And we're back

Hi! Hope all my fellow United Statesians had a great Independence Day and my Canadian pals had an awesome Canada Day just a bit earlier than that.

I saw a few movies over the last week. I probably won't do full reviews of them, but the quick rundown is:

Ratatouille: Awesome. Funny and meaningful. Brad Bird retains his perfect record. I saw this one one-and-a-half times because David got freaked out the first time and needed to leave. He empathizes with animals and can't really handle when people are mean to them in movies. The second time I saw it though I was watching the other kids in the audience during the intense parts and no one seemed to be affected, so likely it's just an idiosyncracy of David's.

Live Free or Die Hard: Also awesome. Everything you want in a Die Hard movie, including quick, unobtrusive references to the first film. Lowering the rating to PG-13 didn't hurt it at all, though the trick they played to get the "Yipee Kai Yay" part past the MPAA won't work again if they do another one.

Transformers: There are movies that Michael Bay really shouldn't do, like Pearl Harbor. But Transformers? He was made for that. Nice mix of focus between the human ensemble and the robots. John Turturro not only stole all the scenes he was in; he ran away with them while giggling gleefully. My only complaint is that the final battle was so long that I actually got bored with it. And there were some big plot holes in order to give the less powerful characters a reason to stay on screen. Not one I'd buy, but lots of fun.

The best part of the long weekend was that we added a new member to our family yesterday. He's a bearded dragon and David's named him Qui-Gon. He's a cute little thing now, but in a year or so he's going to look like this. He'll still be cute, just not so little. But for now...