Jonathan's blog

A few months back we went to see Up (2009,PG) in the theater.  From ScreenIt!:

A 78-year-old widower uproots himself when he attaches balloons to his house and sets off for South America, unaware that an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer has unintentionally come along for the ride.

I give it 4 out of 5.

Back in March we went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in the theater.  From ScreenIt!:

A former museum night guard tries to rescue his museum figure friends -- that magically come to life at night -- from an Egyptian pharaoh figure that's likewise now animated and desirous of resurrecting his army of the dead.

The kids liked it, but I thought it was pretty bland.

I give it 3 out of 5.

Back in July we watched E.T. for family movie night.  From ScreenIt!:

An alien misses his spaceship ride home and is befriended by a young boy until his crew returns for him.

This is one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater (I was 10).  The first one was Star Wars (when I was 5).  I also remember seeing a Star Trek film but I don't know if it was the 1st one (when I was 7) or the 2nd (when I was 10).  It was actually a drive-in when I saw E.T. as a kid.

I give it 5 out of 5.

We went to see Where the Wild Things Are on opening night (October 16).  I'd been looking forward to it.  From ScreenIt!:

A hyperactive child imagines traveling to a distant land where he becomes the king of a group of large creatures that have their own share of personal and interpersonal issues that they and thus he must deal with.

I wonder how much all the ambiguous angst of adult relationships that saturates the film registers with kids.  Anyway, I enjoyed it, and they did too.

I give it 4 out of 5.

My buddy Madan is a Rams fan (he went to grad school in St. Louis), so we went together to the game Sunday at Ford Field.  It was expected to be an epic battle between the 1-5 Lions (coming after their historic 0-16 season) and the 0-7 Rams (loser of 17 straight games).  I was just hoping it would be a close game and that my Fantasy peeps would perform well (Kevin Smith and the Lions special teams/defense, the latter a bye-week pick-up chosen intentionally to help me care about the game).  The game lived down to expectations as it was 3-2 Rams late in the first half.  That’s when the first excitement came as the Rams scored a TD on fake field-goal and I got to see Madan get excited.  The Rams ended up winning (link) and celebrated breaking their losing streak by dumping ice water on the coach (pretty sad when a win over the Lions is a cause for celebration).  Also, my streak of consecutive weeks attending an NFL game was extended to 2 but is destined to end there.  Here are a few photos: