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Last night was one of those rare occasions that the Jim and I had the same thought at the same time. “Wanna go see Julie & Julia?” “Seriously?! I was thinking that too!” We’re both fans of good food, and we both enjoy a movie that might be an interesting flick. Sadly, we had like NO TIME before the movie to grab a bite to eat so we ended up eating at the sad, but fast Shoney’s down the street. Then we rushed to the movie theatre only to find out that the parking garage shut down like half their parking spaces for “painting”…only issue – last night downtown was a BUZZ…it was First Friday folks!
So we ended up paying $5.00 for parking nearby and then ran to catch the film. To our delight, it was a good movie. A very good movie…mostly thanks to performances by Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, with great turns by Jane Lynch and the always sweet, Amy Adams. Essentially the film follows Julia Child and her work to become a chef and then co-craft one of the premier Cookbooks in existence “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”; it cuts between her life journeys, and the journeys of Amy Adam’s character, a worker dealing with people who have suffered from the 9-11 tragedy and her decision to take 1 year to blog her way through tackling all the recipes in the aforementioned cookbook. While I enjoyed the journey of Julia Child more, I suppose it was primarily because sadly the Julia character has a lot of elements that remind me of my life. You’d have to see it and know me real well to understand (the husband was commenting during the film regarding the similarities).
The one thing that really stands out is the glorious delights of French cuisine. It was lush and lovely and makes anyone who likes to cook at all ready to run out and buy the cookbook so I can finally learn how to make a burre blanc. It made both of us sad that we ate dinner at a Shoney’s. If you enjoy character studies, life journeys, and rich food…you might like this movie. Meryl nails Julia Child in many aspects and I lost track a couple of times that I was watching Ms. Streep.
So, if you want to see a nice little film…and then run out to your local Brasserie – check it out! *** stars out of 4.
So, we’ve already seen a number of the big summer movies so far…here’s the brief-est review I’ve ever done on them.
STAR TREK – I liked it a whole lot, and the Jim was not so enthused about it. I felt it made the Spock character so much more alluring; the Jim thought it took all the cerebral content out of the Star Trek mythos. I thought it was a good summer movie, lots of explosions, good characterizations and fun…but perhaps a tad mindless. *** out of 4 Stars.
TERMINATOR SALVATION – It was…okay. I must admit, I’ve only ever seen T2 and that is it. I know the story arc though, so I figured it would be easy to manage. The two things that stick with me from this film is how relentless the Terminators are and how depressing the future appears. Again, the Jim was far from enthused. It appears his suspension of disbelief isn’t as strong these days. ** out of 4 Stars.
ANGELS & DEMONS – I liked it! I was surprised. It was a good story if not a bit of a stretch. The visuals were great, the art awesome, the movie made me want to go to Europe big time. Now there was a slashy-slashy bit that I wasn’t into, but over all it was an enjoyable little mystery chase movie. The Jim actually LIKED this one, mostly because the plot took some directions he wasn’t expecting and he liked that. *** out of 4 Stars.
This week brings us UP and I can’t wait to see that. Chime in…what Summer Movies are ones NO ONE should miss?
Somehow I managed to get a gaggle of good friends together today to go see the new animated 3D extravaganza that is Coraline. I was surprised at the reviews – solid 87 on Rotten Tomato, and my film guru, Ebert liked it but thought the subject matter and movie was a little less than kid friendly. It’s definitely a good tale for kids to digest. It’s essentially about the lack of luster behind the belief that the grass is already greener on any side than the side you live on. It makes me think of some specific people in my life who seem to believe that life is a smorgasbord and people are expendable as long as life seems more golden wherever you decide to be…but I digress. The real-D was stunning and not at all full of the trite 3-D surprises that every other movie appear to be about. The story is taken from Neil Gaiman, whom is brilliant. It is a dark story, but a valuable lesson in working to make your “life” something wonderful once you realize that you’re responsible for making that life happen, not that life is always “done to you”. I don’t want to get preachy, so I’m not. While no children appeared to be freaked out significantly in the theatre, I’d recommend it to any parent/child that can glean more understanding from the heart of this story. Plus the main character has blue hair, and that’s just cool. Oh, and great performances by my favorite duo, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French…oh and the one funny moment is when I said “OH NO!” because I mistook that Keith David provided voice talent for the film not David Keith. Ha. ***1/2 Stars out of 4
In a few words: behold the power of ABBA.
