Wanted

It's funny that Angelina is so prominant on this poster because James McAvoy owns this movie. He's wonderfully intense as usual and burns up the screen.

This is not the kind of movie I usually go to, but James McAvoy drew me in. And it was so worth it.

It's sort of like Pulp Fiction in that it has a dark sense of humor while being a serious action flick. And yes the action is "out there" like the Matrix. Those two things with James and Angelina (who I do like as an actress) make for a pretty good movie. I recommend it!

Iron Man

I'm not usually an action movie fan but this one I loved. Maybe because Robert Downey Jr. is naturally a tortured soul and so he does that part so well in movies. He does it wonderfully here. He's electric on screen. And the movie was written more around the characters and the plot and less on "blowing things up".

Gwyneth Paltrow also stars, but more as eye candy. They definately set her and RDJ up for a sequel.

Great Sex

A friend, who knows I see a lot of movies, asked me, “Would I still enjoy the Sex and the City movie if I didn’t watch the TV show?”

To that I have two answers.

First off, I’m so sorry that there are women out there who haven’t seen this show. It’s a female right of passage to watch this show. It celebrates and empowers women and their messy lives and relationships. It’s like a good friend who gives great advice. And you don’t even have to like New York to enjoy it, because the stories and characters with their problems and their joys resonate no matter where you live.

My second answer is this: if you haven’t seen the show, you would probably still enjoy the movie. You might think it funny and clever. But you wouldn’t go from laughing hysterically in one minute to crying hysterically the next like a SATC veteran. And that’s sort of like giving a really expensive bottle of wine to a beer drinker.

I purposely did not read the reviews because I didn’t want to know what they had to say. Michael Patrick King didn’t write this movie or the series for the critics. He wrote it from the heart (he had to have been a woman in another life). He wrote it for us. And it was AMAZING. Absolutely amazing.

He was completely true to the characters. He didn’t contrive ridiculous plot twists to invent drama. He just let nature take its course the way things would really have worked out if these were real people, with real, every day issues like the rest of us. It was wonderful to watch and I hope to see it 10 more times.

TWILIGHT

My friend Nancy told me two weeks ago about this book she'd read called Twilight. I had never heard of it before. Now I'm hooked and I can't stop reading the books (there are three so far, number 4 is out this month).

The story is about a high school girl, Bella, who falls in love with a high school boy, Edward, who just happens to be a vampire. A good vampire. But the focus is not on the sci-fi angle, it's a love story and it's amazing. The way this woman writes had me hooked from the very sentence to the last. I read it in one weekend and it's over 600 pages (although it's a fast read because the writing is simple and the type large). I can only plagerize Entertainment Weekly magazine to sum it up best. The writer said that he could "feel Bella breathing" when he read the book, and it's so true. You feel like you're there. It's amazing.

I also just read that the writer, Stephenie Meyer, is a Morman housewife and these are her first books. They are written for a young adult audience, so there's no sex in them (in fact it's interesting how the vampire angle has allowed her to avoid that). And I have to say that the books are actually better for it. The connection between the two main characters is so hot that sex, written poorly, would make it cheesy.

Lastly, they have made the first book into a movie that premieres on 12.12.08 (the movie poster is above). If anyone wants to go with, Nancy and I will be in line at 6am.