Festival!

A brontosaurus eating what seems to be a pineapple.

My attention span is that of a dog - I find many ways to distract myself. Point being - on our way back from the grocery the other night, we drove by a light up Brontosaurus! I immediately had to see what this is all about and we quickly took a detour to the Wayne Country Festival of Lights. It was simply amazing. If I was a six year old I probably wouldn't stop talking about it for the next week and begging to come back.


It was a slow start - but once I saw the Baseball Santa, I knew it was going to be the most badass Christmas light tour I've ever seen. They have all the sports included - Basketball, Football and Golf Santa are represented here. I will say this - why hasn't Hollywood started this franchise? You know how kick ass combining the sports genre and a lucrative Christmas comedy would be? I can think of a million different ideas that would generate at least a $100 million dollars. Scenario: The Cincinnati Reds are in dire straits, the franchise is losing money and they desperately need star power. Luckily, Santa also needs some extra moolah because his present-making factory is old and needs repairs. Yada yada yada, the Reds win the World Series that year with a walk-off home run. And Santa learns a valuable lesson in self-respect because his big jolly belly is what gives him his edge against pitchers - it makes for a smaller strike zone. See? I'd watch that movie. Well, at least on DVD.

There was even more awesomeness if you can believe it! There was a velociraptor about to make a stegosaurus its dinner - something that may give little Timmy nightmares, but completely solidified my theory that dinosaurs can make anything extra awesome! Also, there was a pink dragon! How can you not love that? The county of Wayne was even thoughtful enough to include the Jewish community by having a a menorah, a dradle and the flag of Israel all on display! Who says Christmas is exclusive to just one set of beliefs? All in all, it lasted a good 15 minutes and it was only $5! How can you pass that up? There were some jerkoffs that passed us with their lights on! Who does that? Those bastards think they're too cool for school but I'll tell you what - I know I'm awesome. And so does Football Santa.

Football Santa has a strong leg.

Other than that delightful night, I've been watching some movies, so let's just get down to that.

Green Lantern (PG-13) Runtime: 114 minutes
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard
Director: Martin Campbell

Well, this was one of the dumbest, messiest superhero movies I've seen in a while. There's probably about fifteen minutes of exposition in the beginning of the movie. The Green Lantern universe is so complicated apparently the producers think the audience won't understand unless there's a color-by-numbers guide to universe. Speaking of colors, the power of will is represented by the color green. It's the most powerful source of energy. Sounds like a lot of hippie mysticism in my opinion. And fear is yellow. They don't mention any other forces, but I can only assume that courage is purple and mediocrity is brown.

On top of the hammy storyline, the effects are just so dull and uninspiring. In fact, a lot of the live-action (not CGI) special effects just look cheap. For instance, a doctor gets flung across the room into a glass window, which doesn't shatter - it's so bad that you can see that it's a rag doll being thrown up against the glass. The CGI wasn't so bad, but more than half the movie is special effects. I would say two thirds of the movie is just computer generated - there's barely any real sets.

All this makes for a sloppy movie with no real heart or genuine emotional connection to the audience. It's all fluff and no substance. I would not recommend this because it's almost two hours of your time that you will never get back.

Rating: Avoid Like the Plague!