Here is our very romantic choice for Valentine’s Evening entertainment that we had along with a heart shaped pizza from Papa John’s. My dream date There is one of these new Blockbuster boxes in our local Duane Reade. Unfortunately it has a very limited number of films available to rent.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I had seen the trailer to this movie which left me cold. When I heard that it received a Golden Globe I was a little more intrigued but little did I know how much I would enjoy watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. It is utterly hilarious!

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) wanted to become an inventor since childhood but his inventions never really worked and he wasn’t well respected, not even by his own dad. But things are changing for him when his newest invention, a machine that turns water into food, takes off. Literally: it accidentally flies into the sky where it turns the clouds humidity into food which then rains onto the earth. Pretty neat! What’s even better is that Flint can type in any food that he would like the machine to produce. Right around that time Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), a young weather broadcast intern, steps into Flint’s life and bewitches him with her nerdy charms. Naturally, disaster is waiting right around the corner. The food machine gets out of control and starts to produce giant food that it now a danger to Flint’s town. He has to stop it!

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs has so many quirky little ideas that make it a lot of fun to watch. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time.

Watchmen

Superhero movies are somewhat blending together in my mind. A lot of them are so much alike. Whatchmen is clearly not one of the better comic book adaptations that I have seen though.

Yes, she is wearing latex suspenders...

I won’t write a synopsis of this movie, mainly because I didn’t really get the story. It felt more like an introduction of the comic book characters then a story-line. And I didn’t care about the characters at all. None of the character managed to touch me in any way, not even really engage my interest. Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter) gave a such a terrible performance that I had to think of my teacher, George Loros, who always says that it’s a pity that we can’t sue actors for bad acting (he is hilarious, I wish I could tape him!). I usually really like Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson but this movie brought out the worst in them.

The special effects, fight scenes and all that were fine but overall I don’t think you are going to miss out on anything if you never see Watchmen.

A Christmas Carol in Disney 3D

I know this is a beloved book and is particularly famous in the US but I have to admit that I didn’t know the story before watching the movie. It is a great story though, and it must be nice growing up listening to it around Christmas time.

The animation in the movie is outstanding. I don’t watch a lot of animated films but they have come a long way from when they started making these. The facial expressions, movements and especially the hair are so real that it makes me wonder why they would even make it an animation, it almost looks like a life action film. It will be interesting to see where this will lead. I don’t believe life action films will ever be obsolete (since I am studying to become an actress, I should hope not!) but animation is coming closer and closer to the look of life action that they might have to keep it to stories that can’t be done with life action.

Jim Carrey (voice of: Scrooge/Ghost of Christmas Past/Scrooge as a Young Boy/Scrooge as a Teenage Boy/Scrooge as a Young Man/Scrooge as a Middle-Aged Man/Ghost of Christmas Present/Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) is really the right guy for the job. He is so versatile that I didn’t even notice that it was him doing all those voices until I read the credits. Colin Firth on the other hand I recognized immediately. Also because they really make the characters look like the actors.

This is turning out to be a very positive review, so I have to pause for a minute and remember that I didn’t think the movie was that fantastic. It is a beautiful story beautifully told but it really did have its lengths. Scrooge is flying through the air an awful lot and in the beginning there is too much time “wasted” on showing that he is a bitter old man. This was the second film I have watched in 3D (as a whole film) so I was still dazzled by that but without the 3D I think I might have found it slightly boring. Even though for children it must be scary. There were a couple of very young children in the cinema (why would you bring kids that can’t even speak yet to the cinema?) and they kept screaming a lot. It is a perfect film to buy for your children and show them every year around Christmas in case you are too busy to read the book to them (which I hope you are not).

The Men Who Stare at Goats

A nice contrast to A Christmas Carol, this political comedy is really only for grown-ups. I had read a few bad reviews on other blogs which made me wonder whether I should even watch this film but I actually thought it was hilarious! It is one of these films that seems like the film makers make it simply to amuse themselves. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all and I was happy to laugh along.

