Search
Search results
Dianne Robbins (1738 KP) rated Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! (2018) in Movies
Apr 24, 2019
Seeing Donna's backstories with her lovers. (1 more)
Nice to see most of the cast together again.
Literally everything else (8 more)
The same dramatic hairstyles on two principal female characters for over twenty years, really? Talk about suspension of belief.
Lifeless.
No real heart to it.
Meryl Streep is in it for mere seconds.
Relationships between the characters. Disjointed and disconnected.
Not the best ABBA songs.
The Kissed the Teacher sequence. I mean, wth was that about?
Not much singing or a reason to sing.
Joyless
Contains spoilers, click to show
I loved the first one and have been known to watch the DVD or listen to the CD on a continuous loop for upwards of 12 hours. I'm not kidding. I adore Meryl Streep and everything she touches is gold. Except for this movie. Omg, it is so bad. It lost all the joy the first film had. Why?! Why did they have to destroy this movie so badly?
Spoiler alert: Donna, Meryl Streep's joyous character is dead at the start of this film. Her story is told through flashbacks with Lily James of Downton Abbey starring as recent college-grad, Donna, and her adventures in the Greek Isles as she meets each of the three men who may be her daughter, Sophie's father. Donna flits around as the bohemian she is but the character is too flighty to be believed and she certainly doesn't flesh out Meryl Streep's version of Donna. It seems pointless for her to even have tried.
The cast is very dated and stagnant, in reverse, as they are shown as their younger selves exactly as they are 20 or 30 years later, even down to the same clothing and hairstyles. It's ridiculous to think these fashionable women would never update their looks over the years or that their personalities and mannerisms had not changed either. Are they living in a vacuum? They're all just so one-note. Maybe the creators did it because they thought the movie would be easier to understand or figure out which character was whom, but it's just not realistic. I'll admit, dramas are my favorite genre and this is meant as much lighter fare but I wish they would have expected the audience to have half a brain and be able to figure out the younger cast and the elder versions of them. It felt dumbed down.
The modern plotline is morose, joyless, and lifeless, and missed all the heart, humor, and passion of the first.
And Cher's character, why bother? She didn't bring anything to the role other than her real-life celebrity.
I regret buying this DVD and even more so, wasting 2 hours of my life watching this dull, spoon-fed money grab.
Spoiler alert: Donna, Meryl Streep's joyous character is dead at the start of this film. Her story is told through flashbacks with Lily James of Downton Abbey starring as recent college-grad, Donna, and her adventures in the Greek Isles as she meets each of the three men who may be her daughter, Sophie's father. Donna flits around as the bohemian she is but the character is too flighty to be believed and she certainly doesn't flesh out Meryl Streep's version of Donna. It seems pointless for her to even have tried.
The cast is very dated and stagnant, in reverse, as they are shown as their younger selves exactly as they are 20 or 30 years later, even down to the same clothing and hairstyles. It's ridiculous to think these fashionable women would never update their looks over the years or that their personalities and mannerisms had not changed either. Are they living in a vacuum? They're all just so one-note. Maybe the creators did it because they thought the movie would be easier to understand or figure out which character was whom, but it's just not realistic. I'll admit, dramas are my favorite genre and this is meant as much lighter fare but I wish they would have expected the audience to have half a brain and be able to figure out the younger cast and the elder versions of them. It felt dumbed down.
The modern plotline is morose, joyless, and lifeless, and missed all the heart, humor, and passion of the first.
And Cher's character, why bother? She didn't bring anything to the role other than her real-life celebrity.
I regret buying this DVD and even more so, wasting 2 hours of my life watching this dull, spoon-fed money grab.
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2589 KP) rated I'll Be There for You: The One about Friends in Books
Oct 16, 2019
The One Where We Look at the Friends Phenomenon
Over the course of the book, we get a well-researched look at the sitcom Friends and the impact it has had on the US and the world in the 25 years since it premiered. We learn about how the creators met and came up with the show, the path the actors took before they landed on the show, and some of the bumps and growing pains that everyone experienced during the 10 years the show was on the air. There is also talk about the impact the show has had on fashion, trends, and overall pop culture the world over.
