I really wish this movie were not rated R; I would go see it on opening day. As it is I can recommend the book by P.D. James, and then you won’t have to see the movie in order to get the message. What a wonderful poster! I want one.
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*My review of Children of Men, the book.
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*Children of Men Official Website
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*Buy Children of Men at Amazon
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Trailer for the movie of Children of Men based on the book of the same name by P.D. James. The movie’s supposed to be in theaters in September.
I think it might be a good movie, judging from the trailer, but I probably won’t go to see it. I already know the story, and I don’t usually watch R-rated movies.
I just found out that one of my favorite books from last year’s reading, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger is being made into a movie. It will star Billy Bob Thornton, as the dad I assume, and it’s being filmed in Calgary, Canada this fall. So far, so good, but those Hollywood types had better not mess up a book that I liked so well that I added it to my list of 100 Best Fiction Titles Ever.
We’ve been cleaning house madly all day, and we finished one and a half rooms and the hallway. And one of the bathrooms. Oh well, it’s a start.
I’m going to reward myself by sitting quietly and watching Ben Hur with Charlton Heston. (The movie is with CH; I’m going to watch it with whichever of the urchins I can corral.) He’s old enough to be my dad, but still Mr. Heston is a good-looking Judah Ben-Hur. And it’s a long movie. I’ll get a lot of rest.
I posted THE LIST (2006) of books I’d like to read this year (or someday) at the beginning of January. I also keep a running list of movies I’d like to see based on recommendations from others or information gleaned from here and there. So here’s my list of movies that I’d like to see sometime soon. I don’t get in a hurry with movies; I don’t like to pay movie theater prices. So I usually wait until it comes out on video/DVD. Or I might catch a movie at the dollar theater–which I think is up to two dollars around here.
To End All Wars
Amistad
84 Charing Cross Road
Cinderella Man
The Great Raid
The Merchant of Venice
The Touch A documentary about the ministry of First Baptist Church, Leesburg, Florida.
I Have Found ItAn Indian Bollywood version of Sense and Sensibility.
Corrina, Corrina
Something the Lord Made
Walk the Line
Pride and Prejudice No, I haven’t seen it yet. I am still having trouble picturing Keira Knightley playing Elizabeth Bennet.
Beyond the Gates of Splendor A documentary about what happened after the martyrdom of five missionaries in Ecuador in 1956.
The Wrong Man An early Alfred Hitchcock film.
Mrs. Miniver
Marty
Mars Attacks! Parableman recommended this sci/fi comedy. We’ll see if we have the same taste in movies.
End of the Spear Due to be released January 20th, this movie tells the story of Nate Saint and his son Steve, another perspective on the same story Elizabeth Elliot told in Through Gates of Splendor.
Curious George: The Movie Due out in February.
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest Release date: July 7, 2006.
Have you seen any of these? Did you love it or hate it? Tell me if I’d be wasting my time and (little bit of) money or if any of these are so good that I should see them immediately.
By the way, here’s a link to Semicolon’s 105 Best Movies of All Time, my own eccentric list of what I think are the best movies I’ve ever watched. I wonder if any of the movies on the list above will qualify to be added to the master list. I’m still considering whether or not to add Napoleon Dynamite and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, two recent favorites.
Inspired by MM-V, this is the Christmas edition of Name That Movie:
1. “If you’re ever under a falling building and someone offers to pick you up and carry you to safety, don’t think, don’t pause, don’t hesitate for a moment— just spit in his eye.”
“What did that mean?”
“It means we’re going to Vermont.”
2. “Why don’t you kiss her instead of talking her to death?”
“You want me to kiss her, huh?”
“Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people.”
3. “Yeah, there’s a lot of bad ‘isms’ floatin’ around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck, make a buck. Even in Brooklyn it’s the same–don’t care what Christmas stands for, just make a buck, make a buck.”
4. Rats, singing: “This is my island in the sun!”
5. “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share. ”
6. “Why am I such a misfit? I am not just a nit-wit. You can’t fire me, I quit. Seems I don’t fit in.”
7. “Garments were invented by the human race as a protection against the cold. Once purchased, they may be used indefinitely for the purpose for which they are intended. Coal burns. Coal is momentary and coal is costly. There will be no more coal burned in this office today.”
8. Stacy: Come on, you guys. She must have some good qualities. Think about it. Come on, you two.
Matt: Well, both her eyes are the same color.
Tanya: She never threw up on me.
9. “I wanted to play ‘Mousetrap. Ya roll your dice, ya move your mice. Nobody gets hurt.”
Yeah, we’re heavy on the animated features around here. I still have a four year old in the house.
