"Finding Neverland" was on my must see list weeks ago but it disappeared so quickly that I almost missed out on this little screen gem. It’s the story of James Barrie (played by Johnny Depp) and how he was inspired to write Peter Pan. Any movie that co-stars four young boys runs the risk of turning into a cute child movie but "Finding Neverland" doesn’t fall into that trap and it is an intelligent movie at all levels. The children enhance the story instead of detracting from it.
Johnny Depp demonstrates that he is capable of acting beyond his usual quirky roles and Kate Winslet does a fine job as the love interest. We see the story of Peter Pan unfold in James Barrie’s mind, though the intercut scenes of imagination and real life, and then the final translation into the play. I was drawn into the movie and enjoyed every minute of it. The story, costumes, and sets are colorful but don’t eclipse the true friendship that develops with the characters. It’s a believ...
Posts
If I can stop you from seeing "Closer" then I will consider my $6.50 and 100 minutes of my life a worthwhile investment. Going into the movie, I thought it was about 2 couples and their relationships good & bad. Since 4 leads are all good actors, I figured, why not? Why not indeed!
I can see why it's been nominated for Golden Globes. Awards are always given out to movies that feature unhappy & miserable people set up in contrived and ridiculous circumstances. Happy endings are out of the question except for the happy ending when I made my exit from the theater.
It turns out that "Closer" is really about how people manipulate each other by using sex as a weapon instead of love or respect. This is demonstrated to us over and over again through chat room sex, verbal discussion of sex, stripclub teasing, and anything but actual sex. This has to be one of the first movies about sex that is minus the sex.
Our four characters played quite wel...
Last night's rain was strong and loud. I woke up during the night to a power surge that took my fax machine offline for most of the day. I went downstairs to find the lower bathroom flooded due to all the recent digging and the two new outside sinkholes getting larger with the mud. Luckily the old tree stayed intact and didn't go down. All things considered, Carlsbad escaped the storm without too much damage. It just started to rain again but this is a quieter rain and the worst should be over.
Yesterday's rain brought on the beginnings of two sinkholes in my front yard. It doesn't photograph well but this is about 3 feet long and 6 inches wide. Another one is a few feet away. The phone company has been installing new cables and the installers will get to deal with this when the rain stops. Luckily the new phone lines are not activated so there's plenty of time to repair the damage.
I've never read the "Lemony Snicket" books but after seeing the movie, I have the feeling that the books are far superior to the movie version. "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is derived from 3 of the books to make one movie that goes just a tad overboard with tongue in cheek fun. I enjoyed the narrative and the story of the Baudelaire children and all their troubles. The 3 young actors do a great job, even the baby, who has some of the funniest lines in the movie.
Jim Carrey is great as Count Olaf and gives a performance worthy of his talent. He's fun to watch but you sense that this is a Jim Carrey movie, rather than a Lemony Snicket movie. In recent family animated movies there have been quite a few adult jokes that play well to all ages, on different levels but in "Lemony" these jokes silence the children and distract adults from the story. A camera shot of Steven Soderberg on the bus in Oceans 12 is a good came...
Movie week continues with "Sideways." A friend encouraged me to see it and bring a bottle of Pinot Noir to drink in the theater. I didn't realize that "Sideways" is a movie about wine but it is. Actually it is more about wine is a metaphor for life type movie as two buddies deal with their hopes and failures for love which wine serves as a backdrop for the movie.
We follow along with Miles and Jack as they take a road trip the week before Jack's wedding to live their glory years one last time. Miles has the goal to educate Jack about wine, Jack has the goal to help Miles understand friendship and women. As the week goes on, the two have a series of mishaps and misunderstandings, while drinking red at every opportunity. Both characters are less than perfect and not too concerned about how their actions will impact the people around them. As we the audience follow along in this one week of their lives, we come to understand Miles and Jack, and end u...
Ms. Kitty and Homer spent the day with me, drinking and watching movies. We started out with the Chargers game and that sad OT loss to Indy. Then we went on to watch "Ginger Snaps Back" and then headed off to Pizza Port. One of the special features was Gem of the Sea dark ale and it was a perfect pizza beer. We all tried a sip of the Cherry Bock and decided that it just didn't quite work for any of us. After a couple of beers, Ms. Kitty read the sign Beer To Go. Yes, I have ended up with yet another 1/2 gallon brewery jug in my home with a small portion of Gem of the Sea left in it! At long last I am nearly caught up on my photo albums and done with the holiday drinking!
