Yes/No Detroit

JT is going to be performing in the D on August 6th at Ford Field, and it should be an amazing concert. Only one problem: tickets are sold out. But guess what? You can enter to win two FREE tickets to his sold-out concert from Local 4 ( ClickOnDetroit.com ) by clicking here . It's very simple to enter, too - all you have to do is log on to Ellen's site by May 3rd  and share why you love Justin, and you must be 18+ to enter. The winner will be announced on May 6th  on her show. Before that, though, you can take part in the #Ellen4Justin Twitter party, on Wednesday, May 1st at 8pm EST. Your hosts  @emilyhay and @laurenweber84 will be giving away some official Ellen Show swag, and no RSVP is required! Check it out for the chance to win some fun prizes - all you have to do is follow the #Ellen4Justin  hashtag on Twitter. And make sure to watch Ellen during the month of May for the latest trends, entertainment guests, and more! She's one of the funniest talk sh...

Well, we've now made it through 3 weeks of Sweet Relish Sunday - welcome to week 4, the last week! This week, I will be talking about 5 Necessities for Family Movie Night . I've chosen two family-friendly DVDs/Blu-rays along with a Blu-ray player and some sweet and salty treats that are essentials for any movie night. Here are my picks: ParaNorman   Blu-ray/DVD combo pack . This movie was one of the best kids' movies I saw in 2012, and the title character shares his name with my dad, which was also kind of fun. Be aware that it may be a little scary for younger children, though. Wreck-It Ralph on DVD . Another one of my favorite 2012 kids' movies, and a great choice for the younger children or if you think your child will be too scared to see ParaNorman.  Or, if you have time, you could even watch them both! LG Blu-ray player . This is the same Blu-ray player that I own, and although it has ethernet and not WiFi, it's a great choice for those who want to us...

The Big Wedding  may be the fluffiest of "fluff movies" that I've seen lately. With an all-star cast encompassing everyone from Robert De Niro to Topher Grace, I expected it to be hilarious; unfortunately, the script was not great, and there was little-to-no character development, for the most part. Don (De Niro) and Ellie (Diane Keaton) are preparing for the wedding of their adopted son, Alejandro (Ben Barnes) to Missy (Amanda Seyfried). Don and Ellie are divorced, and Don lives in their former house with his girlfriend, Bebe (Susan Sarandon), who used to be Ellie's best friend - until Ellie caught Don cheating on her with Bebe. Don and Ellie haven't really spoken for the past ten years, so things are awkward, to say the least, when the family all reunites. Alejandro's birth mother, Madonna (Patricia Rae), who is Spanish, is also very Catholic - where divorcing is considered a sin - and Alejandro asks Don and Ellie to pretend to be married for the weddin...

Mud is what I would imagine a modern day Huck Finn to be like. The title character, played excellently by Matthew McConaughey, is a bit of a drifter, who is hiding out in an abandoned boat on an island waiting for his girlfriend, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), to meet up with him. Juniper, however, has no idea that he's on the island, so it may take her a while to find him, and in the meantime, we get a coming-of-age story concealed as a "con man does good" plotline; it's the former, however, that makes Mud as good as it is. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his friend Neckbone (newcomer Jacob Lofland) take a small boat to a nearby island, to look for an unusual boat they've heard about: it's stuck in a tree, probably from some storm. When they get there, however, they find that the boat is already inhabited, by a man who introduces himself to them as Mud (McConaughey). Mud spins a story to them about true love and waiting for Juniper (Witherspoon) so that they ca...

So when I received an email today about this giveaway, I became a little jealous of you, my readers - because this prize pack is pretty awesome. Mother's Day is coming up and this would be a GREAT gift for moms (or to keep for yourself - I won't tell!) . First, check out the widget and "Dream Mother's Day" fill-in-the-blank sheet below: If you'd like to email me your filled-in Mother's Day sheets, feel free to do so! You can email me here . This collection retails for $597.97 and includes 100 of the Warner Bros. Library Best Picture winners. A little bit about the collection: The World’s Largest Film Collection From a Major Studio! Warner Bros. continues to entertain the world with films passionately produced, selectively acquired, carefully preserved and impeccably curated for both the casual and ultimate movie lover to enjoy forever. 100 movies including all 22 of Warner Bros. Library’s Best Picture™ winners on 55 discs presented in book...

