I’m astonished to report that the movie Fred Claus should be an annual tradition. It’s great for both kids and adults.
Fred Claus is a 2007 Christmas comedy-drama film produced and directed by David Dobkin. The film stars Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, marking their first time working together.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
It only got a 23% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. That’s rotten. But I liked it.
I was certain I wouldn’t be much interested in a movie about cooking. … But I was wrong.
Loved it.
… a comedy-drama film written and directed by Nora Ephron. The film depicts events in the life of chef Julia Child in the early years in her culinary career, contrasting her life with Julie Powell, who aspires to cook all 524 recipes from Child’s cookbook during a single year, a challenge she described on her popular blog that would make her a published author. …
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
The acting is terrific.
… Meryl Streep has been widely praised for her performance as Julia Child. Movie critic A.O. Scott of The New York Times affirmed that “By now this actress [Streep] has exhausted every superlative that exists and to suggest that she has outdone herself is only to say that she’s done it again. …
Similarly, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon magazine concluded that “Streep isn’t playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful — she’s playing our idea of Julia Child.” …
Stanley Tucci as Paul Child, Julia’s husband, is brilliant too.
This will be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. Love the cast.
Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson
Mickey Rourke as the “bad guy”. Fantastic!
Click through to watch the first official trailer.
Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment present the highly anticipated sequel to the blockbuster film based on the legendary Marvel Super Hero “Iron Man”, reuniting director Jon Favreau and Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr. In “Iron Man 2”, the world is aware that billionaire inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is the armored Super Hero Iron Man. Under pressure from the government, the press and the public to share his technology with the military, Tony is unwilling to divulge the secrets behind the Iron Man armor because he fears the information will slip into the wrong hands. With Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) at his side, Tony forges new alliances and confronts powerful new forces.
These guys have won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice:
Spencer Tracy
Fredric March
Gary Cooper
Marlon Brando
Dustin Hoffman
Tom Hanks
Jack Nicholson
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sean Penn
Laurence Olivier was nominated 9 times, winning once. Peter O’Toole was nominated 8 times, never winning.
In my opinion Johnny Depp is in that league. He was nominated, not winning, in 2004, 2005 and 2008.
Who else deserves to be on that list?
De Niro? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Gene Hackman? Kevin Spacey? Denzel Washington? Clint Eastwood? Robert Downey, Jr.? Jamie Foxx?
Leave a comment.
Two of my favourite movies of recent years:
They were the first two feature films of Jason Reitman, son of comedy director and actor Ivan Reitman.
Reitman describes his production company’s goal as being to produce “small subversive comedy that is independent but accessible”.
I’m really looking forward to his third major film, Up in the Air. Clooney is …
… Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after hes met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams. …
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
One knock against Reitman, he’s a Vancouver Canucks fan.
I finally got around to one of the only W. Somerset Maugham books I had not read:
The Painted Veil (1925)
… Shallow and lost, Kitty marries the intellectual and passionate Walter Fane, a bacteriologist on leave from the Far East who is madly in love with her. She does this purely so that she can be married before her younger sister, Doris, and to get away from her mother. They move to Hong Kong where, bored by the stifling climate and social mores, Kitty quickly starts an affair with the “perfect” Charles Townsend, the handsome assistant colonial secretary.
When Walter finds out about their affair, he gives Kitty an ultimatum. She must either accompany him to the Chinese interior to deal with a cholera epidemic, risking death, or he will divorce her, causing a scandal, unless Townsend will agree to marry her. …
It’s masterful, as always with Maugham.
The guy may have been a jerk, but he could certainly work words.
As I followed the tale I visualized it as the perfect film for Merchant Ivory.
Surprised was I to find out it was made into a movie in 2006, The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
… Norton considered The Painted Veil to be in the spirit of films like Out of Africa (1985) and The English Patient …
I’ve got to see that movie.
I happened upon the book in Germany.
It’s good. But not great.
Apparently the movie is great.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
I can’t find a copy online.
Nowhere in Africa (German: Nirgendwo in Afrika) is an epic 2001 German film directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Stefanie Zweig. It tells the story of a Jewish family that emigrates to Kenya during World War II to escape the Nazis and run a farm. The film won an 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. …
I first posted about this movie May 22, 2007.
How could I have missed seeing it until now?
It’s a very important film. Especially with the Health Care debate happening in the USA.
… Sicko is a 2007 documentary … by American film maker Michael Moore. The film investigates the American health care system, focusing on its health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. The film compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S. system with the non-profit universal health care systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. …
You can watch it free and legal on Google Video.
It’s not a documentary. It’s Michael Moore’s one sided diatribe against the American Medical system.
But he got the bottom line right. The USA has a crappy medical system, overall. Sure if you have good coverage in the States (working for Cirque du Soleil, for example) … you are better off personally than someone working for, say, Cirque in Canada.
But something like 50 million Americans have no insurance. That is really sick!
People are healthier and live longer in pretty much every other developed country, too.
The case studies in Sicko are selective, but still well worth watching. (I want to move to France from Canada after seeing those interviews!)
Under the Obama presidency, something is going to happen in the USA. But what?
It’s complicated.
The best vision I’ve heard is that of George C. Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed care organization in the United States. A non-profit.
… KP places a strong emphasis on preventative care, reducing costs later on. Second, its doctors are salaried rather than paid per service, which removes any incentive for doctors to perform unnecessary procedures. Thirdly, KP attempts to minimize the time patients spend in high-cost hospitals by carefully planning their stay and by providing cares in clinics. …
His most recent book: Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User’s Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care
Halvorson is a realist. Not a utopian like Michael Moore.
Listen to an interview with Halvorson on NPR.
In his movie Michael Moore neglected to mention that current systems in countries like Canada will soon collapse. They are not sustainable financially.
In 10 or 20 years how will the U.S. ranking compare?
That’s being decided right now.
Leave a comment if you have an opinion.
I read and enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. It won the the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.
So … expected to enjoy another of his books, Wonder Boys (1995).
The writing is skillful, of course. The plot original. The characters quirky.
But ultimately I could not finish the book It had nothing to teach me. I hate books about disfunctional losers and their stupid lives.
Yeesh.
I never saw the film version (2000) starring Michael Douglas. But some say, despite being a box office dog, that it was better than the book.
The Hunt for Gollum is a fan film based on elements of J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The film is a prequel to the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, and is based on passages in the novel’s appendices. Its visual style is inspired by Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but the production is completely unofficial and unauthorized by the Tolkien estate or New Line Cinema, which produced Jackson’s film trilogy. …
The Hunt for Gollum debuted at the Sci-Fi-London film festival and on the internet, free to view, on 3 May 2009.
Click PLAY or watch one of the trailers on Dailymotion.
As a fan film, The Hunt for Gollum exists in a legal grey area. …
It is unclear whether the production violates the rights held by the Tolkien estate and New Line films. Fred von Lohmann, director of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, told NPR that the high quality of the film and its global reach via the internet could potentially create legal issues. However, director Chris Bouchard told BBC News:
We got in touch with Tolkien Enterprises and reached an understanding with them that as long as we are completely non-profit then we’re okay. We have to be careful not to disrespect their ownership of the intellectual property. They are supportive of the way fans wish to express their enthusiasm.
Surprisingly good. I recommend it. It goes to show that amateurs can make quality cinema with only a few thousands dollars and volunteer labour.
