Wednesday, March 14, 2007

I'm back... almost
Hey y'all, sorry I've been away for so long. It was my holiday, and I was unable to post. Not that I didn't have a lot I could have posted on, but vacation got in the way. I will be posting on Lost later tonight (and I'm just about to watch America's Next Top Model, yay!)

Favourite line on 30 Rock last week: "I believe that vampires are the world's greatest golfers, but their curse is that they'll never get to prove it!" If you missed it, you can watch it here:



Over the past few days, due to a couple of grandparents with free time, my husband and I have been child-free (and to be honest, it's totally getting to me... I WANT MY GIRL BACK!) and in that time, we've seen lots of movies:

Breach: This is a VERY good film starring Ryan Phillippe, who is good, and Chris Cooper, who is always brilliant. I hadn't heard a lot about it when it came out, but I highly recommend it.

Zodiac: Good, but LONG. Very long. They start with the editorial cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal), then focus on the writer (Robert Downey Jr.), then the cop (Mark Ruffalo) and while they're all awesome actors, and I understand the point was to show how the Zodiac killer destroyed the lives of the people trying to hunt him down, they drop the writer and cop stories and come back around to the cartoonist. If they'd found a way to keep the writer and cop peripheral to the story, they could have had an amazing film in about 1 hour and 45 min, not the 3-hour epic that it is.

United 93: Wow. I rented this one after avoiding it when it came out. I'm still haunted by the images of 9/11 (who isn't??) and didn't think I could handle a movie that would bring it all back. But I can't recommend this movie highly enough. Yes, it's disturbing, and despite seeing the image of that plane flying into that tower countless times, I literally gasped out loud when it happened again. This movie isn't just about the people on the plane that was supposed to hit the White House, though; it's a film about the whole day, about the people who were involved in the air traffic control centers (in many cases, using the real controllers who were working that day), showing you how early the problems were spotted, yet they had no idea what was happening, how difficult it was to get military help, and just how confused everyone is. And while I'm the LAST person on this earth to go, "Yay, George W. Bush!" (I am baffled by the fact he is somehow in for a second term) it really shows that they had no idea what was going on, and that no one was mentally equipped to deal with a problem of this magnitude. Michael Moore can make fun of Bush all he wants, showing him sitting there reading a story about a goat to children when he should have doing something, but just like the rest of the world, he had no idea what was actually happening. When you're put into the very moments between 8:20 and 11 a.m. of that morning, you realize how confusing and insane that morning really was. More importantly, though, this movie shows you that real heroes exist in the world. Watch this film. (I cried for the last 45 minutes, so be warned.)

Jesus Camp: I loved this documentary about a Bible camp for Evangelical children. The genius of this movie is that the filmmakers simply filmed these children at the camp, at their homes, interacting with their parents and peers, and just let it stand. There is no editorializing. There is a radio host who has a call-in show where he talks about how dangerous the Evangelical movement is in the U.S. (there are 30 million of them, and they can -- and did -- determine an election). But if you are an Evangelical, you will watch this movie beaming at the honest depiction of your beliefs. If you are not, you will sit and stare at the screen, with your jaw on the floor, watching as 6-year-old children are standing in the middle of a church, being yelled at as hypocrites by a minister, holding their arms in the air, speaking in tongues as the Holy Spirit fills them, with tears running down their faces. There is something almost sinister about these scenes, and it has to be seen to be believed.

The Devil Wears Prada: This was our fun film amongst all of the other ones, and it really was fun. There was a lot of it that was kinda head-scratching -- like, um, how does Andie come out OK at the end of it after everything she's done to people around her -- so you just have to try not to think about it too hard, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Meryl Streep is fantastic in it.

Anyway, on to watch ANTM!

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