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. The movie Ring the Bell  started off promisingly, and even made me laugh in a few scenes. Hotshot sports agent Rob Decker, now unused to personally going on recruitment visits, makes a visit to a small town to try and persuade a high school baseball star to sign with him and his agency rather than going to play college ball. Unfortunately, as the movie continued on, it became more about the religious themes throughout than the baseball story, and I began to lose interest. Official synopsis : Ring The Bell shares the story of a slick, big city sports ag...

Week 3 of Sweet Relish Sunday brings us to "10 Must-See Book-to-Movie Adaptations." As you might know, I also have a book blog,  Books I Think You Should Read , and I'm an avid reader. When I hear that a favorite book of mine is being turned into a movie, I'm both excited and also a bit apprehensive, because sometimes the essence of a book can be lost in translation when it airs on the big screen. With these ten movies, however, the movie is just as good as, if not better than, the book version, and they are shining examples of what a good book-to-movie adaptation can be. The ten movies I chose are: Sarah's Key  (2010). Still one of the saddest Holocaust movies I've ever seen; I don't often cry during movies but I challenge anyone to see this movie and not cry. I actually liked the book less than the movie, but only because parts of it were very different. Holes  (2003). The book was intriguing and the movie was just as good, with Shia LaBeouf as ...

What is NBC’s Share and Tell? Did you know that for every pound of new goods produced, 71 pounds of waste are generated during manufacturing? This Earth Week, NBCUniversal is partnering with the sharing site yerdle to help you minimize your impact on the planet by sharing your stuff. One person’s stuff is another person’s story! Here’s how it works: 1) Join or host a Share & Tell Party (click the “Join the Party” button in the app below). 2) Post your stuff to share with friends. Discover other items that are up for grabs. 3) Tell the story of your sharing experiences on your favorite social media site. #ShareandTell. And if you're like me, you're probably wondering what yerdle is ... Yerdle is the new mission-driven California Benefit corporation that’s out to help people share with their friends rather than buying things new. On yerdle, friends post items they're willing to give away or loan, search for items they're looking to get, and nab the thi...

I saw Oblivion on a Tuesday night, and by Wednesday afternoon I was still mulling it over in my head, trying to put together some of the pieces. It's a sci-fi movie with a bit of action thrown in, and there's a major plot twist that complicates the entire movie. After talking the film over with some friends, I understand it enough now to write this review (hopefully!) and to also give my opinion on the movie - I got the gist of the film, but there's some details that are hard to figure out throughout it. Earth, 2077. After a long war with the "scavs" (scavengers), the humans won, but destroyed Earth in the process - it is a shell of what it used to be. All of the humans now live on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, except for Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, also in Disconnect ), who monitor the drones that patrol the Earth looking for scavs. Jack is in charge of fixing these drones, and Victoria speaks with Sally (Melissa Leo) while he is ...

I had a feeling that Disconnect was going to be similar to 2010's Trust , a movie about online predators that was partially filmed in Michigan, and it is, although the type of predators is different in each - the one bad guy in Trust is a sexual predator preying on young girls online, and in Disconnect , we get a variety of predators. The movie follows three stories that interconnect, and although each one is different, any of them could happen in real life. Story #1, the main story of the film, follows two teenage punks as they pull tricks on people. They go to a mall and urinate in a used sports drink bottle, and then go to a gym and put the bottle in the fridge where drinks are sold, and watch to see who falls victim to their malicious prank. Ben Boyd (Jonah Bobo, the kid from Crazy Stupid Love ) sees them do this and the boys don't like that; they look Ben up on Facebook and find that he goes to their school, and is a bit of a loner, so they decide to make up a female ...

