Kellyvent Magazine

Review: (500) Days of Summer

Rating: A-

Synopsis: Tom Hansen, the boy, believes in true love. Summer Finn, the girl, does not. Boy thinks girl is Miss Right. Girl thinks boy is Mr. Right Now. The two meet at the office — a greeting card at which Hansen, who was once an aspiring architect, is responsible for writing clever sayings about love and Summer works as a receptionist. An office romance quickly buds between the two, but deteriorates over 500 days. An interesting twist is that the audience sees the different stages of their relationship out of sequence, each introduced by the number of day out of a total of 500.

Review: It’s a simple story, but the combination of a fragmented story line, offbeat digressions, atypical gender roles and lovable actors make this a unique and heartwarming film about love and heartbreak. Both Joseph Gorden-Levitt (10 Things I Hate About You, 3rd Rock from the Sun) and Zooey Deschanel (Elf, Winter Passing) are perfect for their characters. Gorden-Levitt is brilliant as he dances down the sidewalk with neighborhood strangers and encounters cartoon birds (much like a scene in the Disney Movie Enchanted). The viewer roots for Tom, and wants to love Summer, even though she make it difficult to do so.

Recipe: Caprese Salad

Simple, simple, simple. Just six ingredients. I’ve used either slices of tomatoes, or whole cherry or grape tomatoes. I’ve also made a more salad-like version using lots of fresh spinach leaves as the “lettuce.” I’ve also added some balsamic vinegar to add a bit of a kick.

Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Fresh Mozzarella
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Movie Review: “17 Again”

Rating: C

Synopsis: Mike O’Donnell (Matthew Perry) never had his chance to shine. At 17, the high school basketball star’s girlfriend, Scarlett, tells him she’s pregnant right before the clock runs out during an important game. Choosing her over his dreams of playing basketball, Mike and Scarlette wed and have a family together. But they don’t live happily ever after. After 16 years of working in sales, a 2-month long employee earns a promotion over him. It’s the last start for O’Donell, who storms out of the office and into his former high school, where he encounters a mysterious janitor while he’s looking at his 1989 team photo in the school’s trophy case. The encounter would change O’Donell’s life forever.

O’Donnell is transformed to his 17-year-old self (Zac Efron) and must find a way to win back Scarlett (Leslie Mann) and become the man he wants to be, while having some funny and some heartwarming encounters wit his two children, Alex (Sterling Knight) and Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg), along the way.

Review: It’s been done before with “Big,” “13 Going on 30,” and others. The film doesn’t come close to “Big,” but will undoubtedly win the hearts of millions of teenybopper Zac Efron fans. The film does have some funny moments between young O’Donnell and his two children, and O’Donnell’s Sci-fi-fanatic uncle, Ned (Thomas Lennon) is good for several laughs. If you’re looking for originality, look somewhere else. But “17 Again” does serve as some mildly funny and mindless entertainment.

Update

I’m back to blogging. What you’ll see here from this point on are movie reviews, recipes, thoughts on news and newspapers, and perhaps some other things.

We’ll see if I can actually keep this updated. Probably not.

Orangina

I bought some Orangina at Trader Joe’s in Indianapolis yesterday. It is a European drink and the first time I had it was when I went to Paris. I want to go back.