Looky looky, Now you see me

That's right, I went to the movies last evening.  "Now You See Me 2" was on the bill.  Hhhmmm, what to say?  Overall I enjoyed it almost as much as I liked the first film in this franchise.  Daniel Radcliffe is in this one and most of the time he's barefooted (for all you Harry Potter foot fetishists out there).  He does a decent job, as does most of the cast.  Where as all of the Four Horsemen get to do their only little solo magic shtick, Lizzy Caplan, as their newest member, gets stuck with this crappy dove trick which is so crappy there's no reveal.  That's right.  All of the other tricks get explained, not hers.  Not good.  And the big reveal at the end?  It goes on for way too long.  When Dave Franco begins to explain away the secrets to "the people of the world," he's not really speaking to them, he's speaking to the movie audience because "the people of the world" have no idea what has been transpiring.  Oh, and did I say, it goes on way too long: five minutes detailing everything that happened, maybe?
Still, I thought that overall the movie was very entertaining, easily worth the price of the ticket.

Here are some quick takeaways:

Either Morgan Freeman is really, really tall, or the rest of the cast is really, really small.

If you ever wanted to see Woody Harrelson with curly hair, this is you chance.

Mark Ruffalo shows you how to make a teary-eyed scene look cheesy.

Jesse Eisenberg actually looks..., well, cute.

The cast, while being racially diverse, is overly dominated by men.

Did I mention Jesse Eisenberg?

The first one made over $375 million worldwide, and Part 2 is over $90 million in it's second week.  What does that mean?  I understand they're already working on Part 3, that's what that means.  Will I go see it?  Probably.

Tom Cruise Flop-Flops

When I first saw the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow I was excited, since I like the sci-fi, action genre, until I saw the star was Tom Cruise.  The minute I saw he was involved I sighed, sat back in my movie theater seat, and wrote it off.  Evidently I wasn't the only one.  Opening weekend for Edge of Tomorrow was very bad, in fact I believe it was one of the worst openings ever for a Tom Cruise film.  It's a shame about the movie, since I'm sure it's probably very good.  I, however, like a lot of other people, don't really want to pay money for a Tom Cruise film.  In fact, I don't even rent them.  I'd like to watch Oblivion but something inside keeps me from renting it from Netflix.  In case you don't remember, Oblivion was last year's Tom Cruise flop - hence the flop - flops.  It's also a shame for his co-stars, last year it was Morgan Freeman, this year Emily Blunt; when you make a movie you want people to go see it.  The saying in Hollywood is "you're only as good as your last film," and these actors deserve better.  On a bright note for Mr. Cruise, the audiences seem to like it in South Korea and China, it's just everybody else who seems to pass on his films.

Ten years ago Edge of Tomorrow would have been a home run, but then a lot of things can happen in ten years.  Tom married Katie Holmes, they had a daughter they named after an Iphone assistant, then they were divorced.  He starred in the remake of War of the Worlds, which I did pay to see... and I hated.  He showed up a couple of years ago at the Academy Awards and instead of people talking about how good he looked for hitting 50, they gossiped about how much plastic surgery he must have had.  He's a Christian Scientist and they don't believe in anesthesia since it renders you unconscious, so if he has gone under the knife it had to have been with a helatious amount of local anesthesia.  Can't you hear some crazy doctor saying "in order to make you look younger, we're going to shave away some of your cheekbones to keep them sharp and youthful looking."  Ouch!

Emily, blame Tom!!

People just don't care about him anymore, and they don't care about his films.  This happens to most actors and they move onto supporting roles.  I doubt if Tom Cruise will ever be a supporting actor.  He's too odd.  Audiences don't mind if the actors they are watching on the screen are eccentric, they don't, however, want them to be weird in an "euwh" sort of way.  Unfortunately for Tom, I suspect most people feel he is so very, very close to being borderline.

I'm sure he's placing the blame for lackluster ticket sales on the way the film was merchandised.  He's wrong, of course.  If this film had starred anybody else I'd have been to see it already, except maybe Shia Leboef.  Anyway, now we're all going to have to wait, without baited breaths I might add, to see if Tom continues his series of flops.  Will a pattern emerge that sounds a lot like flop,flop, flop, flop, flop? 

Through the Wormhole, kind of

As a person of "retail" my schedule can be quite varied, some mornings I
need to get up at 5 AM, other mornings at 4 AM and on some occasions as
early as 3 AM.  This puts me at odds with networks such as the Science
Channel which has a terrible policy of premiering new shows at 10 PM.  That
time slot does not work if you work in retail, unless, of course, you happen
to be in upper management, which I am not.  A prime example, this week the
3rd season of Through the Wormhole begins... with the first new episode at
(drum roll, please) 10 PM.  Thursday morning, my alarm clock is set for 5 AM
which would give me, at best, about 5.5 hours of sleep.  

And it isn't only the Science Channel, they all do it.  Do the Executives in charge of
programming think everybody works 9 - 5?  I don't understand why it has to
be 10 PM, why not 9 PM or 8PM.  These shows are at best rated PG, there's no
vulgar language, on sexual situations, and there sure as hell isn't going to
be a flash of titty or butt crack, or peen.  As a result, I always have to wait until they choose to air these episodes at an earlier time which defeats the purpose, at least in my book, of having a premier show.