2 Days in Paris

Hey everyone, I finally saw a movie worth writing about. I rented it on itunes movie rental, so it's surely available in dvd by now as well. 2 Days in Paris was written and directed by Julie Delpy (Delpy wrote part of Before Sunset, one of my favs). It stars Adam Goldberg and Delpy as a NYC couple who travel to Paris to visit Delpy's family. All I'll say is hilarity ensues. Goldberg is adept as a kvetching hypochondriac and Delpy is totally unself-conscious at portraying herself in a bad light. Horrible glasses, frizzy hair, the works. Thomas thoroughly enjoyed this one as well so it's not just your typical rom-com. I haven't laughed so much in a movie in a very long time. But it also manages to be intelligent, natural and a great dialogue movie.

Thomas and I also saw Iron Man on its opening weekend. I loved the first half or so. RDJ is in a class of his own. Gwyneth did fine, but really anyone could have played this roll. It was RDJ's show and he ran with it. Jeff Bridges was great as usual and it was interesting seeing him with a shaved head. He somehow pulled it off. It helps that he has one of the best voices in the biz.

Boulder Bumperstickers of the Day:

Stop bitching and start a revolution

Beef. It's what's rotting in your colon

-sunday

Mad Men Redux and Another to Check Out

Good news for everyone who did not catch Mad Men the first time around, AMC is going to begin rerunning Mad Men season one on Sundays at midnight. Now you have no excuse! If you can't trust me, trust the Golden Globe Givers.

A new series, Breaking Bad is also premiering on AMC. AMC is trying to be the HBO of basic cable, so they shouldn't be shrugged off lightly. If this show is anywhere close to Mad Men in premium goodness, then it is a must see. Especially given the barren tv sched the writer's-strike has left us with. Just give them their piece of online profits already! Here's what AMC has to say about Breaking Bad:

Breaking Bad is the new original series that the AP calls, "heartbreaking, shocking and bitterly funny."

Meet Walter White, high school chemistry teacher. Sleepwalking through life when, boom, a terminal diagnosis changes everything. Liberates him. Empowers him to use his chemistry skills anew: to man a rolling drug lab and finance his family's future. Breaking Bad: Change the Equation.

Premieres Sunday, January 20 @ 10PM | 9C.

-sunday

The Golden Globes that Should Have Been

Best Dressed: Keira Knightley
Worst Dressed: Everyone else

Hey everyone, It's been a decade. Or so it seems. But I did have a baby, so that's my big excuse. I've been doing more posting on Sam's blog these days, so if you want to check that out send me an email or post a comment to this post and I'll link you to it.

Anyway, there have been many entries that I've wanted to write. My reading, tv-watching and movie-going have all suffered in the past five months, but that doesn't mean I've totally been out of touch. In fact, I did get some good tv watching in many an early morning while feeding Sam thanks to my ever trusty replayer. And what I found were two stellar new shows. I should have blogged on them ages ago, as they're both on hiatus now, but you can probably catch them on line or eventually on dvd.

So why am I posting on this now? The Golden Globes of course! My fav awards show was cancelled this year due to that bedeviling writer's strike. So that means there's no chance for me to make fun of people's speeches and even better - their dresses. Instead, I got to scour the web for the list of winners. What I found was great news. These two shows I discovered this summer were somehow also loved by those madcap foreign press people: Mad Men (best drama and best dramatic actor) and Damages. If you have not seen either, I have to pity you. Mad Men especially is the show of the year. It's set in an ad agency in 1960 and it follows adman Don Draper, his coworkers and their spouses. The show's stellar performances and meticulous eye for detail impressed me so much I forced Thomas to watch it, and he was an instant convert as well. Easily the best thing that's been on tv in the past 5 years (except for The Wire). The question of Who is the Real Don Draper was tv's most compelling mystery.

Damages centers around one case in a high-powered law practice owned by Glenn Close. The firm represents a group of workers who lost all of their pensions at their Enronesque company headed by Ted Danson. The twists and turns and complications are too much for me to go into, but the cast and writing are great and I never knew where the script was going. I can tell you that I was very wary of this show because I am SICK TO DEATH of shows about lawyers (David Kelly should be banned from penning their stories at this point), but Damages' focus on one very complex case made lawyers fresh again and never ever boring. Anyway, Close won Best Dramatic Actress. So yeah for her! I wasn't really interested in any of the other winners, though Rose Byrne was screwed for not winning Best Supporting Actress in a Drama series (for Damages).

