Calling All Buddhists!

Hey everyone, Today at the grocery store the guy checking me out took my credit card and asked if my name was really Sunday. I replied yes and he told me his name was Friday! I was very excited, though his nametag read Pannang. He said that means Friday in Tibetan - that's where he's from. He then told me that other people were named after weekdays in Tibet. My name is Pima there. I always love figuring this out. I once met a lady at the DMV named Dominga (it's the word for Sunday in Spanish and was my name in my jr high Spanish class - Senora Galoodt vetoed my first choice of Josephina for some reason) - she processed yet another lost driver's license for me. Dominga wasn't nearly as thrilled by our naming coincidence though. It must have been the setting.

I still have people from college that call me Dominga and I'm also called Zondag by Niels (he's from the Netherlands). I just googled how to spell Zondag and found my new favorite website - it has the days of the week in almost every language! Pima isn't listed, but neither is anything in Tibetan, so I'll hope Pannang wasn't pulling my leg. Pima sounds like puma to me, so maybe it'll somehow make me faster, just like black sneakers used to do.

Anyway, Pannang was extremely friendly and obviously thrilled to be asked any question about his native country and asked me if I was familiar with the Dalai Lama. Any girl who's read anything about Richard Gere knows the answer to this question. It turns out the Lama himself is coming to Colorado on September 17. Pannang can't remember the exact name of the venue, but it's open to the public so it should be pretty easy to find. He is so excited though already, I just don't know how he's going to wait 8 more months for this. For all you would be Buddhists or celebrity stalkers out there, here's an event you can't miss. Tibetans seem pretty friendly so I think I'll be there to support Pannang.

-sunday

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Skateboarding ruined my life.

And One I Forgot

Hey everyone, I just saw Joan and Mellissa's Golden Globe Fashion Wrap on the TV Guide Channel where they review the best and worst dressed of the night. The TV Guide channel is a new one for us. Our local cable network just got bought out by Comcast (an utter nightmare of a transition let me tell you, resulting in me missing last week's Lost - I'm still bitter). Anyway, it's a very strange channel. The top half is a show and the bottom half is the scrolling guide of what's currently on TV. Joan and Melissa deserve better. It's definitely not the best forum for reviewing stars' clothing choices I can promise you. But it was still worthwhile to me because they highlighted a star I had somehow missed in my Golden Globes viewing: Kate Beckinsdale. She looked utterly gorgeous in her white gown. She also had great hair, makeup and jewelry so she definitely belongs on my best dressed list. I first noticed Kate in a fabulous movie called Cold Comfort Farm (this led me to read the equally good novel by Stella Gibbons). If you're an Anglophile or a fan of great, small, witty period movies (this one's set in the 30's), Cold Comfort is one to add to your netflix queue. It also stars Rufus Sewell of Dark City (please don't tell me you haven't seen it - Ebert actually named it the number 1 movie of 1998 so you have no excuse), Ian McKellan (that'd be Gandalf to all you Tolkien fans) and Joanna Lumley of the incomparable Ab Fab. Anyway, this is the first movie I ever saw Kate in and I adored her for it. Since then, she's had a fairly dismal record in film. She opens in the sequel to Underworld this weekend, a movie I'll probably be forced to see by Thomas. The original was fairly horrid even tho it starred Kate and my beloved Ben from Felicity. Hopefully Kate will one day return to her roots and star in more English period pieces, definitely one of my favorite genres.

-sunday

The Golden Tomato Awards

Rotten Tomatoes posted their top 25 rated films in 2005 in wide release and limited release. The results are pretty interesting. Check it! Wallace & Gromit got #1 for wide release and Good Night and Good Luck got #1 for limited. I haven't seen either. I'm beginning to doubt my entertainment junkie status. I'm a little suspicious of these results tho. Star Wars is #6 in wide release. Lists like these do feed the netflix queue.

