Showing posts with label Ryan Reynolds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ryan Reynolds. Show all posts
September 14, 2010
August 30, 2010
Best LOOKING Buddy Cop Movie Ever
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper have signed on play cops in an action comedy written by Sheldon Turner (Up In The Air). Yes, yes, and yes. I whole-heartedly approve of this casting. In fact, if these two are going to be in a movie together, I don't even care what the movie is. That is just a whole lot of pretty in one place.
July 26, 2010
I'm not so sure about this...
Entertainment Weekly put up a bunch more pictures in their ComiCon series and I'm calling this one - of Peter Sarsgaard, director Martin Campbell, Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Mark Strong and producer Donald De Line from Green Lantern - The Bald, The Beautiful and The Boobs.I'm in full support of the bald men because I think we all know by now that I love me some baldies. And there is no denying that Ryan is a beautiful sight to behold. But sweet mochachino Moses, I don't know if I can abide the inclusion of Blake "Boobs, Boobs, Boobs" Lively in the cast. I'm sure she's a nice enough girl but until she learns that less is more - and that goes for her boobs, her legs and the spray tan she seems to be over-using - I don't really want to see her draping herself all over my crush objects.
Expect to hear this rant again as we get closer to the release of The Town.
April 20, 2010
March 11, 2010
Buying My Tickets...Now!
Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman have signed on to co-star in the movie Change Up. They'll play best friends - one a responsible family man (Bateman) and the other an irresponsible, lazy man-child (Reynolds) - who switch bodies. Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover), David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) will direct.
I'm a little bit in love with this development.
January 8, 2010
December 18, 2009
Happy Birthday
Steven Spielberg, director of one of my favorite movies - Saving Private Ryan - is 63 today. I know I should have a picture of him here, but I don't have all that many good excuses to post pictures of Saving Private Ryan. I'm taking this one. 
Ray Liotta turns 55 today. I'll take this opportunity to mourn the loss of his tragically short-lived television show Smith. He was really good in that. Oh, and wishing him a happy birthday afforded me a chance to post an extraneous picture of Ryan Reynolds. Look how crafty I am! 
Brad Pitt is 46 today. I know Brad Pitt is like that universally lusted-after figure but I honestly didn't get what all the fuss was about until Ocean's Eleven. He was really, REALLY hot as Rusty. I believe that he, like Leonardo DiCaprio, is definitely getting hotter with age. Now if he'd just shave off the raggedy shit he's been growing on his chin, we'd be all set. 
Katie Holmes, one time girlfriend of my future husband (Josh Jackson) and current wife of a really odd duck, turns 31. Googling pictures of her has reminded me how much I loved her bob. Do not be surprised if I run out and get my hair cut like this (again) very soon. November 25, 2009
October 27, 2009
October 5, 2009
Weekend In Reviews
I spent my weekend catching up on all of the TV I didn't have time to watch during the week and some TV on DVD that I always enjoy. I tried to watch one movie but it was so boring I gave up. If you ever have the notion to watch the Edward Norton/Colin Farrell movie Pride and Glory, do yourself a favor and ignore the notion. It's over 2 hours long and at 45 minutes in, it was about as riveting as watching grass grow.
I caught up on Modern Family (another funny episode that tugged at the heartstrings both when Mitchell tried to clip Cameron's wings, and when Jay proved once and for all why he's a far superior father to Manny than his real dad is), FlashForward (I actually liked this one a bit more than the pilot which is a good sign but I have to be honest with you, neither episode has demonstrated why I would need to watch this live and not on DVR delay later in the week), Accidentally on Purpose (there might be signs of improvement in the show overall and having Jon Foster take his shirt of a couple of times does not hurt. ROWR!), NCIS LA (I still think it's pretty boring, this show's season pass is hanging by a very thin thread), The Forgotten (a bit of an improvement over the pilot here, I thought the mystery was a little more well-put-together and the exposition didn't hit me in the face quite as hard. We're getting some clues as to what's what with Redhead's husband - my guess is he was a serial killer - so yay for that), and Fringe (a very solid ep with great Walter moments both with Peter and with Astrid and I'm really liking Kevin Corrigan as Sam the bowling alley guy).
