will NOT be the last X-Men movie…apparently Kelsey Grammer and Vinnie Jones have signed up for 4 and 5.)
I wanted this movie to be better than it was. From what I understand, a lot of people liked this movie (enough for it to have the 4th largest weekend opening ever), but for me, it just seemed like it was trying a little too hard.

I must confess that I have never read an X-Men comic, let alone ANY comic book in my life (I stick to comic strips…they are easier to digest and have funny talking critters). But I love comic book movies. I don’t want to put the work in to read all the back story of Superman or Spidey or anyone else for that matter, because if I were…I would probably have to read it all…I’m a little obsessive that way.

So it comes as no surprise that the stuff that was for comic book nerds in that movie went over my head. Not only that…the movie just seemed to lack focus. It was more worried about cramming as many cool new mutants into it as possible and forgetting about those little things called DIALOGUE and PLOT.

Granted, there was some plot to push the story along, but I really felt that it fell short where XMen and Xmen 2 succeeded in focusing more on 1 or 2 or 3 of the characters. Instead, The Last Stand really jumped all around. It TRIED to be about the whole Jean Grey/Phoenix thing, but it got too sidetracked and I never really felt like it fully told the story.

It also really lacked good action sequences, particularly those between mutants. In the mutant battle royale near the end of the movie, the camera jumps around so much that the fights seem really unsatisfying. Not that it lacked violence…it just lacked the Saber/Wolverine fight of X-Men 1 or the Jean-holding-back-the-dam in X-Men 2.

It was entertaining at times, but it really left a lot to be desired.

I was shocked to hear how much it made over Memorial Day weekend. Maybe not shocked, but impressed, considering how underwhelmed I was by the whole thing. Just goes to show you that I don’t know much.

It’s 1:48 AM.

Big night.

Corporate Challenge Volleyball Finals (we won).
American Idol Finale (Michael McDonald II won).
Top Chef Finale (my boy Harold won).
Lost Finale (I got goosebumps…such an awesome show).

It’s time for bed. More on the above later.

I was really disappointed in American Idol tonight. I am still baffled by the Soul Patrol and the whole Taylor Hicks phenomenon, but to me, it seemed like Katharine just mailed it in, almost resigning the Idol crown to the silver fox, bad-dancin’ Taylor. Katharine’s performances seemed uninspired and it was somewhat evident that Taylor really wanted it more than her.

That’s not to say he deserves it. In fact, I’m not sure that any of them deserve it, necessarily. I tried to call about 20 times tonight (for Kat, of course…even if she mailed it in, she’s still better than the Overweight-George-Clooney-looking-crazy-guy), but I didn’t get through once. Say that out of the 40 million or so that watch American Idol, maybe 40% call (I’m pulling these numbers out of thin air, but for argument’s sake, bear with me). If even half of those people are brutally rebuffed as many times as I was, don’t you think that those votes could have significant sway on the totals? Under my estimations, we’re talking about a potential 8 million callers. And if they, like myself, get frustrated and give up because they can’t get through, don’t you think that it is a little unfair? That’s why I don’t totally agree with the whole “America Gets to Choose” thing, because let’s be honest…there are some morons with very little time out there voting for all 4 hours, calling on 3 cell phones, redialing each of the numbers they are given. Now, these are Taylor Hicks’ clientele for sure, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.

I honestly thnik that either way it goes, America got it wrong. They got it wrong 2 weeks ago when Chris went home and last week when Elliott went home…those two should be in the finals. And I think that most of the judges know it, but unfortunately, despite what they might think, they really don’t have a lot of pull. (And truthfully, thank GOD, because if that were the case, Justin Guarini probably would have won season one since he was sleeping with Paula…)

I’m pretty confident that Taylor is going to win, which is unfortunate, but hey…this is YOUR FAULT, AMERICA.

I’m testing something with my feed. Bear with me.

OK, so I’m going to try running my feeds through feedburner so I can get better metrics on how many people are signed up for my feed, etc. Anyway…I’m hoping that nothing changes for you in your feed readers…let me know if there are any problems.

For four years now (we started watching regularly in Season Two), Alli and I have been hooked on the television show, Alias, starring Jennifer Garner as super-spy Sidney Bristow. That show came to an end with a 2-hour finale last night and it continued in my mind throughout my dreams (not your crazy “JG Dies” dreams, Sarah…just normal Alias dreams).

