Movies
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Outsourced & Zatar
Last Saturday, while I was all grumpy and crisis-of-faithy after picking up the newspaper at breakfast (note to self, funnies only from now on), we decided it would be fun to go to Berkeley to see a nice romantic comedy. You know what? It was! We went to see Outsourced, which isn’t playing yet out in the ‘burbs, hence the driving in to Berkeley. Outsourced is the story of Todd (aka, Mr. Toad), a call-center manager in Seattle who learns that his call center is going to be closed down, and he must go to India to get the new call-center up and running, as well as to train his…
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On a wire between will and what will be
Have you ever woken up on a Saturday morning with visions in your head, scenes that tell you exactly how you’ll be spending your afternoon? You lay there, eyes not yet open, and you see a middle aged fat man, dancing in a bunny suit at a Halloween party. You hear the sleazy strip club owner call the failed comic in the alligator suit, “Izod”. You hear Alex calling for her elderly friend…”Hannah…Hannah…”, then the capable older woman bluntly says, “She died….yesterday.” Then you see Alex smoking cigarettes and picking at the threads in the holes of her 501s while Kim Carnes sings “I’ll be here where the heart is”,…
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Sunday in France
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8raqLzb3rQ[/youtube] This last Sunday, Maya went to spend the day with her BFF, leaving Ted and me on our own. I love Maya so much, and so much of being a parent defines me, that I sometimes wonder what we will do when she has grown up and moved away…days like Sunday remind me…we were fine before we had her, we’ll be fine when she is in college, or married, whatever. Days when we can go and see a movie that we want to see, without worrying whether it’s appropriate for a child or not…dinners at restaurants where we don’t need to think about kid conversation…which no wonder how wonderful…
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Retail Therapy
Monday night, home from SF early, but not yet on our way to Tahoe, I decided to watch the third movie in what I like to call the neuroses trilogy, Going Shopping. The director, Henry Jaglom, has made two other films using very similar style…a storyline that outlines the neuroses affecting some women, interspersed with little snippets of women telling their real feelings on the matter, with much more honesty than you would likely see in real life. The first film in this ‘trilogy’ was Eating, which came out in 1990. I remember liking that film quite a bit, and thinking that the women in it were all pretty much…
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Notorious
“Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up.†That’s a quote from this book, and it came to mind the other night when I watched an old Alfred Hitchcock classic, Notorious, which stars Cary Grant (though not Jimmy Stewart) and Ingrid Bergman. I would have to say that Notorious was DE-LI-CIOUS. I’m not sure how this film came to be in our Netflix queue, but I’m glad it did. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, in 1946. Cary Grant plays Devlin, a U.S. govt. agent who recruits Alicia to fly to Rio and…
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The House of Mirth – Film Version
A few months ago, I read The House of Mirth as part of my Winter Classics Reading Challenge. I heard good things about the film, so I added it to my netflix queue. You all know how it is with the queue, right? Things keep getting pushed up top, so something you intended to watch soon gets watched rather later than you had thought. I thought I would watch The House of Mirth soonish after reading the book, but things like Big Love got in the way. Anyway, it finally came last week, and while Maya and Ted washed the dog and had a swim on Sunday, I watched the…
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Six Degrees of….nothing really
I was watching Sex and the City the other night, and I was remembering the first time I saw Kristin Davis, aka Charlotte York…which would be on Melrose Place, where she played the ill-fated and psychotic Brooke, who married Billy, who was played by Andrew Shue, who was the brother of Elizabeth Shue, who was pretty darned good in Adventures in Babysitting and Leaving Las Vegas, which are two movies that are about as different as they could possibly be. But I first saw her in one of the lamest movies EVER, Cocktail, in which she played Tom Cruise’s idiot girlfriend/wife. Idiot because she loves Tom Cruise, really, who I…
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Miscellany
OK, first things first. Chrissy, Scarlett, and Curiosity Killer have all decided that I’m a Rockin’ Girl Blogger! Tres cool! I think that I am now supposed to pick 5 rockin’ girl bloggers, and nominate them myself. Or award them, to be more precise with my language skills. But here’s the rub…how do I decide, from my many female blogging friends, which ones are rockin’ girl bloggers? How do I say to some, ‘hey, you’re a rockin’ girl blogger’, and not others, who are equally rockin’ in my book? So I’m breaking the rules. No paying this one forward. I suck like that. But you know what? If you are…