-sunday

Golden Globes

Hey everyone! My favorite awards show of the year was Monday night, The Golden Globes, and they did not disappoint me too much. I got a late start on them and expected to only watch 20 min or so that night and save the rest for the next day. Instead I was up until midnite - they were just too addictive. How 80 foreign journalists manage to consistently produce a more entertaining show every year than the Oscars is amazingly inexplicable, but it sure does happen. Some of my picks were left off - Joan Allen, in particular. She should have so been nominated for Upside of Anger, but they did a pretty good job. Now for the results.


Here's what made me happy:

• Sandra Oh's win for Grey's Anatomy
• Steve Carell's win for The Office
• Mary-Louise Parker's win for Weeds, a show I did not see, but Desperate Housewives is so undeserving and thanks to it worthy people like Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls, Ed's ex-wife played by Jaime Pressly, and Pam from The Office were not even on the ballot
• Hugh Laurie's win for House
• Lost's win for best drama (tho I would probably have been a little more happy had Rome won)
• Joaquin Phoenix's win for Walk the Line
• Reese Witherspoon's win for Walk the Line
• Walk the Line's win for Best Musical or Comedy
• Phillip Seymour Hoffman's win for Capote
• The fact that Maria Bello did not win for History of Violence so that horrid, horrid film received no awards (it's my 2nd to last film of the year, better only than the even more horrid Edmund starring William H. Macy. At least we had Viggo to look at in History).
• Larry McMurtry's win for Screenwriting - I'll always love him for Lonesome Dove, so this is really what I'm happy about. One issue I do have is the whole original vs. adapted screenplay. The Oscars do one thing right -they separate the two into two categories. This wasn't the case with the GGs. Since they're all lumped in an original screenplay (like Crash) should have won. But still, props to Larry and his Hermes typewriter.

Here's what made me mad:

• Paul Newman's win for Empire Falls. That they lump actors from mini-series in with those from full on series is a total injustice to me. Newman was great as always in Empire, but he wasn't even there to pick up his award. I could never get as an attached to a mini-series character as I can to a regular series one. This was Naveen Andrews's year!
• Desperate Housewives's win for Best TV Comedy - The Office and Earl are so much more deserving. It's infuriating.
• Geena Davis's win for Best Actress in a TV Drama - Polly Walker's Attia was a joy to watch on Rome.
• George Clooney's win for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana. First, wasn't he supposed to be the lead actor of that movie? Competition must have seemed a bit too thick in that category for him. Second, he and everything else about the moviee sucked. I think I'll officially award it my third worst movie of the year. Matt Dillon was so robbed!
  

There are still so many of this year's nominees that I haven't seen that I just don't know what to think about most of the other winners. I'm bound and determined to adore Woody's Match Point. He is consistently one of my fave directors, and though the preview looks nada like a Woody Allen movie, I'll be in the first showing should it ever come to Boulder. There is, however, a good chance I'll finally see The Squid and the Whale this wkend if the Landmark Theatre gods are smiling on me. It's another I have penciled in in my Top 5 of 2005 list. But for now I don't have much to root in the Best Picture and Actor/Actress categories. Hopefully this will be remedied by Oscar time.

Now for The Sundays:

Best Dressed: Keira Knightley - absolutely flawless in vintage Valentino. Shoulders to die for.
Honorable Mention: Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria

Worst Dressed: Drew Barrymore - she can do sooooo much better
Honorable Mention: Rachel Weisz (scary hair and makeup too), Geena Davis (you aren't winning for Thelma - this is 2006), and Reese Witherspoon (to make matters worse her vintage Chanel - the exact same dress, like it had to be dry-cleaned - was previously worn to a GG after party by Kirsten Dunst), and of course our old standby Mariah Carey

Best Hair: Maria Bello - the gardenias in her casual updo were gorgeous and Mary-Louise Parker. She just has great hair (worn in a low ponytail to the side and also adorned with gardenias) and a beautiful face. Plus I'll always love her for Fried Green Tomatoes.

Best Back: Hillary Swank - her dress was pretty normal from the front but showed off her amazing back in a spectacular way. She definitely has the best back in the biz.