Merry Christmas! It's clear and sunny in SoCal, the way it should be on Christmas Day. In a few minutes I'll be going to my Dad's house where our family opens gifts, eats, and enjoys the day. I've been lagging this morning because kim! sent over a Rabbit Photo Blog and I can't stop looking at the pictures. There are years of Rabbit Photos on this Blog. It's from Japan but there are both English & Japanese words so you can figure it out.
http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~sokaisha/rabbit/rabbit.htm
Dec. 24th is the day that I begin my annual quest to get caught up on movies. Every year I seem to fall behind right when the Thanksgiving award movies come out in full force. Today I started off with "Phantom of the Opera."
As a fan of the theatrical production I was eagerly waiting for the film version. The music contains some of my favorite scores of all time and I have always enjoyed the story and characters. I've seen both good and bad stage productions and now it was time for the movie.
First off - kudos to Minnie Driver. She has the part of Carlotta and this is a role that Minnie really brings to life in a both subtle and over-the-top performance. As Carlotta, Minnie Driver can steal a scene with just a glance and she has great comedic talent. The two leads of Christine and Rauol are well acted and sung and the actors have the on-screen chemistry needed to make their love story work.
The ultimate success of "Phantom" rests with the casti...
I learned about a new world of wine today - Arizona Honey Mead, made at the Grand Canyon Meadery in Arizona. It was sweeter than what I normally drink and would make a great dessert wine but it went down just fine with movies and scrapbooking. We've already booked another bottle for Sharon's return trip next year.
Ms. Kitty's nephew was in charge of the movies today so it was Two Towers EE and Van Helsing. We made a quick trip in the middle of the day for a stop at Karl Struass Brewery and then headed back to my place to hang out. Later on kim! joined us and we moved on to X-Men and yet more scrapbooking!
I must mention that the Honey Mead is 17% alcohol and is best served in small doses. It's deceptively tasty and one bottle for 3 people is plenty. (Ms. Kitty and Sharon might have differing points of view on this.)
Just 3 days before Christmas and I can relax! The last gift was bought and wrapped yesterday and I have somehow stayed sane. The workweek is winding down for a 4 day weekend and the house is ready for a day of scrapbooking tomorrow. Ms. Kitty and sister & nephew of Ms. Kitty are coming over for photos, movies, fun, and duh! Beer! (not nephew, he's too young)
In the news of the strange, I walked out of the house this afternoon to suddenly see white flakes falling from the sky. Since it doesn't snow here, I thought something was wrong with my roof. But when I looked up, the flakes were falling from the sky and I thought a bird had been hit by a plane. Then I realized the sky was somewhat black and I could smell smoke. As I walked to the garage I was pelted by what I now knew was ash and the stuff was coming down. There was nothing on the net about it and I missed the local news, so I'll just have to blame it on UFO's.
The Christmas parties just keep going on! On Friday night I went to Tijuana, for a fun Christmas event and wonder of wonders, I even made it back home the same night! We had the usual group together for food and wine and fun!
On Saturday, Amoeba came over for the day and ended up running around with me as I did all my errands. He fixed up my TV feed and speaker system to make sure everything was optimized for Sunday's DVD party. Afterwards we went to the Whistle Stop bar in South Park (there really is one here) for a Guinness and then met up with LJ. Next stop was the Turf Supper Club for our annual Christmas dinner and holiday drink. I was driver so I powered down diet coke for the rest of the night.
Sunday brought the big event, the 3rd annual movie party. This time was the extended edition of " Return of the King". At 4 hours and 10 minutes, this kept up occupied for most of the day, along with binge eating, and various beer tasting! Next year we'll ...
Last night's Christmas party was at CineSpace in Los Angeles. This is the club where you get dinner and a movie, but last night was major party, background movie, Santa and his helpers. Amoeba invited me to go along to this party as it was hosted by a friend of his who had the good luck to make an obscure horror movie in Prague, and sell it direct to video, and make enough money to rent a club and buy 400 of his closest friends drinks! WOW!
Now this was not Hollywood glamour, this group was production experts so nobody had anyone to impress which made it more fun. We were greeted with Santa hats and beer so it started off great. Turns out that Santa himself was not the family Santa but more the naughty Santa and his elves, well, I'm sure they wear a lot more clothing at the North Pole.
The background movie was "Pirates of the Caribbean" and it was fun to go in and watch for a few minutes but the action was in the main room so that's where we huddled. ...