As for movies, I have seen a few - including this year's winner, Atonement. I read McEwan's novel a few years ago when it was all the rage and remember being disappointed in it. So much so that I've yet to check out his other raved about novel Saturday. The first half of Atonement was to die for. I was on the edge of my seat loving everything from the costumes to the exquisite Keira and her freakly little sis. Then the second half felt like a silent movie to me and I was bored silly. So bored that I have to admit I dozed at some point. Hugely embarrasing, but true. The darkness of the movie theatre seduced me. So I could just not ever justify giving top honors to a movie I couldn't stay awake for.

Others I've seen:
The Great Debaters - true story which always helps. Interesting and inspiring. Denzel and Forest were great.
Superbad - I'm ashamed to say this was Sam's first movie. Seen at far too young an age. I'm not sure what effect this will have on him, but Thomas and I really enjoyed it. Thomas more than me because let's face it, it is definitely aimed at guys. But as a girl, I still thought it was really funny when not being too gross
Golden Compass - I read all three of these books and this one was my fav of the series. I LOVED this movie! So many people have slammed it. I just don't get it. I thought it was magical, interesting, CG was awesome and it left me wanting more. This was definitely a better movie than the first Narnia book was as a movie. Don't get me wrong - I love Narnia, but the movie was disappointing. I wasn't disappointed for a second by Golden Compass. Loved all the casting from Kidman to Craig to Eva Green to the perfectly-cast Sam Elliot as Texan Lee Scoresby.
American Gangster - another true story ( both this and Debaters were inspired by magazine articles). Saw this one with Jen and we were both a little disappointed that they didn't expand the ending some more. This could have been the most interesting part of the story but it was glossed over. Still, great performances from Denzel and Russell Crowe (worst haircut ever!). I was never bored even though the movie was almost 3 hrs. Guess that's partly due to Ridley Scott's directing.
Beowulf - This movie is a good literary lesson for those of us who have zero desire to go back and read Beowulf. The motion-capture animation bugged the heck out of me though. Some people looked good (I was very annoyed that Thomas and Jess thought nothing was enhanced on Angelina) and some looked horrid (Anthony Hopkins, I'm talking to you). It didn't help that I didn't like any of the characters in the story. Beowulf is such a blowhard! It was also too long and I admit to falling asleep. Maybe this should not be a factor since I'm obviously sleep-deprived at this point in my life.

Movies I'm dying to see: Charlie Wilson's War, Juno, There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Cloverfield, Persepolis and 27 Dresses

So now the big question is will the Oscar's get cancelled too? After the last few years shows, one can only hope.

-sunday

One Final Note

Hey everyone! I forgot to add that thanks to my diligent efforts, HP was not spoiled for me - not even one tiny plot point. Even though it took me an extra week to finish the book. I did live in a state of terror that entire week, especially since the first thing Thomas did when I got my (first) Harry Potter book was to open it up and read the last two pages. He miraculously kept it quiet for the entire time so props must be given.

I actually enjoyed my 2 week moratorium on news - even the entertainment variety. This will hopefully be good prep for the coming months.

-sunday

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - ****SPOILERS BELOW****

Hey everyone! So my grand plans for reading Harry Potter did not work out as I hoped. To give you an idea, by noon 7/21 I was still frantically waiting for my book to arrive, thinking I'd already missed out on at least two prime reading hours. An hour later after cursing a mad Swede to Azkaban, I was at home, exhausted, with 2 copies of HP7 sitting on my coffee table. Thomas managed to not strangle me during this entire disturbed period. A feat for which he should be awarded the Order of the Phoenix. Okay, enough of that. By the end of the weekend, instead of having finished the book I was only half way through. You know you're tired when reading exhausts you. I continued to read about 100 pages/day and completed the book on the morning of 7/28. Now for the review. Be warned there are plenty of spoilers!!!
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
HP7 started out once again with Harry at his Aunt and Uncle's home. He was quickly whisked off, but not before Dudley had a chance to redeem himself and be decent to Harry. His parents chose not to do the same. I was hoping for more from Petunia. What a cold-blooded freak. She so would have been a Slytherin had she not been a muggle. During the journey to Ron's house, we quickly had the death count jump to two. I wasn't too shocked by Moody's death (but was saddened by it) and was stunned by Hedwig's - killing Harry's pet seemed especially cruel. When I told Thomas about this he immediately thought of a little kid he saw dressed up as Hedwig waiting outside Boulder Bookstore on Pearl St at midnite on 7/21 (in other news, he really needs to post the pics and video he took of this - it was crazier than Halloween). Anyway, this brought up the first potential mystery. How did the deatheaters know when Harry was being moved? Who was the turncoat?

