My mom and I just watched Bridget Jones's Diary in preparation for the sequel, which comes out this weekend. When the movie was over, my mom set off to clean house.

Inspired by the fact that Colin Firth/Mark Darcy/Mr Darcy is adorable and everything that is wonderful, I got out my homework and popped Pride and Prejudice into the DVD player. My mom wandered in with her dustcloth, saw the DVD menu, threw the dustcloth into the air and leapt into the recliner with a surprising agility for someone who's just had a total knee replacement.

"What, you didn't want to do anything, did you?" I said, gesturing to her dustcloth.

"Not for the next five hours, I won't!"

Another triumph for distraction!

I finally saw Spider-man 2 last night. It was very nice, but I was an awful movie-going patron and ended up whispering annoying comments to my companion through the whole thing.

It must be rather awkward to be Mary Jane. I mean, when it comes time to send out the wedding invitations, do you invite Harry* Osborn or Peter Parker? You can't invite both of them, what with Harry wanting to kill Peter and all. Heavens, it's so awkward. What would Miss Manners have to say about superhero-supervillain grudges when it comes to seating at the reception?

Update: I forgot I was going to link to this charming set of recaptioned Spider-man cartoons for your viewing benefit. So now I've done it. [Thanks to Mr B------'s co-worker Melissa]

-----
* Not "Jack", as was believed by some movie-going patrons...

Yet another rollicking season of American Idol is at an end. If you don't want to know who won and have the surprise spoiled for you, then read no further and go scratch out your eyes and plug up your ears, because it's hard to miss.

I think two words defined the evening: Wardrobe Malfunctions. Fantasia's first words on discovering that she'd won the competition were a teary, "I broke my shoe!" - this coming after she'd already broken her necklace.

When they brought the Final 12 back together for one last hurrah, they were all in yellow and white. Yellow! Stevens, this could have been your chance to make my dreams come true! Well... my dream, that is.

Meanwhile, Kelly Clarkson looked like her waist had been covered in bubble wrap before being encased in her dress. Simon Cowell did not need his shirt buttoned down so far and Paula Abdul was accused (by everyone at Rachel's house anyway) of trying to revive her career à la Janet Jackson as the camera managed to find ways to look up her cleavage.

I read A Swiftly Tilting Planet this weekend and decided that Peter Jackson really ought to get in on the Wrinkle in Time action - that the Wrinkle in Time series deserved the same treatment as The Lord of the Rings and that he could probably do it.

All through the Harry Potter Extravaganza last night (Sorcerer's Stone plus deleted scenes plus previews from Prisoner of Azkaban) they showed previews for a made-for-TV Disney miniseries of A Wrinkle in Time that airs on ABC tonight.

Calvin doesn't have red hair. Mrs Murry isn't beautiful enough. Sandy and Dennys have disappeared. I just know that Charles Wallace is going to sound like a normal 5-year-old and be called "Charles." They're going to mess it up. It's going to be rubbish. It's going to be Disneyfied crap. I'm going to watch it.

We managed to initiate at least three new people to the Cult of Clue on Friday, when we had a Clue party complete with costumed attendees. The party was, for some inexplicable reason, hosted by Mrs White. In attendance were Colonel Mustard, The Motorist, Mme Rose, Mrs Peacock, Wadsworth (Rachel), Miss Scarlet (Allison) and Mr Green.

We watched the movie, during which Colonel Mustard was killed with the Brass Monkey in the Family Room for mumbling along with the entire movie. Then we played Clue Master Detective, where Mme Rose uncovered the dastardly plot, and we ate s'mores which had no connection to the movie other than this: s'mores are good.

This week's American Idol theme is the music of Gloria Estefan.

John Stevens, we hardly knew ya. Oh god, this is going to be painful.

Sometimes you wonder what motivates people to go on American Idol. Clearly it is the allure of singing in really large, important venues.

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend with Young Matthew and the Urstodian. It was as good as everyone says it is, which is very. I highly recommend it! It's sweet but at the same time, quite thought-provoking and visually interesting*.

In case anyone wondered and didn't have their Bartlett's on hand, the Alexander Pope poem quoted in the movie is "Eloisa to Abelard".

-----
* My movie reviews are always totally lame and sound like I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about. This is probably because I am. Go see it for yourself.

In a conversation this weekend with a friend who shall remain nameless, it was revealed that he had never seen The Princess Bride.

At first, I didn't believe him. But he insisted. This information slowly sunk into my mind and the top of my head has now healed quite nicely, thank you very much, from when it blew right off.

There are people out there who have never seen The Princess Bride? There are nerds out there who have never seen The Princess Bride? I have been associating with people who haven't seen The Princess Bride?

It is so important to know these important things about the people that you are friends with, so that they won't lead you down the path of the Un-PBed - a path that will only lead to sorrow and eternal damnation!

If you have a friend who is on the wrong path, it is your duty to instill in them the teachings of the One True Film!

Yea, though I walk through the Fire Swamp, lead me not into lightning sand, but deliver me from ROUSes, for thou art the something or other blah blah blah AS YOU WISH.

Justin and I are going to make the epic cinematic masterpiece Srah, The Flying Pig. And when I say Justin and I are going to make it, I mean "Justin mostly ignored me as I went insane planning this horrible horrible movie." Justin is an up-and-coming young director and I'm going to hitch a ride on that star no matter how many times he tries to pry my fingers loose.

The baddie is Richard Simmons in goth makeup, platform shoes and with chartreuse horns that he claims are fuchsia. The title role will be played by Christopher Walken in a diaper - "like Cupid with a pig nose. And a flame thrower."

I also definitely think it should involve a scene with someone's pants being kicked while they're not in them.

"Take that! Hiiiiiii-yah! Hiiiiiiii-yah! Grrrr, take that!"
"Uh... dude? I'm over here."

Would you like to contribute to the monstrosity? Scenes? Characters? Production funding?

Ever since I found out this week's American Idol theme is Elton John, I've been hearing Elton John songs wherever I go. So, thanks to this careful research, I am able to bring you this observation:

Unacceptable songs to sing include Crocodile Rock, Benny & the Jets, Candle in the Wind and Circle of Life. If I hear any of these songs tonight, I will throw up and not vote for you! Yes, even you, John Stevens! If you forgo your birthright ("Daniel") and sing any of those rotten, overplayed songs, you are banished from my favor!

AI prediction for the evening: the group song that they all sing together will be "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."

Update: Stevens, you mustard!!!!!!!!1 At least Camile was even worse than your sucky self!

Dear Stupid Idiot,

Why did you think it was such a bright idea to watch The Silence of the Lambs in the middle of a Sunday afternoon? Far from saving yourself from fear by watching it during daylight, you have now committed yourself to several extra hours of terror wherein you fear moths and transvestites and creepy creepy men and men in general and men in night-vision goggles and visions of serial killers are dancing in your head, which has plenty of dance room because they have already eaten your brain.

This was Clarice's first big shot at practicing her profession. Are they going to try to eat your brain at your summer internship? Are you actually going to get a summer internship in the first place so that your brain can be eaten?

For heaven's sake, Stupid Idiot. You started out the day watching The Prince & Me. The visions dancing in your head could have been a happy-ever-after fairytale where you are in love with the very attractive Prince of Denmark. Instead, your face has been eaten off. WAY TO GO!

Love,
Yourself

P.S. Goddamn Australians! Stealing our god-given right as Americans to swoop in in storybook-style and marry European princes, bumbling backwardly through court etiquette and yet wooing them with our views on democracy and knowledge of good, wholesome farm know-how and our ability to bring the royalty and the common man together! That's our job! He's MINE!

My latest thoughts on American Idol:

1. I didn't realize they told us these things in advance, but according to the AI website, this week's theme is Elton John. Boooo! While I like Elton John and I think people could do interesting things with it, I have heard rumours about a Show Tune week and I am still praying for the Neil Diamond Extravaganza.

2. If America were not smoking crack, the next people eliminated would be:
   1. Camile Velasco
   2. Jon Peter Lewis
   3. Jennifer Hudson
   4. Fantasia Barrino
   5. Diana DeGarmo
   6. John Stevens*
   7. Jasmine Trias
   8. George Huff

   ... leaving Latoya London as the winner. However, I am not particularly attached to my #1 and #2 spots and I would actually be happier if the lovely, happy George came in first.

   Unfortunately, they are indeed smoking crack and in large doses. I would have put Amy Adams between Jasmine and George, but she's out now.

3. William Hung's CD (and bonus DVD!), Inspiration, comes out April 6.

-----
* Even though I recognize that he doesn't really fit in, he does have a great voice and I do love him, so that's why I don't kick him out until this point.

Dear John Stevens,

It is sick sick sick that I can't take my eyes off of you when you're singing and I want you to be singing to me and I get your songs in my head for weeks after your performances.

You are 16 years old and besides, tbone has already laid claim to you. I'm afraid it can never work between us, sweetie, so please stop giving me that entirely inappropriate 16-year-old come-hither look while you sing and making me want to jump into the TV.

Sincerely,
The Demon Dog (No, ha ha, just kidding)
SRAH

Listen, you freaking whores. I grew up watching musicals. Musicals have a lot of sex in them, but like good humour, it appeals to people on different levels. Jokes in Animaniacs were funny on one level to kids and on another to adults. Sex hidden in flowery language is understood by adults and kids just accept the words, sing along, and don't worry about getting it. That's why I didn't realize until about 1999 exactly what Aunt Alicia was training Gigi for. You can't go mindlessly banning one of the best musicals on Earth and the one thing that makes me proud to be an American.

Well, apparently you can, but that is why you are an ass.

[story via Bobbert]

Katie and Sarah
Are once again caught up in
The Haiku Cycle.

7 AM: Barf*.
Rest of the day: Starve instead.
Neither is much fun.

Tea, broth and crackers
Don't provide much sustenance
For poor, sickly srahs.

I watched A New Hope.
Grainy film, Han shot Greedo.
The Special Eds suck.

Attack of the Clones
srah wants the clones to attack
Hayden Christensen.

Oh Princess Leia
Hair all bunnified. You could
Kick your mother's ass.

-----
* Could be replaced with "bjork," thanks to jday...

... in our household anyway.

(During a discussion of the Democratic candidates)
me: The thing about Wes Clark is, he has no political experience.
Dad: Yeah, and he has no professional training of singing.

tbone and I have come to the following agreement:

American Idol is ruining our lives. We were both unhappy this week. We have decided that this is because we wasted most of our evenings by watching American Idol. Then after wasting our evenings in pointless entertainment, we had to either feel guilty about not doing homework during that time or feel tired when we stayed up after AI, doing said homework.

Wouldn't you think that would make me resolve to stop watching the show, because it's interfering with my schoolwork and my happiness? No such luck. It's bonding time with friends and family! Can't give that up!

If you are also dangerously addicted to the show, here are a few links that might interest you...

I've been watching a lot of American Idol lately. And I have come to the same conclusion that I know you all have: srah could totally be on this show.

Srah would kick some ass on this show. Srah has the talent it takes to be Your Next American Idol. Srah will go up there, sing her song*, and blow you out of the park! Srah--

What's that? The point is not to suck? Then why are all of those people going on TV and doing it? Just to embarrass themselves in front of a national audience, without even getting paid for it? Why, that doesn't make any sense!

So much for my dreams, then.

* Which I like to call "The Theme from 'Saved By the Bell' With Added Interpretive Dance and Flaming Batons"

If you are a fan of good movies, you need to see The Theory of the Leisure Class. I don't recommend it because it's a good movie, but because it is so bad that after seeing it, all other movies will look ten times better and you will be able to enjoy a much wider range.

The lead actress (and co-producer) of the film is named Tuesday Knight. When we saw this on the box, we hoped it would at least be a p0rno, but it turns out the acting was too bad to be p0rn. The acting was bad, the dialogue was bad, the plot was bad, and there were millions of plot holes and loose ends... but there was an exploding car!

I hope it was made as a joke, or that the ultimate crappiness was part of the overall message of the film. It is one of those movies that you have to see with a group of friends, alcohol and low expectations. Which we did. And we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, speculating on how much worse it could get.

(Answer: a lot worse. Blowing up a strip mall worse.)

It is terrible terrible terrible and I highly recommend that you run out and rent it today.

Here are the IMDb's top 100 movies - with the ones I've seen in bold. Which of the rest do you recommend?

Did you know that there is a whole other world out there, existing in the same time and space as our own? This is the world of the People Who Think That Pants Should Be Introduced Into The Lord Of The Rings. After seeing these shots from the terrible cartoon version of the movie, I am inclined to agree with them.

"Do not meddle in the pants of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

[via fujikosmurf]

Song in my head: "See My Vest" from The Simpsons
Mental image to accompany song: Mr Burns in grizzly bear underwear

*shudder*
*gag*
*contemplate suicide*

Perhaps you would like to help my sister and me out in the eternal debate:

Which are cuter, Orcs or Uruk-hai?

Wearing: pyjamas
Eating: ice cream
Watching: Pride and Prejudice

I somehow end up watching at least part of Pride and Prejudice every time I'm left home alone. I may be developing a sideburn fixation or something. Now I don't know whether to go for more Jane Austen or more Colin Firth or go a completely different route in my Big Girly Video Fest.

I saw Elf last night with the Pato. I know everyone on earth has already seen it and loved it, but I feel obliged to put my two cents in. It was terribly cute and very funny. I was surprised that a Will Ferrell movie would turn out to be so cute and innocent.

Later, I watched Jesus Christ Superstar* with Mr B------. Having heard so many different versions of the soundtrack, I had quite a different image of the production in my mind. It's now my mission to remake the movie in a style that isn't quite so... 70s.

* Because nothing says "Christmas" like a movie about Jesus' death!

Return of the King was The Book That Wouldn't End. The climax comes, then the book drags on forever, tying up millions of loose ends and telling you what everyone did for the rest of their lives.

Even after taking out an important end sequence, Return of the King was The Movie That Wouldn't End. It was great, but the end was so very long and so very filmed in slow-motion.

I also laughed inappropriately much too often, but that could be me. For example, I couldn't help but giggle every time Gondor's ridiculous helmets came onscreen. And seriously? They all ended up in bed together. What's up with that? I had a lot of other complaints, as a fan of the books and as a fan of watching movies, which is just stupid because it was a great movie and I enjoyed it. All I can think of was how much more I could have liked it. Maybe this will all be solved in the Extended Edition.