So now that we know what Sweet Relish is, and what you can use it for, let's jump in to week two of four of this series. As you may or may not know, I am not a fan of scary movies. Suspenseful movies, I can handle - movies like The Shining , which brings the crazy but doesn't have as much gore - but "slice and dice" movies are not my thing. Using Sweet Relish, I made a list called "Scary movies for people afraid of scary movies," and I chose six movies that popped into my mind for the list. They are: The Shining.  Both the book and movie were fantastic, and Jack Nicholson is utterly creepy as a writer who goes insane while living as a hotel caretaker with his family in a remote location. I first watched it when I was 16, at a birthday party, and may have had few nightmares; however, I return back to the movie because it's so good. The Sixth Sense . Maybe you got the twist ending, but I didn't, until the very end. And the girl ghost hiding ...

I didn't know much about Jackie Robinson before viewing 42 , other than that he was the first African-American to play in major league baseball. Although the movie chooses to focus only on the beginning of his baseball career, and fills in a bit about the time period immediately before that, you still learn quite a bit about his career, even though I would not have minded learning more about his post-baseball life as well. Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) is a baseball player who is trying to make the Montreal Royals team, managed by Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), who is also the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Branch has been thinking about adding an African-American player to the Dodgers, and once Jackie makes the Montreal team, he is soon after offered a spot on the Dodgers. Rickey warns Jackie that there will be a lot of backlash, and he's right; in one particularly hard to watch scene, Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk), with the Phillies, calls him the n-word over a...

The director of Starbuck , Ken Scott, is remaking the film in English with an American cast, which I found to be interesting because I had never heard of a director remaking his own film before. That movie, called The Delivery Man , will be out this October and stars Vince Vaughn as the main character, with Chris Pratt and Cobie Smulders in supporting roles. This version, however, is French with English subtitles, although the characters live in Montreal (not France), and was actually very funny; the American version has big shoes to fill if it is to be as good as this version. David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) works as a meat delivery man, and has a kinda/sorta girlfriend - they date, but he hasn't seen her in a while. One day, when he shows up at her doorstep with flowers at 3 AM (his idea of a romantic gesture), she tells him that she's pregnant, but that she will raise the baby herself. He decides to change his bachelor ways so that he will be a good father, but soon he fi...

Sweet Relish  is a website where you can keep a list of things you "relish" - aka, things you like - and make lists based on any categories or themes that you like. Imagine that every time you clicked the "like" button on Facebook, you could categorize whatever you "liked" into a list with a name of your choosing - that's what Sweet Relish is, in a nutshell. For the purposes of these posts, I made my lists movie and entertainment-oriented, but I could also see Sweet Relish being used for clothing or event ideas. The site seems similar to Pinterest to me (although Pinterest is pretty much the one  social media site I haven't signed up for), but it's rather fun "relishing" items and then seeing your completed list after. The BIG difference is that anything you see on the site that people have "relished" comes from another site - i.e., I mostly used Amazon for these lists - so you can click and buy that item if you so choose,...

Is it bad when a 20-year-old movie manages to entertain you more than most of the films you've seen in the theater in the past five to ten years? That's what I was wondering as I left the screening of Jurassic Park 3D. The movie is celebrating its twenty-year anniversary, and I was six when it was in theaters - needless to say, I didn't see it on the big screen. I think at one point I saw it on VHS, and also its sequel, but I'm not sure if I saw JP III ; also, there will be a JP IV released in theaters next year. So we know the movie is worth seeing again, and definitely in theaters - but what about its 3D? For the uninitiated: according to IMDb, the movie occurs "During a preview tour," when "a theme park suffers a major power breakdown that allows its cloned dinosaur exhibits to run amok." That's the polite way of putting it, I suppose; perhaps they should have added that the park founder should not have let his grandkids test out the exh...