You guessed it, more reviews...

First of all, I got the new Dave Matthews cd Tuesday, Stand up. The Stand up link will let you listen to a bit of it. Of course I had pre-ordered it via the Warehouse, DMB fan club, so that I could get the free extra cd with some live versions of songs and some rare studio recordings! I am a geek when it comes to DMB! Of course I love most of what DMB does and I really do like the new disc. It is different. I hate when people expect bands to stay the exact same forever. These guys have been together for 15 years so you expect some changes. The new album is more hippy with the lyrics and subjects of the tunes. The songs are more R&B this time, but I like the mix of R&B and the unique DMB sound. A lot of the songs make you want to get up and shuffle your feet like Dave and spin in circles like a hippy in your bare feet on the grass! Dance! I have only listened to it a few times so I have not memorized it yet. I will have to memorize the tunes before July 13th since Eric and I have tix to their show in Atlanta! The reason I joined the fan club is that we get tickets first and the more senority you have the better tickets you get. With 8 years senority, we are usually in the center in rows 1-5! I love it. I am not sure how the seating at this venue is but I think that we are in the first few rows again. I am in withdrawl since I have not been to a DMB show in 2 years. I usually go at least once a year. One year Eric and I went 3 times in a year and he said no to the 4th :( I am addicted. This is 12th or 13th time I have seen them!

On to some movie reviews. Since Eric's job sucks and insists on sending him on trip after trip I am here alone and usually end up renting some movies to stave off the boredom at night when I cannot sleep. This last time really angered us since they told him Monday, "By the way, you are going to Ft. Rucker today to fix a project you have never worked on and you have to stay there until you fix it!" Thanks Uncle R. I guess this was one of your old projects. So Eric had to stay until Thursday, our anniversary, and he did not get back until almost 5 pm. Now he has to go back next week again! I am going to a baby shower at Tybrin today so I am going to have to try really hard not to yell at the tools in charge for screwing up our anniversary plans. But I digress... Movie reviews.

I rented Meet the Fockers, Spanglish, and The Phantom of the Opera. First of all, I watched them as I played World of Warcraft so I was distracted at times. That game sucks time!

I rented Meet the Fockers since I knew Eric would never rent it. It was funny. Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand were hilarious and really made the movie good! Watching DeNiro with Hoffman was ecspecially funny. It is a good sequel which follows well with the previous movie.

Spanglish was an pretty good Adam Sandler movie. It was pretty funny since the family is very dysfunctional. It was a little too serious in some parts though for an Adam Sandler movie. Still, I liked it and the story was pretty good.

Phantom of the Opera was ok. Now as a huge fan of the original Andrew Lloyed Weber musical, having listened to the cd over 100 times, replaying the production in my room starring me in every role, and after seeing the real production twice, I must say I was disappointed, particularly with the casting. I hate when Hollywood makes musicals into movies and they cast actors that cannot sing into the roles. It is a musical people!!! Phantom is a very opera sounding musical and the songs are very hard to sing, trust me I have had to sing them for choir. First of all the Phantom they cast, Gerard Butler, sucked. He is a great actor, fine, but he had no singing experience at all before this role and Andrew Lloyd Weber cast him knowing this! He did hire a singing coach and practiced day and night for about 6 months but his singing was only decent with all of the studio modifications. His voice was way to deep for the role. The Phantom is supposed to sing like an "Angel" and it sounded more demon like. Michael Crawford, who played the Phantom for many years and made the role famous is very hard to follow and no one will ever be him, but I saw two great singers play the Phantom in the Broadway versions in Toronto. The Phantom is a very hard role to fill since the songs are written in a big range and it takes a very skilled singer to get notes just right. It angered me, since the Phantom is the main role!! Stupid Hollywood. The thing that really angers me is that they were supposed to make the movie a long time ago with Crawford and Sarah Brightman, original Christine and Weber's ex-wife, but Weber wanted to get as much money off of the Broadway version first. Minnie Driver played Carlota and also sucked. Another woman sang her parts in the movie. Hello, why is she still in the movie when most of it is singing?!?! Emmy Rossum, Christine in the movie, was great. She can really sing and is a trained singer. She did great. Most of the other actors did very well and the chorus did a great job. It is a pretty movie and it is pretty close to the real musical, but they made some of the singing parts into talking parts, which angered me. Oh well.