Orlando Bloom Legolas was always the most masculine-looking of the elves (which really isn't saying much). Then they ruined him by putting him in some ice-blue getup and putting jewelry on his head. He was also ruined for me earlier in the day when Mr B------ pointed out that all of his lines just state the obvious. At least he got to climb an oliphant.

I'm glad my beloved elf turned out to be totally lame, because my affections were stolen by a Fool of a Took anyway.

I still haven't sat down to watch The Two Towers Extended Version. And I call myself a nerd! A nerd, perhaps, but a nerd in the crazed end-of-semester mode where I am perfectly willing to be distracted ALL the time, but can't in good conscience consciously commit to a four-hour distraction.

In the meantime, I bring you this quote, which I think you should keep in mind whenever reading my blog or interacting with me in meatspace:

"That doesn't make sense to me, but then, you are very small."
- Treebeard

The Real World: Paris is over. Last night's season finale sucked, except for the return of Cheryl to our viewing party, which caused much sarcastic remarking and renewed accusations of sister-loving for Ace. The RealWorlders all remarked, before leaving their boring, boring lives in France to return to their boring, boring lives in the US, on how much they had grown as human beings and how they really appreciated learning about French culture.

Growth? French culture? Were they living the same lives I was watching?? These people spent four months drinking Snapple in a chateau and emerging only to go to English-language bars and plagiarize a guidebook.

What am I going to do with my Tuesday nights now? Who will I look down on and scream at in disgust?

I watched Finding Nemo last night. I loved Bubbles* and the seagulls. I think I have an affection for the stupidest characters in a movie.

You should probably not give too much thought to what this means about my real-life relationships.

* Who I have just discovered was voiced by Stephen Root, which explains everything.

Roro and her sister and brother-in-law and I went to see Love Actually yesterday. I wasn't expecting any more than a chance to stare at Alan Rickman and Colin Firth, and was pleasantly surprised. It's done quite well, actually. It's a lovely movie telling something like ten stories about all of the forms of love. I cried and laughed and laughed through my tears.

I'm not sure why they released a Christmas movie this early in December, but maybe they're hoping it will gain momentum through word of mouth and be big just in time for the holiday season.

Roro, Mr B------ and I went to see The Matrix Revolutions last night. If you haven't heard of it, this is a great comedy that just came out.

Well... maybe it wasn't really intended that way, but I still laughed all the way through. There were several good parts, but the dialogue was crap and the battle scenes were long and nauseating. I think it bothered Robin that I was the only person in the theatre cracking up when people were dying. I did have good company, though.

General: If we detonate that EMP, we'll lose the dock.
Underling: Sir... we've already lost the dock.
Guy in audience: ... DUMMY!

I had a great time, even if I didn't appreciate it on the intended level. I might have been just as happy paying full price, but we went at 5:30 and paid the matinee price, which made it even better. I believe it was totally worth all $6 I paid!

I spent the weekend listening to the soundtrack from Fiddler on the Roof. I keep wondering what the town thought of Motel and Tzeitel getting married.

Did Golde really believe in the dream, or did she just play along so that her daughter would be happy? I suspect that she did believe, because the girls seemed to think that her main concern was finding a wealthy husband ("For Mama, make him rich as a king") and I don't think she'd give up the butcher for a poor tailor without a sewing machine. And yet… why would she believe Tevye?

How about Lazar Wolf? Did he believe in Tevye's dream, or did he see it as an excuse to get Tzeitel out of the marriage? When he saw Tzeitel and Motel together, did he put two and two together?

And the rest of the town… having seen Tzeitel and Motel growing up together, you would think that they would notice something odd was going and suspect that there was more to it than this dream when she suddenly dumped the richest man in town for Motel.

Maybe I'm being fractious and suspicious and putting my 21st century cynicism where it doesn't belong. Most likely.

I haven't done a Real World recap in weeks and weeks. I bet you thought you were safe.

This week, we had two episodes to catch up on, because my cable TV connection was in Germany last week. The first was all about how the roommates dealt with the war in Iraq (pronounced EYE-rack). Different roommates dealt with this in different ways. Ace knelt at his Shrine to the Dubya and announced that everyone in the world should just get along and drink Kentucky bourbon together. Leah felt that we should get Saddam Hussein back for all of the people he killed on September 11th and protect her family in New York from further Iraqi attacks. Ahem. Christina dealt with the situation by making up big words in an attempt to look smart (no surprise there). Simon, the sole non-American, had the only viewpoint that came anywhere near what mine was when I was there in March, but was eventually beaten into silent submission by the others' whines. Chris feared that he would be a victim of anti-American sentiment in France, which I thought was interesting since they don't seem to interact with anyone outside the house.

The second episode was about how Chris doesn't know how to function in normal society and thinks that getting drunk and beating people up while screaming completely unintelligible threats is an acceptable way of behaving. He wonders why no one seems to understand him. I believe, although Robin wants to review the tape, that he described this as being in touch with his "animalicious" tendencies. Next week: Chris beats more people up.

Lost in Translation was really good. Roommate only thought it was "okay", but I quite enjoyed it. It didn't really have a plot, but some movies are about plot and others are about character study, experiences and the development of a relationship.

Bill Murray was great.

I want to go to Japan.

Thanks to smg's Quintessential Burn CD, I have had When You're Good to Mama from Chicago in my head all morning. I can hardly think of someone less appropriate than myself to sing things like,

They say that life is tit for tat
And that's the way I live.
'Cause I deserve a lot of tat
for what I've got to give.

Oh wait, I can think of someone: my old friend Mrs Nobody.

Yes, I am five. Who let me come to work today?

For our first Social Systems & Collections paper, we have to examine the social systems and collections in the TV show The Restaurant. I have discovered, from watching the provided clips over and over again, that what reality TV shows us is that everyone on Earth except me is a friggin' moron.

I'm not sure I want to be a human being anymore. Do you think the bunnies will have me?

It's raining. And when it's raining, I don't feel like being out and about or even like being at work, next to the window. I feel like being curled up in a blanket on the couch, drinking tea and watching Jane Austen movies.

But I'm not. So let's pretend we are and recreate Austen movies in quotes. I am watching Sense & Sensibility in my mind. You may watch it with me, or curl up on your own couch and watch something else.

Edward Ferrars: I wish to check the position of the Nile. My sister tells me it is in South America.
Elinor Dashwood: No! She's quite wrong, for I believe it is in Belgium.
Edward Ferrars: You must be thinking of the Volga.
Margaret Dashwood: The Volga?
Elinor Dashwood: Of course, the Volga! Which, as you know, starts in -
Edward Ferrars: Vladivostock, and ends in -
Elinor Dashwood: Wimbledon.
Edward Ferrars: Precisely. Where the coffee beans come from.
Margaret Dashwood: The source of the Nile is in Abbysinia!

Edward Ferrars: She's heading to China shortly. I'm to go as her servant. But only on the understanding that I am to be very badly treated.

Elinor Dashwood: I do not attempt to deny that I think very highly of him - that I greatly esteem him...I like him.
Marianne Dashwood: Esteem him? Like him? Use those insipid words again and I will leave this room this instant!

Colonel Brandon: The air is full of spices.

Elinor Dashwood: Marianne, you must change or you will catch a cold.
Marianne Dashwood: What care I for colds when there is such a man?
Elinor Dashwood: You will care very much when your nose swells up.
Marianne Dashwood: You are right. Help me, Elinor.

Elinor Dashwood: What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to discuss it with a single soul. Having it forced on me by the very person whose prior claims laid ruin to all my hopes. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.

Edward Ferrars: My heart is, and always will be, yours.

I realize that I never recapped last week's Real World episode for all those of you who are interested. That's probably okay, because all of you are on vacation in Spain. So here's what happened:

Leah and Simon made Mallory buy ugly, uncomfortable shoes. Fight the power, Mallory! Have a little backbone! Support your comfortably-shod sisters! Meanwhile, Adam was interested in this girl based on the very selective criteria that she had a pulse and spoke English. She wasn't interested in him, even though he was spending huge wadges of cash trying to make her love him. He also rapped.

"Adam giggles like a little girl and rocks back and forth on the bed and tries to pretend snuggling with Ace would be funny and not the fulfillment of his life's dream."
- Television Without Pity

Adam: I really like girls who like me, you know.
Robin talking to the TV: Then you must not like any girls at all.

The end.

Thanks again to Social Systems & Collections, I have come to realize that I watch this show a) out of habit and b) because it causes an emotional reaction in me. I just knew I had to keep watching even if I didn't understand why. The cognitive aspect has finally caught up and I've realized that my justification for watching the show is that it makes me feel superior and gives me a chance to see how the stupid side live without actually interacting with stupid people.

This week: the whiners and drama-queens left on a vacation to Nice (pronounced like the adjective, I kid you not), Italy and beyond and CT purposely got himself left behind in the train station so that he would have an excuse to be mad at them all.

What my family enjoys even more than watching the new Star Wars trilogy is watching the new Star Wars trilogy annotated. This is a handy guide to the Star Wars universe narrated by... well, me... in my family room. Today we watched the middle one.

Anakin: I'm sorry, master!
srah: I'm sorry, too! Sorry that you're in this!

Obi-Wan: I hate it when he does that.
srah: Me too, Obi-wan. If by "that" you meant "appear in this movie", that is.

The parents had their own input:

Mummy: Why does he want her dead?
srah: Who?
Mummy: The clone guy.
srah: Jango Fett? He's a bounty hunter.
Mummy: So why is he telling that one to do it?
Daddy: What kind of bounty hunter subcontracts?

(Anakin jumps out of speeder and goes hurtling through space)
Mummy: What is he doing in this? Luke was annoying and whiny, but he was supposed to be whiny. Anakin isn't believable at all, and he isn't even good-looking. They should have cast Heath Ledger.

Perhaps if he had some better dialogue to work with he wouldn't be so embarassingly bad. Give me my original trilogy on DVD! Minus Special Edition changes!

This movie does, however, have one redeeming feature that the others don't. Click below for a special message from the family's official Favorite Star Wars Character.

« hide continuation

I am such a chicken. Movies like What Lies Beneath and Signs scare me out of my wits. They make me so scared that I curl up into a ball and cover my eyes or clutch onto my fellow moviegoers, hoping that they're whoever I came in with and not the stranger on the other side. To some extent, though, these movies are supposed to scare you.

I, on the other hand, have just been freaked out of my mind by The Life of David Gale. The movie is not at all a horror or suspense movie. Robin and I speculated throughout the whole movie but had it figured out by the end. I still covered my eyes and curled up in a ball and had to watch some Trading Spaces before I could leave her house. Once I left, it was with my car keys in my hand, I locked the door as soon as I got in, and I ran from the car into my house. Even safely inside my house, I got scared by shadows. Now I'm barricaded in my room with all of the lights on and will remain that way until I've gotten over it.

I can't explain it. There's really nothing in the movie that should make me feel in danger. But I have to finish typing this because I have my back to the window and that's freaking me out.

G-g-g-g-good night.

If Love Actually—directed by Richard Curtis and out in November—sounds like Notting Hill, Four Weddings, Sliding Doors and Bridget Jones all rolled into one, that's because it probably will be. But, if a formula works, why not stick with it?
- firth.com

Notting Hill, Four Weddings, Sliding Doors, Bridget Jones, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Rowan Atkinson, The Delectable Mr Darcy Firth (smiling!), romance and love abounding AND Richard Curtis. Lovely lovely lovely.

Why does this only have a limited US release date????? Join with me in demanding that this movie be shown in Ann Arbor!

I really expected Saving Silverman to be just like all of the other gross-out buddy movies that are churned out every year, all of which seem to star Seann William Scott*. And yet it stood head and shoulders above the crowd of buddy movies. And why, you may ask? I can tell you in two words. And if you've already seen the movie, I think you know what those two words will be:

NEIL DIAMOND.

I don't think I ever would have thought to watch this on my own, but I got it as a birthday present from Robin. Five seconds into the movie, I could tell why and I declared it the Greatest Film Ever Made. The movie is about a trio of Neil Diamond-obsessed buddies. It is clearly the story of my life, although there was some argument in the family over which role corresponded with which of my friends.

One of the trio (Jason Biggs) finds himself engaged to an evil bitch of a woman and his friends (Steve Zahn and Jack Black) have to rescue him from ruining his life and their friendship by kidnapping the fiancée and redirecting his attentions to a more suitable partner. It's actually a lot funnier than it sounds and it features the main characters' Neil Diamond cover band, Diamonds in the Rough, their enormous Neil Diamond memorabilia collection and a very important cameo by The Neil himself.

If that hasn't turned you off already, I will tell you that the movie also features Jack Black in a Neil Diamond wig doing a very bad imitation of a mime having sex. Run out and rent it now!

* who is cool because he has double letters in all of his names

The Real World was really lame this week. It's always lame, but this week it was lame in that I don't even have anything to say about it. Ace's girlfriend (or not?) came to visit and he got in a drunken fight with a taxi driver.

On the bright side, next week brings about the Revival of Adam, the forgotten Worst Character Of All. He will bring home some chick no one likes, get mad when she won't kiss him, and take his sexual frustration out on the world by inflicting another of his famous raps on the viewing audience.

I hate You've Got Mail.

I don't want to hate it. I love romantic comedies. I feel like it's my duty to love this one, but I don't. Not only do I not love it, I hate it. I hate it for lost potential, for what it could have been but wasn't. I hate its long stretches of pointless dialogue. I hate Tom Hanks. I hate all of the characters in it. I hate it because it's not In the Good Old Summertime. I hate it for itself.

We watched In the Good Old Summertime followed by You've Got Mail last night. That was probably a mistake. You've Got Mail is never going to be good when it follows the far-superior 1949 film based on the same play. The later movie's main characters are annoying, their relationship is less believable, and Parker Posey's character is superfluous to any plot. What's more, neither Van Johnson nor Buster Keaton is in You've Got Mail, so it was cursed from the get-go.

I don't find Tom Hanks attractive or romantic. Nor do I find him a charming rogue. I'm starting to suspect that maybe he's not a very good actor. I think he plays the Tom Hanks in all of his characters. This character is supposed to be snarky and say what's on his mind. When Tom does it, he's either unbelievable or so mean that you hate his character for the rest of the movie.

Even Tom would have been able to pull off a nice romantic comedy if it hadn't been so loooooong. I don't know what the running time is, but it felt about twice that. The characters talked and talked and talked about nothing. They made observations on life that I'm sure would be very fascinating in real life, but which had no place being forced on me in a movie. I'm all for peeling apples in one long strip à la Sleepless in Seattle, but I don't need bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils. Die, Nora Ephron, die.

