./janella.com

rating: ***1/2 out of 5

quick shot: smartly written tina fey comedy.  a cut above your average teenager movie.

what i liked about the movie: the way it treated most kids with some intelligence.  i also liked that the adults weren’t totally oblivious either.  smart script all around.

what i didn’t like: the movie bogged down a third of the way through, though it picked up in the end.

rating: *** out of 5

quick shot: men at sea battling a faceless (for most of the movie) enemy, and amongst themselves. you can feel the isolation at sea, and the camaraderie the crew feels. russell crowe leads by example and charisma.

what i liked about the movie: the chemistry between crowe, bettany (who plays the ship’s doctor) and crew was very good. the chase and battle scenes were excellent.

what i didn’t like: the movie felt a little lengthy. i think it could have lost about 15 to 20 minutes and still been effective.

rating: **1/2 out of 5

quick shot: jack and diane try to find love at there age!  overall good story of may-december romance and how it works for both genders.  the writing is good, though gives up in the last ten minutes of the film.

what i liked about the movie: jack and diane have good chemistry in the film.  i like the fact that they bared more than their emotions in the film.

what i didn’t like: keanu is as wooden as ever.  again, the ending is predictable but satisfying i suppose.

rating: **** out of 5

quick shot: a tale of bloody revenge tarantino style.  loved the bloody brutality mixed in with the animation and poppin' tarantino dialog.

what i liked about the movie: the bloody mess.  the fight scene with the cray 88’s was cool.

what i didn’t like: that i didn’t see this movie in the theater.  thank g. for dvd, but still would have been nice to see it on the screen.

just got back from yosemite, where farrah and i spent about three days. i’ll have a few pictures to post from the digital camera later this week. we only took a few film pictures for some reason.

john or lotte, you gotta translate this!

i want to thank everyone for a great birthday weekend! it will be one i will never forget.

the weekend started early with dinner with doug at our old weekly hangout, satsuma’s. it felt like old times sitting, eating, drinking, and talking about everything and anything.

on friday, lotte, john, fina and farrah took me to king of siam for some great thai food. the atmosphere was pretty lively for downtown san jose, and the food was excellent as always. oh, and the tiramisu they brought for my birthday cake was to die for.

saturday morning, farrah and i drove up to have breakfast with tessie. she was in town on a business trip. it was really good to see her and spend time with her, walking to chinatown and such. i wish we could have spent more than the three hours we had together. it was good to see you tess.

saturday night found farrah’s parents, my mom, farrah and i at the fishmarket in santa clara. again, great food, good beer, and good dessert in chocolate covered strawberries.

sunday night the trabers came over and took farrah and i out to chevy’s. i had a nice mohito margarita, with farrah having a cantaloupe margarita. overstuffed with fajitas, but not before having some chocolate mint (i think it was) cake from gale’s.

last but not least, dave took me out to stacks for breakfast on monday. and get this, we were served by cops at the restaurant who were doing their part for the special olympics [please see the south park episode 803]

just picked up the playstation 2 game [james bond 007: everything or nothing] it’s a pretty nifty third person game that has you shooting, driving, flying and firing at enemies all over the place. it has the voices of heidi klum, mya, shannon elizabeth, and of course pierce brosnan among others, so it feels like being in a bond movie.

yeah, i know, i was supposed to start playing final fantasy x-2. i’ll get around to it.

some new photos have been added to the photos pages [of all places]! click the above images for a preview or go straight to the photos page to look at more.

celebrating birthdays for

• kayla
• mom
• rex
• john

please remember, you may have to re-register by clicking the registration link. if you do need to re-register, please use the same login name you used previously so i recognize who you are!

rating: **** out of five

quick shot: a man lost. a woman ignored. friendship [and more?] follows.

what i liked about the movie: the acting, direction and pacing of the movie was very well done.

what i didn’t like: the movie seemed short.

just a quick note: you might have noticed that all the postings are now listed by ‘janella’. well, i thought it was a weird thing when doing a search on any search engine (e.g. msn, google, yahoo!, etc.) janella.com would come up somewhere after the top 5! i mean, come on this is janella.com!

anyway, it’s part search engine driven and part whatever.

i have established a few accounts for login from memory. if you try to register for the [photos] page and it says your name is already taken (or in there), then please try logging in with your password. if it’s not in there please continue with the registration.

it’s looking pretty ugly outside right now. the winds are supposed to gust up to 40mph down here. in the santa cruz mountains it’s suppose to get as high as 75mph. whew!

so if you’re driving today be careful. if you are not driving, stay home and enjoy a good dvd. (and yes, i’m still trying to get this page back to normal).

btw: this page will probably look kinda funky until i make more postings. i’m not going to try and bother to recreate any of the previous postings i had. please bear with me as we rebuild.

my mom heard tigger meowing in a neighbor’s backyard. she rushed over to the next street, knocked on the neighbor’s door and told her our cat was back there. our neighbor wasn’t aware of it and was happy to let my mom back there.

funny thing seeing my mom carry tigger through the front door, seeing how she says he annoys her a lot (all the meowing and need to be petted). but i think she was as happy to see him as i was.

from the looks of tigger, it appears he just wandered off. he might have gotten scared or curious during his travels, which would account for the amount of time he was gone. of course my mom still thinks he was cat-napped by some kids.