Sunday, January 29, 2012

M: A Netflix Weekend

Haha, and two more off of my Netflix queue!  Only 19 more to go! :)

Prom: Even though Aimee Teergarden kind of annoys me, I rather enjoyed this movie and her in it as well.  I appreciated that the actual prom part of it wasn't a big deal but it was more about the lead up and what prom meant for people than anything else.  Quite predictable, but a really cute movie.

Sorority Wars: This was a made for TV movie, I guess, since it definitely had commercial breaks built into it.  Lucy Hale stars, with Courtney Thorne Smith and some other girl who reminds me a lot of Ellen Page but isn't Ellen Page. It was another super predictable movie but made me happy in that feel good made-for-TV movie way.

M: Resolution 2012 Update

2 movies off of my Netflix instant queue: It's a Boy Girl Thing and My Girlfriend's Boyfriend.

Both cheesy and pretty much exactly what I expected of them when I added them to the queue.  The second one had a little bit of a twist at the end and the final scene was set to an Ingrid Michaelson song, so I'll say that of the boy girl, girl boy movie face off -- My Girlfriend's Boyfriend won by a small margin.

Not worth expanding on either of the two movies, really. The first one had the girl who played Seth's girlfriend on The OC when he wasn't dating Summer (the comic girl... Anna, I think?).  The second one has the blind guy from Covert Affairs (also formerly of Popular) and Alyssa Milano.

A nice lazy Saturday evening. :)

Now to get a currently playing movie in before the month is over... I might concede defeat on that within the first month! :(

Update (2 hours later): 3 movies off my Netflix instant queue. Latest addition is Morning Glory starring Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, the friend from Mad About You, and the Jeff Goldblum.  Maybe I'm just Rachel McAdams biased, but this was actually really good!  Probably the only movie I might recommend from the three I watched today.

Well, 3 down... 21 more to go? :)

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Check in Thursdays: Week 4

Jennifer:
Watching... Catching up on Gossip Girl. I know, I know, I'm still watching this show? When they're rehashing the Blair/Chuck thing for the billionth time? Where no one seems to even be in college anymore and Nate, of all people, is the editor-in-chief of a magazine? What can I say, it's ridiculous but still generally entertaining...
Listening... Florence + the Machine - Shake It Out. Yes, it's a pop song!!
Reading... The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. My first time borrowing a Kindle book from the library! I can only have it for 14 days though, which is kind of a problem when you're reading 4 books at once like I am...


Mira:
Watching... anything and everything to get my DVR EMPTY.  This week is the series finale of Chuck, so I'll be finishing that show off.  I'm surprised that I stuck with it all the way through, especially since it was one of the shows we wouldn't watch every week but would play catch up halfway through the season. I have to say, I'm glad they're ending it and getting a nice cohesive ending (I hope) for the show, but they really have done a great job at mixing up the storylines while keeping pretty much the same cast of players throughout.  Maybe this deserves its own post. Maybe! :)
Listening... to random mix CDs from my college years.  One of my favorites had random songs like: "Can I Get Your Number" by No Authority (ridiculous song), "I'll Make a Man out of You" from the Mulan soundtrack, "Life in Mono" by Mono, "Run" by Collective Soul, the Sex and the City theme song... Lotsa random songs, but such a great reminder of silliness in the high school years. :)
Reading... absolutely nothing. I'm playing this game with my DVR where I try to keep it as close to empty as possible (got it down to 17% at one point last week -- it's back to 45% full now) before February sweeps start. Plus, I have some major knitting projects that I need to try to finish before April. So, both of those activities do not lend to being able to read.  Maybe I should try some audiobooking; does that count as reading? I guess not... I'm even behind in my Us Weekly trash reading!

Sorry for the not so Thursday check in... (More like Saturday backdated to Thursday.) Completely my (Mira) fault!  Jenn actually reminded me at least twice on Thursday to do it, and I did go in and start typing up my portion... but... then I forgot to finish it and it didn't get finished until Saturday. Oops!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Check in Thursdays: Week 3

Jennifer:
Watching...Justified season 3. The hat is back!
Listening... Just started a new audiobook, The Penderwicks. It's a relatively new children's series but with an old-fashioned feel. Super cute.
Reading... Um, this is kind of embarrassing, but I'm reading a Christian dating book. It's called Boundaries in Dating. It's really not bad.

