What's Playing at My House

War of the Worlds

I can sum up my thoughts on Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds in just a few sentences.

• Can we all agree that Dakota Fanning, while clearly talented, is the creepiest child actress ever?

• Here's a movie formula for you: Nonstop action + little plot + too much dark lighting = One annoying movie.

• Seriously, the problem here is, it's all shoot 'em up, and you get little to no reason to care about anyone who dies. And only slightly more reason to care about those who live. You will run out of adrenaline before the movie is half done.

• It is now hard for me to watch Tom Cruise without thinking of the media firestorm over his religion. Do we really all care that much? Do we all realize how few Scientologists there are in this world? Do you really think he's more of a threat to your daily life than say, poisonous spiders? I didn't think so.

• To sum up: I've seen better out of much lesser directors than Spielberg. I'm hoping for more the next time out.

Random notes

This is mostly about TV, but it still feels more appropriate here than at Fixin' Supper.

* Y'all, John Oliver on the Daily Show is about the funniest person ever.

* Close second: Assif Mandvi.

* I've been trying to get into Burn Notice, the new USA summer series. I'm not having a lot of luck....it's not as X-Files as I want it to be....but I haven't been able to summon the effort to remove it from my Tivo, either.

* I can confess to still being addicted to Dead Zone and Psych, however, despite the fact that neither is ever going to win an award of any kind. You know, I think my problem with Burn Notice is the same as what I like in these: It's too obviously ironic. Enough already.

* I haven't watched a lot of movies lately, which is fairly unusual for me.

* However, I can unrecommend The Longest Yard. I tried, but I couldn't get into the whole gratuitosity [made-up word I think, maybe it's the next ginormous] of it.

* Who puts movies like that on my Netflix, anyway?

* I also have War of the Worlds sitting on top of my TV. This, too, may have been an ill-considered decision.

* On the other hand, if you go to Target right now, you,too, can get Steel Magnolias for $5.50 plus 9.25% sales tax in Davidson County. [Put me on record as hating the sales tax.]