The new Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is being advertised and merchandised in all the stores, and people are talking. While I was out shopping today, I first heard a clerk at the Christian bookstore rehearsing the entire plot line of the book for an attentive customer who wondered what all the Narnia stuff was. Then I went to Half-Price Books where I saw more Narnia posters, calendars, and paraphernalia, and the two college age guys next to me in the children’s section were looking for “some witch book by C.S. . . . uh . . . uh. . . ”
“Lewis,” I said helpfully. But the books were all gone.
I just returned from seeing Elizabethtown with Organizer Daughter and her friend. First piece of advice: don’t go see this movie with your fourteen year old daughter if either you or she is easily embarrassed. However, I’m not so easily embarrassed, so I enjoyed it immensely. I don’t think there’s anything really immoral in the movie; one questionable scene, I chose to interpret in the best possible light. However, there is some bad language, and there are some very funny, but not at all tasteful, jokes. End of warning.
Elizabethtown has a problem because it has dueling themes. It’s a romance movie, a chick flick, but it’s also about fathers and sons and about success and how it is defined. So you just have to enjoy each theme as it comes up and then switch gears for the romantic parts. I didn’t find it difficult, but some people might be annoyed. The movie takes place mostly in Kentucky, and the Southern country atmosphere was done just about right. The moviemakers don’t make fun of Southern-ness, but they do make it enjoyable, sometimes hilarious, especially when you’re from the South or near-South and can see the parts that are exactly right. The big hair, the casseroles, the house full of pictures on every wall, the overdone wedding and funeral, and the summertime clothes are all shown with a light touch that enjoys Southern culture and gently allows Southerners to laugh at themselves.
The acting was adequate to good. Even at my age, I think Orlando Bloom is cute, but sometimes in this movie he just seemed to be going through the motions that he read in the script that day. I found a couple of scenes to be frankly unbelievable, but a better actor might have been able to pull them off. Kirsten Dunst, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite actresses, but I thought she was wonderful in Elizabethtown. Her character could have become a caricature of a half-crazy romantic distraction a la Audrey Hepburn, but she did it seriously enough to avoid going off into silliness, yet funny enough to be endearing. Susan Sarandon, as the mom in the movie, has a great comic scene funeral scene. You’ll have to see it to believe it, and it’s a little over the top even then.
We were discussing the influence that movies have on us, both good and bad, in worldview class today. Elizabethtown made me decide to live more, to be more whimsical, to appreciate Engineer Husband and the romance in my own life. I think that’s a good influence. I recommend Elizabethtown for adults and mature teens who would enjoy a romantic comedy with a few lessons thrown in for good measure.
Other bloggers review Elizabethtown:
We did watch Much Ado About Nothing last night, and those who watched enjoyed it thoroughly. Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson do make such a good pair, and I agree with whoever said that it’s a shame that their real-life marriage broke up.
Tonight is Romeo and Juliet. I think I chose it because it sort of goes with Much Ado: similar themes, but one ends happily and the other tragically. In the midst of the comedy there’s a family feud and deception and dueling and a near-tragedy. People jump to conclusions just as they do in Romeo and Juliet, and the good almost die young.
Dancer Daughter said she thinks Shakespeare had a thing about people pretending to be dead. I think he had a thing about people pretending to be other people, but that’s another post and several other plays.
Shakespeare, of course. A couple of weeks ago we made our annual trek to Shakespeare at Winedale where the plays are presented by college students in an old country barn converted to theater. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.. We learned that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, but the time is worth the use on’t, that the younger generation is seriously annoyed by The Taming of the Shrew, but I think they enjoyed being annoyed, and that Bottom is a funny name for a funny character.
So now a week and a half later we haven’t had our fill of Shakespeare, so we’re hosting our own Shakespeare festival. Since none of us is an actor that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, we’ll be taking advantage of the miracle of DVD. Here’s the invitation I gave out to a few families this evening:
You’re invited to:
The First Annual Semicolon Shakespeare Festival
Presenting at 7 p.m. each evening:
Tuesday, August 9th Much Ado About NothingWednesday, August 10th Romeo and Juliet
Thursday, August 11th Henry V
You and any or all of your family are invited to attend any or all three of the plays. Much Ado and Henry V are the movie versions directed by Kenneth Branagh. Romeo and Juliet is the 1968 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
I’d be happy to invite all my blog buddies, but the trip to Houston might be a little too long for some of you, and my living room might be a tad too small. So if you want to rent the movies and watch them in the comfort of your own home, you’re hereby invited to host your own Shakespeare festival.
Which of the three plays we are planning to watch contains which quotation and who said it?
1. “In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
2. “O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”
3. “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.”
4. “The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!'”
5. “If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.”
6. “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
7. “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”
8.”See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”
9. “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”
10. “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”