Saturday, June 26, 2010

Northglenn Auto Repair

I like to make recommendations in this blog (after all, it's part of the blog's title) and after taking vehicles to Northglenn Auto Repair several times over the past few years, I can enthusiastically recommend this "full service auto repair shop" to anyone looking for general automobile maintenance and repair.

Most of us are looking for three things when trying to decide where to have our vehicles serviced: knowledgeable/skilled mechanics, honesty, and convenience/timeliness. My wife and I and friends of ours who have also taken vehicles to Northglenn Auto Repair agree that we have found all three of these positive attributes there.

We have appreciated the timeliness and convenience of Northglenn Auto Repair, but have been especially impressed with the work done there and with the honesty we've experienced in our dealings with them. We have felt like the only work done has been work that needed to be done and it has been done correctly. We even had one experience where we were told that a particular service did not need to be performed. In tight economic times like we're currently living in, it's more important than ever to not spend money on unnecessary services.

Here is Northglenn Auto Repair's location and contact information:

Northglenn Auto Repair
10650 Irma Drive, #18
1901 Leroy, Unit A
Northglenn, CO 80233
Telephone: 303-452-1512
http://www.northglennauto.com/

A skilled and fair mechanic is something I have found is best discovered via word of mouth and via reputation among previous/current customers. I recommend Northglenn Auto Repair for anyone in the Denver metro area looking for a good general auto repair shop.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

The Dish: An Underappreciated Movie

Some of my favorite movies are the favorites of many other people as well and are very well-known: The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Men in Black, Fletch, Sherlock Holmes, Groundhog Day, Uncle Buck, Ocean's Eleven (2001), The Italian Job (2003), Toy Story, The Sixth Sense, North by Northwest, Batman Begins, Ironman, The Princess Bride, The Shawshank Redemption, and so on. However, every once in a while I enjoy that rare pleasure of seeing a movie that I've never heard of that takes me by surprise and becomes one of my favorites despite it's not being well known. Such was the case when I took a chance on The Dish on NetFlix (NetFlix currently streams it as well). I ended up purchasing it on DVD immediately afterward because I liked it so much.

There are many things to like about The Dish. It provides that rare mix of "effortless" humor (Amazon.com editorial review), inspiration, interesting story, historical interest, and is just plain entertaining. It's one of those movies I like to watch when nothing else sounds good. It's not as fast-paced as movies like Ironman nor as humor-laden as Fletch, Men in Black, or Uncle Buck, but it is really faster-paced than one might expect when hearing about the story and has enough humor to make one smile and even laugh throughout. In fact, I had to watch it two or three times to catch all the humor. It is not really a suspenseful movie, but it does have its moments of suspense.

The current Internet Movie Database rating for The Dish (7.1/10 on 8528 votes) describes my experience with this movie. A relatively small number of people have seen it, but it is widely popular among those who have. For comparison, Avatar currently has an 8.4/10 rating on nearly 242 thousand votes and The Empire Strikes Back has a rating of 8.8/10 on nearly 270 thousand votes.

This Australian-produced movie had a U.S. box office gross of a little over $2 million. Contrast this with The Empire Strikes Back's nearly $300 million U.S. take and Avatar's $700 million+ take. Even The Princess Bride, which seemed to take on a cult following after its run in the theaters, pulled in nearly $27 million in the U.S.

Even the critics like The Dish, which earned a relatively rare 96% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer. I sometimes like movies the critics generally pan and sometimes dislike movies that critics all rave about, but I am in agreement with the consensus of the critics on the Tomatometer about "The Dish." Only 126 reviewers have currently rated The Dish on Amazon.com, but the cumulative rating is well above 4 stars out of five.

"The Dish" is one of those movies that puts me in a better mood after I have finished watching it than I was in when I started watching it.