Then there's the plot of the movie. Rather than being rivals, they're complete enemies and he's the Big Business bookstore destroying her life and driving her Independent one out of business. And what's more, we're supposed to side with her when I (sorry) would much rather shop at his huge commercial book warehouse with 35% discounts than her creepy little hole of a store. He has coffee and selection. She has a stupid hat.

If you like romantic comedies, don't settle for this crap. Go out and rent In the Good Old Summertime. You'll get a better, shorter, simpler story, "Cuddles" Sakall, the charmingly gruff, Van Johnson, and my beloved Buster.

I know you've missed the weekly screaming Real World recaps, but it was replaced by thirty-seven consecutive episodes of The Osbournes two weeks ago and I missed it last week. So this week I got a Double Dose of Reality! Yay!

Dear Real World Cast,

Once again, you've handed in your assignment at the last minute, and incomplete as well. Yelling at each about it is not going to get you your bonus. Suck it up and move on. I don't know how you can complain about student loans when you are being paid big bucks to do nothing and have, I assume, free housing and food. Your boss is not your mommy. Don't tattle on your housemates and complain to your boss about things that have no relevance to work. This isn't going to get you your bonus either, and it's just going to make you look like a big baby.

I hate these people and this show so much I can't articulate my hatred while I'm watching it. I think I frightened Robin and the poodle she's dog-sitting for with my screeches and clawing at the air.

CT and Leah, just do it and stop telling us how much you hate each other. Your relationship is only amusing in that we can take all of your lines and change them à la "Everything he does drives me insane" "...WITH LUST" and "He's so dirty" "... and that's the way I like it" and "He bought Christina and I a rose and thinks that makes it better?" "'HE BOUGHT CHRISTINA AND ME ROSES' or 'HE BOUGHT ROSES FOR CHRISTINA AND ME' you friggin' idiot". Well, maybe not that one.

How can these people write a guidebook when they can barely speak English? I don't want to be the editor who has to try to find a meaning in Christina's misuse of big words and Leah's grammatical incorrectness.

Simon, as cute and happy and smiley as you are when he visits, your boyfriend wants out. I'm not even convinced he's gay.

Adam, you are gay and in love with Ace. Realize this and stop hitting on every English-speaking girl in Paris in an effort to deny your homosexuality. Also stop instigating more trouble in the house than there already is. Also rapping. Also breathing.

Synopsis of What a Girl Wants (starring Colin Firth and Some Other Girl)

Colin Firth wore a suit. Colin Firth got angry. Colin Firth was reunited with his long-lost daughter. Colin Firth smiled a shy little smile and we all went, "AAAWWWWWWWWWWW". Colin Firth rode a motorcycle. Colin Firth wore leather pants. Colin Firth refused to head-bang. Colin Firth was sad and lonely, but happy in the end.

And some other stuff happened.

Everything sounds more romantic and lovely in French. I have downloaded a clip from Tout le monde en parle where Jean-Claude Van Damme is one of the guests. Mmmmm, Jean-Claude Van Damme in French.

WHAT????

i am sooooooooo excited to see gigli, peeps. it's this one new movie with my boy ben afleck and j-lo she's so pretty, even if this one girl srah says her posture makes her look like donald duck. what is she talkin about ne-way? she dosnt no shizzle about my girl jennifer lopez and how shes from the block but shes still keepin it reel, ya know? like she only has five butlers just like she did back in the day. newayz, aparently this movie is really really a chance for benben and jenny to show there acting skillz. j-lo plays a lesbian but she isnt one in real life, so that has to be hard. and she has to sound like shes from new york city when shes really from the bronx so i bet she had to have some training. but my girl did all that work and i think its really going to pay of. and b diddy hes so hottt and you can tell he really luvs jenny bcuz i herd he gave her a dimond the size of her hed. i dont no about in the movie thou. but i do no im going 2 b 1st in line for tix on friday!

but dont take my word for it, read these reveews. they compare it to glitter, with my girl mariah, so i no its gonna b good!

p.s.: heres another story about the movie. it sounds reely good!

This week on The Real World...

I like Ace a lot better since the idiots decided to barricade themselves in their château and refuse all contact with the natives. He is quite snuggly - at least according to Christina, his room- (and apparently sometimes bed-) mate.

His snugglitude was enough to save him when he ate all of Christina (Mme Food Coveter)'s eggs. These people, despite being 7 in a house, are apparently too stupid to have communal groceries. I want to hit them. Christina went off on CT, thinking it was he who had eaten the eggs. Then when Ace confessed, she said he was too snuggly for her to be mad at him. Plus, adds srah, he always looks like he's going to cry. The Real World website says, "Looks like Christina is serving up a scoop of double standard."

Alas, the snugglitude was not enough to save Ace from her wrath after he and CT got drunk and noisily played pool while the others were trying to sleep. CT got drunkenly belligerent and gave the housemates more material for talking about him behind his back. He only ever deserves about half of the abuse they give him, but this group is really good at being snarky and has chosen him as their communal victim. I want to hit them.

Next week's episode looks to be a big fat pile of same ol', same ol', as they continue all of the stupid fights they were having this week and manage to accomplish nothing and never ever move on. I want to hit them.

To celebrate Becky's birthday, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean again. Watching all of the credits like a true member of my family, I found my calling: pirate dialect coach. Not a dialect coach for pirates in movies, of course, nor dialect coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates. I'll sail the seven seas, teaching novice pirates to sound more authentic.

In other news, I decided I was tired because I was dehydrated, so I've been drinking vast (avast!) amounts of water today. It hasn't helped so far, so I've decided that since I can't remember the last time I had anything citrus-related, I have scurvy instead. Much more pirate-appropriate, anyway.

I saw my pirate movie last night. Sigh...

It was lovely. There are movies that make me laugh, but my face returns to a neutral movie-watching face after that. This is one of the few that makes me grin. Tho' I'm sure Legolas had something to do with that. Mmmmm.

Pirates are wonderful. If I can be very nerdy for a moment, I think I like them because they have such interesting language. They have muddled, strange accents from being on boats with a mix of people, and they have a vocabulary all their own. I am so going to start saying things like, "I can't bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy?" Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow reminded me a bit of Ozzy Osbourne, if Ozzy were a pirate. According to IMDb, he based the character on Keith Richards.

You couldn't make a movie with the dastardly pirates fighting with the heroic navy. It wouldn't work, because they audience will always side with the pirates. As bad as real-life pirates were, literary/cinematic pirates are lovable, if only because they're usually not very good at piracy. I even liked the bad pirates.

I have found a career path after all. Two years at the School of Information, then it's the pirate's life for me.

Spent last night alternating between downloading mp3s being a good, upstanding moral citizen of these here United States and running to the other room to watch Saturday Night Live's Best of Will Ferrell episode. The highlights were James Lipton's invention of the word scrumtralescent and Dissing Your Dog, which is exactly the same dog-training strategy I've been employing for years.

It was the third of June
On that younger day
Well I became a man
At the hands of a girl
Almost twice my age
- Neil Diamond, "Desiree"

For those of you who moved back to France just to avoid watching this show, I will torture you with the latest: Leah is mean and no one likes her. She has a brother named Pascual who is in 10th grade and who comes to visit. Christina and Mallory fight over Pascual. Mallory and Simon (!!!) smooch around in a club ("You know, Simon, you're a really good kisser." "Thanks. You're quite good yourself."). Mallory goes and hooks up with Pascual. Leah doesn't like that. Eventually Mallory and Leah talk it over and become beeeeeeeeeest frieeeeeeeeeends again. Hooray.

How many characters on Head of the Class can you name, just off the top of your head?

One of the IMDb user comments:

Stretching the realms of plausibility is what makes sitcoms great! Well, actually, Alex P. Keaton is what makes sitcoms great. And he's not in this. So, it ain't great. And, what's more, it stretches the realms of plausibility. The students in the class are geeky. A little too geeky if you know what I mean. And they never get beaten up! I smell a rat, and that rat is of alien form. Yes, I think it is fairly obvious that the only explanation for their super- intelligence and their physical invulnerability is that they are extra- terrestrials planning an invasion. Impossible? Remember, Robin Williams looked human in Mork and Mindy. I rest my case.

I am what Meg calls a meejahoor. Recently I have been constantly trying to read four or five books at the same time and watching movies when I come up for a breath of non-literary air. I think this is because I was deprived of English-language books and movies (or at least of selection) in France and I'm now so inundated with them that I gave myself and get in over my head. Read/viewed within the past week:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - it's a reread, but an interesting one, what with all I've learned in book 5. I like it when Sirius tells the gang, "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."

Mr Darcy's Daughters - I couldn't get all the way through this. I tried, but I've finally come to the conclusion that I can't read sequels written by other people. They never have exactly the right voice, and there's an odd tendency to put modern concepts into Jane Austen books. This very dumb book does it too. I'm not disputing that there were homosexuals then, but there aren't openly gay characters in Austen's books, and putting them there feels all wrong. It's like published fan fiction.

Diary of an American Au Pair - A bit of travel-fluff. I love travel-fluff. I like the trend of Bridget-Jones-single-gal novels when I need something light to read, and it's even better when there's culture shock to boot.

A Mighty Wind - I went to see this with my parents this weekend, and no one in the theater laughed as hard as we did. I think Best in Show was slightly better just because it had fewer characters to keep track of, but this was still mighty good and had fun music. "I think Crabbeville in autumn would look quite magnificent."

Writing the Novel - It was a book about writing novels. It made me feel a lot better about having no idea what I wanted to write about and reaffirmed some of the things I'd read elsewhere:

"Characters take on a life of their own and insist upon supplying their own dialogue."

"It's encouraging to note that we're in the majority, that most writers have been obsessed with the idea of becoming writers before the nature of what they might write about revealed itself to them. [...] The identification of self as writer comes for most of us before we know what sort of writer we'll be or what we'll write about..."

"I learned quickly that my self-image as a writer was stronger than my self-image as a potential great novelist. I didn't really care all that deeply about artistic achievement, nor did I aspire to wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. I wanted to write something and see it in print. I don't know that that's the noblest of motives for doing anything, but it was at the very core of my being."

The Professor - Lovely. Will eventually have a post all to itself.

Shanghai Knights - Not as good as the first one, but what sequel is? Still pretty enjoyable. "I'm a thirty year old waiter/gigolo. Where's the future in that?"

Greenfingers - Not spectacular, but rather cute. It's a movie about inmates in a British prison who discover a love for gardening.

Farm Fatale - I can't stop reading this woman's books, even though I don't really like them. I don't know who I do like in the fluffy-single-girl genre, so I just keep reading what I know, even if I don't like it. Any suggestions?

Zazie dans le métro - I'm in the middle of this one, but it's already overdue so I'm afraid I'll have take it back to the library before I finish. A little girl comes to Paris, wants to ride in the metro, the metro's on strike, she runs away... not a whole lot of action, but the dialogue is interesting because it's written the way people talk, with "cexé" for "ce que c'est" and things like that.

America's Sweethearts - Bof. Lots of dislikable characters. Julia Roberts was okay. "I really want to play a character like a The Terminator. The Hispanic people are crying out to see a deadly, destructive, killing machine that they can embrace as their own."

Kate & Leopold - This must be Meg Ryan's last single-gal-in-the-city romantic comedy. She should have stopped before this one. She was too old for the movie and too old for Hugh Jackman and Liev Shreiber. She can still make divorced-mother-of-three romantic comedies or branch off into something else, but I really don't want to see her doing this anymore.

Plus, she looked like she was going to cry during the whole movie.

Plus, I hate time-travel.

In the director's cut, there's a scene at the beginning where Meg Ryan's character is doing media research on a movie and someone claims that your main character doesn't need to be likable all the time. Meg Ryan doesn't agree, and he argues that she probably isn't likable all the time. She responds, "I'm not the protagonist in a major motion picture." But she is. And she's not likable. So it doesn't work.

Victoria's Daughters - I just started this last night, so they've only just been born. I'm quite liking it, though. I do like a bit of non-fiction from time to time.

Cheryl, adding the description above, sent me a Mandy Moore interview that, among other things, talks about her next movie (Mandy's, not Cheryl's):

In "Saved," due out this fall, she seems to mock her own righteous image in a story about a teenager attending a Christian school who tries to "save" her gay friend by having sex with him -- and winds up pregnant. "It could be quite controversial," Moore says slyly of the film in which she co-stars with Macaulay Culkin. Moore plays the friend of the pregnant girl (played by Jena Malone).

I wouldn't dream of making a judgment about this movie, except to say SERIOUSLY, SERIOUSLY. I just hope that the pregnant girl's name is Belle.

I don't even want to waste cyberspace by telling you what an unbelievable freak of nature Adam is. I'm surprised nature hasn't eliminated him yet. I'm glad this show is only 30 minutes long because I might have had an aneurysm if it had lasted any longer.

Also, watching the stupid stupids try to work together for their fakety fake-ass job, I realized that think I might hate group work, due to intense misanthropy. Robin and Cheryl tell me that U-M students do this sort of thing rather often, and it occurs to me that I haven't really done any since high school. Uh-oh.

My family went on a rare late-night excursion yesterday to see On Guard! as part of the Michigan Theatre French Film Series. It was a charming swashbuckling comedy, and quite enjoyable. Of course anything that can be described with the word "swashbuckling" and includes the word "hump-buckle" in the subtitles has to be good.

I HATE THE REAL WORLD. But I think everyone needs an outlet for rage, and mine is screaming and flailing, and occasionally just opening my mouth with nothing coming out, in awe at the stupidity of these stupid stupid people.

CT is a dumbass and ridiculously difficult. You drop the straightening iron on the floor, you pick it up, whether you were using it or not. You don't get in an argument about whether someone is talking down to you. It's what you do.

Leah is a whiner. Adam is an instigator. Simon is absent. Christina and Leah are cheap hos, and their affection can be bought with flowers. I almost have less respect for them than for CT, who doesn't listen to anyone, do anything to help, and just goes out and gets drunk and whines.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

All of the people on The Real World are just as stupid as they were last week, and I still hate everyone except Simon. The good thing about this week's episode, though, is that they actually did something. Sort of.

They had their first deadline this week for their ultra-important guidebook-writing job. Their assignments were due at 6pm. Two tried to get extensions, two emailed them at six, and the rest just sent them in late. This isn't college! You don't get extensions! This is real life!

Okay, no, this is The Real World, which is fake real life, but still. Did you see me scraping up English lessons at the last minute? Well, okay, you did. But we don't call that procrastination. We call it improvisation.

