Kicking and Screaming, with Will Ferrell and Kate Walsh. Also Robert Duvall and Mike Ditka randomly, but I don't really care about them so much. But anyway. What happened to the days when they used to make good kid-sports movies, like The Mighty Ducks, or The Sandlot? Those movies had at least the semblance of a plot, and sometimes even character development. This one, however, was disjointed, had a horribly skewed story arc, and there's some sort of anti-character development going on, that last bit which I suppose is kind of interesting in a roundabout way. Thank you Wyatt for taking credit for picking this one to rent; that was courageous of you.

King Kong, with Jack Black and Naomi Watts. Though a humongous amount of detail and action and amazing imagery was crammed into this film's three hours, and I'm sure much of it was cut to get that time, we actually found it kind of boring. The best explanation we've come up with is that any given scene just went on for too long; even the most interesting, epic creatures and movement can start to wear on one after a while, I suppose is what we felt. Perhaps, it was mostly a showcase for the awesome accomplishment of animating Kong; the characters and story, while true to and in some parts improvements on the original, didn't seem to develop or change in any noticeable way. I think if one went into the movie looking for theory kind of stuff, like aspects of Kong or the island being explored as representations of the unknown and monstrous within the psyche, there might be more to be gotten out of it. Or maybe this was all just the mood I was in, I don't know. I did like the fun references to Conrad's writing, that was nice, though I don't remember whether it was in the original?

Extinction, by Lisa Smedman. Yet another in the War of the Spider Queen shared setting, I enjoyed this one in a specific sense; it didn't have barely if any action or intrigue compared to the novels previous to it in the series, but it delved nicely into the awakening of some of the characters as they encounter a cultural clash that changes them utterly. Though very little actually happens in this novel, I think it was well worth it to devote that much attention to slowing down to appreciate what those characters go through internally. That said, if this novel is recognized as a kind of interlude amongst its busier neighbors in the series, that's a big help to enjoying it.