It’s not the greateast movie, but I enjoyed it. I was ready for it to be abysmal but I like cheesy love stories, so I suspended my disbelief for a second and my little voice telling me “Of course he’s going to win” and enjoyed the ride. I like Kirsten Dunst and her character was fun. I have a little knowledge of tennis – I played a bit but not that much, so it was just enough to enjoy it without wondering what the hell was happening, but I wasn’t angry at mistakes or anything like that. The movie reminded me of watching finals with my dad, so that was nice.

I expected a really cheesy movie (no that there’s anything wrong with that!) with a big focus on the love story, but I was actually very pleasantly surprised by the story about the main character Kate and her niece. It was very sweet and dealt very well with the death of a parent – I actually found myself crying a lot of times during the movie. Kate’s struggle to become a mother to Zoe was very believable too. Abigail Breslin is amazing as usual.

I loved it! I’m a big Jane Austen fan, but the book kind of disappointed me. I wasn’t sure of the writing style, and all the “we”s felt weird, plus the backstory distracted us from the main storyline. Here all the stories are beautifully woven together and I enjoyed it a lot. Sadly my DVD was a scratched and I lost the ending, would you believe it! I managed to see most of it though I missed 5-10 minutes. Anyway, I really got into all of the stories, loved all the characters, I thought the actors were all very good. :)

I had great fun reading this book while in Disney World or on the plane – it’s great “trip” book. I think I prefered her first novel though (Soutien-gorge rose et veston noir). This one felt a bit like auto-fiction, like the author wanted to be her heroine – it wasn’t always realistic (men who always want to talk about their feelings?!). Also there was a lot of description – at the middle of the book the author was still describing her characters, it was like she forgot to mention something at the beginning. I would have prefered to find out how the characters were through their actions than through descriptions. But still a fun, light reading that I recommend for chick-lit readers everywhere!

Not bad. I had a really intense chick lit craving so I bought this one since Emily Giffin is apparently all the rage now. It was written well, and the characters were attaching, but I thought the story lacked a bit. I guess I wanted a story where you’re not really sure when/how the main characters are going to get together… but they hooked up in the first chapter ;) I thought the middle lagged on a bit. Oh well!

I didn’t go at all for any of the love stories – Jude Law and Cameron Diaz’s dialogue was very contrived and they both acted very stiffly. I found myself constantly wishing they would stop talking! For example in the end when Amanda comes back, she runs all the way to the cottage because she can’t bear to be without Graham one minute more (which the music conveys very well) but when she actually sees him she starts babbling away again. Blah. That annoyed me a lot. (Though it was a good idea to make him a daddy – it warmed me up a bit to him!)

But Kate Winslet is so, so wonderful. Her story with Arthur (the screenwriter) was the best of all, it felt more real than all the rest. Jack Black didn’t bother me at all – and he was the reason I didn’t want to see the movie that much!

But the main good point about this movie is Hans Zimmer’s score. It’s great and really helps to make us feel the emotions that the actors lack. It’s the only thing keeping me from saying this isn’t worth consuming… Although I did think most of the song cues were very poor (except for Let Go which was a good fit for Amanda&Graham’s weird story).

I plan to watch everything related to Jane Austen and this movie intrigued me. I had never seen a Bollywood movie and was a bit curious to see how P&P could fit in the Indian modern world.

It’s a… weird movie. It’s not bad, I enjoyed it quite enough, but it’s just surprising. Somehow I didn’t know it was a musical and when they burst into song I was a bit freaked out!!! But it’s really an interesting adaptation effort. I loved to see all the parallels they drew between the original and how it might translate in our world – like the London/country being changed into America/India. I didn’t much care for some changes though, like having Lady Catherine be Darcy’s mother or removing a Bennett sister.

The acting was quite good, and everybody were good singers. I was surprised to recognise way more people than I though – Naveen Andrews of course and Alexis Bledel (what a surprise! She’s good though). Aishwarya Rai was a good “Lalita” even though she was so gorgeous that it undermined a bit the fact that Darcy falls mostly for her wit and brilliance.

So I’d mostly recommend this for Jane Austen fans who are open-minded!

It’s one of the many books my grandfather wrote. This one however isn’t published, it’s just the manuscript with a binding made by my grandmother. (They are quite a team!) My grandparents recently moved in a much smaller place than their previous apartment and gave much of their books to us, their grandchildren.

The book relates some of my grandfather’s memories of Quebec City. It talks about people he knew, shops he went to and different events that happened in the last 100 years. (He’s not 100, but he goes a bit further back!) It’s interesting – mostly for his family I guess.

Notes on the viewing: My best friend gave it to me on my birthday; we watched it with another close friend after my dad’s funeral. The day might have colored my vision of it (like nothing would have been good enough for me to love it) but I was really happy to watch it with friends.

So! I was very excited to see this, but then it never got released in theaters in my city, and the DVD took forever to arrive, so it lost a bit of momentum. But still it’s a pretty good movie with excellent acting, images and music. I thought the story was a bit on the weak side though. They didn’t really explain why Jane went from hate to love in her feelings (though I guess we’re supposed to assume it’s à la Elizabeth&Darcy) which made the whole drama a bit less believable to me.

For some reason I was really looking forward to Season 5. I wanted to see how they would integrate Dawn, to be in awe of Spike (and the Spuffy goodness) and mostly to finally get rid of Riley!

Season 5’s general plot was much better than Season 4 but it had less “special” episodes, apart from Fool for Love and The Body. Also, the whole Joyce arc came at a really bad time in my personal life which made it kind of hard to get through it. I think that lessened my appreaciation of the season a bit, though of course it’s not the show’s fault.

I thought Glory was a so-so villain, though the duality with Ben was interesting (and could have been exploited better, I thought). However, The Gift is in my opinion the best season finale of Buffy and maybe of all season finales (though I haven’t seen Chosen yet). So that’s that.

About bonuses, well, there a few commentaries – I always like those by Doug Petrie and Jane Espenson, and obviously Joss Whedon’s on The Body (but seriously, why no commentary on the finale?!). The featurettes didn’t strike me as particularly interesting; I liked Buffy Abroad and the one on the stunts (it was cool to see James Marsters saying his stunt double isn’t his stunt double but instead just another part of Spike).

So, not the great season I was waiting for but not the worst either!