Only a family as dorky as my own could get as excited about the Restored Director's Cut DVD (with reinserted scenes banned by Richard Nixon!!!) of 1776 as other people get about the Star Wars Special Editions.

Watching 1776 on video is our Fourth of July tradition, but we bought the DVD this weekend and couldn't wait until Friday. I'm sure we'll watch it again then, and that we'll sing along and recite the entire script, just as we did last night.

It may be physically harmful to be as nerdy as we are.

I hate The Real World. Every week, I get to the end of the episode and realized that I have wasted a half-hour of my life and that it has made me stupider. NOTHING EVER HAPPENS on that show. They bicker, they get drunk, they make out with each other... but they never do anything. Supposedly, they're working on a travel guide, but they never travel anywhere. I hate them all, but I will, of course, be back next week.

I did learn something this week, and I don't know if it's a good thing. Robin and Cheryl told me that a Real World season lasts about six months. This cheers me up, because I thought the show was going to end at the end of the summer, and nothing would have happened. Six months gives us time for things to happen. The downside, of course, is that I have to watch and suffer this for six months.

Watched The Real World again last night. I hate these people. I hate this show. Here they are in Paris, supposed to be learning French, travelling around France, and writing a guidebook... and all they do is get drunk and bicker. I hate them, I hate the show. I'm so watching next week.

In happier news, I finally caught on that this was actually filmed several months ago (the snow on the ground gave it away), so I have decided that I am in the background during one of my numerous trips to Paris. Watch for me! I am the real star!

Whose idea was it to have that stupid mouse character in Cinderella's catchphrase be "Strike 'er easy"? What does that mean? Who says that, apart from cartoon mice? And why won't it get out of my head?

Cartoons say weird things anyway. For a good year after seeing Lady and the Tramp, my sister would exclaim, "You mongrel!" whenever she got upset at someone. Which, if you know my sister, was often.

Of course, this is not to suggest that my sister is a cartoon. Although...

It has been decreed that I will become a Real World Watcher this season. Although I have never followed the show before, I agreed, because the show takes place in Paris this time and the contestants will have to learn French. I decided it could be amusing and watched the third episode last night.

I hate them all. I hope Simon The Gay Irishman kills them all and eats them, because he's the only one who's any good.

He can start with Ace The Alcoholic, who decided after two days that he hates France and hates the Parisians. Stupid boy! Everyone hates Parisians. You come from some podunk town in Georgia with a population of 4 and don't know how to live in the big city. Maybe you are grumpy because you're missing the sister-girlfriend Cheryl has decided you have.

Next, we can knock off Chris/CT, just because he has stupid eyebrows and I can't understand a word that he says. Then he can go after Adam, who everyone else seems to hate for some reason. Simon gets to stay because he seems mature and interested in achieving something, whereas the rest of them seem interested in getting laid. Fascinating that the only non-American is the only one with a brain. That looks really good.

I don't know anything about the girls yet, because girls are boring.

Tune in next week for my Very Fascinating Real World Report #2!

While watching Will & Grace, I found myself lamenting le fait que the character Barry soit gay. What a monstrous pile of franglais. Anyway, I was upset that he was gay because he's so cute and charming and it means that I will never have a chance with him.

I will never have a chance with... a fictional character on TV. Because I would have a much better chance with him if he weren't gay. It's always nice when I can be in touch with reality like that. So I guess you're safe for the moment, Boyfriend. No Barries, gay or otherwise, for me.

We watched Revenge of the Nerds in two parts last night, with an Auberge Espagnole break in the middle. I almost feel sorry for the cool crowd because there are so many movies about the nerds and outsiders overthrowing them, and because their lives are basically sad and empty and they are all going to grow up to be failures. Plus, the nerds are always more attractive.

We went to see L'Auberge Espagnole last night at the lovely mall theatre. I've been talking sans cesse about this film, so I suppose I owe it to you to tell you about it.

Xavier is a young Frenchman who wants a job with the French Ministry of Something Or Other. He talks to a friend of son père at the Ministry, who would like to hire him but with the European Union and blah blah blah, in short it would be easier for him to get this job if he spoke fluent Spanish and understood the Spanish economic system. So he wades through the normal sea of French paperasse to enroll in Erasmus, an inter-European exchange program, in order to spend a year in Barcelona.

He leaves his girlfriend and his mother and arrives in Barcelona, knowing only the French couple he met on the plane and un poquito de español. From there, his adventure takes off, as he searches for an apartment, love, an understanding of his Economics classes, and order and meaning in his life.

He finally finds a room in what the French call an auberge espagnole - their expression for a place where people from many cultures come together and interact. Although this is nothing more than a guess, I think that the expression, which literally means "Spanish inn", is a reference to the days when Spanish inns would be full of people doing pilgrimages from all over Europe to holy cities like St-Jacques de Compostelle (I don't know the Spanish name for this city!). He shares the apartment with roommates from England, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy who are also studying through Erasmus.

I love the idea of auberges espagnoles and the movie really captures the study-abroad feeling and the experiences of young foreigners like the assistants. It's a movie for anyone who ever studied or lived abroad, thought about studying or living abroad, or wondered about studying or living abroad.

It was just as lovely the second time, although the début was marred by subtitle typos which were a bit distracting. In addition, I picked up quite a few translation errors, but most of them weren't so drastic that they took away from the quality of the film and wouldn't bother anyone who didn't understand the French. I can't wait for the DVD...

Becky spent the evening flipping back and forth between the Stanley Cup finals and For Love or Money, and I spent the evening walking through and screaming at the télé while my cookies baked.

My thoughts on the Stanley Cup finals are that I don't care who wins as long as it isn't Anaheim. So yeah, go Devils or whatever. I don't care how good Anaheim are or how long they've been around or how long ago the movie came out - I don't want to live in a world where the Mighty Ducks win the Stanley Cup.

My thoughts on For Love or Money are that it doesn't matter who wins the Stanley Cup - I just plain don't want to live in this world. For those of you who are living in a foreign country or a cave, there are 15 women and one man, and he eliminates them blah blah blah and at the end the winner chooses between the guy and a million dollars. I hate everyone on it and I want them to die. What alternate plane of reality do these incredibly vapid individuals exist on? How does anyone think this is a good way to meet someone? Why do they think it's attractive to be stupid and drunk and back-stabbing? They are all so stupid that they deserve each other. I, on the other hand, have a brain and deserve to have something else on TV. They make me want to scream and hit them - certainly not to watch this stupid show again.

In case you were wondering, as I was, what the heck the foreign murderess is saying in Chicago, IMDb has the answer:

Mit keresek én itt? Azt mondják, a híres lakóm lefogta a férjem, én meg lecsaptam a fejét. De nem igaz. Én ártatlan vagyok. Nem tudom, miért mondja Uncle Sam, hogy én tettem. Próbáltam a rendõrségen megmagyarázni, de nem értették meg.

which means:

What am I doing here? They say my famous tenant held down my husband and I chopped his head off. But it's not true. I am innocent. I don't know why Uncle Sam says I did it. I tried to explain at the police station but they didn't understand.

Ah, any excuse to put Hungarian in my weblog, eh?

Is this movie playing near you?

It is? What are you doing reading my site? You are supposed to be at the movie theatre!

L'auberge espagnole is a lovely French film that perfectly documents the experience of studying in another country, from the linguistic mishmash that results to the relationships you make. If you have ever lived or wanted to live in another country, or if you have ever wondered about the experience, I highly recommend it.

I went to see The Matrix Reloaded last night. My thoughts are as follows:

Lambert Wilson, despite being a real live French person, has the fakest French accent ever. He has a good English accent and was trying to cover it up, very ineffectively. He just sounded German. I still lurve him just for being French and I curled up in a little ball and giggled when he would swear and order wine.

Keanu Reeves seemed to me to be lacking in keanureevesocity. I didn't hear him say "Whoa" or "I know kung fu" once! I was not once distracted from the film by his abyssmal acting talents, which sort of disappointed me. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to invent the word keanureevesocity. What was with that dress he was wearing?

Was I the only one who felt like Zion was eerily similar to the Ewok Village? Oh.

I love the Keymaker's voice. I love the Keymaker. But having a character called The Keymaker just makes me think of Ghostbusters. "Are you the Keymaster? I am the Gatekeeper."

Alex and I stayed for the Matrix Revolutions preview after the credits. Um... yeah. I was not impressed. Alex said I wasn't necessarily supposed to be, because it was just a teaser. This "teaser" didn't tease me at all, though. It made me go, Huh. Well, I've already put the time and money into seeing the first two, so I guess I might as well see this one too, although the film itself holds no particular appeal.

I am only wearing black from now on.

Alex and I saw Down With Love last night. As a big fan of Tony Randall movies Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies, I was rather excited about it and rather disappointed. I found it fluffily entertaining but confused, disjointed, overcomplicated and long. It felt like it wasn't sure whether it wanted to be a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie or a parody thereof. I would recommend it on video, but it's not particularly worth seeing on the big screen, except maybe for David Hyde Pierce, who was excellent as Tony Randall the hero's neurotic boss and friend. He made me giggle.

So. American Idol's over.

I called it.

That is all I have to say about that.

I don't quite see why my sister is obsessed with Clay because to me, he looks like the love child of David Bowie and Fraulein Maria. I have decided that Ruben is going to win, based on the following careful observation: in American Idol I, the guy with Sideshow Bob hair was the runner-up, so this time the runner-up will be the guy with Sideshow Bob feet.

Why is it, in movies, that if there are only two gay characters, they will almost always end up together? I know movies like to tie everything up and make everyone happy at the end, but sometimes it's just stupid. In Sweet Home Alabama there are significant gazes at the end between the sweet Southern Ethan Embry character and the rather scary fashion-designer Gay Best Friend From New York, when they clearly have nothing in common except for being gay. Heterosexual characters are never matched up just for being heterosexual - we would find it odd if Professor McGonagall ended up with Anakin Skywalker.

Very odd, in fact. I'm sorry I couldn't come up with two characters from the same movie...

Our in-flight movies were Chicago and Maid in Manhattan, both of which I had already seen and neither of which I had particularly liked. Unfortunately I finished my book about two hours into the 8+ hour flight, so I was forced to watch. If you are interested, Maid in Manhattan was better in French.

Sophie and I are hoping that the Nice People will get frustrated with their shortcomings in French (the presenters are already making fun of them for misgendering things and saying someone has nice horses instead of hair) and revert to English, a language they have probably all been studying for longer and know better. Not because we are great fans of English or Watching Subtitled TV or anything, but just because all that extra subtitling work would somehow teach TF1 a lesson. Live broadcasts will be interesting, if they find several languages to communicate in. Translators, start your typing!

I wonder if TF1 gave any thought to this in advance. The Belgian speaks five languages, the English girl is half Portuguese, and Swedes can always speak a million languages. Are we sure that French will always come out on top?

We really don't have enough contact with the Portuguese in the US. I don't think I had given Portugal another thought since we learned about thei XVIth century conquests and the Line of Demarcation. They seemed to disappear from history and geography after that.

I desperately need to find an attractive Portuguese man. I am in danger of creating my entire image of XXIst century Portugal based on the two Portuguese men I've seen on TV, in C'est mon choix and Nice People. There must be interesting and attractive men in the country, but apparently they don't export well.

The damned Belgian on Nice People speaks five languages. The damned Belgian I'm visiting tomorrow speaks at least six. Why was I not born in Belgium?

Sophie and I are both disappointed that our parents aren't foreign, as this would have given us a fine linguistic head-start. Being Belgian or Luxembourgeois wouldn't have hurt, either.

I watched the first episode of Nice People tonight. It's a reality show where they're locking young people of various European countries up in a villa, then voting them off one by one. A sort of cross between The Real World, Survivor, and an auberge espagnole.

Personally, I think it's a shame that anyone has to be voted off, because the pleasure could just be from watching people from different nationalities interact, like the assistants do. Voting people off means we won't see them anymore and that someone will have to win. Yechhhh.

Saw Laisse tes mains sur mes hanches tonight, which wasn't particularly spectacular and just made me feel lonely.

My observations on the film and its previews: Jean-Hugues Anglade looks like a French Kevin Spacey. Mmmm, French. Mmmm, Kevin Spacey. If I see another preview for The Recruit, I am going to bite someone. The Hulk looks disturbingly similar to Shrek. And the saddest thing about my departure from France is that I will miss the June 11 release of Mais, qui a tué Pamela Rose?, the greatest French cinematic classic since La Tour Montparnasse infernale.

For weeks now, I've been looking forward to seeing Bon Voyage. The previews looked incredibly stupid, but the leading man looked really hot. No, not Gérard Depardieu. The other leading man. Anyway, WWII-era costumes and Grégori Dérangère were all this movie had going for it in my opinion, but I am shallow, so I considered it well worth paying 6€ to see a Hot Guy In Costume. I am glad I did, because it turned out to be a funny, dramatic, good movie with, as an added bonus, scenes filmed at the Aletti Palace Hotel in Vichy. Rather ironic that a Vichy hotel was the stand-in for a pre-capitulation hotel in Bordeaux, actually.

I am quite impressed with our cinematic excursions this week and will be awaiting the North American DVD releases with bated breath.

Renaud was so adorable in Wanted that we squealed whenever he came onscreen. I was in a Renaud mood when I got home, so I put on the Best of '75-'85 CD I burned from Renata. In Dès que le vent soufflera, Renaud sings "La mer, c'est dégueulasse/ Les poissons baisent dedans."

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after Indy bluffs to the Germans that Marcus Brody will blend in and disappear in Egypt, it flashes to Marcus in Cairo, looking for someone who speaks English or ancient Greek. When someone offers him some water, if you listen carefully, he responds, "Water? No thank you; fish make love in it."

What is the connection here? Are they both making reference to another earlier quote about the watery behavior of fish, or is Brody (1989) quoting Renaud (1983)? I find it hard to believe that they would both independently come up with the idea. Is there some kind of vast fish-love conspiracy? Can this quote be found elsewhere? What's going on here?

A cinematic masterpiece has been born! Renata, Jennifer and I finished off our Traditional Easter Sunday with a kebab and a movie. We went to see Wanted, wherein a band of French braqueurs including Gérard Depardieu, Johnny Hallyday, and an adorable gun-toting Renaud, set off for Chicago for a heist. They wind up with the FBI, the Chicago Mafia, and a Latino gang all after them, and hijinks and gunfights ensue. It is wonderful and perfect, and yet not really a good movie. Nonetheless, I suggest it highly.