I did not catch up on One Tree Hill because the sound and the picture weren't matching up in the 10 or so minutes I watched of it and it was far too irritating for me to stick with. I'm going to power through that tonight before the new ep airs though. I also didn't watch the two episodes of Vampire Diaries I have recorded because I am not quite sure if I'm going to stick with this show yet. I'm waiting to see if my interest raises to the level of actually wanting to watch the episodes I already have...if that doesn't happen in the next couple of weeks, then this one gets the heave-ho from the Season Pass list.
I also watched the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode, "Once More With Feeling" and the "making of" short for that ep as well. I simply couldn't love that episode or it's music any more than I already do. But watching the "making of" demonstrated that I had not yet hit the ceiling of my love for Adam Shankman.
I am another 4 episodes closer to the end of my ER rewatch. I left off with Carol having the twins so I have just over 1/2 a season left because this rewatch stops just where my original watch did - at the end of season 6. Carol had the babies on Thanksgiving and, if my memory serves, I think that the tragic stabbing of Lucy and Carter happened in the Valentines Day episode so I'm probably a disk and a half or so away from that. I'm hoping I can wrap this up this coming weekend and free myself up for a new rewatch.
Not that I can't engage in two rewatches at once because I've also been rewatching Sports Night again for roughly the 15th time since the night of The Good Wife premier. I've been watching 3 or 4 episodes every night before I go to bed. I left off with "The Cut Man Cometh" so I'm about half way through the second and final season. As I always do, I'm looking forward to "Dana Get Your Gun," "La Forza Del Destino" and "Quo Vadimus" and really dreading "Draft Day Parts 1 and 2" but I shall watch them all and enjoy them all in their own way.
I also caught up on the only 3 episodes of the first season of The Mentalist I hadn't seen and watched a behind the scenes feature that blew my mind when I discovered that Owain Yoeman who plays Rigsby is Welsh! I may well be the only person who didn't know that I realize, but the revelation nearly made me choke on my pot sticker!
I watched Ryan Reynolds host Saturday Night Live and he was perfectly fine. I didn't find any of the sketches especially funny though I did enjoy the surprise guest appearances by Madonna, Elijah Wood and Ryan's wife Scarlett Johansson. Everything seemed exactly like it always does on SNL for me: my crush on Seth Meyers grows every single time I watch a Weekend Update, Andy Samberg's digital shorts aren't funny, the monologue is painful to watch. It would have been an utterly forgettable episode except for the inclusion of a sketch about John and Mackenzie Phillips that, even if it weren't too soon, would still have been in bad taste because joking about incest is like joking about murder - it's not fucking appropriate.
And with the scant time I had left after all of that, I took Tibby for a walk, I ran some errands, I talked to my sister, I did laundry, did dishes, tidied up and enjoyed the breeze through my house as the weather finally cooled off enough that I could turn the air conditioning off, open the windows and air the place out after the stuffy summer months.
I caught up on Modern Family (another funny episode that tugged at the heartstrings both when Mitchell tried to clip Cameron's wings, and when Jay proved once and for all why he's a far superior father to Manny than his real dad is), FlashForward (I actually liked this one a bit more than the pilot which is a good sign but I have to be honest with you, neither episode has demonstrated why I would need to watch this live and not on DVR delay later in the week), Accidentally on Purpose (there might be signs of improvement in the show overall and having Jon Foster take his shirt of a couple of times does not hurt. ROWR!), NCIS LA (I still think it's pretty boring, this show's season pass is hanging by a very thin thread), The Forgotten (a bit of an improvement over the pilot here, I thought the mystery was a little more well-put-together and the exposition didn't hit me in the face quite as hard. We're getting some clues as to what's what with Redhead's husband - my guess is he was a serial killer - so yay for that), and Fringe (a very solid ep with great Walter moments both with Peter and with Astrid and I'm really liking Kevin Corrigan as Sam the bowling alley guy).