After 4 years of building up what I thought that the finale should be, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed in the final product. The finale did its best to wrap up all loose ends - Rambaldi’s endgame (immortality?), Sloane’s endgame (immortality?), Irina’s endgame (surprise…immortality) - and what ultimately will happen to the people around Sidney (most live, some die).

In a lot of ways, it was what a finale should be, a wrap-up of the previous seasons, and it tried to accomplish that with flashbacks to Sidney’s past, but I couldn’t help but feel those were trying a little too hard. I would have much rather them spent more time on the present-day story than giving back-story to the character that faithful watchers know more about than any.

Now, call me a sentimental guy, but I like happy endings in TV and movies. I was glad when Ross and Rachel ended up together on Friends, and it pleased me a lot when they revealed that Vaughn was still alive. The last several episodes have been really good and they brought us to the finale well, but you could tell that the show had “lost” its touch of its creator, JJ Abrams. I would have liked to have seen his participation in the final episodes a little more, but he was a little pre-occupied with that crazy Tom Cruise and that little Mission Impossible movie.

I don’t know. Perhaps me being disappointed with the finale is my way of dealing with the fact that the show is actually gone. It will live on in the DVDs (Season 1 and 2 are still the best), but I’ll miss Alias Night at our house. Most of all, I’ll miss the magic that was captured in this show in the early seasons. It was the kind of show that you just wanted to watch every week (because if you didn’t, you’d be lost). The characters were so endearing that you related to them, even if they were spies.

My hat is off to you, Jennifer Garner and the Alias crew. You will be missed.

After a really fun Rook party on Friday night, Alli and I met my mom and dad and Ashley for the 10:00 showing of The Da Vinci Code. All of us except Ashley had read the book, so we were very anxious to see the movie and we crossed our fingers hoping that they wouldn’t ruin the bestseller like they did with The Firm.

For a long time, I have spoken out that I thought that Tom Hanks was an awful choice for Robert Langdon. Turns out that I was right all along. However, the movie succeeds IN SPITE of Hanks’ awful, uninspired acting. (I don’t know if I would even call it “acting”…he didn’t even seem like he was acting. He just seemed like he was reading his lines as Tom Hanks with ridiculous long hair.)

The rest of the cast is just about as perfect as it could have been. Ian McKellen (who is always money) was a perfect Sir Leigh Teabing. Audrey Tautou (who would not have been my first choice) was a fantastic Sophie Neveu. Jean Reno was awesome as Bezu Fache. Even Alfred Molina was good in his small roll as Bishop Aringossa. The person that impressed me most, however, was Paul Bettany. You rarely see him in such a dramatic role, but his portrayal of the albino monk Silas was so dead-on that it was almost haunting. When I had read the book, Silas seemed like a bigger, more hulking type of albino (I was thinking like George “The Animal” Steele without all the body hair). But, in the words of Randy Jackson, he worked it out and made it his own.

Fans of the book will not be disappointed because all of the major plot points exist in the movie, and not only that, they also don’t change the ending drastically, like they did with the aforementioned Tom Cruise debacle.

Overall, I was really happy, even if I couldn’t get over Tom Hanks. We’ll see if they decide to make Angels & Demons now. In my opinion (as well as many others), it is a superior book, despite its ridiculous ending.

As an aside about the “controversy” surrounding the movie…it looks like it didn’t really work too well for the Catholic Church to boycott the movie, since it had the 13th largest opening weekend in the United States EVER.

Two weeks in a row, America has been wrong on American Idol. Elliott Yamin should not have gone home last night. He should have won the whole competition (except maybe Chris).

If you figure that 50 million people voted last night, considering their percentages, the difference between first and last was only 300,000 votes. That is such a small margin when you are talking about 50 million total votes. Crazy.

Unfortunately now, it is all but locked up for Taylor Hicks, who I don’t get. I’ll never buy his record, but I might ask him to sing at a wedding or something like that. I just don’t see him doing much else.

And as for Katharine McPhee…after the home visits, I just liked her a lot less. She came across as a snob. I can’t put my finger on one thing that bothered me about it…just the way she acted and some of her snide little comments. The home visits made me like Elliott even more. I wish that they would have showed those last night because I think that might have been enough for Elliott to win.

MacBook that is…

Comes in white and black and looks downright good enough to eat. Who wants to give me $1100? Actually…with the release of these, maybe I’ll be able to get an old iBook for really cheap!

*sigh*