Movies...
Despite having my Mom in residence this weekend*, we were more than usually pinned down**... so we attempted to watch a few movies.
Definitely, Maybe - Romantic Comedy as I see generally see them, amusing, unoffensive, killed 90 minutes... and almost certainly forgotten in 90 days or less. The upshot was Isla Fisher, who first got my attention as the crazy sister in Wedding Crashers... she could get on the list, but there is this weird familiarity with Madeline Kahn, who, for whatever reason is actually negatively attractive to me...
Be Kind, Rewind - As much as I am curious about a movie starring Jack Black and Mos Def... this just didn't take off. Lots of weird before the story even started, so we quit it. The tag line "A man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films," is PROBABLY not acurate, nothing in the first twenty minutes establishes this on any level except the existence of the video store. That annoyed me... trying to bill moderately funny romances as romantic comedy... trying to bill action movies as dramas... I don't like marketing between me and the director.
Chaos Theory - More Ryan Reynolds flashbacks in the same weekend? No thank you, no. I didn't like the polarity of the characters, they didn't seem reasonably real, even though the movie wasn't "zany" enough for them to have been that unrealistic. We abandonded this one after 20 minutes also.
The Oxford Murders was the winner this week. Spanish film, and by that I mean in the credits it says "director" instead of director... Delightfully for this spoiled American, the movie stars American and British actors, is set in England, and has completely English dialog. Elijah Wood and John Hurt DELIVER... best talking movie I've seen in years. Very smart, and anti-hollywood in their refusal to hold your hand, be smart or don't get it. Some translation occurs when the brains have to talk down to a well placed ordinary thinker in the police Inspector Peterson played comfortably by Jim Carter.
Overall QUITE fantastic... with some pretty sexy twists (in script and in slang, assisted amply by Leonor Watling) in there as well...
and Torchwood's Burn Gorman as a russian...
* More on that to follow.
** More on that to follow also.
Definitely, Maybe - Romantic Comedy as I see generally see them, amusing, unoffensive, killed 90 minutes... and almost certainly forgotten in 90 days or less. The upshot was Isla Fisher, who first got my attention as the crazy sister in Wedding Crashers... she could get on the list, but there is this weird familiarity with Madeline Kahn, who, for whatever reason is actually negatively attractive to me...
Be Kind, Rewind - As much as I am curious about a movie starring Jack Black and Mos Def... this just didn't take off. Lots of weird before the story even started, so we quit it. The tag line "A man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films," is PROBABLY not acurate, nothing in the first twenty minutes establishes this on any level except the existence of the video store. That annoyed me... trying to bill moderately funny romances as romantic comedy... trying to bill action movies as dramas... I don't like marketing between me and the director.
Chaos Theory - More Ryan Reynolds flashbacks in the same weekend? No thank you, no. I didn't like the polarity of the characters, they didn't seem reasonably real, even though the movie wasn't "zany" enough for them to have been that unrealistic. We abandonded this one after 20 minutes also.
The Oxford Murders was the winner this week. Spanish film, and by that I mean in the credits it says "director" instead of director... Delightfully for this spoiled American, the movie stars American and British actors, is set in England, and has completely English dialog. Elijah Wood and John Hurt DELIVER... best talking movie I've seen in years. Very smart, and anti-hollywood in their refusal to hold your hand, be smart or don't get it. Some translation occurs when the brains have to talk down to a well placed ordinary thinker in the police Inspector Peterson played comfortably by Jim Carter.
Overall QUITE fantastic... with some pretty sexy twists (in script and in slang, assisted amply by Leonor Watling) in there as well...
and Torchwood's Burn Gorman as a russian...
* More on that to follow.
** More on that to follow also.