Just a few notes ‘cuz I haven’t posted any thing since last month. Yesterday I finished the fanlisting for the wonderful Beatles film, Two of Us. It took me all day (after class anyway) to do it ‘cuz I was having major layout block. But I went with simplicity and black (I was originally thinking white) because I just loved that main image so much and it was against black. What better way than to do rainbow? =D

Also, for those who are interested Amazon has the exclusive new trailer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which either starts April 29 or May 6. The trailers are confusing their dates. Maybe one’s Brit and the other American? And then there’s a beeeautiful trailer for Mirrormask but who knows when that will be out on dvd or (hopefully) to theaters. I’m working on a layout featuring it actually. Yes, that’s right, a new layout since this one has been up since May 2003. But it’ll still be here, I’m gonna skin again =)

Okaaaaaaay, I am now truly freaked out. Tim Burton, what the hell goes on in your head?

I’ve been watching movie trailers on Yahoo for the last 3 hours. Watched Charlie & the Chocolate Factory which surprised me as I thought the title to be used was Willy Wonka even though the new one is only based off the book. So very very odd. My sister says Johnny Depp looks eerily like Michael Jackson. He kinda does but what’s eerie is the darkness of his outfit, the wrinkles, the bouncy hair, the dark circles under his eyes, and his paleness. The Tim Burton version of course. *sigh* The music was creepy. Dunno if I can manage watching it when it comes out in July…

But other movies that look good to be out soon or later this year (lest I forget): In Good Company (Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, I so wanna see!! why isn’t it playing near me?!), The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Hotel Rwanda, White Noise (Michael Keaton, scary, ghosts), CSA: Confederate States of America (what if the south won? hmmmm), Beautiful Boxer (January 21, a man in Thailand becomes a pro kick boxer to afford a sex change operation), Aliens of the Deep (3D Imax documentary underwater near the Mid-Ocean ridge), Hide and Seek (Robert DeNiro with scary Dakota Fanning), Imaginary Heroes (yet another twisted family drama, yay!), The Wedding Date (finally, a romantic comedy I want to see! besides B&P of course ^_^), The Pink Panther (I must admit it looks like Steve Martin will do a good job), and Batman Begins (it can’t be hard to be better than the other batman movies).

You can find out more about these movies on Yahoo.

I must remember to come back to this list throughout the year… Ack! And Shaun of the Dead came out a week ago and I didn’t know it! Needs to be in my collection.

On Monday I saw Sideways and it was excellent. I’m not sure how much play it’s getting across the country but it’s from the director of About Schmidt with Paul Giamatti. It’s been playing in Napa since it was released because hey, it’s about wine. Not that I know anything about wine myself so don’t let that keep you from watching it. It’s quirky and hilarious in the “people sure are funny” kind of real-life way. (there’s just so many kinds of comedies)

Also caught Finding Neverland on Wednesday. Yet another lovely performance by Johnny Depp as usual. Kate Winslet was excellent, I’ve never seen her so motherly, it was a little odd ^^;; It wasn’t absolutely fantastic but it was charming and made my eyes water. Just a couple times really =P

Now for an actual review worth being called a review. I watched Love Actually for the first time since it came to dvd. I saw it on the big screen once but had missed the first 20-25 minutes. Sooo after having seen the first bits, my opinion has not changed. It’s still a C+ movie. It’s just amazing to me the love the movie has received from the LJ fandom, well the fandoms I’m slightly more familiar with HP and H/D. Now I know we all love Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, etc. But holy crap, it just wasn’t that great.

The problem with such an excellent cast is it’s such a big cast. I just don’t quite know where they were going with it. They apparently didn’t know either judging by the deleted scenes. What on earth was the African picture thing…?

Ok, story. You have these segments of different plots about love. A new widower helps with his stepson’s love life. A husband is invited to have an affair with his employee. The new (unmarried) prime minister falls for his secretary. There are plenty more which are all connected by someone knowing someone. One plot is treated as hopeless. It can’t work no matter how much they want it because of family situations. The plot of the affair is left open ended by what happened. So we have a few plots which are treated realistically in that sometimes it just can’t work. And a few plots which are just hopelessly romantic like Hugh Grant’s bit (of course, as the prime minister).

And for no apparent reason is the stupidest plot imaginable, made for shits and giggles (I really don’t know), where Colin goes to America to try his luck with the ladies and what do you know? “We don’t have much money so we can’t afford heat and we only have one bed and no couch.”

Putting that aside, overall we have a long movie with not quite enough attention on some plots. And yet there are two scenes in which have too much attention. The first is Keira Knightley’s and um that other dude’s. She has come over to his place to watch the wedding tape and has just realized he’s been avoiding her not because he doesn’t like her, but because he likes her in that way. He leaves and proceeds to have an emotional walk. It’s a great moment in which to show his anxiety, worry, anger. But it goes on for far too long.