The weird thing about the movie is that it seems to have been made especially for us. I don't know who had the idea to make a movie with Johnny and Renaud speaking English, but we giggled and sighed and laughed at both the French in-jokes (Renaud and Johnny fighting over the radio, for example) and the purely American things like the take-off on Judge Judy. De toutes les façons, we really appreciate that someone made this movie just for us and I hope that others will enjoy it too.

I went to Agnès' ce soir for dinner and a movie. We talked about end-of-the-year activities and watched Mon Oncle by Jacques Tati, a comedy without dialogue. There's speech, but it's almost unnecessary. Monsieur Hulot must be the ancestor of Mr Bean, but his character was set in a futuristic world from the 1950s. Very funny little thing and I'm glad I passed up Pile et Face to get a chance to see it.

We saw the Club Cinéma movie Mies vailla menneisyyttä tonight. I am now fascinated by Finland and the language, and even more fascinated by the fact that French has two different words for the people (finlandais) and the language (finnois) of the country.

Saw an entertaining movie called Effroyables Jardins ce soir with Renata and Andrés. Despite a large number of clowns figuring prominently in the film, it managed to be enjoyable and sad. It is unusual for me to be unhappy during scenes of violence against clowns, but this film managed it.

The latest big-scale musical comedy extravaganza in France is Autant en Emporte le Vent. I don't know yet what the show itself is like, but judging from the soundtrack, it seems to have been written by a French person with a vague idea of the causes of the Civil War, who saw Gone With the Wind once while very drunk.

There seems to be a good deal of emphasis on slavery and slave revolt and the slaves' desire to be treated as human beings. I myself don't remember slavery being much of an issue in the movie, except that when you haven't got any slaves, you have to dig your own potatoes. I remember the film much more clearly as the story of a little tart who gets gussied up in the curtains and marries everyone she lays eyes on. But maybe I was drunk too.

For those of you who are not up-to-date on the latest in my life, I will sum it up in a brief resumé: Ralph Fiennes and I are going to get maaaaarried and have seventeen little Hispanic children named Ty.

After a crappy day at work, it was with great joy that I learned of the Printemps du Cinéma. The PdC means that from March 16-18, movies in Vichy are only 3€. At 3€, one could go see any old trash, so we did. Coup de foudre à Manhattan is the kind of tripe I would be hard-pressed to pay full price for, but it was a very enjoyable giggle for 3€.

The movie stars Jennifer Lopez' ass as the ass of a New York femme de chambre (or camarera de piso, for those of us who are studying Spanish For the Restaurant/Hotel Industry) who falls in love with a rather despicable senator played by Ralph Fiennes, probably with a bad fake American (New York!) accent.

Fortunately in the dubbed version, he had no such monstrocity, so I was free to fall in love with him and try to devise ways to pull him off the screen and make him switch places with Renata so that he would be sitting next to me and Renata would have to make out with J-Lo. I am not usually a Ralph Fiennes maniac or anything, but he appealed to me tonight. Probably because I was in a bad mood and needed something to make me giggle and grin inanely. So I get Ralph and the cute kid, and I'll let the bootylicious Miss Lo keep Renata and do what she will with her. I highly recommend the cinematic masterpiece, but only on video with a gang of friends and perhaps vast amounts of alcohol. Nite nite!

We watched Ghost on TV last night in the same way we watch all French-dubbed American movies - mostly talking and occasionally glancing at the screen to make fun on whatever's going on.

We are all perplexed as to how Patrick Swayze was ever considered attractive. It must have been an 80s thing. His acting skills are somewhere between Kevin Costner and Keanu Reeves and when he's trying to act sad, he scrunches up his face and looks unnervingly similar to George W. Bush. It is really freaky.

I have to stop writing now, because all I can think of is "DIGRESSION!".

Yesterday, between all of the adorable little caniches I saw in the street that begged to be petted and cuddled and my fellow moviegoers at the Harry Potter screening, I decided that we have it all wrong. We should be spaying and neutering our neighbors and letting the puppies flower and multiply in abundance.

The family behind me had somewhere from 3 to 8 kids. I couldn't tell, because they were moving around throughout the whole movie. And kicking my chair. And kicking other chairs in my row so mine bounced along with them. And walking up and down their row, smacking me in the head as they went by. And talking loudly about how Dobby was really ugly and they wanted him off the screen. And throwing paper over my seat. I would have wondered how someone could raise such unruly children, but I didn't have to, because they were attended by parents who had also never had lessons on How To Behave In Public. Certainly they had never had lessons on How To Behave In A Movie Theater, because every time a kid wouldn't sit down or wouldn't shut up, the mother would scream, "BEHAVE YOURSELF," or "SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I'LL HIT YOU," not only not whispering, but not speaking in a normal indoor voice, either.

Harry Potter is not a children's movie, although many parents have this mistaken impression. Eight, nine, ten year old children, yes. Children who know how to behave themselves in public, yes. But it is not a movie for four year olds who will be frightened by Dobby, let alone the enormous scary spider attacks. I dream of a world where there would be "no children" showings of Harry Potter that people like me could go to.

The IMDb summary for Dougie Henshall's next film (also starring Sean Penn, Joaquin Phoenix and Clare Danes) reads:

It's All About Love is the story of two lovers and their attempts to save their relationship in a near-future world on the brink of cosmic collapse. John, and world-famous ice skating star, Elena, are about to sign divorce papers when they realise that, in spite of everything happening around them, their love is worth fighting for. It's All About Love is a fresh take on modern love and future life as two lovers struggle in a conspiracy of epic proportions.

I believe this will be the Greatest Movie Ever Made.

Hooray!

I am listening to the radio broadcast of the NRJ Music Awards on the radio. Phil Collins is mangling the French language, but I am so proud of him for speaking French at all. What happens at concerts where the singer doesn't speak the language? Do they just drop the between-song banter, do they do it in their native language and ignore the fact that the crowd probably doesn't understand, or is there someone there to translate?

Mariah Carey is also at the awards. You may ask what I think of her. Unfortunately there I run out of words. Perhaps you will forgive me if I turn from my own feelings to those of another splendid bugger: S.T. Coleridge. This is actually what I want to say:

"Swans sing before they die. It would be no bad thing if certain persons died before they sang."

I would have made the film differently, but it didn't seem to completely disgust the internes, so I guess I can breathe easier. We shall talk to them about it on Monday.

Tonight is the first night of Ghost World, the January film for the Club Cinéma. As it is an American film shown VOSTF, Agnès and I managed to convince the Vie Scolaire that it would be mighty educational to bring the kiddies.

Thusly the 37 or so students who board on Friday nights will be going to the movies tonight, to see a movie that Agnès and I recommended despite having never seen it. I am terribly frightened that they will hate the movie and that it will turn them off of subtitled films for the rest of their lives. Ridiculous, I know, but that doesn't make me any more confident.

On the other hand, maybe they will fall in love with it and all go out and get their Club Cinéma membership cards and decide to picket in front of the cinémas of Vichy, demanding more subtitled films.

Um, yeah right.

"But how am I supposed to teach English As A Foreign Language if I don't speak English as As A Foreign Language? Can't I just take Foreign As An English Language?"
- Smack the Pony

A way long time ago, I blogged about these three movies, which are now finally coming out in France. One critique I read gave them one, two, and three stars respectively, but I still want to see all of them because they were filmed in Grenoble.

The horns were a-honkin' in the département de l'Allier last night as I walked home from Presles. In the distance, somewhere beyond the fog, fireworks could be heard. Nolwenn triumphant! Victory for St-Yorre and the Allier! Star Academy is over.

I spent yesterday bullying all of my classes about going to see Bowling for Columbine.

"We have too much homework," said the S1OLs.

"Is there a bowling alley in Vichy?" asked the S2OLs.

"If we go, will you come with us?" and "Are you taking us to the movies?" and "Are you going to pay?" asked the THOTs.

I, myself, had not yet resolved whether I wanted to see it again this week or whether, like Il faut sauver le soldat Ryan, it was too stressful to see ever again. I decided to ask Renata and Jennifer if they wanted to go to the movies. If they picked Bowling for Columbine, I would see it again and if they picked Bend It Like Beckham, then that was that. They picked the former, so off I went.

It was much more comforting to see it with other Americans. I didn't have the pressure I rather ridiculously felt the first time, thinking that as soon as the lights went up, the audience would see the hat I was wearing - flashing "AMERICAN" in big light-up neon letters - and would stone me for being The American In The Audience and for living in such a confused, violent, frightened country.

Since I wasn't sobbing my head off, I was much better able to appreciate the humor and to catch little background details, like the fact that the K-Mart woman didn't shake the hand of the boy in the wheelchair, and the fact that at Charlton Heston's Hollywood mansion, full of loaded guns around every corner, there was a children's basketball hoop.

I went, yesterday afternoon, to see Bowling for Columbine all by myself. Renata and Jennifer had gone to the Gorge de Sioule or however you spell it, but I'd had a headache and research/blogging to do at the cybercafé, so I stayed behind. I discovered that Bowling for Columbine was being shown in VO. I was thrilled and ready to go tell all of my students on Monday, and it occurred to me that before I went and recommended it, I should probably see it. So I went and bought a ticket.

It could have had something to do with the five hours of sleep I'd had the night before, but I started crying in the first scene. Throughout the whole movie I was crying and laughing at the same time and not really knowing which I was doing, because despite being about firearms, racism, poverty, violence and fear, it was often presented in a humorous way.

I know the movie touched me more than any of the French people in the audience, because mine was the only sobbing I heard. I laughed, I cried, I wanted to throw things at people on the screen. It was such an intense emotional experience that I can't decide if I want to go back and see the movie tonight or never again. It was mostly about things I already knew, but to actually see it all on the screen created an response second only to the hysterical, hiccupping sobs that lasted for a half hour after the end of Saving Private Ryan.

In addition to moving me more than the French people, I think the movie touched me more than it would touch other Americans, because Michael Moore comes from Michigan and so much of the movie was filmed there. Part of it was that I saw bits of Michigan - I saw Detroit from across the river in Windsor, I saw Genessee County and knew that Jen Dively was from there - and it made me homesick.

The other reason I think it touched me as a Michigander was just to realize what kind of state I'm living in. When they talked about violent images in the media and how the news scares people, it was not Unnamed Newscasters they were showing as examples - it was Huel Perkins and Monica Gayle. It was MY newscast that was the example for America. I knew that James Nichols and the Michigan Militia were milling about in the thumb, but to actually see the whackos freaked me out.

After I got back from the movie, I got on the phone to Agnès and Jennifer and Renata, telling them that they had to go see it and tell everyone they knew and all of their students to go see it as well. I've spent all day trying to explain it to my classes, who don't seem particularly interested. If you are in Vichy, I suggest that you high-tail it to the Mat cinéma in the Rue Sornin, tonight and tomorrow at 14h45 and 20h45. Not that anyone in Vichy is actually reading this, but a girl can dream.

Anyway, I highly suggest it. It's very entertaining and while it may not be as emotionally wrenching for you as it was for me, I'm sure you can find plenty to shock and enrage you.

What on earth is Gangs of New York about? I don't understand a thing of the plot from the French-dubbed previews. From what I can tell, it recounts the famous Battle Of The People In Comical Hats. As Daniel Day-Lewis' side is wearing top hats and Leonardo diCaprio seems to be wearing something resembling an ancestor of the modern baseball cap, I have to assume that the battle was really over which was to be the Hat Of The Future and Leo is the triumphant one in the end.

I think that the movie and the divisions between the gangs might be slightly easier to understand in VO because I bet they've all got comical ethnic accents as befits the time period. I think Leonardo is supposed to be an Irishman with the very Irish name of Amsterdam, but I don't know if it's the battle of old vs. new immigrants or between two groups of new ones. Or possibly it really is all about the hats.

Care to enlighten me?

Yes, the billionaire has-been had nothing better to do than follow me around all weekend. She was one of the guests this week of the Star Academy, a sort of American Idol-Big Brother hybrid where young French people are locked up together in a château for intensive pop star training and eliminated one by one by the audience and each other until someone wins. The Star Académiciens are visited from time to time by various pop stars who sing with them or offer them pearls of wisdom like "Always follow your dreams."

This week the académiciens and the public at large were lucky enough to have Mariah Carey And Her Enormous Breasts thrust upon them. And I was lucky enough to be spending the weekend with 25-year-old men who are really big fans of Star Academy.

Mariah pulled up in her limousine and tottered into the château in her sweatpants and high heels. She said some completely useless stuff to them through the help of an interpreter, all the while with an air of "Yes, I'm Mariah Carey. Isn't it such an honor to be in the same room as me?" about her and all the while falling out of her shirt. The students, on the other hand, had more of an air of "I'm really glad the interpreter finally told us who this was, because Mariah has managed to put on a good 50 pounds, most of which has gone to her face and made her completely unrecognizable."

After her brief introduction, Mariah held interviews with three lucky students, the first of whom was Georges-Alain.

Ah, Georges-Alain. How does one describe Georges-Alain? He has somehow managed to become the cheri of the voting public, despite being indisputably ugly, having no talent for singing or dancing, and having about as much charisma and stage presence as Al Gore. I think it is perhaps for all of these things that they keep him there - because he's so very untalented that it's entertaining. I myself love Georges-Alain for his lack of talent - it always makes me laugh.

On top of all these charms, Georges-Alain is painfully shy and speaks about zero English. So it was completely impossible for any conversation to go on between him and the vapid superstar. She dismissed him and had much better luck with Aurélie and Nolwenn, who get by much better in English. Then Mariah tottered back to her limo, all the while saying stupid things and making me wish I didn't speak or understand English.

This was all during the week, in the daily grind of being a superstar-in-training. On Saturday, however, it was The Big Day. Saturday is when everyone performs and they announce who's been voted off. It's when the starlets get to sing with their idols. And with Mariah.

Mariah returned on Saturday and got to engage in very confusing banter with the Franco-Greek host of the show. I think it was more confusing for me as an Anglophone because Nikos was trying to carry on the conversation and translate for the audience and improve on the inane things that came out of Mariah's enormous face. He would say something to her in French, she would look blank, he would translate into English, she would respond, and he would say in French whatever he wished she'd said in English. As a result, it took a million years and nothing really got said. Then sometimes she couldn't understand what he was saying in English either, so she tried to get Aurélie to translate for her. It was all live and it was a chaotic mess of languages where normally she should have had a bug in her ear with a running translation.

