Gossip Girl Season 2

Title: Gossip Girl Season 2
Claims to Fame: Leighton Meester and Blake Lively
Grade: A
Rating: TV-14

Summary: (Amazon)
It's senior year for our beloved Upper East Siders, and the drama is at an all-time high. Applying for college is only one small part of the story, as new romances (and some not-so-new romances) bloom and fade, scandals erupt at every turn and alliances shift even faster than Gossip Girl can send an update. Families and reputations are destroyed and made; so are fortunes. And even the strongest friendships are tested. In this sizzling 25-episode, 7-disc Season Two, you never know what's next for Serena, Blair, Dan, Nate, Jenny, Chuck and Vanessa. Good thing Gossip Girl is always there to provide us with the latest, juiciest info!

Title: 5/5
I love how the title is the same as the book. It wouldn’t have gotten as much publicity and would have been strange if they changed the title for this tv series.

Cover: 4/5
The art on the second season cover was even better then the first! I loved how glamorous all the pictures were. What bugged me was the one picture where Jenny and Dan appear to be snuggling. Too close for comfort guys!

Plot: 5/5
The plot thickens in this second season. There is more to be discovered as many secrets begin to unravel. The final episode leaves you wanting more! Good thing I waited till recently to start watching Gossip Girl. I don’t know how I would have waited so long for season three!

Acting: 5/5
The acting in the show is superb! I couldn’t think of better people to play the parts then those who were casted. I feel like I’m actually watching someone’s real life, not a scripted TV show.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Title: Confessions of a Shopaholic
Claim to Fame: Isla Fisher
Grade: A
Rating: PG

Summary: (Amazon.com)
Fall in love with the adorable Becky Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) in the hilarious romantic comedy Confessions Of A Shopaholic. Becky s desperate for a job writing for a high-fashion magazine in glamorous New York. She gets her stilettos in the door writing a personal finance column at a sister publication. Much to her surprise, her column, The Girl In The Green Scarf, becomes a hit, and she falls head over high heels for her handsome, overworked boss (Hugh Dancy). But Becky has a secret that leads to some hilarious high jinks that could unravel it all.

Title: 5/5
The title is super amazing. Who doesn’t want to see a movie with a title like that? I am happy that they kept it the same as the book or it would have ruined it for me. Changes that big should not be made.

Cover: 5/5
The cover is gorgeous and fits the movie perfectly! It showed us many insights into the movie and made me even more intrigued. You cant judge a book by its cover, but a movie…

Plot: 5/5
The plot was fantastic. It was so very unique. I have never seen a movie about a shopaholic before and the book was great. It was a tad annoying how they changed some major aspects though.

Acting: 4/5
The acting in the movie was good but a few parts could have been better. I didn’t like the way the roommate was portrayed but it was okay. I would have kept the same actress but shown her differently, with different lines.

Thirteen

Title: Thirteen
Claim to Fame: Nikki Reed
Grade: B
Rating: R

Summary: (Amazon)
gut-wrenching portrait of adolescence, Thirteen is made all the more powerful because it was co-written by a genuine teenage girl, Nikki Reed, who also co-stars in the movie. Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), a serious good student, finds herself needing to express her anger and resentment at her fractured family life. To rebel, she pursues a friendship with the reckless, alluring Evie (Reed), who seems to have all the cocksure freedom that Tracy desires. What follows is both harrowing and compelling: Tracy becomes enmeshed in a relationship with Evie that empowers Tracy and drags her deeper into the misery she wants to escape--and terrifies her mother (Holly Hunter), who struggles desperately to hold on to her daughter's love.

Title: 4/5
The title did fit the movie but something told me it could have been a bit better. A one world title can’t show enough insight into the plot.

Cover: 5/5
The cover fit this movie perfectly. It showed the wild side of the teen girls with the tongue ring and it didn’t get too flashy.

Plot: 4/5
Overall the plot was great but left a few too many empty holes. Another spot with room for improvement.

Acting: 4/5
A few parts in this movie could have been cast better. Overall the acting was just above mediocre.

Fired Up

Title: Fired Up!
Claim to Fame: No super big name actors
Grade: B
Rating: Unrated Version

Summary: (Amazon)
The word "shameless" does not begin to describe Fired Up, a sneaky, self-aware teen comedy about two high-school jocks who join the cheerleading squad so they can score with girls at cheer camp. Naturally, they find themselves starting to care and end up committed to helping their squad win the big competition at the end. But while trotting through the formula paces, Fired Up manages to subvert the cliches of teen movies while fulfilling them at the same time. It's really kind of genius. Fusing the smart sassiness of Bring It On with the hyperactive self-referentiality of Dude, Where's My Car?, Fired Up wallows in the luscious flesh of its cast (both male and female) while pushing the horndogginess to ridiculous heights; it casts an absurdist eye on cheerleading while making savvy use of sports-movie plot devices; it starts out with the rigidly defined sex roles of high school, but by the end has mocked masculinity, femininity, homophobia, and furries(!). Nicholas D'Agosto (Heroes) and Eric Christian Olsen (Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) play the jocks with just the right mixture of likability and preposterousness.

Title: 5/5
The title was great and defiantly fit for the movie. It was unique and not the same cheer titles we’d been seeing over and over again!

Cover: 4/5
The cover was good but did have a degree of dullness to it. I didn’t like how it didn’t show much insight into the movie but it was still a nice cover.

