Movie Night

Friday night, Mel and I went to a movie in a theater for the first time in over a year. The last movie we saw in the theater being Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe. My sister came over to babysit her niece and nephew, so Mel and I started our evening by having dinner at Olive Garden. I had a new dish from their Four Cheese Pastachetti with Grilled Chicken. Lately when I have tried different dishes from my typical choices at restaurants, I have been a little disappointed. This dish however, did not disappoint. I enjoyed it.

After dinner we went to the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I enjoyed the movie. It was not as good as the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but it was still good. And while it is difficult for us to get out to movies as much as we would like, I hope Mel and I can make it to another movie or two this summer.

Buying Tangled

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Tangled at our local Target store. It is going to be a present for Emma for Easter. There were several options available to choose from. There was the DVD-only, the two-disc combo pack with the Blu-ray and the DVD, and finally there was the four-disc combo pack which included the Blu-ray 3D and the digital copy as well as the 2D Blu-ray and the DVD. While we do not have a Blu-ray player, I decided to go with the four-disc combo. We did buy an HDTV earlier this year, so it's probably just a matter of time before we get a Blu-ray player. We will not be buying a 3D TV in the foreseeable future, but the digital copy will be nice. It would be nice if Disney sold a combo pack that had all three formats of the movie with the exception of the 3D disc, but I guess that would just complicate things. Besides, with the five-dollar coupon I got online, the four-disc combo pack cost the same as the two-disc pack.

Robin Hood

Since my mom was in town to visit us and to attend my sister's orchestra concert this weekend, Mel and I decided to take advantage of her as a baby sitter so the two of us could go to dinner and a movie by ourselves. We had a nice dinner at Don Pablo's followed by viewing Robin Hood. We both enjoyed the movie. I do not know how this story compares to what has been written in the past about Robin Hood, but I enjoyed learning of his origin, at least as far as this film was concerned. I suppose I could do a little research, but I am now wondering if Ridley Scott is planning on following this movie with another featuring Russell Crowe as Robin Hood.

The Hangover, The Movie

Yesterday I rented the movie The Hangover from Redbox. I had reserved it on their website, but there was an error when I submitted my credit card information, so I had to resubmit the information to complete my reservation, or so I thought. When I swiped my credit card in the Redbox machine at my local Cub Foods, the machine dispensed two copies of the movie. Not needing to watch the movie twice, and definitely not needing top copies of the DVD even if I did want to watch it twice, I returned the second copy immediately. When I got home, I emailed Redbox to make sure that I wouldn't be charged twice for the movie. The rental is only one dollar, so if I do get charged twice, it's not that big of a deal, but I don't feel that I should have to pay twice as much just because their website hiccuped when I used it.

Anyway, Mel and I put Emma to bed about half an hour early last night. She hadn't napped much the past couple of days, and we couldn't really start the movie until she was in bed. I enjoyed the movie. It had that certain offbeat humor in it that I like. Mel appeared to enjoy the movie as well. I thought the idea of having the characters of the movie retrace their steps from the night before to reconstruct their memories of what had happened during their drunken night was clever. And while a lot of the things that the discovered shortly after waking the next morning in their suite didn't make sense initially, everything came together through their day of fact finding. While Mike Tyson is not one of my favorite celebrities, I thought his part in the movie was really good. He was actually pretty funny! The major problem I had with The Hangover is the same as a problem I have with every movie that takes place in Las Vegas. After seeing this film, I really want to take a vacation there. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be in the cards at the moment.