I did not catch up on One Tree Hill because the sound and the picture weren't matching up in the 10 or so minutes I watched of it and it was far too irritating for me to stick with. I'm going to power through that tonight before the new ep airs though. I also didn't watch the two episodes of Vampire Diaries I have recorded because I am not quite sure if I'm going to stick with this show yet. I'm waiting to see if my interest raises to the level of actually wanting to watch the episodes I already have...if that doesn't happen in the next couple of weeks, then this one gets the heave-ho from the Season Pass list.
I also watched the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode, "Once More With Feeling" and the "making of" short for that ep as well. I simply couldn't love that episode or it's music any more than I already do. But watching the "making of" demonstrated that I had not yet hit the ceiling of my love for Adam Shankman.
I am another 4 episodes closer to the end of my ER rewatch. I left off with Carol having the twins so I have just over 1/2 a season left because this rewatch stops just where my original watch did - at the end of season 6. Carol had the babies on Thanksgiving and, if my memory serves, I think that the tragic stabbing of Lucy and Carter happened in the Valentines Day episode so I'm probably a disk and a half or so away from that. I'm hoping I can wrap this up this coming weekend and free myself up for a new rewatch.
Not that I can't engage in two rewatches at once because I've also been rewatching Sports Night again for roughly the 15th time since the night of The Good Wife premier. I've been watching 3 or 4 episodes every night before I go to bed. I left off with "The Cut Man Cometh" so I'm about half way through the second and final season. As I always do, I'm looking forward to "Dana Get Your Gun," "La Forza Del Destino" and "Quo Vadimus" and really dreading "Draft Day Parts 1 and 2" but I shall watch them all and enjoy them all in their own way.
I also caught up on the only 3 episodes of the first season of The Mentalist I hadn't seen and watched a behind the scenes feature that blew my mind when I discovered that Owain Yoeman who plays Rigsby is Welsh! I may well be the only person who didn't know that I realize, but the revelation nearly made me choke on my pot sticker!
I watched Ryan Reynolds host Saturday Night Live and he was perfectly fine. I didn't find any of the sketches especially funny though I did enjoy the surprise guest appearances by Madonna, Elijah Wood and Ryan's wife Scarlett Johansson. Everything seemed exactly like it always does on SNL for me: my crush on Seth Meyers grows every single time I watch a Weekend Update, Andy Samberg's digital shorts aren't funny, the monologue is painful to watch. It would have been an utterly forgettable episode except for the inclusion of a sketch about John and Mackenzie Phillips that, even if it weren't too soon, would still have been in bad taste because joking about incest is like joking about murder - it's not fucking appropriate.
And with the scant time I had left after all of that, I took Tibby for a walk, I ran some errands, I talked to my sister, I did laundry, did dishes, tidied up and enjoyed the breeze through my house as the weather finally cooled off enough that I could turn the air conditioning off, open the windows and air the place out after the stuffy summer months.
September 15, 2009
Ryan Reynolds and Bradley CooperSeptember 8, 2009
Weekend In Reviews
I spent the majority of my long weekend on the couch watching television. I watched several movies I've seen and reviewed before.
I finished off the 4th season of ER and started on the 5th season. Dr. Ross's tenure at County General is nearing its end which means I'm nearing the point in the show where I stop watching. I plan to trudge through the completion of Hathaway's story just like I did the first time but then I'm out and on to other things. If I remember correctly, that should take me through the 6th season. The last episode I watched is just before Mere Winningham is hired as the new ER Chief and then promptly turns bat shit crazy. Milestones included in the episodes I watched this weekend were: Doug ultra-rapid detoxing a baby and the shit hitting the fan; Michael Rapaport playing a chemically burned deadbeat dad; Swoozie Kurtz playing a wackado televangelist with diabetes and infected plastic surgery incisions; a depressed man attempts to kill his entire family and himself; Lucy Knight (Kellie Martin) arrives; Benton finds out Reese is deaf; Benton saves a patient and kinda blows up trama 2; Doug gets his peds ER and the job running it; a Halloween party at the med school dorm turns into a helluva rager with flaming furniture and 2 ODs and then Carter blames Lucy rather than accepting responsibility because for some reason, Lucy's presence brings out the most hatefully Mark-like qualities in Carter; Carter gets his beard stuck to one of two brothers brought in covered in carpet glue and is forced to shave; Carter and Lucy track down the father of a little girl with such rare blood that only the dad can donate, after the dad bails from the hospital rather than be busted for kidnapping her in the first place; Carter rents Weaver's basement apartment; and Ross and Hathaway start trying to get pregnant.
