Movies
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Friday Randomness
Happy Friday everyone. I went to the grocery store today and got Gen a HUGE chewie thing, which you can see her enjoying in this picture. Had to snap a shot, since she looked so funny with her butt up in the air and her face down on the ground. She loved it. Hope we don’t pay for it later. She has a very sensitive tummy. Tomorrow I’m going with Maya’s scout troop to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a place I’ll take over Disneyland any day of the week. The rides aren’t as good maybe, but it’s not NEARLY as crowded, it’s tons cheaper, it’s right there on the beach,…
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Babies
(Photos from film website. Click to enlarge. They’re gorgeous.) Thomas Balmes is a French documentary filmmaker, and in Babies, he brings us a nature film about, well, babies. The only dialog is that between the members of the various families in the film, and most of it we can’t understand, either because it is in foreign languages, sans subtitles, or because the voices are low. Because the families surrounding the babies are not the point of this film, except perhaps in that they all love their babies dearly. No, the point of the film seems to be how similar babies around the world are, whether they are being raised in…
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Date Night
Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a couple that truly love each other, but are a bit worn out by life. Especially the kids in life, followed by the jobs in life, then the daily chores in life…life is wearing them out. They still make some effort, though, going out for a weekly ‘date night’ at their local steak house, where they enjoy spending a bit of time together, and laughing at their made up scenarios of the other couples around the restaurant. These glimpses into their marriage show genuine affection, almost drowned by daily life. When they find out that their friends, who have sex…
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The unnamed narrator of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is a writer, who has recently moved into a Manhattan Brownstone inhabited by a cast of characters, most prominently Holly Golightly, who lives below him. Holly nicknames him ‘Fred’, after her brother, who is away in the army. Fred is a writer who can’t publish what he writes. Holly is a lonely party girl, who makes her money by spending her time with wealthy men who give her $50 every time she has to go to the powder room in a fancy restaurant. As the story takes place in the 1940’s, $50 was a lot of money. The average employee in 1949 brought…
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
I read the novel version of The Time Traveler’s Wife a few years ago, and I loved it. It was really well done. This weekend, we finally got around to going to see the film version, and I loved it too, just not quite as much. I think that happens most of the time with books that are turned into films. So much of the story has to be left out when you change the medium, it’s rare to find a film version that really works. And I would say, this one did. The premise of the story is that Henry has a genetic disorder that causes him to travel…
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Friday Randomness
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNB4epGxK8[/youtube] First off, go see Ponyo. Right now. I’ll wait here. Seriously, we went to see it on Wednesday evening, and we LOVED it. So much that Maya and her friend went to see it on Thursday. And the friend said she now wants to see it again, with her mom. Such a sweet, lovely film. It’s made for perhaps a slightly younger audience than Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, but it’s so charming and delightful, I can’t think of a single age group that won’t enjoy it. That’s two awesome films in one week, and I have to say that I cannot imagine two more different films than Ponyo and District…
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District 9
Ted and Maya are huge science fiction fans, so we went to see District 9 on Friday night. In case you haven’t heard, District 9 is the apartheid tale of a group of aliens who find themselves stranded in Johannesburg for the past 20 years. Humans are afraid of them, so they’ve been sent to live in abhorrent conditions outside of Johannesburg proper, conditions where crime runs rampant, and the aliens learn that humans are not to be trusted in the least. Watching the gangs and violence portrayed by the aliens, and the dismissive racism (speciesism?) portrayed by the humans, is a grim reminder of what humans are capable of. …
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Julie & Julia
Julie and Julia (link is to my review from a few years ago), the book, is a memoir written by New Yorker Julie Powell, who in 2002 found herself coming up on the big 3-0 in the midst of serious career angst. Her aspirations of becoming a writer were not panning out for her, and she found herself in that horrible quadrant of the work spectrum that I like to call, bored and stressed. She had an emotionally stressful job (talking to people about the memorial for the victims of September 11th…many of the people who called had lost loved ones that day) that was at the same time the…
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(500) Days of Summer
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsD0NpFSADM[/youtube] Do you believe in love? That’s the question at the heart of this sweet romantic comedy. Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a slogan writer at a greeting card company, though in his heart of hearts, he is an under-employed architect. Tom is a firm believer in love, true love, love at first sight, romantic love. Enter Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel, a new assistant at Tom’s work. Summer does not believe in love. She believes in friendship, but thinks that love itself is a social construct, and nothing more. Of course, Tom quickly falls in love with Summer, who while she doesn’t love Tom, is perfectly willing to…
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DVD Review
We recently signed up for Netflix again, after canceling for awhile. I’m not sure how long we’ll keep it, because our queue is pretty darned short at this point, but we have watched a few things. Between the DVDs and the OnDemand, we’re not running out of things to watch. Also, we can watch Netflix films using our XBox Live. Crazy, huh? What I want, though, is a perfect world, where I can download ANY movie or show I want, at any time, and not have to wait for it to be available via. OnDemand or XBox. And I don’t want to have to pay extra for it. I basically…
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Sunshine Cleaning
Rose was on top of her game in High School. Cheerleader dating football hero, she seemed like she had it all. Fast forward a few years, however, and we find her in her mid-30s, still dating that same (now married) football hero, and working as a maid, cleaning houses. This isn’t how she pictured her life, and her desperation and desire to improve her situation radiate from her every pore. Amy Adams is amazing as Rose in Sunshine Cleaning, conveying her determination to somehow make more of her life than cleaning the houses of her old high school rivals. She talks of a possible career in real estate, but when…
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Duplicity & I Love You Man
I’ll admit it, I’m a Julia Roberts fan. She’s not my very favorite actress ever, but I do like her, and when she has a new movie out, I’ll usually go see it. Our local theaters charge $6 for the first showing of the day, so Friday at 11am, I was found with popcorn and diet coke, plopped down in the seat to see the newest Julia Roberts’ film, Duplicity. Claire and Ray are special agents, aka spies, for their respective governments, and when they first meet she plays him and walks away with the secret information. The film takes place 5 years later. They’re both still spies, but now…
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Farewell, Natasha
I was saddend to hear of the skiing accident of Natasha Richardson. It reminded me of when Princess Diana was killed in that car accident. The first reports that were reported to the press said, “She has been in a car accident, and has been injured”, which is right and correct and as is should be, to protect the privacy of the family. This was what we learned before I went to bed that night, and in the morning, I learned that she was dead. Horrible. So Natasha, who I remember first and foremost as Offred from “The Handmaid’s Tale“, was skiing, and fell on a beginners slope, with a…
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He’s Just Not That Into You
A movie taken from a book taken from an episode of Sex and the City (remember when Burger is talking to Miranda about the guy she’s obsessing about, and he says, “He’s just not that into you”, to which Miranda is greatly relieved, because it means she doesn’t have to obsess and try to figure the guy out anymore) doesn’t seem too promising, does it? And yet, there’s a lot of talent lighting up the screen, and at some level, I found myself wondering why. I like all of the actors in the movie, but none of them came off very well. The premise that successful, beautiful women have nothing…
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Friday Five ~ Sucky film version
This one started over on Facebook, where my friend Jeff mentioned being proud that he had never seen Ghost. Which started a discussion of films we’re glad we never saw, which morphed into a discussion of films we wish we could unsee. I like that idea, except for the brainwashing aspect that’s kind of there in the undercurrent… So, here’s my list of 5 films I wish I could unsee. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZTYkmAcsvk[/youtube] 1. Crash. And by this, I mean the 1996 version that most people were smart enough to avoid. I pink puffy heart James Spader, but he should have been smarter and skipped this one entirely. Blurbs are from imdb.…