Like finally seeing An Affair to Remember. I already know the story from Sleepless in Seattle and from the Bollywood version of this movie (Mann). It holds up well; Cary Grant is of course awesome as hell, and the banter between him and Debra Kerr is top notch.
Oliver putting his own name in the search box brought us to the musical Oliver! with a very, very young Oliver Reed. So that's where that song came from...
The African Queen is another one I've been meaning to see since forever. I loved the little steam boat, and Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn were great.
The Maiden Heist stars Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and a super-buff William H. Macy as art musuem security guards who each have one specific work they adore. When a museum in Holland buys their obsessions, they turn thieves to steal what they can't live without. It's a quiet little movie, but has so many really wonderful touches about how subjective our reaction to art is. These guys can understand each other's obsession but can't quite get the focus of each other's obsessions (I love Morgan Freeman's attempt to replicate Christopher Walken's favorite painting - oh, he didn't get it at all).
Less compelling was the French film The Ultimate Heist. "Ultimate" here doesn't mean the heist to end all heists, it just means the last one. So I went in expecting one sort of film and got another. Still, Jean Reno reading a phonebook is worth watching once just to see.
Constant Gardener was about what I expected, a deserved Oscar winner but not a film I expect will be remembered much in ten years. (From my research on slums, it's my understanding that the slums of Nairobi are by far the worst place to live in the world, and this movie doesn't scratch the surface of what it's like. But then what it does show is harrowing enough).
Boondocks Season 3 was just as sharply written, just as lovingly animated, as the first two seasons. I love the way the old Peanuts cartoons' influence can be felt, especially in the music, and the intrusion of anime elements in a suburban setting always brightens my nerdy little heart. This is one of my favorite shows.
Toy Story 3 was not as good as the first two, but still a fun show. Mr. Potato Head left sans potato, making do with a tortilla, was brilliant, and the character of Ken was a great addition (they never say metrosexual, but it's implied). Some clever bits and the ending was just perfect, but the minimal influence of the original filmmakers was felt. Also finishing up a series was Shrek the Final Chapter, which also had some elements I liked (like Fiona rescuing herself, and she and Shrek sparring as a prelude to romance. Which it totally is). But on the final score, this is a series that's gone a bit past it's best by date. Time to retire it. It's a Trap!, the final of the Family Guy Star Wars parodies also feels less than fresh, although I loved the Seth Green jokes, and when Mon Mothma shows up and suddenly Leia is no longer the only woman in the galaxy. "I don't like her," she says. Yeah, that made me laugh.
Bollywood, y'all. Jawani Zindagi had pretty low production values, which was a shame because I really liked the story, about how dowries suck, and not just for women.London Dreams had a cool premise: Amadeus done as two competing rock stars in the same band. Ajay Devgan (who was awesome as the lead in the Hindi version of Othello, Omkara) makes a delicious Salieri, and Salman Khan is the perfect choice for the never serious Amadeus. Sadly, a movie with a plot built around music and who makes it well and who doesn't needs to have really awesome music, and the songs in this one just didn't do it. The scene were Khan's character riffs on Devgan's snippet of song, playing it in several styles and improving on it a la Mozart, was good, but the songs they were performing before stadium crowds just weren't the sorts of songs that fill stadiums.
As opposed to Dabangg, which had awesome songs. Plus a sweet little love story, Salman Khan as a policeman with the universally recognized policeman's moustache, and action scenes that show just how much Salman Khan loved Sherlock Holmes and the Matrix. All that, and Malaika Arora Khan too. There was an episode of Friends where the guys were picking out the names of five celebrities they would sleep with if given the chance and their partners couldn't object because they were on the list (Ross laminates his, natch). My husband has just one name on his list: Malaika Arora Khan. And he insisted I put this song up on the blog (I was torn between this one and, well, every other song in the movie). It is a great number; Salman Khan looks like he's having all sorts of fun here.
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