Tons of good stuff. Here's what else I watched that I haven't reviewed before:
The Big Bang Theory, Season 1 - I only started watching this show over the summer but I must say, it's hilarious. The nerds are absolutely delightful and ridiculous. The chemistry between the entire cast is terrific and while I've never been particularly fond of Kaley Cuoco, I think she's great as Penny. But without any doubt Jim Parsons' Sheldon is the highlight of the show.
Sunshine Cleaning - This movie reminded me a lot of Little Miss Sunshine in that it's several things at once. It's a study of family dynamics, it's a comedy, it's a drama, it's bittersweet and a little acid.
Amy Adams is a former head cheerleader whose life peaked in high school. She's never been married but is raising a son alone and having a not-very-well-hidden affair with her high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn), who is now a married cop with a few kids and another on the way. She works as a maid but dreams of doing something bigger and better.
Emily Blunt is her younger sister who wears the scars from her mother's suicide like fresh, open wounds. She's a screw-up who can't keep a job and lives with their dad. Dad is Alan Arkin who has a million money-making schemes up his sleeve none of which ever work.
At Zahn's suggestion, Adams recruits her sister into helping her start a crime scene cleanup business where they do everything wrong. They're throwing biohazardous stuff in the trash and cleaning blood spatter with tooth brushes. Eventually they get the hang of the requirements of the job and they're doing well until tragedy strikes when Admans is busy proving she's as good as her old girlfriends and leaves Blunt to handle a job on her own.
The movie has a happy ending but it's not exactly what I expected and I liked that quite a bit. I recommend this movie highly...as long as you have the intestinal fortitude to stomach a couple of maggots, a severed finger, a lot of blood and one really disgusting mattress.
Adventureland - Set in the mid-'80s this movie is a coming-of-age story told against the backdrop of a summer at a local amusement park. College students home for the summer are working in the only job that inexperienced liberal arts majors in mid-west industrial towns can get - carnies.
The main story revolves around James (Jesse Eisenberg) who has just graduated from college with a BA in something useless and pretentious like "12th Century Literature and Art" and is ready to attend grad school at Columbia when his parents hit a financial stumbling block and can no longer afford to help him with this plan. He goes to work at Adventureland where he meets Joel (Martin Starr), Em (Kristen Stewart), Connell (Ryan Reynolds), and Lisa P (Margarita Lavieva). Adolescent drama all dressed up in an early-adulthood disguise ensues.
The main problem with this movie is that the entire cast is competent in comedy and drama, just as they need to be, except for Kristen Stewart who has the acting chops of a wet cardboard box. She can make one face. She exhibits no emotion whatsoever. She is broody and obnoxious and not remotely fun or enjoyable to watch which sucks the entire movie into a downward spiral that not even the collective talent of the otherwise terrific cast can pull it out of. I don't know why people continue to cast her in things because she is really and truly a terrible actress.
The movie had potential that never really paid off for me because I was repeatedly taken out of the moment by my inability to figure out what the crap Em was supposed to be feeling at any given time. Seriously, I get that Connell is married so maybe she has some guilt about sleeping with him, but when you're actively making out with Ryan Reynolds, maybe you could put on a face that doesn't look like you've just found out that you're going to lose a limb!