Ewan McGregor (Bob) is a journalist at a small paper somewhere in the US. When his wife leaves him for their editor, he decides to prove his worth by going into war. On the way he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who is part of a special army unit that tries to win wars with psychic powers. Lyn is on his way to find the leader (Jeff Bridges) of this New Age Army somewhere in the desert.

George Clooney and Jeff Bridges are particularly funny in this. The U.S. army is such a serious institution and it is interesting to see it in a different light. Surely The Men Who Stare at Goats will not be one of the films which will be remembered in a few years but it was entertaining to watch and would be fun to see with a few friends and some wine on a DVD night.

So this is the very first movie I watched in New York City (well…since 2006 anyways).

When I was sitting in the cinema with the Buddy Holly 3D glasses on, I realized that I knew nothing about the story of this film even though I had seen the trailer. I knew that it was about 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen who flies his house to South America by attaching hundreds of balloons to it (a very brilliant man, I wish I had thought of that, then I would have all my stuff here…). What completely took me by surprise is the story that leads up to this rather unusual event. It starts with Carl as a young boy, wanting to be an explorer, but being a shy and scared kid he only fantasizes about adventure. One day he meets little Ellie who actually plans on becoming an adventurer when she grows up. They become best friends, fall in love and eventually get married. She is everything to him and his greatest dream is to make her happy and go on the adventure with her that they had been planning since childhood. But before they can finally go, Ellie dies. Carl is so upset about the loss of his loved one that he becomes a bitter old man. For Ellie, he goes on their big adventure alone. What he didn’t plan on was taking the little boy scout Russell along with him.

So this is only the beginning of the story. The main part is, of course, the journey and what happens on the way to Carl’s dream destination.

Up is made with so much love that it really goes right to your heart. I was incredibly moved by Ellie’s death. I haven’t felt this sad watching a movie in a really long time. I know it is supposed to be a fun movie with a positive outlook on life because Carl finds a way to move on and live his life without Ellie, but I found it mainly depressing, at least two thirds of it.  Disney/Pixar always put so much effort and detail into their films that it is so lovely to watch them, though. I guess if you are spending that much time working on it, the film becomes very precious to the film-makers and nothing is rushed or “accidentally” put in. I really think this is one of the best 3D animated films I have seen. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it!

I have never actually seen a Disney movie in 3D before (I don’t think I have seen any full length 3D film…just a short when I went to Universal Studios a long time ago…how odd…), but Up isn’t a film that has to be seen in 3D. It doesn’t really make good use of the effect. But it was still quite fun to have the feeling of almost being able to touch the characters.

Susan (Reese Witherspoon) is about to get married to the man of her dreams, but on her wedding day she gets hit by a meteorite, which turns her into a giant. She is immediately taken into custody and deported to an extremely secret government prison for monsters. America has already captured the mad scientist Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie) who has transformed himself into a cockroach to be as indestructible as the monsters: fish-man The Missing Link (Will Arnett), slimy B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) and the giant Insectosaurus.

Poor Susan is very upset about the prospect of being stuck in prison for the rest of her life and not being able to get married and live her dream life. Luckily aliens send a huge robot to San Francisco which the monsters are now being expected to destroy. Here, Susan discovers her new strength… once the robot is destroyed and the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) has to come to destroy the Earth himself, she is quite comfortable in fighting him.

This film is really good fun! And let me just say, it is not for young kids. If I had any, I am not sure I would want them to see it. It has some quite grownup topics and jokes. But if you’re over 13, go and watch it! What really amazed me is how far the animation has come. The textures of things (like skin, fur etc) look so real! And the movements are very human and realistic. Monster vs Aliens has some great jokes, very sweet characters and a fun story. It is not going to be one of my favourite Dreamworks films, but I am happy I saw it and I have nothing bad to say about it. I might have liked it even better if I hadn’t seen the trailer. Most of the really good jokes are already shown in it. I do like how it is mocking the American society.

