This week we watched the new film “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” starring Elle Fanning (“We Bought a Zoo”), Nicole Kidman (“Big Little Lies”) and Alex Sharp (“To the Bone”) and directed by John Cameron Mitchell (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”).
Brent’s review – “So this was quite the movie. The plot is during the 1970’s, a teenage punk music fan stumbles on what appears to be a cult and walks away with a girl intent on exploring Britain with him for the next 48 hours. Is she really from a cult, or is she from another planet? And what does the title of the movie have to do anything? Unfortunately, the entire film felt fairly amateurish, from the acting, to the directing to the special effects. Although I chuckled a few times, overall it wasn’t a movie I’d recommend. 4 out of 10.”
Beth’s review – “If you are watching this movie based solely on what you think it will be like based on the title it will really throw you off. I thought the plot was interesting but the main actor was really bad to me. I also thought Nicole Kidman’s character looked like she was trying to be David Bowie from “Labyrinth” in a distracting way. The most lasting impression this movie had on me was how bad the hair and makeup in the last scene was to age a character. 3 out of 10.”
Cliff finished his first year of Pre-School this week! To celebrate, his class had a “Very Hungry Catepillar” party where the whole class ate the same foods from the book and played with all sorts of related toys and props. Cliff’s mom and Grandparents Tom and Sue also made it to the class for the party. Cliff will certainly miss his teachers Ms. Parker and Ms. Sebastian, however we’re sure he will keep in touch with his best friend Hudson who he has looked forward to seeing in class all year.
This weekend, we lived it up like we did before we had kids and went to a concert down in Noblesville featuring three bands. The first two bands were opening act Sir Sly followed by Foster the People. Sir Sly was a fairly electronic alternative three piece group that made the unique choice to play their entire set with the anime film “Akira” playing in the background. They were also surprisingly the loudest of the three bands we saw. Foster the People was definitely a support band for lead singer Mark Foster, who played all their hits (and a fun cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop” by the Ramones) while doing his best George Michael impression. Although the band sounded great, it’s definitely not an act that you can make out the vocals particularly well in person.
The main reason for our excitement (and willingness to spend a night away from our babies) was that The Killers were in our state for the first time in nine years. They are one of our favorite bands, and one of the last bands we love that we haven’t seen in concert before. They opened the show with “Mr. Brightside,” and closed with “When You Were Young” and played a ton of their best songs in between. They have so many songs we love that there was no way they could have played all of them but they gave us our moneys worth, even stopping the show for a 45 minute rain delay and coming back and playing until midnight. We loved hearing so many songs off of Hot Fuss, they had fun effects behind them for “The Man” and outfits for the encore, and even covered a few songs, “American Girl” by Tom Petty and a few bars from “Pink Houses” by John Mellencamp. To top off the night, we ran into one of our good friends from Law School who happened to be the show as well.
We celebrated a few birthdays this week, up first was Uncle Aaron’s and Aunt Shannon’s. The boys had a great time with their family first showing off their playground over at our house and then wrapping up at everybody’s favorite wings restaurant Buffalo Wings ‘n Ribs.
Up next was Fiona’s fourth birthday, where Cliff and Dean joined several other kids for a few hours of fun at “More Than Gymnastics.” Our boys both had lots of fun, with Cliff enjoying the obstacle course and instruction, and Dean wandered around either trying to do what the big kids were doing or just exploring the soft and cushy landscape.
We’ve also continued to work on some fun projects around the house. We made this “Camp Crystal Lake” sign and life preserver based on the famous killing grounds for Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame. (Wait until we tell our boys what happens to teenagers who drink, do drugs, or have unprotected sex when Jason’s around!) We’re also making a picture wall in our house featuring the houses we’ve lived in since we met each other. The top two pictures are our parents houses when we met, and the bottom right is our last house. Brent’s aunt Amy is finishing up our house from Valparaiso to finish off all of our old houses.
Rock N Jazz 