Froth and frills. You know...nothing that matters :)

2 weekends ago, my bff and I headed out to see a movie. It's a bit of a slow time for movies, so we settled on Jack the Giant Slayer (which turned out to be in 3D!). Visually, it was amazing. Content wise....meh. It was a movie. Not great, not terrible.  The plot was a little thin, the characters fairly undeveloped.  We sat there as the credits rolled, and pondered what the cost of making this kind of movie must have been.  So we looked it up on Wikipedia.  The budget for Jack the Giant Slayer was $195 million.  3 weeks in, it's only made $92 million worldwide (I'm not saying $92 million isn't a lot of money, I'm saying it still represents a $103 million dollar loss).  We couldn't help but speculate, having seen the movie, who the target audience was supposed to be....It was far too scary to take small children to, and while I could be way off base on this, I don't think adults have been clamouring for a big screen interpretation of Jack & the Beanstalk.  It doesn't have the cult-type following of say, Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz (which, with a budget of $215 million, in 2 weeks has already made $292 million), where lots of adults would see it regardless.  It was just a little perplexing, I guess....

I don't know why more people haven't been talking about it/watching it, but Fox (of all things) has turned out one of the most amazing shows on network television in...a long, long time.  The Following comes on on Monday nights, stars Kevin Bacon (a man weasel-like in appearance, but with the most striking eyes ever), and is IN-CREDIBLE.  It's a serial, so you do need to watch from the beginning, but it's definitely worth getting into.  The characters are amazingly complex, and you're nearly always left not knowing how to feel.  There are periods of the show where EVERY episode has the tension and excitement of a season finale. I don't know how long a show like it can be sustained, but probably at least 2-3 seasons. I definitely recommend it.

I was re-watching Django Unchained the other day, and considering Christoph Waltz's Oscar win for same.  While his performance really is fantastic, it strikes me that his character is pretty much the same keel the whole way through the movie.  And in lots of ways, bears striking resemblance to his other Oscar winning role in Inglorious Basterds.  Amusing, composed, devious, tongue-in-cheek guy.  Leonardo diCaprio, on the other hand, gave what I thought was an incredibly moving, exciting and unpredictable performance, and wasn't even nominated.  I mean, you'll never see him in a movie and think his acting was weak.  But I thought this was one of the better performances I've ever seen him give....(just to mention, this clip has some language in it...depending on your definition of "language")

Several years ago, Scruples stopped making the spray I used to straighten my hair.  This was a bummer because I have preternaturally thick AND oily hair, so it takes me a solid hour to straighten it out, and it tends to get insufferably oily by the next day.  The Scruples was the only product I'd tried that didn't make the problem worse.  So I began a long and arduous search for a new product, and after frustrating the gals at Chatters to no end and making several returns, I settled on KMS Flatout Hot Pressed Spray.  And I've been using it ever since.  But at $17 for 7 oz, it's slightly pricey.  On a whim a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Tresemme Keratin Smooth Heat Protection Shine Spray at Walmart for like...$4-5 for 8 oz.  And honestly, it's amazing.  Like better than the KMS.  It leaves your hair crazy soft and shiny without making it greasy.  I rarely find recommendations for drugstore brands to "replace" salon or name brands to be very credible, but I completely stand behind this one (however, NEVER bother with Tresemme's dry shampoo. It's awful. Suave makes a superior one.)

By the by, I think Kate Middleton is having a boy.

My most recent obsession has become the British annual TV event Big Fat Quiz of the Year.  It's hosted by Jimmy Carr, and is basically a panel quiz show about the year's events.  As I have been laid up recently, I've had all kinds of time to just catch up on stuff I didn't know I was behind on!  Last year's was hilarious (Jack Whitehall and James Corden = fantastic), but any year that has Russell Brand and Noel Fielding is classic.  Jonathan Ross is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is.

To finish out a very shallow posting, I will leave you with the new Fall Out Boy single, which is already a frontrunner for my favorite song of 2013.  I don't know where they've been but I'm glad they're back :)  The video's not great, the song is gold.

"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities.  Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed." - Lily Tomlin