I finished off the 4th season of ER and started on the 5th season. Dr. Ross's tenure at County General is nearing its end which means I'm nearing the point in the show where I stop watching. I plan to trudge through the completion of Hathaway's story just like I did the first time but then I'm out and on to other things. If I remember correctly, that should take me through the 6th season. The last episode I watched is just before Mere Winningham is hired as the new ER Chief and then promptly turns bat shit crazy. Milestones included in the episodes I watched this weekend were: Doug ultra-rapid detoxing a baby and the shit hitting the fan; Michael Rapaport playing a chemically burned deadbeat dad; Swoozie Kurtz playing a wackado televangelist with diabetes and infected plastic surgery incisions; a depressed man attempts to kill his entire family and himself; Lucy Knight (Kellie Martin) arrives; Benton finds out Reese is deaf; Benton saves a patient and kinda blows up trama 2; Doug gets his peds ER and the job running it; a Halloween party at the med school dorm turns into a helluva rager with flaming furniture and 2 ODs and then Carter blames Lucy rather than accepting responsibility because for some reason, Lucy's presence brings out the most hatefully Mark-like qualities in Carter; Carter gets his beard stuck to one of two brothers brought in covered in carpet glue and is forced to shave; Carter and Lucy track down the father of a little girl with such rare blood that only the dad can donate, after the dad bails from the hospital rather than be busted for kidnapping her in the first place; Carter rents Weaver's basement apartment; and Ross and Hathaway start trying to get pregnant.
Tons of good stuff. Here's what else I watched that I haven't reviewed before:
The Big Bang Theory, Season 1 - I only started watching this show over the summer but I must say, it's hilarious. The nerds are absolutely delightful and ridiculous. The chemistry between the entire cast is terrific and while I've never been particularly fond of Kaley Cuoco, I think she's great as Penny. But without any doubt Jim Parsons' Sheldon is the highlight of the show.
Sunshine Cleaning - This movie reminded me a lot of Little Miss Sunshine in that it's several things at once. It's a study of family dynamics, it's a comedy, it's a drama, it's bittersweet and a little acid.
Amy Adams is a former head cheerleader whose life peaked in high school. She's never been married but is raising a son alone and having a not-very-well-hidden affair with her high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn), who is now a married cop with a few kids and another on the way. She works as a maid but dreams of doing something bigger and better.
Emily Blunt is her younger sister who wears the scars from her mother's suicide like fresh, open wounds. She's a screw-up who can't keep a job and lives with their dad. Dad is Alan Arkin who has a million money-making schemes up his sleeve none of which ever work.
At Zahn's suggestion, Adams recruits her sister into helping her start a crime scene cleanup business where they do everything wrong. They're throwing biohazardous stuff in the trash and cleaning blood spatter with tooth brushes. Eventually they get the hang of the requirements of the job and they're doing well until tragedy strikes when Admans is busy proving she's as good as her old girlfriends and leaves Blunt to handle a job on her own.
The movie has a happy ending but it's not exactly what I expected and I liked that quite a bit. I recommend this movie highly...as long as you have the intestinal fortitude to stomach a couple of maggots, a severed finger, a lot of blood and one really disgusting mattress.
Adventureland - Set in the mid-'80s this movie is a coming-of-age story told against the backdrop of a summer at a local amusement park. College students home for the summer are working in the only job that inexperienced liberal arts majors in mid-west industrial towns can get - carnies.
The main story revolves around James (Jesse Eisenberg) who has just graduated from college with a BA in something useless and pretentious like "12th Century Literature and Art" and is ready to attend grad school at Columbia when his parents hit a financial stumbling block and can no longer afford to help him with this plan. He goes to work at Adventureland where he meets Joel (Martin Starr), Em (Kristen Stewart), Connell (Ryan Reynolds), and Lisa P (Margarita Lavieva). Adolescent drama all dressed up in an early-adulthood disguise ensues.
The main problem with this movie is that the entire cast is competent in comedy and drama, just as they need to be, except for Kristen Stewart who has the acting chops of a wet cardboard box. She can make one face. She exhibits no emotion whatsoever. She is broody and obnoxious and not remotely fun or enjoyable to watch which sucks the entire movie into a downward spiral that not even the collective talent of the otherwise terrific cast can pull it out of. I don't know why people continue to cast her in things because she is really and truly a terrible actress.
The movie had potential that never really paid off for me because I was repeatedly taken out of the moment by my inability to figure out what the crap Em was supposed to be feeling at any given time. Seriously, I get that Connell is married so maybe she has some guilt about sleeping with him, but when you're actively making out with Ryan Reynolds, maybe you could put on a face that doesn't look like you've just found out that you're going to lose a limb!