The same is true in Emma Thompson’s emotional breakdown scene. She has just realized the expensive gold necklace in her husband’s coat was not meant for her and proceed’s to play Joni Mitchell(the gift she did get) in their bedroom and cry. Once again, the point with which we see the buildup and a good display of emotions passes and we continue to wait and watch her pull herself together.

Honestly, what I think happened is the director drew out the scenes for so long, not out of an idea that the audience needs to watch longer but that the music must be listened to for that long. There is a great emphasis on music in this movie but I think there was too much of a focus on it. With so many plots and characters, the use of camera shots, camera tricks, and music should be used to reconnect to the past related scenes instead of basing each scene off unique music. We don’t neccessarily need music to build an emotional high in a film. Good movie music for such emotional moments is subtle. Most of the time ^_^ But I’m not explaining myself very clearly. I just know the scene’s end was much farther than they should have been!

Ugh, and the deleted airport scene. Thank god they didn’t use that one. It would have been truly absurd for Sam to be doing acrobatics every which way and where would that leave the realism and non-absurdity of the Laura Linney scenes? Oi.

I should have warned you I don’t think that highly of romantic comedies. They’re enjoyable to a degree and there is one I absolutely adore alongside my other movies and there are many lovely movies that have the makings of a romantic comedy but… Yea, truly good ones don’t happen a whooole lot.

3+ months of no internet on my own computer. Do you realize how much manga and music I’ve missed?! Granted I have been reading more, but I would’ve been reading most of those books anyway ‘cuz they’re related to school and/or to very good things (ie: Discworld, Adobe, Austen, Film).

Tonight is our third night of Smallville/movie watching. Is this the third or fourth season of Smallville? I have no idea, I haven’t watched much of it since the end of season 1 and my friend, Jennifer, (who was way more obsessed, she drools over Clark, I drool over Lex) hasn’t much either. But as the trailers for the season premiere brought a glimpse of flying and lots of Lois we can’t not watch. And it’s much easier to remember to watch it when you decide to get everybody together that night. I’m not too keen on tonight’s episode, girls wanting to be beautiful, another “monster-of-the-day” sort of episode, nothing too major in the plot of the series but we’ll watch Coffee and Cigarettes after (I completely forgot about that movie!! good thing my sister rented it) and it’ll be the first night my neighbor (Nadia) and I hang out together. I’ve knocked on her door a few times when I was going out but she was always gone. She just graduated from a culinary school somewhere and is working at Copia. Her schedule changes every week. Oh how I don’t miss that.

In other news, The Forgotten was pretty damn good. Julianne Moore did really well. I’m sure her experiences in motherhood helped well (she had a baby within the last couple years right? That great photo). The directing was awesome! Shakey in many scenes to jitter you up, add to the chase. The opening shot was really interesting. Many movies have used the aerial view of a city but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use exactly overhead so that the point in the middle of the screen is perfectly perpendicular to the camera. Very cool. OOoooh and the car crash shot was perfect… I’m not giving away too much am I? There’s nothing in there related to plot or giving much more than the trailers have =P

Today is the day to move our big furniture and hopefully everything else that’s left. So I probably won’t have internet for a few days to even a week or two(I’ll be having withdrawals). So before I leave off and nobody notice my absence I have to talk politics. I watched Farenheit 9/11 last night, didn’t learn anything new, but cried and laughed a couple dozen times. I hope the people in the sold out show learned something and are properly awakened to start paying attention. “If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention.” Napa isn’t quite as snobby and dumb as it looks.

I’ve grown up as a liberal under liberal-leaning non-activist parents. They grew up as Seventh-Day Adventists which is a truly “compassionate conservative” religion. Leave gay marriages to the states, always keep church and state separated lest the church gets screwed, and war is wrong wrong wrong because killing is a sin. But I’m sure Bush doesn’t feel he will go to hell since he didn’t actually pick up a gun for it.

Anyway, my parents are liberal in the issues but I suspect my dad’s more conservative as far as money goes. I never particularly liked politics. Politicians lie, I knew this when I was 8, so why was Clinton lying that surprising? He lied to the Supreme Court, however I don’t think he ever should have HAD to lie because it’s not the Supreme Court’s business or the country’s business for the President’s personal/family/sexual life which is in no way connected to his policies and his job. *cough* When the 2000 election came up, I started paying attention. Bush scared me and as it came to that “oh gee golly gosh, alllllll of us networks got it wrong, FOX News is right, Dubya’s the winner!” I fucking paid attention.