Author Kelsey Miller starts out by talking about her own connection to the show, and at various times in the book she talks about how she gained insight into the show (and vice versa) while talking to her real-life friends about it. As I said, the book is well-researched, but that is part of the problem – it has too much research, rehashing stories we can find elsewhere with little new insights from the cast and crew. I did find her commentary on a few episodes and arcs to be interesting. I had already thought of some of her comments myself, and the rest make perfect sense to me. My biggest issue with the book is the way she works modern social issues into a look at a comedy from 25 years ago. Now, I’m not saying that the issues on the show aren’t worth talking about. This is the only part of the book where she did her any original research, reaching out to people to get reactions to the show’s handing of diversity, etc. However, her experts all seem to be of the opinion that it would be nice if the show had done a better job, but that was TV in the day, and it is a funny comedy that wasn’t trying to push an agenda. It is clear she wasn’t happy these people didn’t agree with her more since she obvious thinks these are major issues in the show. She even spends much of the last chapter talking about the lawsuit a writer’s assistant brought for a hostile work environment and speculating how it would have been handled in the current environment. These complaints aside, I found the book very readable, and when I picked it up, I was hooked. I was even choking up as I read about the taping of the final episodes. This would probably appeal most to die hard Friends fans, but most of the material here they probably already know.
Author Kelsey Miller starts out by talking about her own connection to the show, and at various times in the book she talks about how she gained insight into the show (and vice versa) while talking to her real-life friends about it. As I said, the book is well-researched, but that is part of the problem – it has too much research, rehashing stories we can find elsewhere with little new insights from the cast and crew. I did find her commentary on a few episodes and arcs to be interesting. I had already thought of some of her comments myself, and the rest make perfect sense to me. My biggest issue with the book is the way she works modern social issues into a look at a comedy from 25 years ago. Now, I’m not saying that the issues on the show aren’t worth talking about. This is the only part of the book where she did her any original research, reaching out to people to get reactions to the show’s handing of diversity, etc. However, her experts all seem to be of the opinion that it would be nice if the show had done a better job, but that was TV in the day, and it is a funny comedy that wasn’t trying to push an agenda. It is clear she wasn’t happy these people didn’t agree with her more since she obvious thinks these are major issues in the show. She even spends much of the last chapter talking about the lawsuit a writer’s assistant brought for a hostile work environment and speculating how it would have been handled in the current environment. These complaints aside, I found the book very readable, and when I picked it up, I was hooked. I was even choking up as I read about the taping of the final episodes. This would probably appeal most to die hard Friends fans, but most of the material here they probably already know.
Accessible (2 more)
Simplified
Incredible insight into how much the modern world has taken from Greek and Roman culture
A lot of pretty complex names to remember (1 more)
Constant footnotes (usually at least one per page) to explain certain aspects, or highlight an interesting fact.
Mythos - The Greek legends retold
Ah, what a great read. Stephen Fry writes exactly how you would expect him to, if you've ever heard him speak. He understands the subject matter, and more importantly, realises how easily a reader will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of players in these myths and answers that problem without condescension.
The book reads as a quasi-novel, from the birth of the universe to the third and fourth generations of immortals (this includes the creators, the titans, the gods, and mythical creatures/characters, spawns of titans and gods, gods and creatures, gods and men and all sorts.) and their adventures, each following on from the other.
I have always had an interest in the Greek myths and gods, and as I suggested above the really interesting part of these stories, beyond the very human nature of the immortals (jealousy, unreasonableness, duplicity, rage, deceit and pride) which makes for so much more of a believable creation theory, is the myriad ways they have influenced English language (any many others I'm sure). To give an example (I'm showing my own ignorance flagrantly here) a simple thing, the alphabet. It never occurred to me, in my own self centered existence, this simply come from the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha and Beta. So simple, so obvious, yet I never made this connection.
