August Rush

Me and diana watched August Rush the other night. Very interesting. Keri Russell and the kids were good. The guy was not very good. The show was one of the most contrived/cheesy shows that have ever been made. I would give in 3.5 stars out of 5.

Here is the rundown:

A super good cellist (Keri Russell) meets a rocker dude (jonathan rhy-myers, I think) and they have a one-night stand and do not see each other. Keri Russell gets pregnant, but her overbearing dad wants her to get rid of the kid. They have a fight and Keri Russell runs into the street and is hit by a car. She wakes up in a hospital bed, clearly no longer pregnant. Her father tells her she lost the baby. At this same time you are seeing the life of an orphan music-genius who is waiting for his parents to hear his music and reunite his family. The dad of Keri Russell is dying and he tells her that she had the baby and he is sorry, blah, blah, but he gave it up for adoption. Meanwhile, the dude cant sing anymore because he lost Keri Russell. The boy runs away from the orphanage and starts playing music in washington square, meets the wizard (Robin Williams). Keri Russell starts looking for her son, not really worrying about the guy. The guy decides he needs to start looking for Keri Russell. Like I said this movie is very contrived. A sympathetic child welfare worker (Terrance Howard) wants to help Keri Russell find her kid, but now that he has run away they cannot find him. The boy ends up at Julliard (a nice clergyman sends him there when the boy shows up at his church). At Julliard the boy is chosen to lead his symphony as the end of a huge concert in central park. Keri Russell at the same time has chosen to be a featured cellist for the opening of the concert at the park. The dad is touring with his band (he is singing again) and they are in NYC - he is looking for Keri Russell, and runs into the kid he doesnt even know he has. They have a loving heart to heart. I should mention that the day before the concert the wizard comes to take the boy away from Julliard to play and pay the wizard in washington square. So the dad and boy have their heart to heart. The boy runs away from the wizard right as the concert is starting. As they boy runs away, he does have to stop as he hears his mother play the cello for her opening number. Keri finishes her song and prepared to walk away, certain that she will never see her kid again. The dad sees the boys and Keri Russell's name on a light-hanging ad for the concert and decides to go try to find her. Keri Russell is walking away as the boy begins his song. She hears something she understands and starts to walk back. The guy finds her in the crows, but she is more interested in the boy. Both adults walk to the front of the crowd and as the concert is over the boy looks back, sees them and knows they are his parents. The movie is over.

Crazy. How much more contrived could this be?

Disneyland

Hey, me again.

My family and I just got back from a trip to Disneyland (mid-March). I posted my pics on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mroblyer/. You can also view my pictures from when I was in Barcelona, Spain for work. I will try to post more pictures of my life as time goes on. I used to not like Flickr (as you can tell, my Spain pictures were posted years ago). I did not like the interface, the load times, or the limitations I had. When I went to post my disneyland pictures (had family screaming to see them), Flickr was a completely new experience, and I liked it. Upload multiple pictures, tag and describe at the same time. I now firmly reccommend Flickr to all people on the web (and it is FREE if you use less then 100MB a month).

Back to Disnyland. It was a great vacation. My family of 4 went with my sister's family of 5. We stayed at the Disneyland hotel. I will post a full review of Disneyland, Jet Blue (the airline we used), and my sisters family in my upcoming posts. The wife just turned on August Rush, you will probably see a review of that too. Other things upcoming: review of "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings" the counting crows new album, and that is all I have right now.