Summer Binge Watching

Also known as HOW I SPEND MY SUMMER VACATION

If you know me, you know I don’t get out much during the school year. 60-hour work weeks and a house full of kids and pets keeps me from indulging in extracurricular activities, including watching all the TV shows that everyone talks about.

So during the summer when I’m not chauffeuring the kids to camp, or cranking out my next novel, I binge watch. Come to find out, I actually prefer binging to the weekly sample size. Enjoying a season or two, or five, within a week is . . . fun! And since none of it moves into long-term memory, I can binge some of my favorite series more than once!

My Top Ten TV Series for Binge Watching

Firefly__Best_TV_Series_Ever

  1. Firefly, followed by the movie Serenity
  2. Game of Thrones
  3. The Walking Dead
  4. The West Wing
  5. Outlander
  6. The Good Wife
  7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  8. House of Cards
  9. Lost
  10. True Blood

 

 

For extra credit I like to binge watch Movie Series. Some of my favorites include:

IndianaJones_Best_Movie_Series_Ever

  • 4 Indiana Jones movies
  • 3 Lord of the Rings movies
  • 7 Harry Potter movies
  • 2 Kill Bill movies
  • 3 Dark Night movies
  • 3 Star Wars IV-VI movies
  • 8 Police Academy movies (don’t judge)
  • 4 Jurassic Park movies
  • 2 Bridget Jones’s Diary movies (with a 3rd on the way)
  • 3 Iron Man/ 2 Avenger movies
  • 4 Sharknado movies (come on, lighten up)Sharnado_You_Know_You_Love_It
  • 3 Godfather movies
  • 3 Matrix movies
  • 3 Toy Story movies
  • 13 Star Trek movies (best broken into sets by cast: 6/4/3)
  • 3 Back to the Future movies
  • 3 Spiderman movies (the ones with Tobey Maguire)
  • 4 Superman movies (the ones with Christopher Reeves)
  • 5 Alien/Prometheus movies (with a 6th on the way)
  • 7 Fast & Furious movies (with an 8th on the way)
  • Come_on_Its_JohnyDepp_playing_a_pirate5 Pirates of the Caribbean movies
  • 5 Terminator movies
  • 3 Naked Gun movies
  • 5 Die Hard movies
  • 4 Spy Kids movies (OK my kids love them and I love hanging with my kids, so, yeah, I watch these too)

Have I left off any of your favorites? Put them in the comments below!

My Turn: The Force Awakens, or How to Clone a Story

You’ve all seen it right? Maybe a couple times by now? Know the dialogue by heart? Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve heard all about it. Read reviews. Glimpsed the Facebook chat and Twitter feeds.

What? You live on Tristan da Cunha you say?Well, if you haven’t seen it, turn back!!! Spoilers abound. I’ve waited a couple months to post this, and frankly, I can’t wait a moment longer.

My review: I hated it. I loved it. I hated it some more. I hated myself for hating it. I hated myself for loving it. It disappointed on so many levels, but then there were occasional bright and shiny moments that made me feel very, very happy.

It made me pop in the DVDs and rewatch the first three (no not those other three, I pretend they never happened).

TOP FOUR FIVE EIGHT, ok TEN REASONS I HATED IT, but I’ll stick with FIVE for now…

1. Desert Planet. All those Imagineers at Disney and all they can come up with is another desert planet for the primary setting? Tatooine meet Jakku, Jakku meet Tatooine. What? You’re the same planet and we just don’t know it yet? Well, that explains everything.

Hero on harsh desert planet

Hero on harsh desert planet

Heroine on harsh desert planet.

Heroine on harsh desert planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Death Star 1, 2, and yep, there’s another one. Really? Years of advancement in space weaponry and what do we get? A Supermassive Black Hole devouring everything in sight like a giant space PacMan? A genetically-engineered army of creatures that feed on both technology and flesh? An insidious space vapor that once inhaled makes the brain compliant to all Empire commands? No. We get a third Death Star. With the same weaknesses. Obviously The Empire has a short memory.

3. The Angsty, Misunderstood, AngryTeen with Parent Issues and a Big Light Saber.  Kylo Ren isn’t a villain. He’s a thug who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. Does he cooly dispatch dissenters with the wave of a hand? No, he whines about them and then orders others to do the job for him. Does he fight his father in an epic battle to prove his superiority? Why, no. He might as well have murdered him in his sleep. Boo. Just boo. I would’ve rather seen a Disney Villain take down Han Solo. Yeah I’ve joined the hatin’ on Ren bandwagon. BTW, he should’ve taken his helmet off for the first time on the catwalk with dad. BBTW, why does every death star have to have a catwalk over a vast abyss?

4. Oh Where Oh Where Did the Chemistry Go?

Maybe if Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher had gone out for a candle-lit dinner a couple times before filming they wouldn’t have seemed like a couple of dead fish in a sack. Han and Chewie still had that ease you love to see when two people “get” each other, but it was no wonder Han and Leia weren’t together any more (even before you-know-what happens to Han). When Leia says, “As much as we fought, I hated it when you left,” she might as well have been saying, “Don’t you have somewhere else you have to be?” And no, age didn’t kill the chemistry. If you think you can’t be old and hot at the same time then you must’ve missed Katherine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins, or Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin in It’s Complicated.

5. Who’s in Charge Now?

via GIPHY

The Empire? Well how did that happen? Wasn’t the Empire defeated in Return of the Jedi?  Maybe a little backstory to set the political stage would’ve been helpful. ‘Cause if the Empire’s in charge, what’s The FIrst Order trying to accomplish, and if they’re not in charge, why is The Resistance called The Resistance?

So with all these flaws, why does this movie have a place in my heart? Well, that’s a subject for another post, but one reason is:

Doesn-t everyone have one?

Doesn-t everyone have one?