At the movies: Cowboys & Aliens.

There's a deadpan goofiness to this film that resonated with me (and apparently very few others- people have been lining up to dump Hatorade on this film like it was the Elm Street remake). It's as High Concept a title as you can get, and you can practically feel the dozens of executives, focus groups, Mountain Dew-addled nine year-olds, and teams of Harrison Ford's writers working things over into movie Play-Doh.

But there's something here that's distinctly enjoyable, even when it's completely ridiculous. Jon Favreau is a director I will follow anywhere (seriously, Made is one of the outstanding directorial debuts of the ages), and you can tell he's ecstatic to be making a Western. That there's a giant spacecraft/complex and alien fighters thrown in the mix is just gravy.

The plot is there just to get in the way of the story, and awesome character actors will periodically show up to liven the proceedings- seriously, Walton Goggins is on his way to becoming the Harry Dean Stanton of the new millennium (once HDS dies, though, and he's still going strong for a bit).

Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are exactly what you'd expect, and Sam Rockwell is just awesome, as always (except for The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy).

At the movies: Coraline.

Young Coraline Jones has just moved, with her distant parents, into the middle floor of the Pink Palace apartments, an old house with mysteries and magic in abundance behind its well-appointed walls. A resourceful and inquisitive young girl, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) soon discovers a portal to another world, where things are brighter and stranger, and previously lethargic dads become like They Might Be Giants, and everything is exactly right. Except that everyone has buttons instead of eyes…

As with all projects associated with Neil Gaiman (Mirrormask, Beowulf), there is so much imagination running around that it can at times feel flighty and disjointed. No matter, as everything pulls together in classic fairy tale fashion, albeit with a gloriously darker tone than most of what gets processed out as ‘family entertainment.’ Overprotective parents will be freaked out, adventurous kids will adore it. Like all great art, it deals with deep and freaky issues in an entertaining fashion. We get mysterious houses, life lessons, and the chance to turn your back on the world we know and live in and embrace the unknown completely, and it’s nice to have all bases covered. It’s slow to get going, but once it does, it keeps blooming in weirder and more vivid forms.

The 3D effects are used in a subtle fashion, avoiding gimmicks and instead adding depth to the world the animators have created. The inspired voice casting grounds us with Dakota Fanning, allowing excellent supporting work from Ian McShane as a Russian circusmaster who works with jumping mice (who actually look a bit more like kangaroo rats to me, but I digress) and British comedy legends French and Saunders as two actresses living downstairs from the Jones family. As a noble cat, Keith David shines.

Director/adapter Henry Selick remains one of cinema’s true visionaries, building upon the criminally underrated Monkeybone and perennial classic The Nightmare Before Christmas to craft a world that simply seduces the viewer. Color and life become characters in the story, and there’s a moment near the end that looks like a Van Gogh painting come to life- simply staggering.

Things you think you can change about your apartment.

A sense of optimism is a wonderful thing to have when hunting for a new apartment. It can be a trying time for anyone when such an important aspect as home becomes a constant source of worry, so a positive attitude can never hurt. Unfortunately, there is a distinct difference between a positive attitude and turning a blind eye to aspects of a potential new home that you will not be able to change.

For instance, nature has a bounty of creatures, many of which would like nothing more than to occupy your space. Exterminators are, of course, an option for situations like roaches, rats, and the like, but if the place you’re looking at has visible crickets or spiders, then you should be aware that a lot of times, extermination technology might not be able to take care of your problems as well as you’d hope- spiders and crickets travel up on their legs, not down on the ground, and thus they don’t get poison on their thorax.

Also, if the heating system looks to have been installed in or before the 50s (and specifically we mean those wall-length heat bar things), you should find out what steps have been taken to make them safer. It also never hurts to check with other tenants in the building to find out about other things which may not be obvious on first glance.