August 27, 2009
August 18, 2009
June 22, 2009
Weekend In Reviews
The Proposal - I have no problem admitting when I like a bad movie. I freaking LOVE New York Minute (the Olsen Twins people!) and that movie is terrible. So I'm going to be honest, I was expecting to have to write THAT kind of review about The Proposal. The kind where I have to talk about all the shit that's wrong with the movie and then defend why I like it anyway. Turns out though, that it's completely unnecessary because the movie is really funny.
This movie was made as about 95% of chick flicks are - beginning with a premise that is tailor-made to create sexual tension between two people in as artificial a way as possible. Margaret (Sandra Bullock) is a tight-ass, ball-busting, career-obsessed, love-eschewing Canadian working for a New York publishing firm. Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is her long-suffering assistant who puts up with a ridiculous amount of her shit in the hopes that he'll someday be promoted to editor. When Margaret fails to follow the procedures for securing her work visa (because one of her many personality flaws at the outset of the film is that she thinks she can just get what she wants if she's bitchy enough), she faces immediate deportation (and dismissal from her job) if she doesn't do something. So she whips up an engagement to her assistant with the agreement that if he goes along with it, she'll give him his promotion and after a few months, they'll get a divorce and everyone will be happy.
So Margaret is bitchy and she treats Andrew badly and Andrew takes it, but he doesn't necessarily suffer silently. He is sarcastic and frank and, after being roped into the engagement, he's actually a bit of an asshole to her in retribution for all that he's put up with from her in the past. But this isn't to say that it's non-stop bitchery - there is an underlying affection to their sniping all along which makes the (SPOILER ALERT) eventual realization that they love each other believable instead of seemingly fabricated out of nothing at all for the sake of a happy ending.
At the start of the movie, Andrew spills Margaret's coffee all over himself and so gives her his when she arrives. She notices that it has his name on it instead of hers and razzes him for drinking "cinnamon soy lattes" just like her. He denies ordering the same drink "just in case" but she knows better and gives him a very hard time. There is a light-heartedness to the teasing that conveys as much camaraderie as it does antagonism. And once he's agreed to marry her and begins to take advantage of his new-found upper hand in their relationship, he continues to act pretty diligently as her assistant (ensuring that she gets a new cell phone when hers is stolen by an eagle for example) while still taking every opportunity to let her know he will no longer be treated as her bitch.
The engagement takes the two of them to Citka, Alaska to spend the weekend with Andrew's family who, it turns out, are wealthy entrepreneurs. His father (Craig T. Nelson) would like him to stop screwing around in New York and come home to take over the family business empire but his mother (Mary Steenburgen) and grandmother (Betty White) just want him to be married and happy. Spending time with a family does a lot to melt Margaret's heart which she's kept in the deep-freeze since her own parents died when she was 16. At the same time, Andrew begins to see Margaret not just has his bitchy, demanding boss but as a person with a history and a heart.
It's an enjoyable love story but more than that, it's an entertaining comedy starring some of the funniest people in movies. Ryan Reynolds sells sarcasm quite a bit better than most with straight-faced reaction shots that I defy anyone not to laugh at. Sandra Bullock is not afraid to make an ass of herself for the sake of a laugh and it works most of the time. Meanwhile, Betty White is a comedic genius and that's all there is to it.
I highly recommend this one - even at $10 a pop to see it in the theater. Which I'm pretty sure I'll do at least one more time. Maybe two or three.
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo - I really love Russo's writing and the way that his books are about people and their lives rather than about a particular event. This book was a great combination of Straight Man and Empire Falls for me - not quite as funny as the former or as dramatic as the latter.
I found every character in the book likable in some way though all of them are immensely flawed. Russo writes about these people with kindness and affection even while letting us know how broken or wretched they are. It says something lovely about a writer when he can create sympathy for a woman who refers to her 5-year-old daughter only as Birdbrain.
I know that my fellow book-clubbers may not have enjoyed the book as much as I did, or maybe didn't get a chance to finish it in a short book club month. But I'm still very excited to discuss it this evening. And even more excited to watch the movie version and compare. I hear it was excellent and the casting of Paul Newman as Sully is spot-on, I think.