Then Mariah started singing and looking over the students with an air of "I believe the children are our future. Maybe someday one of them will be as big a star as I am. But just in France." I don't listen to a lot of Mariah Carey, but her voice sounded odd, like there were two distinct personalities fighting for possession of her brain. One, the one who sang the high and loud parts, was the Mariah Carey I knew. The other, the one who sang lower and softer, had the strange vocal sounds of a deaf person, in the way that they tend to enunciate less clearly and seem to speak from a different place in their mouth and throat than the hearing community does. It was extremely odd and made me wonder exactly what had happened when Mariah had her breakdown.

When she was done singing, Mariah didn't seem to know exactly what to do, so she did what any normal person would do in that situation: she kidnapped Georges-Alain. She grabbed him by the hand and walked off stage with him. Nikos, of course, had no idea what was going on, so he translated whatever she had muttered, "She says she wants him to help her compose some new songs." Riiiiight. Does Mariah Carey compose her own songs? Somehow I doubt it.

I believe we went to a commercial at that point, in the style of any live television program which has just erupted into chaos. When we came back, Georges-Alain was back on stage with the other académiciens and Nikos was grilling him about Mariah. Georges-Alain, of course, had no more idea than Nikos did about what happened. Some scary trampy American former star with mental issues had dragged him off the stage and chattered at him in a foreign language.

With Mariah gone (perhaps being questioned by the police), the show was able to continue as normal. Or as normal as it can be, given the circumstances. Of the three candidates for eviction, evil bombshell Nolwenn was saved by the public and the académiciens, given the remaining two, chose to keep weird Jérémy - elegantly clad in a plastic headband and some kind of potato sack or butcher's apron wrapped around his waist to look like a skirt - over Anne-Laure, the ever-perky hard-working lesbian.

I hope you realize that there is no hint of sarcasm when I say that I am so disappointed I don't have a TV in my apartment.

This afternoon, I went to see Le Dictateur, the French-dubbed version of Charlie Chaplin's talkie The Great Dictator. I had never seen one of Chaplin's films all the way through and was quite impressed, as were the two other spectators in the enormous screening room.

Chaplin played Adenoid Hynkel, a dictator who was meant to resemble Adolf Hitler, and a Jewish barber with amnesia, who had just been released after 20 years in the hospital for an injury received during WWI. There was, as could be expected, a case of mistaken identity, so that the barber had the opportunity to give a touching speech to people all over the world:

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these things cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that has come upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to these brutes who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle and use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men---machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are men! With the love of humanity in your hearts! Don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to the happiness of us all. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us unite!

It was a very enjoyable and moving film.

I thought that I had blogged about this before, but a quick search of my archives turns up nothing before Monday on "Kubrick". So I must have just ranted aloud. This simply will not do! I cannot go on without recording for the public and for my future self, how much I hate the films of Stanley Kubrick.

I saw Dr Strangelove years ago and it scared me. All in all, I found it disjointed and mostly a waste of Peter Sellers. It doesn't seem to me to add much to the genre of bomb-movies. Thus, it is one of Kubrick's best, in my opinion.

The Shining was my freshman-year-roommate Stephanie's favorite movie. It was very thought-provoking, provoking such thoughts as How many men in a bear suit can give that guy a blow job while having nothing to do with the movie?. At the time, I thought it was the movie that was weird, little suspecting the director.

Later that year, in my Film class, I told Dr Loukides that Singin' in the Rain was one of my favorite movies. So he very thoughtfully showed us the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex and his droogs beat up and rape a couple while singing "Singin' in the Rain". "You'll never think of that movie the same way again," cackled my evil professor.

My sophomore year, a little Kubrick-festival took place at Albion, organized by a History professor whose class I happened to be taking at the time. So he made mandatory the viewing of Barry Lyndon, Paths of Glory, and Dr Strangelove (again) and attendance at a lecture on Kubrick's career. All I remember of Barry Lyndon was that it was long and I couldn't leave to go to the bathroom because whatever I missed would undoubtedly be discussed in class the next day. There was something else, too, like I had the hiccups or I was starving or dying of the Albion Death Plague. I just remember suffering.

Paths of Glory, on the other hand, was the best Kubrick film I have ever seen, by which I mean the least bizarre. It's the only one I've seen where you can forget who directed it because there are no bears giving oral sex or monkeys beating each other up.

Speaking of monkeys... 2001: A Space Odyssey was rereleased - surprisingly enough - in 2001, when I was studying in Grenoble. As you may know, I had nothing to do in Grenoble so I saw something like 75 movies over the course of the year. I decided that, because it was a "classic", it was time to give Kubrick another chance.

You know how the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour makes no sense at all, but it must when you're high? I got the same impression from 2001, except that unlike the time I tried to watch MMT, there was no eject button and I had paid to see it, rather than checking it out of Albion's enabling library. I also wanted to see the ending, where all of the mess that came before would be explained. Which explains why I am writing to you from the Club cinéma in Grenoble right now, because I refuse to leave until someone tells me what the hell that was, with the monkeys and the Big Black Box. Every time I thought I got it, I was wrong.

And now we come to the last one. WHY? I am seriously asking this, because I can't explain it myself. WHY? Why did I watch Eyes Wide Shut, a movie I had no interest in seeing after the previews, a movie which, in addition to being directed by Stanley Kubrick, starred both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Why why why? Orgy orgy blah blah blah. I think I fell asleep. I hope I fell asleep.

I can't believe I've seen seven. I don't know if there's another director in the world (maybe Steven Spielberg) who has made seven movies I've seen. How much of my life has been wasted by watching Stanley Kubrick movies?

So all in all - in case you hadn't caught on - my opinion of ol' Stan is not very good. But, like Woody Allen, someone out there must like him, because he just kept making movies that were, for some reason, considered classics. I blame the French.

I am in love.

His name is Jojo, he lives in the backwoods farming country of Central Auvergne, he wears a black leather jacket... and he is four years old.

No longer feeling like I was dying of la crève, I wandered around downtown and by the river this afternoon, but when the Sunday-shopping crowds started getting to me and the sun went behind the clouds, I found myself next to the cinéma Mat, just in time for the 2:30 showing of Être et avoir.

The movie, an official selection at Cannes, was a very delightful way to spend the afternoon. It's a sort-of documentary, sort-of narrative look at life in the countryside of Auvergne, centering on a school where all of the students from ages 4 to 11 (numbering somewhere from 10 to 15) are taught in the same room by the same teacher - a sort of one-room schoolhouse deal.

Everything in it is supposedly true and I found it very cute and sweet and real, from the charming Jojo with a marker up his nose to playground conflicts to the older students who help the younger ones. It shows a bit of the homelife of the students, too, with their activities on the farm and their families helping them with their homework. I doubt it will ever be released in other countries, but you should check it out if it is.

As I walked home from the movie last night, I felt super-aware of my surroundings, afraid that CIA agents were going to jump out and grab me or just take sniper shots at me from the roof. Yes, because of course, I am a supersecret spy and the CIA is going to take an interest in me.

What I should be more concerned about is normal criminals, I guess. Vichy, as you may have heard, is full of old people. Old people like to get their rest. So Vichy shuts down in the evenings and goes to sleep. Walking home from the movies, the streets are sometimes deserted - or almost deserted with a few suspicious-looking (everyone looks suspicious in the dark) men wandering around. So I hurried home, watching the rooftops and dark doorways, and had Renata and Rachel call me to make sure they got home alright.

On another supersecret spy note, last night we saw a preview for Sorry, You're Not Supposed to Die Until Tomorrow or whatever the new James Bond flick is. Pierce Brosnan looks really old. It's time for him to be replaced by the lovely Clive Owen.

I HATE DUBBED MOVIES.

That said, there isn't much else to do around here. Tuesday night I saw Le Pianiste with Agnès and Sigrid and last night I was La Memoire dans la peau with Renata and Rachel.

Le Pianiste was good, in a touching-war-movie sort of way. True stories often seem more fake to me than fiction does and there were a lot of violent scenes with people getting shot in the head. But I suppose it did add something to the genre and it was rather beautiful with the music and all, so I enjoyed it. There were times, however, when I found myself reading the characters' lips and getting sidetracked by trying to figure out what they were saying in the original English language track.

La Memoire dans la peau was better than I expected. There was a lot of fighting and action, but there was a lot of travelling, so there was some nice European scenery. During the car chase in Paris, I found myself more concerned for the other drivers than for Bourne. I didn't want him to accidentally kill French people.

So, how was MDs?

Saw La Callas tonight with profs from V. Larbaud. Don't know English title. Music v. good. Film dragged when there was no music. On the whole recommended, as is soundtrack.

Saw preview for I'm With Lucy (dubbed).

I realized no one's seen the new site yet because it's 7:30am on a Monday in the US. Never mind my loneliness.

Don't forget to watch this on Wednesday!

I went tonight to see I'm With Lucy, a John Hannah film that has been released in France and nowhere else. I saw it dubbed into French, because I figured that was better than not seeing it at all. It was kind of oddly composed and I think that if I had been making it, I would have done it differently... or made it into two separate movies. Anyway, it was very entertaining, so I recommend it. I'm sure I'll see it again. The problem I had with the movie was that it was very romantic and made me feel lonely. Can I not see another romantic movie for seven months? Sigh...

Last night I went out with the other Srah and her fellow Boston University program participants. First, we went to see L'Auberge espagnole, which I recommend highly to anyone who anyone who has studied, is studying, or will study abroad. It's a very accurate portrayal of the situation. It takes place in Barcelona, with students from all over Europe studying there as part of the Erasmus program (a European university exchange program).

After the movie, we went to Les Trois Canards, a very crowded bar downtown. I got rather tipsy (to the point where if I turned my head, it took a while for my vision to catch up) from one kir, then we wandered around for a while, looking for Club Vertigo. We finally gave up and went home to sleep (yay).

After the movie, we went to Les Trois Canards, a very crowded bar downtown. I got rather tipsy (to the point where if I turned my head, it took a while for my vision to catch up) from one kir, then we wandered around for a while, looking for Club Vertigo. We finally gave up and went home to sleep (yay).

I went to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding last night with Robin. It was really funny and (pardon me for being a nerd here) an interesting view into cultural differences. Sometimes we forget that we don't even have to leave the city to find someone who has a different way of doing things. End nerd rant. The movie was really funny, the love story was sweet and the heroine was a real character, rather than some prepackaged Hollywood junk. Go see it.

The movie only strengthens my desire to get married on the moon and not invite anyone at all, including the groom. All of you, go away.

Well, American Idol is over. Kelly won. Yippedy doo. We all knew she would, anyway. What am I going to do with myself now? Oh yeah, all of the stuff I should have been doing during the hours I've been wasting in front of the television. How did they manage to drag "You won. You lost" out for TWO HOURS? Ridiculous. I screamed at the television all night, but they just kept singing that same stupid song.

My mom thinks that Kelly and Justin are going to get married and be like Sonny & Cher. I want to try out for the next one and be like the people in the outtakes. I will be singing the Oscar Mayer bologna song.

"Seven, like Seven chipmunks twirling on a branch, eating lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know, the old children's story. From the sea."

Sorry about that. It had to be said; I've had it in my head all day.

Yay! Nikki's gone. That's good. It was sad when she was forced to embarass herself on national television week after week. America has finally shown some mercy and let her go home. Now we'll have some real competition. Justin can sing, even if he looks like broccoli and acts like (to quote a Detroit morning radio show) Wayne-Newton-in-training.

We are going to see James Earl Jones tomorrow night at Albion. My mother says he sounds like God, although I don't know how she knows that.

Those lucky Albion students. They don't know how good they have it, with their James Earl Jones on campus and their Baldwin food cooked for them. Why, when they're old like me and have to worry about feeding themselves, they'll wish they were back at Albion, with their Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and their free Internet access. I don't know where I'm going with this. It was supposed to sound old and crotchety.

Anyway, the whole reason I brought this up - to return from a long tangent - was this. How did whiny, high-pitched Anakin "I wanna be the most powerful Jedi" Skywalker, father of whiny, high-pitched Luke "But I wanted to go to the Taaaaaaaashi station and pick up some powwwwwer converrrrrrrters" Skywalker, get this great James Earl Jones voice? It must be the helmet. I want a helmet like that.

I forgot to watch American Idol last night. Shame on me. Or perhaps... just the opposite.

This comes out in the US two days after I leave. This comes out in France two weeks before I get there and may be gone by the 19th.

Poop. I want them both.

Why do I watch this show? Why do I suffer through it when it's so obviously fixed? Why do I keep putting myself through the torture, week after week, that is listening to Nikki sing?

I saw Signs this weekend. It was very good, but I think I should have waited until it came out on video. Spending $8 (or having your boyfriend spend $8) for you to close your eyes and curl up into a frightened little foetal ball is not an efficient use of money. It scared me. It scared me. It scared me. I was shaking after I left. I still liked it and thought it was a good movie, but if you're going to see it, don't see it at night.

Or just be braver than me, which is not difficult.

I can't believe Nikki is still on American Idol. R.J. sucks, but nothing like the heavy duty professional-strength vacuum of talent that is Nikki.

I saw Austin Powers in Goldmember last night. I was pleasantly surprised. From everything I'd read, it was a big disappointment and was horrible. But it was an entertaining movie and I laughed a lot. There were parts where it dragged and I would have changed things, but they didn't ask me. They were really packing celebrities in at the beginning, and I was afraid the whole movie was going to be like that. I thought Goldmember was a funny evil henchman, but he didn't need a whole plot line. He could have just appeared at the table. And whyyyyyyy was Fat Bastard back? Ew.

But anyway, I was delighted to see Kevvie's Dr Evil. Yum.

Would you still be my friend if I told you I've been watching "American Idol"?

Has anyone else been watching? What did Sideshow Bob Justin do two weeks ago that was so bad? I must have the answer.

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, just after Indy tells the Nazis that Marcus speaks several languages fluently and will blend in in Egypt (I hate putting the same word twice right next to each other like that. If I had had the choice, I wouldn't have), it flashes to Marcus in a busy Egyptian street, asking if anyone there speaks Ancient Greek. If you listen, someone offers him some water and he says, "Water? No thank you, fish make love in it."

Don't know why I was thinking about that, but I thought I'd share.

We watched Live and Let Die this weekend on ABC. The reasons were twofold: I wanted to see the young Jane Seymour and I wanted to see previews for MDs.

Mmmm, James Bond.

Yes, I am not exactly what you would call a James Bond fan. In fact, I see absolutely no value in the movies and can't understand why people like them, except possibly because they're so stupid they're kitschy.

