So, we finally got to see the George Clooney movie “Up in the Air”, which he was nominated for at Oscar time, but did not win for.  Let me tell you, this movie was well worth the wait.  We actually have to re-order it from Netflix three times because each time we got the BluRay disc, for some reason our blu ray player would not take it.  It finally worked on the third try, so I don’t know whether this particular movie was produced on a disc that’s hard to read or what.  I’m glad we didn’t give up on it, because this movie was a pleasure to watch the whole way through.

Contrary to what some may think, it’s a movie for both women and men, my husband enjoyed it thoroughly also.  I of course enjoyed it because two good looking men were in it, George Clooney and Jason Bateman, and guys might enjoy looking at the pretty and talented Vera Farmiga, who is costar to Clooney’s shallow, selfish airline mile collector, Ryan Bingham.

Clooney plays  a self absorbed corporate guy, who works for a company that pays him to fly to different places and fire people professionally.  The situations hit a little too close to home in time of recession in some cases, and you have to wonder if they picked actual situations in some of them.  Ryan loves to fly around the globe, and actually hates when he has to return home to his small efficiency apartment.

He loves everything about his job, the traveling, the hotels, the hotel bars, the corporate events, and the flings with women since he’s also a commitment phobe. When the young Cornell graduate Natalie, played by the awesome actress Anna Kendrick of Twilight fame (something tells me she’ll be getting lots more juicy roles after this movie, she’s great in it), Ryan is thrown off of his usual routine. She has proposed to the head of the company an idea that would keep the corporate firers grounded, where they would be doing their firings from a computer screen.

Ryan gets off on the wrong foot with Natalie, so the head of the company, Bateman, puts them on flights together so Ryan can show here the ropes. Vera Farmiga enters the picture as Ryan, only “with a vagina” as she puts it. They engage in a fling that becomes a little more serious, and Ryan starts to slowly see that he is missing  a lot in his life devoid of human complications and connections.

The ending really surprised me, but in a good way, it wasn’t the rosy Hollywood ending that you’re used to, but that’s what made this movie even better for me.  You see a guy come to terms with his life as a traveler and wandering sould, and start to become more human, only to realize that the world has sort of left him behind. Very excellent movie, I’d highly recommend you rent it.

So, I told you that we had horrible problems here in Northeast Ohio with our cable for the Lost finale.  Well, we weren’t able to watch the Jimmy Kimmel after-show that night either because we were already up so dang late screwing with the TV and trying to get Lost to come in right. So, we finally watched it tonight. We had DVR’d it and it only had a few glitches. It was a total waste of time. Filled with some pretty lame jokes and skits, except for the Bob Newhart alternate ending, which was pretty funny.

Other than that, more than half of the important characters weren’t even on the show, including Evangeline Lilly, a major part of the show, or Josh Holloway, although both appeared in skits.  Terry O’Quinn who plays Locke seemed the most at ease on stage out of the other actors, who seemed nervous and unsure of what to do with themselves. Can’t say I blame them, they’re so used to having scripts when they’re in front of people.

I was disappointed to that the alternate endings were just jokes. I thought when I read that he was showing alternate endings that they were really what the producers considered airing instead of the one they went with. Oh well, joke was on me for that one!

Wow. All I can say is WOW. As a long time fan of the show Lost, and my husband and I both instantly loving it from the pilot to the very end, besides a few off episodes that seemed to be one-offs and time killers, I can honestly say that the series finale show of Lost was truly moving. I love it. I even was moved to tears a few times. Where to start on this epic journey?

My husband and I discussed how some fans may not think there was enough explained, and I felt the opposite. I like to use my imagination on any loose ends that were left, and I’m even going to go back and watch the finale again to pick up on any more tidbits I may have missed the first time around.

Oh, and we live in Akron, Ohio and there was a colossal screwup on the locally served station, and most of the show was pixelated so bad you couldn’t tell what they were saying. We were still able to get the gist of the finale, but they are actually re airing the show again on Saturday at 8:00 because so many people complained about it.

We find out that the sideways flashes, as they’ve been coined by Losties and the producers, are actually a sort of purgatory, a self created reality by the characters, satisfying what they feel may have been their destiny, or a facilitator in helping them to let go and accept their death and also their life. This wasn’t clear until the end when Christian Sheperd (aptly named since he gathered everyone togetehr at the church) told a befuddled Jack who opened his coffin only to find his father standing, apparently alive, behind him. tells Jack that he needs to “let go”.