The stories themselves are wonderful, and the best thing about them is they all tie in with a creation theory. Something, whatever it is, is learned, or created. Some paradigm is set, some moral conundrum is answered, or something in the world is explained by the end of every story told (the tides, the moon, wine, love, soul, war, sex, the seasons, humanity itself just to name a few). It's such an entertaining read, and I find myself telling anyone who will listen some of the revelations I find in this book page on page on page.
As an end note, don't be overwhelmed by the prospect of reading about these stories, this installment ONLY covers from creation, to the establishment of the twelve Greek gods, and their children. It stops before the even greater amount of legends stemming from human demigods (Hercules, Perseus etc) and these are picked up in Fry's most recent offering, Heroes (which I am yet to read).
If you have any interest in the Greek mythology, or etymology, or even history as a whole, this is absolutely one for you.
- Rob
The book reads as a quasi-novel, from the birth of the universe to the third and fourth generations of immortals (this includes the creators, the titans, the gods, and mythical creatures/characters, spawns of titans and gods, gods and creatures, gods and men and all sorts.) and their adventures, each following on from the other.
I have always had an interest in the Greek myths and gods, and as I suggested above the really interesting part of these stories, beyond the very human nature of the immortals (jealousy, unreasonableness, duplicity, rage, deceit and pride) which makes for so much more of a believable creation theory, is the myriad ways they have influenced English language (any many others I'm sure). To give an example (I'm showing my own ignorance flagrantly here) a simple thing, the alphabet. It never occurred to me, in my own self centered existence, this simply come from the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha and Beta. So simple, so obvious, yet I never made this connection.
The stories themselves are wonderful, and the best thing about them is they all tie in with a creation theory. Something, whatever it is, is learned, or created. Some paradigm is set, some moral conundrum is answered, or something in the world is explained by the end of every story told (the tides, the moon, wine, love, soul, war, sex, the seasons, humanity itself just to name a few). It's such an entertaining read, and I find myself telling anyone who will listen some of the revelations I find in this book page on page on page.
As an end note, don't be overwhelmed by the prospect of reading about these stories, this installment ONLY covers from creation, to the establishment of the twelve Greek gods, and their children. It stops before the even greater amount of legends stemming from human demigods (Hercules, Perseus etc) and these are picked up in Fry's most recent offering, Heroes (which I am yet to read).
If you have any interest in the Greek mythology, or etymology, or even history as a whole, this is absolutely one for you.
- Rob
Gruffalo: Games
Education and Games
App
Based on the UK's favorite bedtime story, 'The Gruffalo', from the creators of 'Room on the Broom'. ...
Tower Keepers
Games, Entertainment and Stickers
App
Heroic strategy RPG with deep solo campaign and real-time head to head battles! Train an epic army...
Walkr - A Gamified Fitness App
Games, Health & Fitness and Stickers
App
*** Best of App Store of the Best Game *** - Walkr combines your phone’s pedometer with a fun...
Colossatron: Massive World Threat
Games
App
AN EXPLOSIVE NEW GAME FROM THE CREATORS OF FRUIT NINJA AND JETPACK JOYRIDE! Colossatron: Massive...
World Cup Table Tennis™ HD
Games and Sports
App
World Cup Table Tennis HD. A #1 game in 94 countries. And of course, the #1 Table Tennis game on the...
Weaphones Antiques: Firearms Simulator
Games and Entertainment
App
Travel back in history and take hold of some of the most significant weapons of all time. From the...
Lucky Time Slots: Vegas Casino
Games and Entertainment
1.0
Rate It
App
*Casino slots fans - it’s time to get lucky with Lucky Time Slots!* Step into this huge online...
Vegemite Girl (284 KP) Apr 24, 2019
Dianne Robbins (1738 KP) Apr 24, 2019