Next up was the big wedding scene for Bill and Fleur. It was nice for us to get a little levity and happiness here and I was especially intrigued by the appearance of Luna and her father and the mysterious symbol he was wearing. Unfortunately, JKR couldn't let us have one full happy day and had to have the death eaters crash the wedding and send Harry, Ron and Hermione (HRH) off on their search for the horcruxes even earlier than expected. This led to the portion of the book that I must admit I was a bit frustrated by. The constant camping and moving and squabbling I found a bit depressing. I'm sure this was her intent, but I wish she would have gone in a different direction here. It seemed overly long and too focused on the 3 leads. I kept wanting to know what was happening elsewhere in the wizarding world and particularly what was going on at Hogwarts. I wish she would have had some scenes set there to break up the HRH trek which started to seem a bit Fellowship of the Ringsish to me. We did get the departure of Ron. As I'm not a huge Ron fan, I had pegged him to be a turncoat so I was very excited when he abandoned H and H. However, he made a fairly quick return and took over for a glum Harry. This gets us through about the first half of the book which I would have to rate a 7 out of 10.

Things dramatically pick up though around page 400 when HRH visit Luna's dad to find out about the mysterious symbol - the Deathly Hallows - and then end up captured and locked in the Malfoy's basement with Luna and some others. I started LOVING the book from here on. JKR is a master at building and sustaining momentum - and that she was able to successfully do so for almost 350 pages is an amazing feat. I was utterly enthralled from this point and the story just kept getting more and more riveting. The escape from the Malfoys was thrilling though Dobby's death upset me more than I expected, given that I wasn't a huge Dobby fan. I was of course happy to get Luna back in the picture, but we also got other characters involved - Bill, Fleur, Dean, Olevander, the goblin and many more - as well and got an update on events at Hogwarts and in the wizarding world.

Things escalated even more of course with the return to Hogwarts and the introduction of Dumbledore's brother. Did NOT see that one coming! I won't cover the battle in detail but will say it was totally awesome, that I especially loved: Neville's role , the entire school - everything from teachers to paintings to statues to magical creatures fighting in the siege of Hogwarts, and the Prince's tale. I was one that totally thought Snape was a Foe, so hearing his whole story and finding out he actually was a Friend was shocking but great. I took his death the hardest. I'm still a bit confused about why he treated Harry so poorly this whole time though. I guess it's because he thought he was so much like James and James took Lily, but this seemed a bit of a stretch.

I was also confused about a couple of other things - how was Malfoy the true owner of the Elder Wand and did Harry really die in the forest when Voldemort cursed him? One of these is answered by JKR here (this explanation also seems a bit of a stretch, but I guess we are dealing with a whole bunch of magicians so suspension of disbelief is already a given). As for the other, I'd appreciate any thoughts.

The epilogue? I was pleased by everything I read and was glad that she didn't wrap up everything too tightly and provide too many details. Though I do hear she's going to write an encyclopedia that provides more details (for example, she said Luna became a naturalist and roamed the world). But most importantly we found that Harry got his happily ever after. The 2nd half of the book gets a 10/10 from me.

I did experience a huge feeling of sadnesse last page because I knew this was it. No more to the story. And nothing - no book or series or even movie - on the horizon that can even come close in the whole expectation game. I will really, really miss having another HP book to look forward to. I don't know if any book will ever match the hoopla that this one generated. It's not my favorite book of all time or anything, but I think the series is in the top ten.

But all is not lost. In 8 days I should be having Boomer and that's something real and concrete and amazing for me and Thomas to look forward to. Something tells me I'll be way too busy in the coming days to read - or even miss Harry.

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Jimmy Buffett for President.

-sunday

Waiting for Harry

Hey everyone! Tomorrow is the day. Or for the true diehards, 13 hours from now is the hour. My HP book is set to be delivered by UPS to our house sometime tomorrow - hopefully in the morning. I've used all of my engineering skills to devise a plan to finish the book unspoiled. I understand it's about 750 pages and I read around a page a minute, so this means to finish the book this wkend, I'll need to read it for 6 hours and 15 minutes each day. This is all that's on my schedule, so it should not pose a problem. Until then I'm in media blackout mode. This means no internet, cable or NPR news. I've been at this for a week now, and it's somewhat refreshing. I'm also using it as an opportunity to blast Boomer (yep, still no name. we've about given up) with classical music while driving in my car. Better late than never, right? He seems to sleep when I drive, so I don't know if this is doing him much good though.

In other Boomer news, we are down to 2.5 wks and counting. I cannot believe I will actually have a baby then, but everyone assures me this is the case. It all still seems very theoretical even though I am all kinds of huge in the stomach department. If it weren't for Boomer's pummeling of my insides, I would be convinced that I'd just let myself go in a big way. Anyway, theoretical or not, I am very excited and we've almost got his nook ready. Ambyswing (our crib), changing table (my old dresser), hanging racks and shelves (my reconfigured 2nd closet) all somehow fit together perfectly in his little nest. My mom and I made blackout curtains a couple of wks ago for it and I have to admit I'm very pleased with the whole shebang. Hopefully he will be as well.