Mira:
Watching... the final 2 episodes of The X-Factor off of my DVR. Hahaha, I'm surprised that I did watch the show all the way through. Though, most importantly -- watching the RAVENS play this weekend for the AFC championship game! Go Ravens!!
Listening... Lady Antebellum. Kinda, sorta, well, not really. But I'm thinking about them a lot because their tickets went on pre-sale this week and I wanna go see them! The song I currently get super happy about when I hear it on the radio: "Just a Kiss."
Reading... sigh, still not reading any books but I started reading this week's Entertainment Weekly just because Revenge was on the cover. I actually almost never read the magazine, even though I receive it, well, weekly. :)

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Check in Thursdays: Week 2

Mira:
Watching... Chuck. We have been quite a few weeks behind on the show but we're catching up (only 2 left!) as the final season winds down.
Listening... well, need to listen to the Foster the People's Torches.  Have had it for a bit and am going to the concert in June, so really ought to listen to it sometime soon! :)
Reading... sigh, not much. When I'm not knitting while watching TV these days, I'm on the Internet looking obsessively at Pinterest... Haha. Does that count as reading? 5 word blurbs?? :) Traveling this weekend so maybe I will have some books to report back with next week. Well, we'll see if they're books worth reporting back with. ;-)

Jennifer:
Watching... Downton Abbey, season 2, obvs. Still very much a Mary/Matthew shipper, although that Lavinia girl does seems nice. When did they decide to make Moseley a jerk though? And I cannot get behind Lady Cora because she still seems to think that O'Brien is "sweet."
Listening... The Shins - Simple Song. First new album in years!
Reading... Great House by Nicole Krauss. Shamefully this is like my third attempt to finish this book. It's not that I dislike it, it's just kind of slow going and I keep having to return it to the library. Definitely not as engaging as her last book (The History of Love) but it's still great writing.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Check in Thursdays: Week 1

This year, we're going to use our weekly joint blog posts to keep track of what we're watching/listening/reading.  Figured this was an easy way to keep our weekly posts going and also a great way to track our year!

Mira:
Watching... ABC Family. Returning: Switched at Birth, Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game. New: Jane by Design.
Listening... Adele's "Fire to the Rain." Hear it every now and then on the radio and really like it, along with all of her other singles. Maybe I should just get the entire season one of these days.
Read... Just finished over the holidays: Book 2 in Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus Series, Son of Neptune. As always, a fun read!

Jennifer:
Watching... Game of Thrones, season 1. The series is very faithful to the book and the casting was really spot-on, especially Daenerys, Tyrion, and Arya. I do wonder how different my experience would be not having read the book though...I'm generally a huge proponent of reading the source material before any TV/film adaptations but when you think about it, it's kind of just another form of spoilers?
Listening... Craig Finn - Rented Room
Reading... A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin..despite my musings about reading the book basically being spoilers for the TV series. 


Sunday, January 01, 2012

2012 Resolutions

M: Can't start a new year without resolutions!

Mira: I'm going to try to quantify my goals this year...
1. Netflix: We currently have 120 items on our Watch Instantly queue. Decrease the queue by 20%. (Translation: Watch at least 24 things off of it in completion myself.)
2. Fiction books on bookshelf: Since I failed so miserably at achieving this achievement, I will make an effort in a way that may be achievable.  For every new book purchased, make sure an old unread book is read. (Translation: do not increase the number of unread fiction books on shelf.)
3. Watch and review at least ONE newer release movie each month. (Possible movies: Sherlock Holmes/We Bought a Zoo (Jan); Mirror, Mirror/Hunger Games (Mar/Apr); The Five-Year Engagement (Apr/May); Snow White and the Huntsman (Jun); The Amazing Spider-Man (Jul); Step Up 4 (Jul/Aug); Les Miserables/The Hobbit (Dec)...)

Jennifer:
1. Read Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, and Atlas Shrugged. I've been meaning to read these for years now. I read 38 books last year, so surely I can finish these three! I got the first two for free on Kindle and I own the last already anyway.
2. Repeated from last year - catch up on Breaking Bad. I did watch the pilot last week!
3. Finish watching Angel. I own all 5 seasons on DVD, I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan, but for some reason I have never actually watched every episode. Ridiculous!

M: 2011 in review

Resolutions:
1. Watch more movies: An improvement over 2010, I think!
2. Read un-read fiction books on my bookshelf: Utter failure; don't think I read a single one of the books on my bookshelf. Oops.
3. Blog more about non-TV things: Definitely an improvement. Our Thursday Top Threes probably were a bit of a cheat and we made a concerted effort not to be too TV-centric with those posts; but I did try to blog more about movies! :)

Favorite "we like tv"-related things from 2011 (not in any particular order):
  • Hulu Plus (and the Playstation 3 integration of Hulu Plus and Netflix)
  • Revenge
  • Crazy, Stupid, Love
  • Michael Fassbender (Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class)
  • Friday Night Lights
  • Mumford & Sons
  • Greek 
  • "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga

Jenn -- We need to figure out what we're doing on Thursdays in 2012!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!