I've never seen a James Bond movie I liked. And yet somehow this one managed to be worse than any I've ever seen. It doesn't have Sean Connery's very strangely slurred Scottish accent - it had a disgustingly tanned Roger Moore. It seemed like James Bond got plunked down in the middle of a 1970s blaxploitation film. The movie seemed to be trying to spread the idea that all black people are involved a giant evil heroin-selling conspiracy. I kept expecting Foxxy Cleopatra to show up with some of her classic dialogue ("I'm Foxxy Cleopatra. And I'm alllllll woman") and fine acting skills. I'm sure she wouldn't have stuck out, since none of the dialogue made any sense at all anyway.

The only highlights of the film were Jane Seymour wearing a peacock-style chair (I think you have to see it to understand) and the same preview for MDs, repeated twice. And, of course, the always popular attraction of adding bits of dialogue to the film about how all of the characters are getting STDs from James Bond. He is a skanky man-whore.

What is the attraction in James Bond movies?

I reread the book About a Boy over Memorial Day Weekend. I really shouldn't have. About a Boy was a good movie. You should go see it and THEN you should read the book. And then you should read Bridget Jones's Diary and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. They were good movies of better books.

I was a bit spoiled for About a Boy because I'd read the book so recently and I was disappointed when they didn't follow it exactly. Of course, that would difficult. The problem is that the book uses the death of Kurt Cobain as an important plot point, which wouldn't work well with Will being "cool". If we took the movie back to 1994, Will wouldn't be cool anymore. 1994 isn't cool anymore. Nothing that happened in 1994 is cool anymore.

So I guess they had to work around that, and they did a good job. Hugh Grant was great, he was actually cute for once, and there were some things in the movie that were better than the book. I just missed Ellie. She was a character in the books, rather than just scenery.

We finally got around to picking up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on DVD. I think I liked the movie better than I did before - after a while to think about it - but there's still a lot missing. I would much rather have Book 5 out than the Chamber of Secrets in theaters.

The extras on the DVD are odd. The box says there are deleted scenes somewhere, but the extras are such a complicated tangle that it's impossible to find anything. Instead they make you play their little games. I WANT DELETED SCENES!

An old episode of Saturday Night Live is on my TV right now. The host, Patrick Swayze, looks insane and is laughing like an idiot. I don't know why I felt it necessary to share. How do you feel about Patrick Swayze? My boss is a big fan. I don't get it.

Name three movie musicals that involve people pretending to be cows or bulls. There may be more than the three I'm thinking of...

I saw The Fellowship of the Ring for the FOURTH time this weekend. But we had to go to see it because they had a ten-minute preview for The Two Towers on the end of the film this time.

I have ALWAYS cried when Sam chases after Frodo at the end. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The preview for The Two Towers looks really good. I am more excited about this one than Episode II or The Chamber of Secrets. Which is saying a lot, for a Star Wars/Harry Potter fan who has never read any of the Lord of the Rings books all the way through.

I finally got around to seeing the thrilling, award-winning film Moulin Rouge this weekend.

Huh.

It was entertaining, but I don't quite see why it seems to be everyone in the world's favorite movie at the moment. It was funny and it was different, but it was lacking in many ways. It didn't really pick up at all until the "Like a Virgin" sequence and by then, almost all of the music was over. It was like:

First half: Many musical sequences that have nothing to do with each other or what's going on onscreen. I thought it was really classy the way the hopeless romantic poet was begging the can-can dancer for one night of sex. Mmmm, romantic. Srah wonders which members of the Academy Nicole Kidman was sleeping with to get nominated for Best Actress.

Second half: Drama and one or two musical sequences (including "Come What May" over and over and over). Much coughing up blood. Srah is only slightly less astounded by Nicole's nod.

Despite the repetition, I really like "Come What May". Why wasn't it nominated for the Oscar? And the "Like a Virgin" sequence was hilarious. It was like Hello Dolly meets A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, but not all I expected it to be. I would see it again if I had to, but I would probably walk in and out of the room.

46 days.

I prided myself on never watching Survivor or any such "reality" series and never giving in to popular American culture. Then I went to France and along came "Loft Story". It was the French version of Big Brother, with a twist that the last male and female who remained in the house had to live there together for a month. The contestants were young and beautiful. When the show first started out, Sophie and I were addicted and would watch all of the updates. Our interest waned after a while, but I have to admit that I was once sucked into the realm of reality TV.

But I've still never seen Survivor, so there.

The main reason for this being my memory today is so that I can upload and offer to you, in mp3 form, one of the worst songs ever made. It was created after Loft Story was over and consists of the "lofteurs" singing about life in the loft. They are clearly not professional singers, but they didn't have great material to work with, either. So all in all, it's a disaster. It's here for a limited time only, so download it now and have a listen.

Channel 35 is SCOLA. It probably stands for something. Scholastic Channel Of Language Aquisition, we'll call it. It shows news or other programs from around the world. They cram an amazing number of countries there so at any time of the day, you could be watching the Azerbaijanian news or a Quebecois variety show.

Alex and I were flipping through the channels on Saturday and there was nothing on the first 33 channels. We got all the way up to SCOLA and they were having some kind of Taiwanese New Year celebration. My favorite part was this big song-and-dance extravaganza. There was the host, then a bunch of people in various costumes. There were brides and grooms, cheerleaders, students, flight attendants, military people, and many more.

From what I could gather, the theme of the song seemed to be "China is reaching out to the world and learning English is a good way to start off the new year." The chorus went something like "China to the World! Okay!" The song was about half Chinese and half English, with the Chinese words subtitled in Chinese and the English words subtitled in English. I assume they were saying things in Chinese and then saying the same thing in English. In which case, the Taiwanese are insane.

It started off normal enough. The brides and grooms would come up to the front of the stage and everyone would say "lweirojcfs (something in Chinese) I love you." The students would come up and everyone would say "lweirojcfs Stay in school." The flight attendants said "lweirojcfs Can I help you?"

But then the second time around, things started getting weird. The brides and grooms said, with big smiles on their faces, "lweirojcfs I'm sorry" and the military people said "lweirojcfs TAXI!" and so on and so on. Maybe if I understood Chinese, I would understand the motivation behind the TAXI! thing. Maybe not.

Last night we (several members of ISU and the Wenzels) went to the Japan America Society of Western Michigan's New Year's rentai (networking) and film. What a great experience.

First we filled up on Japanese food like rice, noodles, fried vegetables, shrimp and vegetables, and sushi. There was a lot of food and it was all excellent. We all at least tried to eat with chopsticks.

Then we went into the auditorium and saw a Japanese juggling group. Normally, if I hear the word juggling I start to squirm and look longingly towards the exit. Not such a big fan of Western-style juggling, me. But this was completely new and different. First they juggled using umbrellas. They would spin the umbrella and make a ball or a ring or a porcelain cup spin around on top. It made a cool noise.

Before the juggling, they had played some traditional music and done the Lion Dance for good luck. The big lion head came around and sort of kissed audience members.

Then after the juggling, they did several incredible balancing acts. I was afraid to clap loudly because I thought everything was going to fall. They would assemble pyramids of stuff on top of a stick in their mouths, all the while keeping it balanced. Then they'd disassemble it. It was amazing. They balanced water, or put water into a bowl on top of a stick, then balanced the stick on a string. Then they spun the string around the stick and made the water come out like a sprinkler. Anyway, I don't know if you can imagine this, but it was great.

Then we had the film. For those of you who liked Amélie, you would probably like Tampopo. It has the same sense of nonsense and whimsy. The main story is about a noodle cook named Tampopo (Dandelion) who, with the help of her friends, builds up her restaurant into the best in town. A lot of it is sort of like Rocky being trained by John Wayne and aided by Mr Miyagi. Ha ha! But the theme of the movie is the joy of food and there are all kinds of side-stories relating to that subject. There's the Japanese woman trying to teach her students how to eat spaghetti properly in the Western way, while a Western man across the room is slurping away at his noodles. There's the woman who sneaks into the supermarket to squeeze all of the produce. There's the pipsqueak underling who embarrasses all of his bosses by being the only one in the room who really understands the menu in the French restaurant. There's the epicurean vagabonds in the park, the kid who's not supposed to have sweets, and the couple whose sexual exploits always seem to be food-related. We had just stuffed ourselves and we still left the movie hungry and searching for a Japanese noodle restaurant in Battle Creek. It's an excellent, fun movie and you should all check it out.

Something I learned: Ramen is the Japanese word for noodles - so if you say "ramen noodles" you're being redundant.

It's 2002. What does this mean?

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (Spring)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Summer)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Fall)

What are you looking forward to in 2002?

One of my biggest fans wants stories. So here's a story for you, B.L.

The Story Of What I Did Yesterday
by srah

Yesterday I woke up and still had a sore throat. In fact, I couldn't even talk. But I had a cup of tea and then I could talk again. Ooh ahh. I wrapped myself up in a blanket, didn't shower or get dressed, and watched movies all day, including Mr Roberts, which was very disappointing because I expect zaniness and humor in my Jack Lemmon movies, and the extras on the Monty Python and the Holy Grail Special Edition DVD, which is one of the greatest DVDs ever created, if you ask me. Which you didn't. Then I went to bed and didn't fall asleep for several hours because all I could think about was how I'll soon have to begin my Real Life and do things like Pay Insurance and Be Independent.

There. That was a story. Now don't complain.

It's a little late for this announcement, but for my money, this is the best Christmas movie of them all. Especially the singing vegetables.

Went to see FOTR again, this time with my family. I cried when Sam came along with Frodo again. It seemed a lot scarier this time, because instead of having Mr Lord Of The Rings Expert with me, who knew the story and was just wondering how they'd express it, I had a four-year-old (who should not have been there) in front of me and my mother next to me, screaming and clutching my arm in terror when hobbits popped out of the corn fields.

I was very impressed with the four-year-old. He held out for a long time. Before the movie started, I thought 'I'm not sure this is a good movie for such a young child'. And as the movie went on and there were scary demons and Orcs and whatever those Orc-goblin hybrids were called, I was sure of it. And I was scared enough for him. He did end up asking his dad to leave, but he held out through at least half of the movie. Brave little boy.

The Detroit Free Press gave Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius three stars.

Pardon me, that gagging noise would be me, choking on my index finger. I've had to put up with those stupid previews for months now. The LEAST awaited movie of the year.

"I may not be smart... but I've got a BIG HEAD!"

Oh dear, they're making Shrek 2. Shrek was amusing enough, but once was enough and I saw it twice so I'd rather not see it again for several years ifyoudon'tmind. But I have a feeling it's one of those movies that I didn't like but that were popular enough that people will want to watch it all the time and I will get trapped seeing it seventeen thousand times until I get to the point where someone pulls out the video and I leap at their throats, teeth bared, and maul them like a wolverine. Other movies like this: Grease, Dirty Dancing, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

(Hint: srah does not want Shrek for Christmas.)

Do you think the people in Shrek looked realistic? I don't. They looked fake and they didn't move like real people do. We don't have the technology yet. Will someone please tell Hollywood? There was only one point in The Fellowship of the Ring (and now I don't remember where it was) where I had that creepy Shrek-feeling, but I noticed it a lot more in Harry Potter - like when Neville flies into the air and falls off his broom, most of the Quidditch sequence, and when they're fighting the troll. We do not have the technology to replace stunt-people with CGI-animated people. It looks stupid and cartoonish. So stop it! Even if you're fighting a CGI troll, there are ways around it. You can cover up a stand-in troll with the CGI and put a real stuntperson on top. It can be done! That's how they had to do it back in the old days!

This made me think of this.

Boyfriend was offended by previous complaining Golden Globes post. It was not to say that there have been no good movies, but that there isn't much competition for his beloved Fellowship of the Ring. The year in movies has been top-light and very very bottom-heavy.

What a sad sad slow year this has been for movies. Echhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I hope Amélie gets nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

I cried and cried during Fellowship of the Ring last night. This may have had something to do with my post office experiences and my lack of sleep, but anyway... It was very good and very epic. I was going to say "I especially liked..." but I especially liked everyone.

A post about my study-abroad experiences will come during today's staff meeting, Krista. It seems like all they do around here anymore is have staff meetings.

Bob and Roommate say I'm Bette Davis in All About Eve. Reading the summary, I have to say that's a little scary. Now I have to rent it.

I gave my presentation on Chile this morning. Not so bad, but nothing spectacular. Then I came back to the room and zoned out until 11, when I went to see Noises Off... in Bob's room.

Oh dearie me, what a funny movie. It's about a theatre company putting on a British sex farce and trying to get to Broadway, but the goings-on behind the scenes are even crazier than what's going on on stage. It has Michael Caine as the director, Carol Burnett as the star, John Ritter (no really, it's good, I swear) as the annoying jealous actor who's having an affair with Carol Burnett and can't finish a single sentence, Christopher Reeve as the sensitive dumb guy who gets nosebleeds at the thought of violence, Indiana Jones' friend Marcus Brody as the drunken, deaf, senile actor playing the burglar, and Larry from Perfect Strangers (Mark Linn-Baker) as the bewildered stagehand.

Lloyd Fellowes (Michael Caine): And God said, "Where the Hell is Tim?" And there the Hell was Tim. And God said, "Let there be doors that open when they open, and close when they close."
Tim Allgood (Mark Linn-Baker): Do something?
Lloyd Fellowes: DOORS!
Tim Allgood: I was getting the bananas for the sardines.

Mwah ha. You'd get it if you saw it. Oh yeah, and Patti LuPone is playing Carol Burnett's part on Broadway right now. :D

Mr Enlow is playing a game where you try to come up with a the largest group possible of people who have been in movies together. At least that's how I've understood the rules. This is one I've come up with:

Bernard Hill was in Madagascar Skin with John Hannah, Dirty Something with Rachel Weisz, and Titanic with Jonathan Hyde. John Hannah, Rachel Weisz, and Jonathan Hyde were all in The Mummy.

After four it gets really complicated. I give up. Damned Andy Serkis got my hopes up.

I am listening to Johnny Mathis. My roommate is going to think I'm cracked out like a villain. "Wonderful Wonderful" always makes me think of that very disturbing "X-Files" episode. Consanguinity=bad.

Srah's weekly JHAC-copied "Alias" recap/review (I promise, it's the last... unless Shepard becomes a recurring character...)

Rather than a few brief encounters in the last fifteen minutes, JH was a major character in the first half hour of the show. It makes me wonder how this show is written, because it seems that they end one thread of a story very promptly on the half-hour or the quarter-hour. Anyway...