Best Speech: Geena Davis - I do not think she deserved the award, but after hearing her speech I was happy she got it. Her mensa abilities were put to good use.
Honorable Mention: Hugh Laurie (gotta love the Brit wit) and Steve Carrel's speech that was supposedly written by his wife

Worst Speech: Jonathon Rhys Meyers - the boy was both nervous and boring. A fatal combination.

Happiest Winner: Sandra Oh - utterly bubbly and adorable

Meanest Intro: Chris Rock's impromptu comments about how he feels bad for Mary-Louise Parker because no one watches her show. Okay, I'm one of the no-watchers but it's not my fault we don't have Showtime. And Weeds is on my netflix queue!

Most Suspicious No-show: Lindsay Lohan - she was supposed to be presenting with the new Superman. Instead the deplorable Terri Hatcher had to fill in. Why, you crazy foreign journalists, why??

Most Horrifying Couple: Nicollette Sheridan (looking quite good though, I must say) and Michael Bolton - they're back together. This cannot mean good things for the listening public. Any day now he'll be ruining another good Percy Sledge song. But at least he cut his hair.

Most Immature Audience Member: Ryan Phillipe (husband of Reese). When Joaquin Phoenix won and was onstage, the camera kept panning to Phillipe as he jumped up and yelled, "You owe me money, you lost the bet." Sorry dude, but it's so not your moment.

That's it for this year's Golden Globes. Next up: my Oscar picks.

-sunday

SJP and the Family Stone

Hey everyone! The Family Stone is a new movie I've been really looking forward to - the cast was stellar (Rachel McAdams, my fav, the return of Sarah Jessica Parker, and a little Luke Wilson thrown in - what more could I want), plus it was a Christmas movie (I saw it pre 12/25, so this review is kind of old). It pretty much lived up to my expectations. The Family Stone is one of those movies that have so many awkward moments that you leave it utterly thankful for relative normalcy of your own family. SJP stars as Meredith, girlfriend of Dermut Mulroney's Everett. The two travel to Everett's family home for Christmas. What awaits them is a big loving liberal family that's comfortable with its own members but not too willing to welcome an outsider - particularly one as haughty and stiff as Meredith. Stone has proved that Parker does not have a face for the big screen - that sounds mean - but it's unfortunately true. I loved loved loved her Carrie (most of the time) on Sex & The City and found her attractive on the show despite some of wacko outfits wardrobe put her in each week. Maybe part of the problem with her looks in Stone was the role itself. She played an extremely uptight, driven perfectionist. Her hair was scraped back from her head tightly in a bun emphasizing her face (nose, mole and all) and her clothes seemed to magnify just how taut and wiry her body is. The contrast with Everett's family - relaxed, even sloppy, and almost soft to the point of blurriness was extreme. The Stone family, with the exception of Luke Wilson's Ben joins forces against Meredith. At first the ringleader is Everett's bratty younger sister Amy, played by Rachel McAdams to perfection. She knows precisely what to say to push every one of Meredith's buttons. But the lead hater turns out to be Everett's mom, Sybil, (Diane Keaton). Sybil initially comes off as kind of wacky and funny but she eventually treats Meredith so rudely that the audience just shifted around in discomfort. We eventually learn she has another reason for being so bitchy - though this was supposed to make Sybil more sympathetic, it didn't work for me. What did work for me is most of the movie. When they're not being horrifically mean to Meredith, the Stone family is fun to watch, particularly in a chaotic fight scene toward the end of the movie that had the audience laughing hysterically. The movie has a few twists and turns and some things work out in the end but others don't. I like that it wasn't quite as straight forward as most Christmas dramedys. Several leaps of faith are called for - such as how a little alcohol can basically transform Meredith's personality - but it wasn't anything I didn't mind watching. In fact, The Family Stone was compulsively watchable - awkward moments or not.

-sunday

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day - Republican Healthcare Plan: Don't get sick.