I decided to watch the ROTK ee in two parts. In the first two hours we get a better idea of what happened in the Paths of the Dead, some resolution with Saruman, (not to the book, but resolution at least) and a better look at Faramir and Theoden. There are some scenes that are extended, some new scenes put in, and a couple of panoramic shots just added in because they look good! There were also some flashbacks put in, as a character would remember something from the past, we would see it on screen. I don't know if anyone watching this ee really needs the flashbacks but they're nice to have.
The second half awaits tonight!
Having never seen "Ocean's Eleven" it somehow made perfect sense to go out and see "Ocean's Twelve" for movie night. Luckily the plot of both movies is easy enough to follow and you don't need to see the first one to enjoy the second. The verdict is that the first movie is far better than the second so I was spared comparing the two.
"Ocean's Twelve" spends the first part of the movie getting us caught up on all the characters and with 12 characters it is a time consuming process before they're all reunited. Once they're together the movie focuses mainly on Cooney and Pitt, so why bother showing us everyone else? 6 of the 12 were simply background talent for the second part of the movie.
The plot is simple. Danny Ocean and his group have to repay millions to their former theft victim and they need to raise or steal the money to do it. This being a heist movie, theft is the obvious choice. The actual caper with a new v...
There are all sorts of different skills that we aquire in life. Sometimes they're useful such as cooking or carpentry, and others are fun but useless such as trivia or stat skills. Then there's the skills that are useful to have but you wish you had never had to use them in the first place.
I have those type of skills.
This is a long story.
I am the person that you want to have when you are stuck on the side of a road next to an inoperable car. Yes, I know how to be stranded and how to deal with it.
Over the course of my driving lifetime I have had more flat tires than anyone I know, even members of the unofficial flat tire club. That includes Mrs. H. and Sher Bear. I have been in 5 fender benders that I can recall. Two were my fault, two were the other driver's fault, and once I was in a taxi in Malaysia. My fault for getting in the cab. And then, there's the number of times that the vehicle that I'm driving just plain stops working for no good reason.
...
It's time for a mid-day blog break. I've taken one of those rare office days to organize the overflowing heaps of paper into some sort of recognizable pattern. It's the least enjoyable of all my job functions which is why it always gets done as a final priority. I can finally see a dent in it all and I've managed to put together a very decent presentation for an upcoming meeting.
So in all of this craziness of paper, somehow Christmas Cards managed to slip themeselves into the agenda. I'm not sure how it happened but after I dropped my car off at Firestone, I found myself in Savon, buying cards. Then I had to walk home, carrying the cards! This from a person who not one week ago swore she would not do cards this year. And - I pulled the decorations from the garage into the house so I guess that Christmas is coming this year after all!
Now if I can just manage to clean the house, purchase and wrap gifts, remember to mail the cards that I wasn't doin...
Utah was cold as expected but the snow had melted from the streets and the sun was out so it made for a fun winter weekend. Since I wasn't there long enough to ski, the weekend activities consisted of eating, watching Star Trek, eating again, and trying new beer. That's about as perfect of a weekend as one could wish for!
Back to what's supposed to be sunny San Diego and it's cold and raining. I might as well have stayed in Utah! Well it's good to be home and now I guess I have to take this whole Christmas thing seriously as it's only 20 days away and I have shopping to do and parties to prepare for!
I'm off to Salt Lake City to do a quick family visit for the holidays. When I made this plan, it was warm and sunny in Carlsbad and my brain didn't compute December + Utah = Snow. Now it's sunk in and at 23f it's far colder than Paris or Chicago. To make it even colder, my family lives north of SLC up in a canyon so it's probably more like 10f at their place! Heaters rule!
I'll be offline until Sunday evening.
While I was on the long flight home, Brad & Lorie headed off to Disneyland. Here's their recap of the differences between Anaheim & Paris: "We went to Euro Disney on Sunday. It was cold and rained most of the day. However, the park wasn't crowded. It is acutally quite different than Anaheim. Space Mountain, for instance, has a loop and corkscrews in it. Thunder Mountain and the Haunted Mansion (phantom manor) are longer and Indiana Jones is a roller coaster."
It sounds like it would have been fun - oh well, there's always next time!
Day 3 in Paris was jam packed with museums! First off we took the train out to Versailles. While most of the interior has been recreated, it is still an amazing building. It's huge! The whole thing really was designed to impress and intimidate people. A restoration process has been in the works for the last two years and the place is looking good. We spent a couple of hours looking around but passed on wandering the gardens. During the winter the fountains are turned off and it's very cold and brown outside. The best part of Versaille was just imagining how the royal family lived. There's nothing to compare and I can see why the people turned against the King. He really lived to excess!