We see simultaneous scenes flashing in between where the knife wound that Locke/smoke monster has inflicted on Jack ends up killing him. But he doesn’t die alone. Vincent – remember the adorable golden lab from season past, lays down with him while he dies. Tear jerking scene number 2. Tear jerking scene number one was when Juliette and Sawyer remember eachother by touching one another in front of a snack machine.

It is in this sideways flash that all the major characters end up running into, and remember their time on the island with, the ones they most loved. It is explained that in purgatory, the in between before these souls move on into their afterlife or whatever else it is they are moving on to (that is not clear, up to the watcher to decide), time does not matter. They have all mostly died at separate times, and have come toghether to see one another one last time before they move on.

After Jack had volunteered to be the watcher of the island, Hurley had to step in and take the ropes, and Ben ends up becoming his number 2, like Richard was to Jacob. Richard, after the giant cork is pulled out and the island begins to destroy itself, like Jack and Smoke monster guy, ends up becoming mortal again, as evidenced by a grey hair plucked by Miles before they board the plane.

The man in black/smoke monster meets his demise by a shot from Kate, and then a swift kick over a rocky cliff from Jack. From there, the show is less about good and evil and mysticism and fairy tale, and more of a spiritual journey for the characters. After all, this was a character driven show.

LOVED IT. I’m going to watch it again saturday, and maybe I’ll have some new insites or theories to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know how this movie got one good review, most notably form veteran film critic Roger Ebert, but it baffles me that anyone could even watch this atrocity all the way through. Matt Damon, who I usually think is a decent actor although I’m not a huge fan, plays “the informant”, a guy who ends up embezzling millions of dollars from a commodities company he works for while becoming a whistle blower against their price fixing scam abroad.

I don’t have much to say about this movie other than I couldn’t follow it, nor was I interested enough to try. This movie is confusing, silly, pointless and should not have been made. I did not like it at all and would not recommend anyone watch it. Total waste of time!

So, after all these years, just over 15 to be exact, I’ve finally seen the movie that garnered a lot of critical acclaim, and put Natalie Portman and Jean Reno on the map as accomplished actors.  Natalie Portman was reportedly only 11 years old when the movie filmed, and of course there was  a bit of controversy because of the adult theme of the movie, and her cursing mouth and desire to be Renaud’s “lover”, but it was actually all very innocent and touching in the movie. How the director accomplished that without being overly creepy is what part of the appeal of this movie is though.

The Professional is a movie about a professional hitman, played by Reno.  He came over to the states by boat not speaking a word of english, after the love of his life was gunned down, and fell into the care of a mafia boss, played by Danny Aiello.  Aiello is also great in this movie.  Another excellent character, who was also incidentally put on the map by this original movie in 1994, was Gary Oldman, who plays a drugged up psychopath DEA agent who is dirty. He also happens to be responsible for the events that set into motion Portman’s character 12 year old Mathilda, being forced into the hands of Reno’s character’s care.

Leon is a loner assassin who lives in a dirty apartment and sleeps with one eye open .He doesn’t even sleep in a bed, he sleeps sitting up in a chair in his living room every night. When Mathilda’s family is killed, she passes the room where her whole family has been killed, and crosses over to Reno’s apartment. He reluctantly takes her in and ends up teaching her how to be an assassin after she badgers him, so that she can eventually assassinate her little brother’s killers, the only one in her family that she seemingly loved.

She ends up going all Lolita on him though, telling him that she thinks she might be falling in love with him. There are a few uncomfortable scenes in the movie, where as a woman, I wondered where they were going with the suggestiveness, but they ended up being more endearing and more real to her character, and also to Leon’s.  The acting is great, pretty much everyone turns in an excellent performance and you can see why this movie put a lot of great character actors on the map.

It may have even been a little before it’s time, with the extreme closeup shots all the time, and that adds to it’s originality and appeal.

I just watched the Mad Men season 3 finale last night, and all I have to say is wow. The writing just gets better, the acting more compelling and endearing to the characters, and the more emotionally tied you are to the show and it’s different characters.  Even Pete Campbell, the sniveling spoiled brat from earlier in the show, has somehow made his way into our hearts, and his annoying wife isn’t so annoying any more.  The characters are really fleshed out this season, and the ending to season three is quite a surprise in a couple of ways.