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Thirteen Movie Previews I Have Recently Seen
Maya and I went to see the new Shrek movie last Friday. My review? Yawn. I would have preferred to be at home watching a DVD of 90210 or something. Which just goes to show that everyone has their own source of stupid. Really, I’m tired of kids films. I’m glad Maya is 11, and is outgrowing most of this genre. For the most part, they’re simplistic and cloying, or sassy and full of gross-out humor. I’m tired of it, and kinda prefer films with actual dialoge and a plot. Call me crazy. While waiting for the film to start we saw 8, count them, 8 movie previews. Wow. There…
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Earth
I finally watched Earth the other night. If you haven’t seen this film yet, it is the story of the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947, at the end of British rule there. The story takes place in Lahore, in the Punjab region of India, where many cultures come together. The picture above is of Lenny, the little girl who tells the story. The woman next to her is her ayah, or nurse. The men are the ayah’s admirers, and they include Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. They are a group of friends who all get along very well, until the divisive power of partition takes them over, and…
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The Namesake (A Joint Review, with Py and J)
The Namesake Saturday morning found Maya selling Girl Scout cookies…and, like always, a Girl Scout event for Maya means free babysitting for us! So, we took advantage of the opportunity to go see a film that Ted has been wanting to see, The Namesake. The Namesake is based on a book by Jhumpa Lahiri. I’ve read some of her short stories before, but I have not yet read the novel, so I came into the film not really knowing what to expect. We’ve decided it might be fun to put together a dual post, with a sort of, He Said, She Said quality to it, so you can read both…
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…
Friday night, we watched “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid“. This is a classic in American Film, everyone loves it, best movie ever, blah blah blah. Want my review? Snore. The writing was excellent, actually, and hints at the genius that is William Goldman, he of “The Princess Bride” fame. The acting was great, the actors were all great to look at. Should have been good. But really, what I got from it was that these guys are thieves, who have no problem shooting everything and everyone up to get what they want, which is money. They’re criminals, and we’re supposed to sympathize with them because they are handsome and…
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Thursday Quiz
OK, because I am driving on a fieldtrip today, and don’t have much time, here you go…. a quiz… What, in your opinion, is the dumbest movie EVER, and I’m mostly hoping for detailed answers to WHY, in option D. A. Cocktail – my reasoning, because any film with a justification for infidelity like “when a man dares you, you can’t say no” (or whatever the actual quote is) is a DUMB film. B. Showgirls – I’ve never actually SEEN this one, but I’ve heard it’s TERRIBLE…almost, “So bad, it’s good”. C. Boxing Helena – Julian Sands was actually pretty groovy in “A Room With A View”, but in this film…
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Notes on a Scandal
Saturday, Maya went to a sleepover birthday party at her best friend Jackie’s house. Ted and I took the opportunity (free babysitting! Is it called that when your baby is almost 11?) to go see a rated ‘R’ film, with dialogue, sex, and intrigue. Specifically, we saw “Notes on a Scandal“, with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. I’ve got one word for you…Oscar. (Both are nominated, Dench for leading roll, Cate for supporting) Judi Dench gives a chilling performance as a British schoolteacher (Barbara), who befriends the new art teacher, Sheba (played by Blanchett), and becomes obsessed with her.  Barbara witnesses a tryst between Sheba and a 15 year old pupil, and they…
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Little Children
Yesterday, Maya went back to school after two weeks off for winter break. I took one last day of vacation, and Ted had the day off as well, so we decided to go see an adult film (no, not THAT kind of movie!), meaning one with adult themes, an actual dialog, some sex and some very disturbing issues. We went to see Little Children, which is based on the novel by Tom Perotta, who also wrote the novel on which the wicked Election was based. Little Children is mainly the story of two characters, Sarah and Brad. Sarah (Kate Winslet) is the mother of a young girl, Lucy, and is…