Movie Mondays: Ocean's Eleven

After blogging about Mean Girls last week, I felt the need for something equally comedic but with a bit more of a plot to it. I ended up with this:

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I mean, how can you go wrong with a movie that stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt AND Matt Damon? (Let's just not talk about Ocean's Twelve, okay??) It's slick, it's witty, and I love it forever.

Reasons why Ocean's Eleven is awesome:
1. The casting is completely flawless.
2. Rusty (Brad Pitt) reminds me of Dean Winchester. He's always eating, he has an old car that he refuses to replace, he's constantly pretending to be someone he's not, and he's kind of hilarious. Okay, so it only works if you ignore that whole demon hunting thing, but apart from that it totally works! Also, Brad Pitt is BRILLIANT in this.

Okay, Dean would never wear this outfit. But you can see it, right? Also, source.

3. The music. It's reminiscent of the Rat Pack era without sounding dated.
4. Rusty teaching celebrities to play poker. Hilarious.
5. Celebrities playing dumb caricatures of themselves.

Here, have some gratuitous Joshua Jackson playing poker. Also, source.

6. The scene where they're all silhouetted against the Bellagio Fountain at the end.
7. Don Cheadle as Basher.
8. Because I love a good heist movie.
9. Matt Damon as Linus.

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10. Because sometimes you need to see the Vegas Strip without dead bodies and Who Are You playing over the top of it.
11. That the full genius of the heist and how it comes together is hidden from the audience until almost the very end.
12. George Clooney in a tuxedo.

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13. The thug guy hurling himself around the room pretending to bash Danny (George Clooney).
14. Basher covering his groin before setting off the pinch.
15. Casey Affleck and Scott Caan as the Malloy brothers.

16. The truck vs remote controlled car race, as above.
17. Danny's conversation with his parole officer.
18. Elliot Gould as Reuben. He's perfect as the disgruntled former casino owner/bankroller.

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19. Stephen Soderbergh as director. He's done some awesome stuff.
20. Shaobo Qin as The Amazing Yen. He'd never acted before, and I think he's amazing in this!

Plus, the following quotes:
- "I hope you were the groom."
- "Shane, you've got three pairs. You can't have six cards! You can't have six cards in a five card draw."
- "Now, they tell me I paid my debt to society." "Funny, I never got a cheque."
- "Tess is with Benedict now? She's too tall for him!"
- "Did someone call for a doctor?"
- "You're a thief and a liar." "I only lied about being a thief."
- "We need to get Rusty a girl!" "There's a women's prison just down the road?"
- "Ten oughta do it, don't you think?... You think we need one more?...You think we need one more... All right, we'll get one more."
- "Thirteen million and you drive this piece of shit cross country to pick me up?" "Blew it all on the suit."
- "Why do they always paint hallways that colour?" "They say taupe is very soothing."
- "I always confuse Monet and Manet. Now, which one married his mistress?" "Monet." "Right, and then Manet has syphilis." "They also painted occasionally."
- "It'll be nice, working with proper villains again."
- "Unless we intend to do this job in Reno, we're in Barney. [gets confused looks in response] Barney Rubble? [Danny shrugs] TROUBLE!!"
- "Why do this?" "Why not do it? [Rusty shakes his head] Cause yesterday I walked out of the joint after losing four years of my life and you're cold-decking Teen Beat cover boys. Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet, and you bet big, and then you take the house..." "Been practising this speech, haven't you?" "Little bit. Did I rush it? Felt like I rushed it." "No, it was good, I liked it. The Teen Beat thing was harsh."
- "Smash and grab job, huh?" "Slightly more complicated than that." "Well, yeah."
- "Apparently he's got a record longer than my.........well, it's long."
- "You're Bobby Caldwell's kid. From Chicago. It's nice there, do you like it?" "Yeah." "That's wonderful, get in the goddamn house."
- "What happened, Benedict? You get robbed or something?"

And my all time favourite line,
- "Ted Nugent called, he wants his shirt back."

Anyone else love a good banter-filled heist movie?
K xx

Meme time!

I've seen this one around the bloggy traps for a while now, but given that it's a tagging people thing, I haven't gotten to participate until now. And it's all thanks to Amy over at Life's Journey with a Smile for tagging EVERYONE when she did it the other day. Thanks Amy!