As for movies, I've seen 3 of note:

• Live Free, Die Hard - surprisingly awesome. Bruce Willis still rocks and the Mac guy was a great sidekick. The special effects were great, especially the ones at the end when some crazy jet that Thomas tells me actually exists chases and fires on Bruce as he drives an 18 wheeler. Unreal. The bad guy (Deadwood's Sheriff Bullock) was also great - funny and his motives actually made sense. All in all this did NOT let the franchise down. Way better than DH2 and even 3.
• Transformers -not surprisingly horrid. For some reason I had a fondness for this cartoon when I was young. It makes no sense as most of my fav cartoons around this time were more along the line of Smurfs. But there you have it. Even though the previews for Transformers looked beyond stupid, reviews weren't bad and a couple of friends said it was good. Plus it was really hot outside so what else are you gonna do if you're pregnant? The first hour wasn't too bad. The problem came with the last hour and forty minutes. Once the transformers started talking the movie started sucking in the hugest way possible. It was absolutely terrible. What can you expect from Michael Bay though. I fully deserved the suffering since I contributed my $5 to its bottom line.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - good, but nowhere close to the book. This book was my favorite so far, so my expectations for the movie were pretty high. The movie did a good job representing the general plot of the book, but so many good parts were cut that I was inevitably disappointed. The ending fight scene was trimmed by a ridiculous amount and this was one of my fav parts of the book so I just can't get past it. On a good note tho, book 5 introduced one of my fav characters the spacy but sweet Luna Lovegood, and the movie did not cut her role at all. The actress perfectly captured her character and I especially enjoyed all the scenes she was in. One of my big complaints with Book 6 was the lack of Luna and Neville. Hopefully this will be remedied in book 7.

That's it! I'll post my thoughts on book 7 sometime next week after I've recovered.

Enjoy all you HP fans!

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: If you're not outraged, you voted for Bush. Twice.

-sunday

Summer Movie Blues

Hey everyone! In this summer of sequels aimed at 12 yr old boys, I have had little to look forward to. There's only one sequel I want to see and that's HP5. Non-sequels have been few and far between but I've actually seen a few movies of late and two of them were worthy:

Knocked Up - We went to see this with Allison and Jess when they were in town a couple of weeks ago. And since Al and I are both pregnant we really thought we should be let in free. Instead we paid our $9.75 for a 4 pm show. When is 4 pm not a matinee anymore? Scumbags. Anyway, the movie was actually worth the money. Katherine Heigl plays an ambitious reporter (at E!) who gets pregnant after a drunken one nite stand with Seth Rogen's Canadian slacker. Rogen's group of pals include many from director Judd Apatow's beloved tv series Freaks and Geeks. This alone made the movie great for me. There were many, many laughs but the movie managed to have heart as well and great supporting characters. It's one flaw was what else - the runtime. Sorry, but no comedy should be over 2 hours and this one was 2 hrs and 25 minutes. The only time I was actually bored tho was the Vegas scene. That should have been cut. And the delivery scene? That was just plain terrifying for a woman in my condition.

Waitress - Yet another film about a pregnant woman. I sense a trend here. Or maybe that's just what I'm drawn too of late. The knocked up girl in this case is Kerry Russell who plays a waitress and pie maker. She's bullied by her husband but soon finds solace in the arms of her OB played by Firefly's Nathan Fillion. The movie had a bit of a storybook quality to it, but once I settled into it I really enjoyed it. Performances of the two leads were great as were supporting ones by Andy Griffith and Adrienne Shelly. Making it all the more poignant is the fact that Waitress was directed by Shelly and she was murdered by an illegal alien prior to the film's release. She left a beautiful swan song.

Georgia Rule - No pregnancies here, but perhaps one could have helped. I went into this film knowing nada about it but its cast - Lindsay Lohan, Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman and its director, Gary Marshall (he did Pretty Woman). I assumed this was a romantic comedy. Instead it was a bizarre hodgepodge of molestation, mormons, alcoholism and death. Not exactly your standard elements of a rom-com. But somehow it was a movie you couldn't look away from, kind of like a trainwreck. Lohan did a fairly decent job, though I don't think she ever read the script in its entirety. Her main purpose seemed to be to show off one white sundress after another and yell at Fonda. Fonda's performance showed she may be better off in retirement.

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Make Levees Not War

-sunday