Movies and Fish

Apparently I am a bad keeper-of-the-fish (i.e., fish tank owner) because I just noticed I'm missing a fish...I'm down to 3 neon tetras (red and blue) and only 2 glowlight tetras (orange). It's my big, fat glowlight tetra that is missing (I assume the oldest since it was always the biggest of them all and the glowlights were the first ones I bought). I'm kind of appalled that I never noticed it died because it would take the snails and shrimp a few days to eat it... : I'm sorry little fishy that I did not save you from being consumed; however, as I have been told by Chris, "It's what happens in the wild." I just hope I don't find some errant body part when I'm cleaning. Ick. I doubt I will since my shrimp are quite the carnivores and they burrow into my gravel. At any rate, I am keeping a close eye on my last shrimp since she's the last one. She has molted twice since the male (and last shrimp) died so that's a good sign, but it seems like the last two kind of died randomly. So...who knows.

On to movies!

Gnomeo and Juliet - I rather enjoyed this. It's a "random" animation company and not one of the major ones, but it was rather cute. They liked to throw in random Shakespeare lines in, but the movie was good. The voice caste is amazing too: Emily Blunt, James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Jason Statham, Julie Walters, Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne (I know...), etc. It was fun picking out everyone's voice. You know the general premise based on the title, but how they did it and the funny moments were cute. The end, of course, is different than the actual play given it's a family movie. :P The animation was also well done and you never lost sight of the fact that these are ceramic gnomes and not, well, people. I would recommend people to watch it. Families with young kids (around the 6-8 range) would probably enjoy this the most. Grade: A-

I Am Number Four - Definitely has a 2nd movie lined-up, but I don't think it did well in theaters so I don't know if they'll try for a 2nd one; however, it was okay. It wasn't a great sci-fi, action film, but it wasn't a total dud either. Chris and I were trying to guess the entire way what would happen and who this beagle was that showed up (we thought it was a bad guy, then that it was one of the 2 chicks on the cover, and then decided we had no clue till the end of the movie). It was your pretty typical Hero's Journey (mentor and hero, mentor is killed, hero goes on alone, etc) so we knew the mentor (or guardian, in this case) was doomed from the get go, but it was interesting. I don't think I'd readily recommend this for anyone. It's pretty average... Grade: C

We might go see Fast Five later in theaters, but we'll see. Not sure if we'll see X-Men: First Class in theaters (comes out June 3rd). It's an iffy one. Won't see Hangover 2 or Kung Fu Panda 2 in theaters either (will watch it on DVD). After that, it's Super 8, Green Lantern, possibly Cars 2, Transformers, Horrible Bosses (we liked the trailer for it), Harry Potter, Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens, The Change-up (also liked the trailer), and Conan (for Chris).

I think that's all the summer movies. Friends with Benefits and Bad Teacher will probably be movie rentals. I still joke that we saw the entire movie for Conan when we saw the trailer (we've seen it twice in theaters). There's this particularly long one with lots of snapshots of everything and it really felt like you watched the whole movie in 2 minutes! Oh well. Chris has read most of the books in the series and also plays the MMO so we'll go see it (we're struggling through the Schwarzenegger version on Netflix right now, or I'm struggling through it at least).

With that...One week left of classes! I have to edit a paper and write a paper by next Saturday and I'm finished! :) That is both a terrifying and exciting thing...