Love Bites (So Does This Album)

For a Jane Austen adaptation I thought this was lackluster.

For an Ang Lee film I thought it was below average.

For a Kate Winslet role I thought it was okay.

For a Hugh Grant role I thought it was phenomenal.

(This is the first movie I’ve seen that I really liked him. Yeah, he was entertaining in Love Actually, but so many others could’ve played that role and probably done it better. Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars really worked for me. I went into this movie thinking he would be the downfall of it, and I really think he was probably the best thing about this film.)

Nothing like the music from Once which declared the brilliance of Markéta and Glen, but a wonderful collection, nonetheless. Would have liked to have heard more from her on this one, as well.

Walking into a room with twenty people, it’s likely you’re going to gravitate toward certain individuals. Some you’ll probably not even notice. And the mere voices of others will nerves feel like a block of Parmesan on a grater. So it is with a book with multiple first-person narrators; especially when it is done well. And Bausch really nails it with this one.

Bausch has really gotten into the voices of these characters and created a community that is very convincing. The story starts out a bit dry, but picks up. By the end, it is quite easy to find oneself looking for excuses to ignore life’s little inconveniences (i.e. work, school) and keep reading.

I had few expectations for this book, and although I didn’t fall in love with The Gypsy Man, I enjoyed it. A highly entertaining read.

I can’t stand Cameron Diaz. I think she’s overrated in about ninety-four ways. That being said, I went into this movie expecting to hate it. And we all know what happens when you approach a movie with such an attitude; either your feelings will be justified, or the movie will blow away all your expectations.

In Her Shoes wasn’t a great movie, by any means. But it was so much better than I expected. Well, the first half was pretty much what I expected, but about midway the movie really began to develop a plot. And-chick flick aficionados beware-an original plot without many cliches. And Diaz wasn’t half bad. I would’ve preferred she kept her clothes on a bit more as it seemed way excessive, but the acting was the best I’ve seen from her.

This has been done before and done much better. What is the motivation of these characters? The romance between Georgiana and Grey was stilted. I felt little sympathies for the characters. Why was G so popular? What about her disgrace? In the end, I just didn’t care. In a movie like this, there should be someone to root for. I didn’t care if the lovers hooked up because I didn’t feel anything between them.

I like Keira Knightley, historical films, and classic romance stories. This film had potential, but there was obviously a need to fit in too much information and not enough time to do it in. Bring true emotion in to this film… let the viewer marinate in it, and you have a great film.

Well acted. Beautifully set. Wonderful costumes. Poor direction. No heart.

SPOILERS

I’m sad and heartbroken. I’ll buy a male escort. No sex. I’ll get drunk and jump him. I’m in love. We fight. I’m sad and heartbroken. We’re in love again.

Andrew Volpe does the best Reese Roper I’ve heard in years, even better than Reese himself in recent years.

I love old sci-fi. I even like bad “classic” sci-fi. Unfortunately, this film didn’t work for me. It mixed all that made Ed Wood’s movies laughable (the stock film and goofs) with a Leave It To Beaver cast attempting to do a serious sci-fi movie. “Gee whiz.”

The U.S. version is surprisingly much better than the British. The British version involves a long scene in the observatory that is tedious and irrelevant. It also has a completely different, and much more positive, ending. Unfortunately, this alternate ending is cheesy (the kid says “Gee, thanks” after humanity is saved) and was obviously filmed long after the original film was (the boy is a couple years older).

I’ve never not liked an old sci-fi film, even when it was ridiculous, boring, predictable, or cheesy…until today. While “Invaders from Mars” was original for its time, the film was highly disappointing overall.

About a third of the way through this film, I realized I had read the play several years back. For whatever reason, this prior knowledge of the story drained much of the excitement I had in viewing this movie.

Still, it was well casted, good story, and great performances. Some of the scenes were exactly as I imagined them when I originally read the play; unfortunately, this gave me the feeling that I had already seen the movie and I just wasn’t that interested in viewing it a second time.