Welcoming December

This time last year we were debating whether or not to go after a possible move to California. That seemed to work out.

The past few months I've started each month with a post about the upcoming stuff, or how I held back a few posts a bit so they'll make the new month even more exciting.

I've finally smoothed out my post about teams' names, context, dinosaurs of Long Beach, the American West, and go-go music and Slim Charles.

I wrote a few days ago about Thor, and using that as inspiration we tried Green Lantern.

Um...okay. Green Lantern, as a character--the Hal Jordan iteration--is one of fans favorites, but always with a caveat. Green Lantern is one of the silliest-yet-coolest DC characters, and fans know it. No character is as comic-book-y as Jordan's Lantern. His power ring manifests will power, which is very cool, but it does so as a green lit energy, and is powerless against yellow.

Superman (a flying super-strong alien), Batman (billionaire martial arts master), Spiderman (bit by a radioactive spider), the Hulk (radioactivity makes him turn into a brute)...Green Lantern (ring that needs recharging manifests will-power). Do you see it?

Manifesting will power is cool...using an item than can run out of power and needs recharging? Maybe that's closer to real life and the need for food or emotional sustenance.

A Green Lantern movie always makes fans first ecstatic, due to the love of the story, then second nervous, due to how easy it is to screw it up. If the movie would be any fun, even if corny, most would be forgiven.

Plot holes would be overlooked. Wooden acting could be forgiven. Scenery chewing would be lauded.

It's just too bad this movie wasn't any fun. Maybe I'm being too hard. It just looked like everyone was fighting their days being on set, and that lack of enthusiasm permeates the data captured by those fancy HD cameras.

Another quick Redbox note: we checked out Source Code. That one's fun. A sci-fi treatment of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the frenetic pace and chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan is amusing as he works through the eight minutes of quanta repeatedly. It's serviceable as science fiction, and having seen some of the recent "Fabric of the Cosmos" episodes of Nova, the outcome isn't so fantastical.

Directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, Source Code makes me want to see his directorial debut, starring Sam Rockwell, Moon.

Pleasant movie surprises please me.