What I find a bit irritating, and I am not sure whether I like or dislike it, is that major animation films seem to use stars for the voices. I didn’t look at the opening titles and was wondering for a really long time who the voices were. This kind of distracted me from the story-line. I know I could just check who is in the movie before watching it, but I usually forget (only when it comes to animations…). I am just not sure if the makers choose these actors because they are best for the role or just because it will be great publicity for the movie (I suspect the latter, which does not mean that I don’t like the actors or think they are doing it badly, just that there might be someone less famous who could do it better).

We did a double feature of Madagascar, parts one and two, last night. It involved a lot of pizza, sweets, Caipirinhas and laughter (especially as the evening went on…)

Madagascar

Alex (Ben Stiller) is the most beloved lion of the New York Zoo. While his friends think that he is a bit lame, Alex enjoys nothing more then putting on a good show for the tourists. The zebra Marty (Chris Rock) on the other hand can’t think about anything else than going to the Wild. At his birthday party he announces this to his best friend Alex and his other good friends, the giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) and the hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith). They are shocked and upset about the news. For them the Zoo is the best place in the world.

During this night, Marty goes to Grand Central station to take the train to Connecticut (which he believes to be the Wild). Alex and the others run after him to bring him back to the zoo. Animal rights activists insist that this break-out is a sign for the animals to be sent back into their natural habitat. The ship they are put on is heading for Africa, but through some circumstances it lands on Madagascar.

Here the movie really starts. The animals have to get used to the new environment, to the other animals living on Madagascar and to not having food served to them anymore. This is especially hard for the lion Alex. He doesn’t even know what his favourite food, steak, is made of. Suddenly he gets urges to bite his best friend.

Although not as good as some other Dreamworks movies (such as Shrek) Madagascar has some funny and original ideas. The beginning of the film, before the group goes off to Madagascar, feels quite long. Once they get to the island, it gets really funny though. A group of lemurs, with their King Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen), is hilarious. They really make the film. As do the other side characters. There are some clever penguins and very upper-class British monkeys that will make you smile.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Alex and the others have had enough of Madagascar, they want to go back home. Using a plane that has crash-landed on Madagascar, they want to fly back to New York City. Unfortunately the plane isn’t properly repaired and crashes again – this time somewhere in Africa (Tanzania?). Alex, Marty, Melmon and Gloria are shocked. This is where they belong! The Wild! There are thousands of hippos, giraffes, zebras and lions.

For Alex it is more then just being with other lions: he meets his real parents again. Now he has to be accepted into the pride. There is an official coming-of-age fight among the young lions, at which Alex obviously fails. Now his father, the king, has to banish Alex from the pride. I really don’t want to get into too much detail of the story here but, of course, there are many other obstacles.

In my view, the second film is better than the first. The pace is quicker and you already know all the characters, so they don’t have to be introduced again. There are some fun new characters as well (such as the hippo Moto-Moto who Gloria starts dating). The African scenery is done extremely well. I would have liked to see it on a big screen, rather than on my laptop…

Lemurs I saw at the Zoo. They are so cute!

What I didn’t like about this movie were the similarities to The Lion King. Why does there always have to be a bad lion, who wants to ruin the party? I mean, I like the obvious mocking or quoting of other films (the plane crash is, for example, obviously stolen from Almost Famous) but with the story of the lions it feels more like the makers couldn’t come up with something else.

These two movies are absolutely worth watching. They almost deserve a MovieCat award (and go onto my !Must see! category), but not quite. There is just something missing to make them perfect.

So, who doesn’t adore this movie? It is just such a classic and my passion for it started when I was a little kid.
Dorothy (Judy Garland) runs away from home, but when she realizes that she wants to turn back, a tornado is approaching the farmhouse. She makes it into the house just in time for the tornado to sweep it up and transport it to the land of Oz.

Here she wakes up in the Munchkin land where she is celebrated for landing on and therefore killing the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy is obviously confused about all this but settles in quickly, and after the Good Witch of the North shows her the yellow brick road to follow to get to the Wizard of Oz, she is excited and happy.

