movies – Page 4 – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Secretariat

November 3, 2010 by Karen, posted in family, local fun, movies, tweens

I took my daughter to see this movie with a bit of trepidation.

First of all, it is 2 hours and 3 minutes long, a very long time for a tween to sit still and remain engaged, especially in the uncomfy old theater seats.

Second, although it is a Disney movie, it isn’t a kids’ movie per se, so this is the first sort of adult drama that I’d taken her to see.

Why was I willing to take the risk? Well, it’s about horses, and my daughter loves horses, so that made it seem like more of a calculated risk. After purchasing the requisite order of nachos that my daughter needs to maximize her movie-watching experience, we entered the theater and settled in.

Fortunately, the movie was great. It already had the presence of Diane Lane going for it, but all of the other actors were also well cast. Like a good book, it pulled us in right from the first moments of the film and kept our interest until the end.

If only they had given out little plastic horsies as favors; then our day would have been complete. 🙂

Life in the cube

October 13, 2010 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, movies, yoga

I was sitting in my cube at work (hour 10), checking out Mayo Clinic’s website for anything new. I found a video of people working at treadmill desks.

I do not have a treadmill desk. Currently, I sit in my cube (to borrow a line from Sandra Bullock in the movie While You Were Sleeping) for 10.5 hours a day “like a veal”. I am not burning the 10% more calories that people who are blessed with bad backs and get notes from the company’s contracted physical pherapy associates and are awarded “sit-stand” stations. So I sit, not stand.

I recently attended a yoga workshop led by Judith Hanson Lasater. I learned many things from listening to Judith, including that the optimal angle for the hips while sitting in a chair is 120 degrees. I am currently sitting in a chair at my job that gives me about a 45 degree angle of hipness. Not good.

I attempted to remedy this. I rolled up a blanket and put it on my desk chair which afforded me a hip angle that more closely approximated the goal. I was feeling smug about having saved about $50 on a new cushion for about an hour, when I started noticing that my right shoulder (which was now clearly at an untherapeutic angle) was killing me, thereby proving once again the theory that “the thigh bone’s connected to the shoulder bone”.

Darn! I guess I also need to attend a workshop about shoulders. Or ergonomics. Back to square one.

Eat, Pray, Love

September 2, 2010September 2, 2010 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, italian, movies, no fear

Eat, Pray, Love came to theaters in movie form on August 13, 2010. If you read the book by Elizabeth Gilbert (published by Viking in February 2006) like I did, you may have been eagerly anticipating the release of this movie. I know I certainly was.

Then I saw a trailer for the movie, and noticed who had been cast to play Elizabeth Gilbert: Julia Roberts, who is one of my least favorite actresses. It’s not just because she basically has one character that she plays over and over; hey, I do like Meg Ryan. I usually do end up liking movies that JR is in though…

So, I reluctantly resigned myself to seeing it even though Julia was playing the lead character and therefore would most likely be on the screen a lot of the time (hello? it’s a memoir; told from the first person point of view). I went with a friend so that it wouldn’t be a totally lost Sunday afternoon…at least I would get to spend time with a friend sans children for a few hours.

So, need I say it more plainly? My expectations were low. I thoroughly enjoyed the coming attractions (3 more good-to-see-with-a-friend movies to watch for) so I was in a good mood when the feature finally started.

I am happy to report that the book was great, but the movie was also perfectly fine! It was not a total waste of two hours and thirteen minutes (plus travel time) after all! Of course, I love all things that have to do with Italy so it helped that the first country visited in the story was Italy.