Farenheit 9/11 is correct on everything. Blacks haven’t forgotten the shit in Florida and neither have the Democrats. And I’m sick of hearing “it’s in the past, get over it”. When someone cheats that’s pretty fucking annoying. And when the prize is the Presidency of the United States? And if it hadn’t been Bush these past four years, how do you think our terrorism defense might have been? The Department of Homeland Security was set up by the Clinton administration to give the Bush administration a good headstart. And how was it doing before 9/11? Gee, Bush didn’t do SHIT about terrorism.

How is it wrong to kill a month old fetus inside you, for your own selfishness whatever your reasons and not wrong to kill a six year old Iraqi child for your own selfishness? Innocent lives always get caught in the crossfire of war. Or maybe even just on the “enemy lines” of war. If my whole family was killed in the invasion of our “saviors from Saddam” because they weren’t sure if they were armed, because they bombed whatever they could, you can fucking bet I would take my revenge no matter how much I’d be glad to be rid of Saddam and have a say in my government. So why were people surprised with the insurgents?

Bush has essentially fucked everything every which way and it’s too late to wish it never happened. So I can only wonder, how the hell are we going to fix this?

I never got to talking about the movies I watched during my AR marathon! I’ll only talk about the ones I hadn’t seen before though.

Mesmer - About a real life doctor in the 19th century(I think) who has very odd methods indeed, methods considering to be merely theatrics which don’t do anything by others. It was a nice movie, not too uplifting or depressing but very thoughtful. Makes me interested in looking up more about the man. Alan’s costar, Amanda Ooms, was fantastic! Looking at the cover I figured she was much much younger but that was merely a bad photo. Alan won an award for this movie, I think it was a film festival award.

Blow Dry - This is the comedy that came out in 2001 I had never heard of. On the cover is Josh Hartnett and Rachel Leigh Cook so I was a little iffy… They didn’t detract from the movie so no worries. Josh’s character is the son of a barber(Alan Rickman) and his somewhat estranged mother wants to enter Britain’s big Hairstyling competition which is coming to their town just like they used to do. It also had the actor that was in Love Actually, the rockstar, who devilishly played an old competitor with Rachel as his daughter. A very humorous, entertaining, and somewhat sad film from the writer of The Full Monty.

Rasputin - My oooooh my. There’s so much mystery surrounding the Romanovs and the man Rasputin that I really don’t know the accuracy of the film as I haven’t studied the subject. Jen and I were arguing about the dates actually because our history sucks ^^;; This film left me crying at the end because no matter how evil the Czar might really have been, I think it’s wrong to kill a family because of the actions of the father or one family member, particularly children. I recommend watching it for the acting by Alan Rickman, Ian McKellan, and Greta Scacchi is excellent and getting to see a Russia that is rarely portrayed in movies. Winner of three Golden Globes, including Best Television Movie or Miniseries, Best Actor–Alan Rickman, and Best Supporting Actor–Ian McKellan.

And I think that was it. We also watched Dogma, Sense and Sensibility, and Galaxy Quest but those I’ll say nothing other than watch them.

So did you miss me? Stop laughing. Well I was going to put BTN back up sooner but I decided to forget the Daniel Quinn-esque large horizontal layout that I made over a year ago that I was gonna use after reading more about CSS and finally understanding what I wasn’t doing with css and jumped to tableless coding. I’m in love! Tableless layouts are amazing. A List Apart is so helpful. I’m such a sucker for pastel rainbows and wanted a unique H/D layout. Everybody and their dog would have a PoA layout but I’m the only one with the picture above. Or at least it’s not in any HP gallery anywhere on the net.

Now I’ll be working on signing up with all my past cliques and rings in case I’m not on there, and putting up the joined listings. Of course, I’ll have to figure out how I’m configuring the listings, I want subcategories on some of them, hmm…

Ah yes, I completely forgot what else I was going to post. Damnit. Something I wanted to add… Aha! Jen and I are having an Alan Rickman marathon on Friday, yay! She’s a huge AR nut where as I really really like him, love him, but then I love a lot of actors. Johnny Depp, Edward Norton, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and so on. We’re certainly not watching Die Hard, I will never sink to that, or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it hasn’t been enough years for that. But I can cook our dinner during Dogma because I just watched that a month with all the extra stuff *squees dvd special edition* and I so want to watch Sense and Sensibility again, I just wish he was in it more. Jen hasn’t seen Galaxy Quest and I think we’ll be renting several others we haven’t seen like Rasputin(mm Ian Mckellan), Mesmer, Blow Dry, and Truly Madly Deeply. Harry Potter is its own marathon for PoA…

After that I think we need a Johnny Depp marathon because I haven’t seen half his movies. I’ve got the ones I have watched frozen in my brain nearly frame by frame so we really don’t need them in the marathon… ¬_¬ The idea of an Ed Norton marathon pops to my head but his movies are always so drastically heavy I’m really not in the mood to watch any of them again right now.