On her way to see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz she meets the Tin Man who hasn’t got a heart, the Scarecrow without a brain and the Lion lacking courage. They all follow Dorothy and her dog Toto to the Emerald City. On the way the Wicked Witch of the West sets traps for them. She is, obviously, upset with Dorothy for killing her sister.

The 1939 film is a wonderful spectacle of colours, songs and dancing. I think every kid should watch this film (and if you missed it as a kid, watch it now). The DVD specials are really good as well. There is a long making-of which gives a real inside on the time when The Wizard of Oz was made. What I didn’t know, for example, is that the film was made by several directors. They were just swapped around. The same with the actors. There were a lot of different actors considered for the film and the producers kept exchanging them. It is a definite must-see!

The Wizard of Oz is awarded the MovieCat for being an absolute classic.

The newest Harry Potter film is coming out on the 16th or 17th of July 2009 (depending on where you live). The makers are seriously taking their time … the last one, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, came out in July 2007. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) will be turning 20 a few days after the premiere next year. So how old will he be when the last film in the series is released? According to the IMDb Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows will come out in two separate parts (oh come on! Just let it be over and done with already …), one in 2010 and the next in 2011.

For the people who can’t wait until next summer, J.K. Rowling is releasing a little book called The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It is a collection of wizarding fairy-tales which was left to Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore in the last of the Harry Potter books. The author wrote and illustrated seven copies by hand from which Amazon bought one at an auction at Sotheby’s (for £1.95 million or $3.98 million!). Amazon will be selling a special edition with a copied version of the handwritten introduction by J.K. herself. It is a pretty little book, in a velvet bag, in a wizarding text book (very Harry Potteresque) and will cost $100. The special edition will be released alongside the standard hardcover version ($7.59) on December 4th this year. I wonder how many kids (and adults?) will find this book under their Christmas tree this year …

I remember when all Sienna Miller was known for was her relationship with Jude Law. And how annoying it was to see her in magazines and newspapers just for her style. Jealousy runs deep

She had a few small roles in Layer Cake, Alfie (I really don’t wanna go into how gorgeous she looks in this film…) and according to IMDB she appeared in some TV shows and films I have never heard of. Then came Casanova, where she was the female lead alongside Heath Ledger. The film, directed by Lasse Hallström in 2005, was incredibly bad (who would have thought after he directed the beautiful Chocolat?). The story was told in a sort of falling-asleep-boring way and Sienna’s acting was dreadful. The make-up and hair made her look plain (I didn’t think it was possible!) so there is really no reason to watch that film at all.

She really developed in the 2006 Factory Girl. Here she plays Edie Sedgwick to Guy Pearce’s Andy Warhol. The film is debatably bad (although I personally quite enjoyed it), but Sienna is great in it. She is the perfect actress to play the skinny, confused Edie. Here Sienna really gets to show what she can do. Her character is very emotional and irrational, she is taking drugs, crying, laughing and getting the attention of entire rooms full of people. Sienna does it well. She is equally good in Interview, playing the soap actress Katya. This film, directed by Steve Buscemi (who plays the other lead role) is marvellous. Sienna appears to be playing herself (which of course she denies in interviews), being a young actress, living in the most beautiful warehouse apartment in Manhattan (I read that Sienna herself moved into a similar house in London), but is therefore great in the role. In the 2007 film Stardust she has a fairly small and bitchy role, nothing worth writing about. Although the film itself is quite sweet.

What I think is quite interesting is the clothes label twenty8twelve she launched in 2007 together with her sister Savannah (who studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins in London). Sienna has always been known for her unique style (which has been copied a lot). Oddly enough the story is quite similar to Edie Sedgwick, whose style was also iconic and who got the chance to have her own label (but did not have too much interest in it). Sienna also chose her outfit for Interview. Personally I quite like the twenty8twelve style (although, unfortunately, I can’t afford it). Their flagship store is a very small but sweet shop in Westbourne Grove (Notting Hill, London). I think it is a great opportunity for Savannah to use her sister’s fame for her own career.