We have the dissolution of an already troubled marriage when Betty Draper tells Don she no longer loves him and “felt nothing” when he kissed her. Wow, that really  blew me away. You never thought that this seemingly spineless woman would have the guts to actually do anything about her unhappiness, but she does. You can’t help but wonder if this Henry Francis guy is really going to help though, because she seems to think that a man can create happiness for her, and well, us modern women know that’s not the case, you create your own happiness, which is what I think the moral of this story is.

And yet, you feel for both Betty and Don when they sit Sally and Bobby, down to tell them the news that mommy and daddy will be living apart from now on.  Even though it’s a troubled family unit, you still feel for them when they are essentially changing it all for themselves and the kids. Are we no  longer going to see the aqua marine backed bed at the Drapers when Betty moves in with Henry eventually?  To be continued!

I find myself wondering how next season is going to be. Are we also no longer going to see as much of the Sterling Cooper office?  Don ends up rousing the other partners into buying back Sterling Cooper and including their British counterpart in the deal, as long as he fires them and helps them to be able to split off and form their own agency. Don and Company approaches only a chosen few to follow them to their newly created agency, taking some of Sterling Cooper’s biggest accounts with it in the process.  Is that even legal? Well shoot, maybe it was back then, who knows!

Joan Harris (Holloway) is back in the fold too. I was wondering how they were going to get her back on the show, and I guess this is it!  They call her in desperation because they don’t know how to gather all the necessary information to effectively split off.  I found myself getting giddy when I saw all the  main, influential characters in one room, a small hotel room, planning with uncertainty and fear for their new agency. It was GREAT seeing them starting from scratch, and I must say I felt like an excited fan girl at the prospect of how next season was going to shape up.

Mad Men is going to go for a few more seasons, and I’m going to await the release of season 4 with baited breath, that’s for sure!  You know a show is good when you burn through an entire season on DVD in a week and a half!

Well, it looks like Iron Man 2 has followed the lead of several other movie franchises, and gone the way of being subpar to it’s predecessor. We saw Iron Man 2, the anticipated sequel to Iron Man, the smash hit with Robert Downey Jr. and directed by actor-turned-director Jon Favreau.  The sequel is also directed by Favreau, and again he also stars in several scenes as well. He’s actually one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Downey Jr. is talented as always, pulling off the subtle wisecracks and quick humor as in the first movie, endearing himself to the audience even though he’s one shallow, narcissistic guy. Hey, at least he’s in it for world peace though, right?  While the sequel is definitley a little bit glitzier and big budget looking than the first, there is just something lacking here.

I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t a huge fan of their replacement of Terence Howard’s character with Don Cheadle in a lackluster performance, or if it was the lulls where I was wondering how much longer the movie had, but for me, it just didn’t have the same appeal or excitement that the first one had.

The dialogue was still snappy and delivered naturally by all the characters, but the cheese factor was amped up a bit more, perhaps for the kiddies watching, they cowed to the expense of making adults gag I guess. One scene shows a little boy wearing a fake Iron Man mask, pretending like he’s shooting the bad guys, and lo and behold, Iron Man himself shoots that bad guys, giving the credit to the little guy. Um, barf?

They also anthropomorhphized a robot and a dog in two scenes, making them do the requisite “doh” or “yikes” type of reaction to certain scenese. Another gag.  On the flip side, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarjo as Black Widow, Downey Jr., and Mickey Rourke as the villain were all excellent.  I also enjoyed seeing Mad Men’s John Slattery appear in a cameo as Tony Stark’s dead father, that was quite a treat. Then again, I’m a super fan of Mad Men and a total nerd at that, so maybe I’m the only one.

Overall, the movie was entertaining, for sure. It just didn’t have that same oomph as the original.  Oh, and the scene that we stayed to see after the credits was really lackluster. All it did was show us where one of the agents went off to during the movie, to the desert, and it showed a huge crater in the sand with Thor’s hammer next to it. Whoopee. Needless to say we were all pretty mad we stayed after for a two second scene.  I guess the super comic fans would have gotten a kick out of it, but as for us normal folk, it was a waste of time.

