Monday...'Nuff said :-)

So, the title seemed fitting since Mondays can often be the most dreaded day of the week. If I ruled the world there would be a mandatory three day weekend (no over time allowed!). 

I want to start today by announcing that my good friend Angie (aka to some: adktd2bks) is running a super cool contest to celebrate the completion of round 1,237 on her revisions (I'm exaggerating of course haha, but I'm sure those of you who've been through the revision process, know that it can feel like that sometimes). Anyway, check it out. She is giving away a choice of one of several books and a 50 page lbl critique (which in my opinion is worth more than all the books combined in her contest's book depository). I have been incredibly fortunate to experience this first hand and let me tell you, the girl knows her shinizit. So get your butt over there and join her contest. Or at the very least, become a follower if you haven't already because her blog totally rocks and she has a LOT of good info to offer writers of ALL levels. 

And now for today's post. I have decided that I want to use Monday's to talk about movies (and sometimes music and music videos). My husband and I are movie addicts. It is very rare that a weekend will come and go where we haven't seen at least one movie, (sometimes we'll see two or even 3). 

One of the best gifts we ever got was from my father last Xmas when he purchased us a membership to Netflix and got us a Roku box (a small box connected to our tv that has a wireless signal to our Linksys, but I've heard that you can now use your Wii game console as well). This boxis so amazing. I sit there with my laptop, go on the Netflix website and download the movies I want to see and it shows up on my television screen. For the newer movies, all I have to do is add it to my cue and they mail it to me. When we finish watching it we mail it in the envelope it comes in (postage paid by them) and four days later, we have the next movie on our cue, in our mailbox. We get an email confirming they received it and then another email says that we will receive such and such movie on such and such day and the movie is ALWAYS in our mailbox on the day they said it would be. It was even there on the day we had a HUGE snowstorm!! It's great and since having the Roku box, I have cancelled all of our movie channels from our cable company (although we did order HBO recently so we can watch True Blood, but we will cancel it again as soon as the season is over :-) ).

Anyway, the movie we saw this weekend was The Fourth Kind. I absolutely love Milla Jojovich. Her movies have never let me down and this one was no different. If you've never heard of it, or don't remember what it is, here is the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVRHOhLP-aA

The way they filmed this movie was really cool. "Supposedly" this movie is based on real events/facts/video footage. In the beginning of the film (and you see a little bit of it in the trailer), Milla Jojovich introduces herself as herself, an actress playing the part of the actual Dr. Abbey Tyler who the  movie is based on. They cleverly incorporate bits and pieces of real footage so you know and see how authentic it is.

After the movie I had to find out what the deal was with this movie. Here is what I discovered.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I now know that this movie is not real because of two things: 1. This article I read from CNN  http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/06/fourth.kind.real/index.html and 2. I googled The Fourth Kind, went to IMBd and discovered that "the real Dr. Abbey Tyler" is an actress named Charlotte Milchard.The whole thing kind of reminds me of the time when The Blair Witch first came out and they were trying to make everyone think that the movie was based on some actual recordings that were "recovered."

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to find out she was an actor and that the video footage was not real because that would have made things a whole lot more interesting. I was certainly fooled with the set up of this movie. Of course there were some things that made me say, "yeah right" during the film. Like the fact that whenever the supposed aliens appeared, the cameras always went crazy and you couldn't really see much of anything. How convenient, right?  

All in all, I really liked this movie. I loved the way they filmed it using the "real footage" mixed in (and sometimes overlapping) with the film.

My rating system:

1=hated it, just wasted an hour and half of my life and I want it back damn it!

2=meh, not the worst I've ever seen, but I don't ever need to see it again 

3=entertaining, maybe I'll watch it again when it comes to Netflix

4=pretty awesome, I'll probably buy the DVD when it goes on sale

5=OMG, this film was kick ass awesome, it is pre-order from Amazon worthy, add to my list of favorites

The Fourth Kind- 3