This movie was made as about 95% of chick flicks are - beginning with a premise that is tailor-made to create sexual tension between two people in as artificial a way as possible. Margaret (Sandra Bullock) is a tight-ass, ball-busting, career-obsessed, love-eschewing Canadian working for a New York publishing firm. Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is her long-suffering assistant who puts up with a ridiculous amount of her shit in the hopes that he'll someday be promoted to editor. When Margaret fails to follow the procedures for securing her work visa (because one of her many personality flaws at the outset of the film is that she thinks she can just get what she wants if she's bitchy enough), she faces immediate deportation (and dismissal from her job) if she doesn't do something. So she whips up an engagement to her assistant with the agreement that if he goes along with it, she'll give him his promotion and after a few months, they'll get a divorce and everyone will be happy.
So Margaret is bitchy and she treats Andrew badly and Andrew takes it, but he doesn't necessarily suffer silently. He is sarcastic and frank and, after being roped into the engagement, he's actually a bit of an asshole to her in retribution for all that he's put up with from her in the past. But this isn't to say that it's non-stop bitchery - there is an underlying affection to their sniping all along which makes the (SPOILER ALERT) eventual realization that they love each other believable instead of seemingly fabricated out of nothing at all for the sake of a happy ending.
At the start of the movie, Andrew spills Margaret's coffee all over himself and so gives her his when she arrives. She notices that it has his name on it instead of hers and razzes him for drinking "cinnamon soy lattes" just like her. He denies ordering the same drink "just in case" but she knows better and gives him a very hard time. There is a light-heartedness to the teasing that conveys as much camaraderie as it does antagonism. And once he's agreed to marry her and begins to take advantage of his new-found upper hand in their relationship, he continues to act pretty diligently as her assistant (ensuring that she gets a new cell phone when hers is stolen by an eagle for example) while still taking every opportunity to let her know he will no longer be treated as her bitch.
The engagement takes the two of them to Citka, Alaska to spend the weekend with Andrew's family who, it turns out, are wealthy entrepreneurs. His father (Craig T. Nelson) would like him to stop screwing around in New York and come home to take over the family business empire but his mother (Mary Steenburgen) and grandmother (Betty White) just want him to be married and happy. Spending time with a family does a lot to melt Margaret's heart which she's kept in the deep-freeze since her own parents died when she was 16. At the same time, Andrew begins to see Margaret not just has his bitchy, demanding boss but as a person with a history and a heart.
It's an enjoyable love story but more than that, it's an entertaining comedy starring some of the funniest people in movies. Ryan Reynolds sells sarcasm quite a bit better than most with straight-faced reaction shots that I defy anyone not to laugh at. Sandra Bullock is not afraid to make an ass of herself for the sake of a laugh and it works most of the time. Meanwhile, Betty White is a comedic genius and that's all there is to it.
I highly recommend this one - even at $10 a pop to see it in the theater. Which I'm pretty sure I'll do at least one more time. Maybe two or three.
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo - I really love Russo's writing and the way that his books are about people and their lives rather than about a particular event. This book was a great combination of Straight Man and Empire Falls for me - not quite as funny as the former or as dramatic as the latter.
I found every character in the book likable in some way though all of them are immensely flawed. Russo writes about these people with kindness and affection even while letting us know how broken or wretched they are. It says something lovely about a writer when he can create sympathy for a woman who refers to her 5-year-old daughter only as Birdbrain.
I know that my fellow book-clubbers may not have enjoyed the book as much as I did, or maybe didn't get a chance to finish it in a short book club month. But I'm still very excited to discuss it this evening. And even more excited to watch the movie version and compare. I hear it was excellent and the casting of Paul Newman as Sully is spot-on, I think.
June 19, 2009
This Is Serious
It's Ryan Reynolds Day here at Phantom Rats. Since he's got a new movie out today (The Proposal - in which, he does us all the favor of taking his clothes off), it's as good a time as any to innundate the interwebs with pictures of him being attractive.
Schmutz
Obviously Ryan needs a better personal assistant. Someone who knows that when he gets a little schmutz on his shirt, the right thing to do is take it off of him to avoid photographic embarrassment such as this.
I'm perfect for the job, Ryan. Call me.
June 18, 2009
June 17, 2009
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