As for acting, apparently Sienna Miller did a three months’ course at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. This seems to be all the actors’ training she got, so I guess she had enough connections and endurance to get into the business. Although born in NYC, she grew up in London. She has an English accent but does the American accent really well in a few of her films.

She is stunningly beautiful, has great style, strange taste in men (what was the relationship with Rhys Ifans all about?), seems to be a really fun sort of girl and has turned out to be a good actress. I think this deserves a MovieCat Award. (I think I deserve a MovieCat Award for saying such nice things about her while I’m green with envy )

Unfortunately I have been too busy to write on this blog in the past few weeks, so here are a few films I have seen during that time:

Enchanted

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed watching this rather silly film. A Disney cartoon Wanna-Be-Princess gets pushed into a fountain by the evil stepmother of her Prince, bringing her into the Real World. Here the Princess meets a grumpy lawyer and turns his world upside down. When her Prince (her true love) comes to take her back home she starts to doubt where her home really is.

It is a cute story with fun characters. Nice Disney entertainment.

Liberty Heights

A group of young Jews are struggling against prejudices in Baltimore, 1954. Against their parents’ will, high school senior Ben strikes up a friendship with a black girl from his class. She introduces him to James Brown and other black artists from the time. Ben’s older brother falls in love with a blonde débutante at a party. This, of course, gets him into all sorts of trouble. Rock’n'Roll, nice cars and growing up in the 50’s (oh, and my favourite: the gorgeous Adrien Brody). Liberty Heights is a wonderful movie and absolutely worth watching.

Hellboy

We watched the first Hellboy on DVD in preparation of the upcoming Hellboy II. It has great characters and a good setting, but I have to say: It’s absolute rubbish. The story is just plain boring.

The Other Boleyn Girl

This is the story of Mary and Anne, the two Boleyn sisters who are presented to King Henry to become his mistresses (one after the other). Obviously, they start fighting over the king. Anne finally succeeds in seducing him to marry her. In order to do this he first needs to break with the Pope, set up the Church of England and then divorce his wife.

This is a fascinating story (although I’ve read that it is very inaccurate) with two beautiful lead actresses (Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson) and gorgeous costumes, but something’s lacking in the film. The characters are not very complex, Anne is very headstrong, Mary weak and Henry easily manipulated. It seems like the king had nothing to do other than entertain his mistresses, the affairs of politics are only mentioned on the side. It was still entertaining to watch.

The new Pixar/Walt Disney film is about a love story between two robots.

The earth is completely full of rubbish and robots are cleaning it all up while mankind has fled to big ships in space, supposedly for five years. 700 years later WALL-E seems to be the last robot on earth still cleaning. The humans have not yet returned to earth. The clumsy little robot is living in a broken truck with his pet cockroach and meanwhile has a huge collection of things he has found in the piles of trash he’s been cleaning up all this time (similar to Ariel’s collection in The Little Mermaid).

One day a big space rocket lands and the beautiful robot EVE is left on earth to see if any plants have started growing again. WALL-E immediately falls in love with EVE, who shows no particular desire to get to know him. In fact, she tries to blow him up.

When EVE gets collected again by the space rocket, WALL-E follows her and the story continues among the humans on a big spaceship.

Even though this is an animation film, it seems to be aimed more at adults that at children. The love between the two robots is a very grown-up love and the film has a political message. The people on the spaceship are what we are heading for at the moment: Everyone is living on a floating chair, with a screen right in front of their faces and food in a shake. They are unbelievably fat, stupid and ignorant.

Of course, WALL-E and EVE change everything and people begin to realize what they are doing and will hopefully now mend their ways.

The film is very cute and even though there is hardly any dialogue it is thoroughly entertaining. I really loved it and recommend it to everyone!

WALL-E is being given the MovieCat Award for outstanding funniness.