Once the crowds moved in it was hard to really see or hear anything so we left the palace and went back to town. Lorie wanted to see the impressionist exhibit at the Orsay, so off we went. Since this was the second stop of the day we encountered a larger crowed than at the L...
As Homer said, I was stuck in Chicago for hours. Falling snow is a beautiful thing unless you are in Chicago. I watched the stuff fall down for hours, soft fluufly flakes, so deceptively quiet. 4 hours of it and I was wondering if I was going to spend the weekend at ORD. Finally my flight was given the go and I was off to Paris, hours after the original plan.
Brad & Lorie were waiting for me at the Paris airport and the shuttle was still waiting for me even after a 3.5 hour delay go Blue Vans! We got checked into the hotel which is right by the Arc de Triomph and on the Champs-Elysees. First up though was the Eiffel Tower. It looks every bit as cool as I imagined and we were there long enough to see the night lights come on. After spending nearly hours there it was time to stroll the Champs and find dinner. We ended up having Thanksgiving dinner at a Persian restaurant and it was fun! I'd now been awake for nearly 36 or more hours so it was time for me to crash....
Economics in Beer 101. Yesterday LJ, Ms. Kitty and I were off to Karl Strauss for the promised Russian Imperial Stout that was guaranteed to be there in November. KS made good on their promise and the desired beer was available. After a pint of the Imperial Stout and lunch, we decided to switch to Downtown After Dark, still a dark beer but without the extreme high alcohol content of the Stout. It was Sunday after all and we all had things to do today. So we had our second pint and were ready to head home when I realized that we could get beer to go!
We ordered up a 1/2 gallon of the Downtown After Dark and the bill came to $10.75. Now we had just spent $4.50 per pint times 6 pints for a total of $27. We were getting 7 or 8 pints for $10.75 and when you bring the jug back, you save another dollar on the refill! This is a deal that works for everyone. There's no need to drive and hang out at a bar just to drink and then worry about driving home. The bar can save money o...
Winter has come to Carlsbad. Last night the storm moved in and I spent most of the night wondering if the big tree was going to fall down. That would have been a bummer because if that tree goes, it will probably take down my new fence. Luckily the tree stayed intact and most of the damage this morning is flooding. It's even 41 F. outside and I've broken down and turned on the heater to warm the house up. Ms. Kitty and LJ are coming over today to scrapbook and I don't want to turn them into icicles!
I also woke up this morning still disliking the movie Kinsey. The quick history is Dr. Alfred Kinsey published the first sex survey that we now see in present day form in every issue of Cosmopoliton magazine. Kinsey was the person who made it possible for there to be a Dr. Ruth or a Dr. Drew, two far more entertaining people to watch. Kinsey on all accounts was not a personable guy and the movie does hint at this and show it to some extent but the kind side of Kinsey...
As I mentioned earlier about Al Stewart, one of the best things about his concerts is his storytelling. Last night we heard about the year that he toured with Yoko Ono (pre-John) and her performance art act. The way the story goes is that Yoko could spend 6 hours on one song about the sky falling and she would turn everything into performance art. Her flat at the time was all white and everything in it was sawed in half for the sake of art. One day the band drove by the Austin Healey dealership in the UK and Yoko insisted they stop so she could purchase a car, paint it white and saw it in half. This being her pre-rich days and the Austin Healey dealer being protective of his cars, Yoko and Al left without painting a car white and sawing it in half. So, today when I saw this white car with the stripe down the middle I had to stop and "saw" it in half, in honor of the story.
This is where I got in trouble from the guard. There are signs everywhere telling you not to touch the cars or get inside the exhibits. I did neither. I thought it was okay to sit on the fake curb but as soon as I did the guard came running over and yelling No! No! He was rather rude about the whole thing so I sat on the floor instead. The guard was glaring at both Mondo and myself and supervised this entire photo. Then he wouldn't leave us unguarded. As we walked out of the room he followed us but we were able to throw him off as he saw young boys looking down the up escalator. Their suggested disobedience was enough to get the guard into a frenzy and he ran over there telling the poor boys to get away and not play by the escalator. Even the parents were stunned by this guard but Mondo and I took the opportunity to ditch him and run into the Batmobile room. Sadly the Batmobile room was too dark to take a fun picture.
