Movies and stuff

There is an unofficial rule between K (who otherwise wants to be known as "nuts" on this blog; if there is some chest-thumping story behind it, I don't want to know) and I when it comes to movie-watching: we only watch romantic comedies together. I consider my movie tastes to be pretty varied, but for whatever reason, whenever we try to divert from The Plan, the movie always turns out bad. He blames this on me, but there really are good movies out there that aren't romantic comedies; just never those that we watch together. It's a good and safe Plan, anyway; my expectations for romantic comedies are generally quite low, and my tolerance has build itself up to a reasonable height, so The Plan has by and large worked out well.

We were discussing what to watch the other day...

K: "How about The Family Stone? But I don't think it's that good. Let's wait for [Memoirs of a] Geisha."

Me (incredulous): "Geisha is a comedy?!"

K: "Yes, it's a comedy because she paints her face white and dances."

Me: "..."

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We ended up watching Elizabethtown, which had much yumminess in Orlando Bloom. Hur hur. I liked the quirkiness and the cinematography, but I thought the storyline involving Kirsten Dunst was somewhat incongruous to the show -- almost as if it was a mere afterthought. I don't know which parts of the show were autobiographical beyond the death of Drew Baylor's father, but if I had to guess, Dunst would probably be it.

Perhaps without that superfluous sub-plot, more development could have been given to the rest of Elizabethtown -- the people in it, the family; I thought that was a delight to watch and it really left me wanting more.

In all, it was pretty okay, 3/5 perhaps. As a sidenote, Bloom needs to work on his American accent; it alternated between sounding somewhat Scottish and Irish, with very deliberate and contrived enunciation -- most peculiar to listen to.

Speaking of movies, I thought Narnia was perfect. Perhaps because of the buildup of bad reviews leading up to it; I found my initial excitement quickly ebb away. But I'm still learning lots of new things which regards to children's books -- an uncomfortable territory for me.

I'm not usually partial to films adapted from books -- too much nuance and too many possibilities to be interpreted just one way -- but my imagination is limited with regards to the fantastical, and perhaps this is why I struggle with reading children's stories; this would also explain why the visual helped greatly. 5/5 from me.

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So this is it. Starting tomorrow: one final sem -- and I haven't even made up my mind about modules yet. Hur hur. Hello school.