So, here's the deal - answer the questions, and post a photo of your handwritten answers so that everyone can see what your handwriting looks like! Kind of random, but fun all the same. Here are the questions:

Questions:
1. What's your name/blogger name?
2. What's your blog's URL?
3. Write "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
4. Favorite quote?
5. Favorite song?
6. Favorite band/singers?
7. Anything else...?
8. Tag 3-5 other peeps (and no, I did not write the 'peeps' part. The original said that!)

And here's my answers:

 
I actually wrote this on Wednesday, and meant to post it then, but I started watching Fringe and got distracted by Joshua Jackson the plot. So the story at number 7 is a couple of days out of date, but it's still nasty...
 
So there you have it - my first meme, and a sneak peek at my handwriting :) Feel free to play along even if you haven't been tagged!
 
K xx

PS. I just read in a trashy magazines that my future husband, Jake Gyllenhaal, is dating Jennifer Aniston AGAIN. Oh, Jake. When WILL you learn? (Also, get your arse to Canberra already...) ;)

Annoying bogans and weird phobias

It's that time of year again in Canberra - when the bogans and their hotted up cars come out to play. Yes, I'm talking about the nightmare that is Summernats. Honestly, I think I said pretty much all I have to say on that topic this time last year. Although THIS year, I have the added benefit of not living two blocks from Exhibition Park, where it's held. Hopefully that means that I won't get woken up at 6am on Saturday by idiots drag racing around the streets...

Anyway, I'm planning on leaving the house as little as possible during the dreaded Summernats. Instead, just for a change, I'll be watching TV. I’ve been watching a lot of Fringe recently. A friend described it to me as “The X-Files, only good”. And he has a point. It’s a lot less ridiculous than The X-Files (although give it ten years, and I’m sure it’ll probably look just as bad!), and the acting is better. Not that it’s really hard to beat David Duchovny’s wooden monotone... Plus, it stars Joshua Jackson, which takes me back to my teenage ‘OMG, Pacey’s SOOOOOOOO hot!” days...

Bahahahahahahahaha!!! I SO don't remember him looking like a five year old... (Source)

The Fringe version is MUCH better... (Source)

Ahem. So I’ve made it through about ten or twelve episodes so far. And I’m definitely enjoying it. But there’ve been two episodes to date that have nearly had be write it off altogether, and both times it’s been because of my weird-arse phobias. The first point was where I stopped watching Fringe when it first aired on TV. And that was where they removed a dead girl’s eyeball so they could access her optic nerve and recover the last images she saw before she died.

I *HATE* eyeballs. I can’t watch people doing anything involving contact lenses without feeling nauseated, I hate it when I get something in my eye, because that means I need to touch my own eyeball, and I’m still relieved that I missed the day in year 10 Science that involved eyeball dissection. My younger brother used to take great delight back in our CSI watching days in telling me that the vile eyeball bits were over when they actually weren’t, leading to me witnessing all manner of icky grossness *shudders* But at least with the eyeball stuff, even in real life, I can cover my eyes like a four year old until it’s gone.

But the episode I watched last night? That related to one of my weirder phobias. (My weirdest phobia, incidentally, is of people dressed up as cartoon characters of the Mickey and Minnie variety. I blame a trip to Disneyland when I was seven, and juuuuuuuuuust old enough to work out that there were people in the suits. They had cartoon bodies and human legs (albeit in white tights!). And that’s pretty damned creepy at the age of seven).

Right. Where was I? Oh, right. The episode I watched last night. Well, that one started out with a guy getting killed by butterflies. I know, right? He was in a room, and a butterfly appeared. And the butterfly kept flying past him, and wherever it touched him, it would cut his skin to the bone. And then a second butterfly appeared. And then there were hundreds of butterflies. And finally, he jumped out of a gazillionth storey window to get away from them. He went splat. Obviously...

See? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t5RLpowQQU&feature=related (all the clips on Youtube had embedding disabled, so you’ll actually have to click through. I know, I know. SUCH hard work!) See what happens when you admire the pretty little butterfly? It turns out to have RAZORBLADES FOR WINGS, brings its friends, and KILLS YOU...

Anyway, it turned out that there *were* no butterflies – it was a consequence of someone poisoning the guy with some weird-arse hallucinogenic toad venom, and he imagined that there were killer butterflies, and his body replicated what his brain believed. Whatever, that’s not the point here.

The point is that I’ve always known that butterflies are evil little fuckers that are out to get me. Now I have proof. I’m never leaving the house again....................... (Okay, fine. What I have is a TV show about paranormal stuff featuring hallucinogenic toad venom. Shut up.)

K xx