When last we saw Sydney, she had a look of open-eyed and open-mouthed horror as she had discovered her partner with his neck slit. Mmmmm. Then along came the guards and caught her. This week, we find Sydney having a nice little bath. With electrodes attached to her. They are electrocuting her to torture information out of her. Unfortunately, she doesn't have any!

She convinces the evil doctors/orderlies, who are with K-Directorate (another (!) spy organization) that Shepard will trust her because she's another patient. In return for the information that Shepard gives her, they will spare her life and just send her to a Tchechnian prison. I am pretty sure I spelled that wrong.

On a side note, isn't it nice that everyone in this Romanian mental institution has learned English for Shepard and Sydney's sake? Awwwww.

So, she befriends our pal Shepard. He is confused and victimized and a lovely lovely actor. You can see the pain and confusion in his eyes and face. He thought he was safe in this desolate, remote location, but they tracked him here. He doesn't know what's going on in his mind - he just knows he's having these horribly vivid black-and-white flashbacks that he thinks are dreams. He thinks he's delusional or dangerous.

Sydney fills him in on what's been done to him and tells him she needs his help to escape. Shepard doesn't want to escape because he doesn't want to be dangerous on the loose. Erm, what else?

Eventually, she convinces him that there are bad people in the hospital who are going to get him anyway.

Shepard still doesn't quite trust her, because he has a flashback that night that makes him wonder if she's setting him up - considering HE KILLED HER FIANCE! Hmmm. Fortunately for him, Sydney doesn't know that. Yet.

They escape and go to a little hut, call Daddy on the cell phone (why do all of these spies have cell phones? aren't those insecure?), and Shepard tells-all to Sydney, who opens her mouth really wide and makes sobbing sounds. Then she forgives him.

She tells SD-6 that he's dead. Srah says "No, he's not. She's just telling SD-6 that he is." Sydney tells the CIA, "No, he's not. I'm just telling SD-6 that he is." Srah says, "Aha! Why am I not being paid to write this?"

Then other things happen. Sydney has an outside life. In the three episodes I've seen, I've never seen this graduate student do anything academic. Isn't her job at the bank enough? And how do I get a bank job as a graduate student that makes me travel constantly all over the world? Doesn't Francie wonder about the bruises and such? No, Francie is busy getting engaged.

La la, conflict with Daddy, then at the end, we get... postcard from Martin! Yay! I'm trying to figure out if it's JH's handwriting, but it's printed and I've only seen his cursive writing, I think. If it's his, it doesn't look familiar.

Fin.

The squirrels were MARRIED. Not merry.

Hooray for closed-captioning.

Isn't this post delightfully vague? I just want to be like my roommate.

Saw Harry Potter again. Ron Weasley stole the show. Life is as it should be.

Saw Amélie for the third time yesterday. It was still as wonderful as the first. I was glad to hear the (enormous) audience laughing along and enjoying it like I did. And it was helpful to have subtitles so I could finally understand Mme Wallace (Mrs Wells), who delivers all of her lines with a rather drunken slur...

I was afraid Amélie wasn't going to be popular... but it looks like it is in Ann Arbor, at least!

Why the Star Wars I-III Trilogy Does Not Work as Well as the IV-VI Trilogy (a Five Minute Thought On the Way to Women And Art Class):

- No one (or at least not me) would think to call Star Wars IV "the introduction one" or V "the romance one" or VI "the one with the big battle". I think that oversimplifying and telling us what to expect is dumb. In the original trilogy, they ALL had big battles. They ALL had romance.

- They ALL had entertaining creatures that spoke foreign languages instead of strangely-accented English. If you know me, you know that this is my beef in EVERY movie, not just SW.

- I think movies these days, to quote Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, get carried away with what they can do and don't stop to think about what they should do. Special FX are cool when they're appropriate, but above all, you need a story and dialogue that reach out and grab people.

Off I go.

Watched "Alias" tonight because John Hannah was on. My thoughts? I'm lazy and have just copied my JHAC post.

The first time I saw the photo of Shepard (John Hannah), I squealed and Alex rolled up into a little ball, making fun of me. It feels like it's been a long time since I've seen him in something *new*. I've seen old projects I just got ahold of, but it's been several months since TMR.

For the longest time, I thought I was watching the wrong episode because there was no mention of Shepard and they didn't seem to be building up to him. But that's Alias for you - one moment Charlie's singing in the bar, the next, Sydney's locked up in a Romanian mental institution.

(Martin?) Shepard is a programmed killer who, if you read him a certain line of poetry once, will do what you want him to do and twice, will forget that he did it. To get to him, Sydney gets herself admitted into a horrible Romanian insane asylum. You see several views of him staring rather sinisterly (?) at her, then she approaches him in the cafeteria, tries out the poetry, and he attacks her, probably thinking she's with THEM. Whoever THEM are.

At this time, I will point out that I was reading something on an Alias bulletin board posting that was the same thought I had: "Wouldn't it be ironic if the little snippet of poetry was Auden?" Or Wordsworth, for that matter. Or hell, Lord Byron. Do we have enough poetry-connections for JH? Unfortunately, 'twasn't. It started out "No man is an island..." which I recognized as John Donne, but when I found the Donne poem online, it didn't sound like I remembered the Alias poem sounding. I'll have to check the tape. Here's Donne:

[...]No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.
- John Donne

Anyway, Shepard jumps on her and gets tazered by the nicey-nice guards, then you don't see much more of him until the "Next Week's Episode" clips, which seemed chock-full of John Hannah and gave me hope for the future. :)

I watched Apt Pupil today with Alex, who is madly and passionately in love with Sir Ian McKellen. I think I may have to fall in love with him myself. This is particularly frightening considering that, in the movie, he plays a former Nazi concentration camp officer who enjoys murdering homeless street hustlers and putting cats in the oven. Of course, this is from the girl who finds Norman Bates attractive. I think I have serious issues and that someone should probably look into Boyfriend's background and make sure he's not a psycho killer.

It was much better than expected. Overall, it was quite enjoyable, although I have those normal Potterholic complaints of things that were left out or changed and a few other things as well.

Most of the effects were great - especially the Invisibility Cloak, which I really liked.

I thought the movie worked pretty well for those who had read the books and who knew what they were expecting. I think it worked less well for those who were new to the Potter experience. I'm not sure that everything was made as clear as in the books and they might not have understood the motivation of some of the characters.

Generally, I think the actors did well. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) got a little hammy at points, but that was to be expected. Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione were much better than expected. Alan Rickman was a little hammy but my main beef was that he was underutilised. But of course, if I had made the films, they would have been hours and hours long. Maybe a TV mini-series for each book.

It upset me a bit that they sort of threw characters into the movie without letting us get to know them. We barely knew Harry by the end, much less Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, Snape, Percy, Neville, etc. We should know that Hermione is Muggle-born before The Chamber of Secrets movie comes out.

Is it just me, or did Lee Jordan look like Whoopi Goldberg? I always expected him to look older and more masculine and better looking. Grr.

My only other beef is that poor Seamus is being treated as a buffoon. He's not a terribly developed character in the books, but he deserves more than a constantly exploding wand (which would be more in character for Ron or Neville...)

Judging from the reviews I've read, I think Harry Potter is going to be a disappointment. But then again, anything is going to be a disappointment when it's built up like this. Look at The Phantom Menace...

I hope The Fellowship of the Ring lives up to everything Alex is expecting of it.

Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain) is an absolutely lovely French film that has just recently come out in the US. It's about a girl in Montmartre with a creative and imaginative outlook on life, who one day decides to meddle in the lives of the people around her. The tagline is "She'll change your life" and even if that isn't completely accurate, the film will definitely change your day... or maybe even your week. If you're feeling down about anything, see if "Amelie" is playing near you, because it's a real pick-me-up. It's sort of like a drug, actually - Antoine and I have each seen it twice and are looking forward to our next hit...

And hey, if that's not playing, you can always settle for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I did manage to get Harry Potter tickets for Friday, after all. Becky is going to come and watch with us and spend the night.

Cheryl and I watched La Reine Margot today for our French class. Whooey! Did Dr Yewah watch this before he assigned it for class? It is chock-full of violence, sex, gore, naked Vincent Perez, incest by the truckload, no plot to speak of, confusing character motivation, the always-adorable Daniel Auteuil with an atrocious hairdo, and an astonishing lack of cross-dressing on the part of the Duc d'Anjou.

Hmm... at least it's better than Cyrano de Bergerac, which I've seen at least three times in the past year. The fact that it's written in verse (and an attempt is made to translate it into English verse) is driving me nuts.

Un couple épatant - Cavale - Après la vie
I don't know how I find these things, but here's a trilogy of films that were filmed in Grenoble this year, including the time that we were visiting there this summer. Now I don't want to go jumping to conclusions or anything, but there seemed to be a lot of cinema-esque lighting nonsense going on down the street from our hotel... Well, even if I didn't almost see this filming, it's exciting to see recognizable scenery from Grenoble! Sigh...

Last night I saw Life as a House - it was really good. I can see why people compared it to American Beauty, but I think it has its own merits and is a really great movie. It made me cry. Kevin Kline is great and it was cool to see Hayden Christensen and test him out for SWII. Kristin Scott Thomas' US accent was quite good. How long has it been out? It's only playing in one theater in Jackson - I wish it had gotten more publicity and theaters...

I HATE DUBBED MOVIES. I need to read boxes more carefully. That said, I put up with the dubbing for the whole movie and quite enjoyed Les Rivières pourpres. Lots of fun and action and thrills and the library scenes filmed in a building on Place Verdun in Grenoble that I passed every day and also HAVE BEEN INSIDE. Pardon me, I'm easily impressed.

Vincent Cassel's English dubbing of his own part was very amoosing, as I have no idea where he learned English, but it might have been inner-city NYC. Jean Reno is divine and I think Vincent is only going to get more attractive with age - mrrrrowwwrr. Wait, I'm lying, because he was not at all attractive in Le Pacte des loups. I think he needs fluffy hair. If they'd been speaking French, they would have been even better.

I finally saw The Usual Suspects last night. An would be proud. It was good. I looooooooove Kevin Spacey.

Alan Cumming is going to be on Celebrity Weakest Link. Almost makes one want to watch. Almost. "Mr Bojangles, you have a drinking problem..."

Today I am finally going to watch Les Rivières pourpres. Yay!

Nothing interesting to say. I spent the early part of the morning reading my wall to my roommate who wasn't listening but that's okay because I was mostly reading it to myself. I think I'm losing my French.

6 days to Potter. And more importantly, to the Weasleys.

I am so shamefully slow. I should have bought Harry Potter tickets weeks ago and didn't get around to it. Now we probably won't be able to see it opening night. Shame shame shame!

I am hanging my head and sniffling.

ABC is a pile of poo and postponed John Hannah's "Alias" episode till the 18th so Jillian and I watched the first half of "Uprising" instead. So far it isn't making much sense.

Last night Alex and I watched Star Wars: A New Hope and I fell asleep. Shame on me. The Special Edition definitely has better sound quality, although you have to put up with a lot of silly additions for it. Watching the first scene with the ship appearing from the top of the screen made me think that Star Wars movies belong in a theatre. I miss Norris 101 movies.

Jillian and I are drinking all of the Earl Grey in Baldwin. Mwah ha! Another convert to the World Of Tea Addiction!

Marian needs to get his own AIM account because one of these days Yen is going to IM me for real and I'm going to be mean to her.

I am playing with penguins!

Monsters, Inc. was fun and entertaining. I quite enjoyed myself, even though I've never seen a Pixar film before. The Pixar short before the movie was hilarious, too. But let's skip to the important part: the previews. There were precisely three million hours of previews.

Ice Age sounded stupid when I first heard about it, but after having seen the preview, I want to go see it. It looks like a fun Disney movie. I think Disney is trying to move away from musicals, which is too bad in a way because they seemed to be the only institution of the movie musical in the 90s.

If I see another preview for Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, I am going to vomit copiously all over whoever's sitting in front of me. I bet I'm in for another one at...

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone! This preview looks better than any of the others I've seen and I'm actually looking forward to seeing the movie. J.K. Rowling likes it, so I'm sure I will too. :)

There was a bunch of other crap...

They had a preview for the re-release of E.T. I'm so mad about that - not that they're re-releasing it, but that they've edited it for post-September-11th audiences. This is the most ridiculous thing of all. You can't go back and edit things that might be offensive to someone somewhere from a movie from 1982! My rule is: you can add things to a Special Edition, but you can't take things out.

Then the last (long awaited - at least by me and the guys behind me) preview was Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. What a disappointment. I'm still looking forward to the movie, but that was a lame teaser. Just Darth Vader breathing through the whole thing. I want to hear some words of wisdom from Yoda or something to indicate that the dialogue won't be full of "Yippeeee!" and "Meesa Jah-Jah Binks" like The Phantom Menace. Boo. Hopefully the second teaser (attached to Harry Potter) will be better.

Coming Attractions says:

"October 27, 2001... We have heard from one of our top sleuths in Hollywood, and so what we're about to report to you is the closest thing to finding out direct from Lucasfilm what's going on with the Episode II trailer. Ready?

The first trailer, dubbed the "Breathing" teaser, will definitely run attached to all prints of Monsters, Inc. on November 2nd.

The second trailer, slated to appear online at the official Star Wars website, will debut November 9th.

The third trailer, longer and containing more adult-oriented material than the first teaser trailer, will be attached to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on November 16th."

Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (US title: Amelie) will be coming out 9 November in a theatre near you. Go and see it or I'll bite your butt. It's a lovely happy movie.

Close Encounters was a supergood post-September-11th movie. It opened with mysterious airplane problems, mentioned anthrax, and had a general theme of mistrust of the US Army and government.

I just finished watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What a beautiful, lovely, wonderful movie. I don't know how I never got around to watching it before.

At the beginning, it was like a horror movie or Ghostbusters or something and by the end it was beautiful - just like the characters felt: frightened, then at peace. I especially liked that there was no love angle and the woman and the man were working together for a common goal. Oh whatever. I'm so happy that I watched that. I was crying by the end.

Wasn't it creepy that Barry, the little kid, looked just like the aliens? I'm full of questions about that movie. It's making me think! Ack! Make it stop!

François Truffaut is so much more enjoyable as an actor than as a director. I loved that there was French scattered throughout the movie. It made a good movie even better. "Before I got paid to speak French, I used to read maps."

What's the matter with me? I'm all mushy.

'I was told that you would not move my desk, but my desk has been moved three times now and I used to have a view of the window and I could see the squirrels playing outside the window and they were merry.'

Or possibly "married". Hard to tell.