So, I just heard that they are planning on cutting the critically acclaimed AMC show Mad Men off after six seasons. I am now just finishing up season 3, which I got as soon as it became available on DVD. I can fly through three episodes a night on the weekends, so it doesn’t take me too long.

And I can’t do that with too many shows, so that says a lot about Mad Men and how I feel about it. I feel like all the actors are really hitting their stride with their characters these season. They seem to have gotten to know their characters more intimately, and have made them more and more multi faceted, or shall I say fascinating, to watch.

For instance, instead of seeing a cold, shallow bitch in Joan Holloway, not Joan Harris after marrying her doctor fiance off screen, we see a more human woman.  She has gone through her own struggles, but she does so quietly and privately, in a dignified way, which seems to reduce her formerly in your face sexuality to a more down to earth identifiability this season. Women identify with her much more I can guarantee that. And how has the actress who plays her become so much more ethereally beautiful!?

But it’s not just Joan.  All the characters, Betty, Don Drapers wife played by January Jones, another stunner of course, has also hit her stride, and is now playing a much more multidimensional character. Her flirtations with a councilman will hold you rapt to your television. Even though you know Don has stepped out on her numerous times you still don’t want her to lose her seeming innocence, even though she pretty much lost that last season with her one night stand with a stranger.

Don has evolved as well. Of course, he’s still a sympathetic character, but yet he still has that weakness where he seems to look for happiness in women outside of his marriage. It’s the typical Tony Soprano complex where you don’t think he could ever be satisfied in a monogamous relationship for very long without getting restless and looking for “more” outside the walls of marriage.

We see Don having a hard time also with the new British management at Sterling Cooper as well, which helps to bring his uber handsome character who seems to handle everything so effortlessly, down a few notches and more identifiable.  We even see different sides of Pete Campbell and Trudy’s marriage and of Salvatore Romano (Sal) and his struggles with being a gay man who is just coming to grips with it himself.

This season is truly gripping and engrossing. It can get a bit depressing, because you really start to identify and feel for the characters, but it’s nonetheless a pleasure to watch the talented actors, the awesome scenery and sets, and to be transported back to a time when things seemed to be much simpler, but the same human struggles are somehow present.

So, we finally saw the movie that won Best Picture this year at the Academy Awards. Kathryn Bigelow, who was a virtual no name before directing this movie is now closer to becoming a household name after directing this movie.  The movie is about a bomb squad in the Iraq war. It mostly stars fairly low recognition actors, with some small appearances by more well known actors like Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes.

Jeremy Renner, who plays a young, reckless hotdog bomb defuser, is a welcome addition to leading men. He’s a relative unknown, having starred in only a handfull of well known films up to this point. He’s got that face where you know you’ve seen him in something, you just can’t quite place him.  He may be getting a little more work from now on having turned in a pretty solid performance in the Hurt Locker, although in my opinion he wasn’t Oscar worthy (he didn’t win the Oscar, the movie did).

This movie is good if you like heart stopping situations.  The bomb squad’s missions are well filmed, leading you to fear for their lives, but I question the use of propaganda in this movie.  I felt like it was using the macho attitude to it’s benefit that we Americans are always right and that the opposite side is always wrong, but then again I guess I’m sounding a little too naive by saying that. War is war, and one thing this movie does is make me think that war is even more pointless than I thought it was before.

It made me feel really sorry for all the young men who have gone over there, risking life and limb, when they haven’t even had a chance to live a full life yet. In fact, it’s sickening, and I think that this movie does hammer home that point, but at the cost of putting the macho spin on it, that this is great if you’re a daredevil and you like to play russian roulette with your life.  Some of the situations were less than life like, although I really can’t say since I’ve never been in a war.

The bomb squad that Renner’s character is put in charge of goes from disliking and distrusting him for being too reckless with his and other’s lives, to respecting him.   This movie has some great, edge of your seat sequences, so that tells you that you must care for the characters in some way, and the sound is tremendous, especially if you’re watching it on Blu Ray and have a good sound system.

Is it worthy of an Oscar? I’m not sure, I still have to see the other contenders. It was good, but I’m not sure it was Oscar good. The next Oscar contender we have on the way is Up in the Air, with George Clooney, which I’ll be reviewing next.