After all the acclaim heaped on
Rachel Getting Married, the family drama starring Anne Hathaway, it makes sense that the movie would lead (along with two other films that also received six nominations each: Sundance favorites
Ballast and
Frozen River) the year's batch of
nominations for the Independent Spirit Awards.
Other titles in the Best Feature category include the heartbreaking
Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams, and the Mickey Rourke drama
The Wrestler. Woody Allen's
Vicky Cristina Barcelona is getting some love, with acting nominations for Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz and a Best Screenplay nomination for Allen.
The trailer for the romantic comedy
New in Town, starring Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr., seems to tell the whole story, and it looks like a predictable story at that. As the
plot description states, "Renée Zellweger stars as a Miami-based consultant whose latest assignment, to restructure a manufacturing plant in small-town Minnesota, causes her to reconsider her professional and personal objectives once she settles into her new life."
And yet, if it's so predictable, why did I laugh out loud a few times while watching the trailer?
As you can see from this helpful poster, men and women are different. So different that when a "romantically challenged" woman (Katherine Heigl) can't seem to find love, a chauvinistic (though incredibly handsome) buffoon (Gerard Butler) is just the person to instruct her on how to attract a man.
The trailer for
The Ugly Truth, a romantic comedy (presumably) about opposites attracting, is actually more amusing than its flimsy premise would have you believe.
It seems like every day, I hear about another movie getting re-released in Blu-ray. The "next-generation," high-definition DVD format promises sharper pictures and brighter colors, and it seems to be really taking off this holiday season. I, though, still don't have a player that can handle Blu-ray discs, so it's all sort of lost on me.
I've been bringing you
gift ideas and now I'm turning my attention to goodies released this month, including eagerly-anticipated albums and books. Fab DVDs are also due out in December, from a summer blockbuster and long-awaited TV treat to a hugely popular tour. Check out
FabUK's most wanted too.
I
was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying
Four Christmases starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, and maybe some of the early buzz from others who also liked it helped the holiday comedy win the Thanksgiving weekend box office this year
with an estimated $46.7 million since opening Wednesday.
Meanwhile the highly anticipated Baz Luhrmann epic
Australia opened at No. 5 after
Quantum of Solace in fourth place,
Twilight (which passed the $100 million mark this weekend) in third, and
Bolt in second place.
For Christmas movies this holiday season we've got
Four Christmases and
Nothing Like the Holidays as new offerings here in the U.S. Elsewhere in the world there's
Un conte de Noel and
Navidad, S.A.
The French film Un conte de Noel (more commonly referred to as A Christmas Tale here) stars excellent actors like Catherine Deneuve and Diving Bell and the Butterfly's Mathieu Amalric, and has been generating rave reviews. Critics are likening director Arnaud Desplechin's style
to that of Noah Baumbach ("if he were French and a little more hopeful about humanity"), or a combination of
Ingmar Bergman and Wes Anderson.
The next project from Tony Gilroy, writer and director of
Michael Clayton, is
Duplicity, a spy thriller with a sexy couple at the heart of it. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play two corporate spies with a romantic past who "hook up to pull off the ultimate con job on their respective bosses." Paul Giamatti and the awe-inspiring Tom Wilkinson also star.
"I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living." — Harvey Milk
The story of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk had a huge impact on me a few years ago when I first watched the Oscar-winning documentary about him,
The Times of Harvey Milk. His is truly a stranger-than-fiction tale and is so full of inspiration, absurdity, and absolute heartache that it's somewhat surprising it has taken this long to create a feature-length dramatization of his life and death.
It's most likely that
Four Christmases wouldn't be nearly so funny or endearing (though that may be slightly too strong a word for it) if it didn't take place around the holidays. Just watching these family members be mean to each other would probably be merely sad if it weren't juxtaposed with this holiday that is supposed to be at least partially about family togetherness. The premise of the film is gimmicky for sure (four Christmases in one day?), but what happens during those four Christmases is actually a lot of fun to watch.
