Ciao Bella, Bloomington

Rating: B

We went for dinner here after recommending it to a friend (he had guests from out of town, wanted a nice place that wasn't real expensive to take them for dinner). We'd never actually eaten here, but always heard from others that it was a good place to eat if you like Italian.

We were a party of seven, adults and children. We ordered pizzas, pasta and Maryanne and I had steaks.

Everyone's food was great, no complaints about taste or quantity and such. Except for mine. Maryanne and I ordered the same steak cooked the same way. Her's was cooked near perfect, mine was very underdone.

To the restaurants credit though, they asked if I wanted this one refired or if I wanted a replacement (I choose to refire). They took it off the bill and gave us free desserts on top of that. Everyone apologized, some repeatedly, about my steak being undercooked and they also apologized for me not being able to eat with my party and ruining the flow of our dinner.

Many points in the positive for that.

I give it a B rating not because of my steak problem, but because of the overall atmosphere and pricing. Prices seemed high for the bit of food you got, and the food itself was not bad or exceptional, just good. The same "good" that I would get at most other places for a lower price. Maryanne had the same thoughts, the kids just said it was good pizza. The pasta's were apparently pretty good, getting thumbs-up and such.

Still, expect to pay a lot when you eat here. Don't be afraid to flag down a server when you need a drink refill or you might not get one (we ordered a bottle of wine, three of us finished it off and were not offered any other beverages the rest of the evening), and please don't go here looking for exceptional 5-star food. You will get at least 4-star service for the most part, and the food is at least Good. Your wallet will take a hit though.

Review posted late due to ISP issues. Actually dining experience was 7/23/09, evening.

Transformers: Revenge of the fallen

Our Rating: Wait

We saw this opening weekend, so the theater was almost packed. That wasn't an issue as we kinda like having more than just a few people in theater because the movie tends to be a bit more enjoyable (crowd reactions, etc.).

That said, we should've waited for the DVD and rented it. The movie moved terribly quick from cut to cut, sometimes seeming as though it was cutting to unrelated scenes just to make the cut. Overall the beginning of the movie was slow much like the last one, and things ended much too quickly to get that real sense of accomplishment, etc.

The fights were pretty good, and the graphics/CGI worked as well as they did in the first, but still we came out of the theater trying to figure out what the movie was about. Instead of saving the world from the Bad Guys, they... saved the world from the Bad Guys. Provided that is the point, but it was a bit difficult to figure out how this movie differed from teh first. They had different plots and stories, but it ended up being much of the same.

Some of it didn't make sense, such as where one bot gives his life to provide his power and parts to another so taht he'd know a power he'd never known before... and then ended up still almost losing with no real change in the fight that we could see.

Basically, it was anti-climax after anti-climax, with a few let-downs inbetween throughout the whole story. And again they spent a lot of time on the humans in the story instead of the alien bots the movie is named after.

All in all we were a bit disappointed. Maryanne commented that she needed to watch the first movie again so that this would make some sense, so we ended up buying a used copy of the DVD from a video rental store (4 dollars!) and watched it. Apparently that didn't help as Maryanne had more questions about this movie after the first one again. Things just didn't quite make sense to her, and I had a similar thought myself.

Wait for the DVD, watch it at home. You aren't missing much.

This review is posted late due to ISP issues.