Plot: 4/5
The plot was good but at times left room for improvement. Some holes were not filled and some of the crude humor was unnecessary and not even a part of the movie.

Acting: 4/5
The acting was good but not FANTASTIC! There were a few parts that could have been casted a little better when it came to some cheerleaders. Other parts were cast correctly!

Theatrical Thursday

Title: The Virgin Suicides
Claims to Fame: Kirsten Dunst
Grade: D
Rating: R

Summary: (amazon.com)
Played in a delicate minor key, the film is heartbreaking, mysterious, and soulfully funny, set in a Michigan suburb of the mid-1970s but timeless and universal to anyone who's been a teenager. The four surviving Lisbon sisters lost a sibling to suicide, and as its title suggests, the film will chart their mutual course to oblivion under the vigilance of repressive parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods, perfectly cast). But The Virgin Suicides is more concerned with life in that precious interlude of adolescence, when the Lisbon girls are worshipped by the neighborhood boys, their notion of perfection epitomized by Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and her storybook love for high-school stud Trip (Josh Hartnett). Unfolding at the cusp of innocence and sexual awakening, and recalled as a memory, The Virgin Suicides is, ultimately, about the preservation of the Lisbon sisters by their own deaths--suspended in time, polished to perfection, and forever untainted by adulthood.

Title: 5/5
The title was super awesome and lead me to believe that this would be a fantastic movie.

Cover: 3/5
The cover was average in my opinion. It seemed okay but nothing that really pulled me in. They could have done better.

Acting: 3/5
The acting in this movie was worse then I had expected. It wasn’t horrible but it was very average.

Plot: 2/5
The Plot was dull and left much to be desired. Too many blank holes needed to be filled.

Theatrical Thursday

Title: Odd Girl Out
Claim to Fame: Alexa Vega
Grade: B
Rating: PG-13

Summary: (amazon.com)
"Girls are brutal," a father warns his young son in the course of Odd Girl Out. "They… tear each other to bits over the smallest things." Director Tom McLoughlin's 2005 film proves it, too, offering up a harrowing tale of one teenager's horrendous treatment at the hands of her high school classmates. When we meet Vanessa (Alexa Vega, also seen in Spy Kids), she's a reluctant member of a group of spoiled, snooty girls who rule the school hallways like designer-dressed harpies. But when she betrays "best friend" and clique leader Stacey (Malcolm in the Middle's Leah Pipes), it all starts to go south; little matter that said betrayal is actually concocted by the genuinely vicious Nikki (Elizabeth Rice). What begins as a relatively petty campaign of text messages, rumor-mongering, and daily ostracism soon escalates into full-scale torment and cruelty, including a particularly nasty website, an invitation to a party that doesn't exist (the better to humiliate the eager and insecure Vanessa), and her near-tragic reaction to these events. McLoughlin's resume includes TV shows based on A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, so it's no surprise that this film has a stylized, horror film vibe; there is nothing remotely light-hearted about this story (loosely based on Rachel Simmons' non-fiction book Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture Of Aggression In Girls), which focuses not only on Vanessa's nightmare but on the well-meaning but futile efforts of her mother (Lisa Vidal) to help.

Title: 4/5
The title was fairly good but there was opportunity for improvement. I didn’t see Alexa’s character as the “odd” girl she was supposed to portray.

Cover: 5/5
The Cover drew me into the movie in so many ways. The Positions and facial features of the girls were very intriguing. The background was also gorgeous.

Acting: 4/5
The acting was not great but it was good. There was room to improve when it came to certain characters.

Plot: 3/5
The plot was overly common and could have used a few twists to it.

Theatrical Thursday

Title: Gossip Girl Season 1
Claim to Fame: Blake Lively, Leighton Meester
Grade: A
Rating: TV-14

Summary: Amazon.com
Gossip Girl is a delicious not-too-guilty pleasure, a visual feast of couture and perfectly coiffed hair. The elite high-schoolers of New York's Upper East Side throw red-carpet parties, live in five-star hotels, and plot dastardly deeds against each other. Their actions are reported--and often exposed--by an omniscient presence known as Gossip Girl (voiced by Kristen Bell), an anonymous Web master who posts updates via her blog and text messages to the student body. Her primary target is the social circle of Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), best frenemies who lean on each other (save for the occasional throwdown). The show opens as Serena returns from a semester at boarding school, determined to put her hard-partying ways behind her. But she's chock full of secrets, one of which is that before her abrupt transfer she'd slept with Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), Blair's boyfriend. In season one, Blair becomes embroiled in her own triangle between Nate and slimy womanizer Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick); the two guys also happen to be best friends. Serena, meanwhile, steps into a romance with studious Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), an aspiring writer on scholarship whose rocker dad (Matthew Settle) once dated Serena's gold-digging mom (Kelly Rutherford, Melrose Place)--got all that?

Title: 5/5
Love that they kept the title the same as the books. It fits perfectly.

Cover: 5/5
The picture on the cover is creative and fits perfectly. The picture really drew me in.

Acting: 5/5
They found the perfect person to play each character. The acting was flawless.

Plot: 5/5
The plot is super unique. I love how it is constantly changing.

Theatrical Thursday

I want to know what you guys think about a new feature I would love to start. It would be called Theatrical Thursday. Please answer my questions in the comments.

1. Would you like to see me do a movie review every Thursday?
2. What Movie should I review?
3. Would it be okay if I included TV Shows on DVD?
4. Any other thoughts?