Movie Poster from Rotten Tomatoes
I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride with two genuinely funny and sassy lasses yesterday, Mrs. A & a newbie my sphere of knowledge, Ms. H, to see the new from stage to screen musical: Mamma Mia! If for some reason, you’ve been living under a rock for a the last 10 years or so, Mamma Mia! is a musical completely built around the music of Swedish super-group ABBA. It puts to use familiar tunes that I grew up with, songs I sadly know all the lyrics to, and weaves them through a tale of a wedding, 3 potential father’s of the bride and a mother/daughter relationship. While that last description makes it sound a lot more noble, the reality of this musical is…put on your CAMPIEST SENSIBILITY and leave your delusions of grandeur at the door. It’s a silly, goofy romp that is fun if you allow it to be.
A couple of points of interest: first of all, it appears it may be the contender for the highest grossing movie musical opening ever (slightly beating out Hairspray – which I actually liked a lot better). I have to imagine that the appeal of this film rests solidly around the often fanatical devotion to the 4 members of ABBA and the music they gave us. ABBA apparently has such world-wide power and devotion, that I don’t know why they haven’t considered signing up to work on the whole world peace issue. I can’t imagine the throngs of thousands were in theatre seats to hear Meryl Streep or (god help us), Pierce Brosnan sing. I probably would have lived a happier life not ever hearing Pierce attempt to sing…it’s not horrible, but I find him a lot more appealing without song stylings or spandex (that comes later in the film).
There are a few moments that I laughed out loud, simply at the silliness factor. There is a “Greek chorus” of locals who keep showing up to provide backing vocals at every scene and it made me realize how happy I am to not live in a “musical” myself. I’m not okay with a huge proportion of on-lookers following me a round and adding commentary via tune. Additionally, the acting is WAY over the top, and there was no showing of “Fernando” (ABBA reference), at which I was sad because god knows Chiquitita had a showing. The location of the film is stunning, and makes you want to live a care-free life on the Greek isles putting up with a Greek chorus if need be just for the blue water. The singing is…interesting…I’ve already commented on some of them and funnily, my crush-factor (Colin Firth), sadly sounds like he could provide voice talent work for a Muppet. There’s even some cameos from ABBA members…but I’m not going to give it all away here.
This movie will NOT change your life, but it will provide some nice escapism and a chance to mumble ABBA tunes for the next few days or weeks. If you’re not an ABBA fan, or a fan of the movie musical genre…stay far far away. If the Jim for some reason had gone to this film, I’d have been removing pencils from his ears that he stabbed himself with. While he’s put up with a number of movie musicals I’ve enjoyed, this I think would kill him. IN the meantime, if you like musicals…if you like ABBA…then go and face this Waterloo.
** Stars out of 4.
In a few words, it was visually amazing but a little overly syrupy.
Movie Picture from RottenTomatoes.com...Thanks!
The Jim and I are recent converts to the film character Hellboy. We only saw HellBoy 1 about a month or so ago and really liked it. The concept was funny/interesting, the makeup and visual effects fun, and the characters somewhat were endearing. The second installment actually takes that endearing characteristic and mixes it with saccharin making you leave with what I felt was the beginning of diabetes. Seriously. A darker concept that has so much potential to me, lost a couple of points due to some overly drawn out sappy scenes of “falling in/being in love”. I’m not going to ruin it here but let me just say, you’ll be so sick of Barry Manilow by the end of the movie. Seriously.
The good points were that Ron Perlman still does a bang-up job as the main character, such a good departure from his “Beast” days. I like Selma Blair as Liz. I miss David Hyde Pierce’s voice-over work for Abe Sapien. The visuals, however were cranked up a notch. Del Toro’s (not the cutie Benicio), directorial budget must have seriously gone up thanks in part to the critical acclaim of Pan’s Labyrinth and there was so much CGI (done well, I might add), that the art direction and animation budget might make someone think that we’re not really in a recession these days. Oh and this movie’s spin on the Tooth Fairy concept is…um…wow.
Our feelings are, that if you like the HellBoy world…you might like it, but you’ll probably be annoyed slightly. If you have no idea who HellBoy is…you might like it a bit more but you might be lost in the shuffle at times. Either way, it’s a decent summer movie and worth a matinee price to be entertained by the Big Red boy and his band of BPRD folks.
Okay, so it sounds more elaborate than it really is right? This is our little slice of internet nonsense, which basically is our on-going effort to keep our friends and family up-to-date on our lives, our love and our continuing pursuit of pomegranates. In this modern age of movement, we’ve realized that distance is not an excuse to not keep everyone posted, so please - stop by anytime - in person or internet-ly and know that you are all never far from our thoughts.
