Caramel

Caramel is a view into the life of lower middle class women (just socioeconomically speaking not a character judgement) and the mores they must live by in Beirut, Lebanon. Most of the movie is set in a beauty shop. These women work very hard and must put up with a lot of expectations from their society, their family, as well as to try to be happy.
It is very good yet very depressing to see how these women are stuck in a quagmire and they will probably have to live with these expectations for the rest of their lives.
One of the women, before her wedding, is seen being told by her fiance that his family loves her when she says that she isn't being herself. In a previous scene, she was seen buttoning up her shirt and rolling down her sleeves. We get the feeling he loves a version of her not her, another woman is having a relationship with a married man, a third has feelings for a female client, one is always trying to get commercial work, one lady probably has alzeimer's or dementia, and her sister who cares for her lets a potential love go because she is the caretaker of her sister.Beautiful, sad and powerful.

Movie Trailer

Less Than Zero

Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis is another book I couldn't put down. The movie starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr is also amazing. Less Than Zero chronicles the life of Clay (McCarthy) a college freshman home for Christmas and how he deals with his exgirlfriend and his best friend's decent into a hell of his own making. The story is both desolate and decadent.
Clay (McCarthy) a rich yong adult from Southern California has decided to go out east for university. Blair (Gertz - Clay's girlfriend) has decided to stay in California and does some modelling and Julian, the best friend (Downey Jr),had stayed there too and partied with a vengeance.
The desolate aspect of lives destroyed or in the pocess of compared to the decadence of the very rich in California create a stark and rich contrast. Clay must also contend with his girlfriend and best friend getting together while he was away.
This is Brett Easton Elliss' first novel. And his books that followed were all good, but Less Than Zero remains my favourite.

Brett Easton Ellis
Hazy Shade of Winter - Bangles video with scenes from Less Than Zero

Penelope

Penelope is a cute teenagy flick with a good message.
Love yourself the way you are and be self confident and things will turn out fine in the end.
Penelope is a 25 year old girl who has been hidden from the world by her well meaning parents. She then goes out to explore the world and live her life while scaring her parents to death.
It was fun to see Reese Witherspoon as a fast talking vespa courrier. I like her when she plays cheeky, funny and witty roles like in Walk the Line as June Carter Cash or Legally Blonde.
And I am still very impressed by James McAvoy. A very different role from Attonement and Becoming Jane.

Movie Trailer
Walk the Line - Movie
Walk the Line - Johnny Cash
Legally Blonde
Atonement
Becoming Jane

Juno

Juno is wonderful.
The Oscar winning movie starring Ellen Page and directed by Jason Reitman recounts the story of a pregnant girl and how she deals with her situation, and possibly the impending doom that a pregnancy could mean for a highschool student. With a sense of whimsy and seriousness, Juno looks at her options, deals with her situation all the while continuing with highschool life. The music is cute and Juno shows people that perhaps with a modicum of support and remaining true to herself people can get through a lot especially without all the drama that would so often surround this type of situation.
The fact that it doesn't look like a major problem to her parents seems to be the only problem with this charming treatment of what could be considered a disasterous outcome for many.

Juno Trailer
Anyone Else but You - Song from Juno

Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers
This D.H. Laurence novel is excellent. If you find your life is difficult, you may want to read about Morrel's life as a miner (collier) and all his children and his wife.

Sylvia and the Bell Jar

Sylvia and The Bell Jar are both excellent and moving. Sylvia is the biopic of the poet Sylvia Plath's life starring Gwyneth Paltrow; The Bell Jar is a work of fiction by Sylvia Plath. Both the movie and the book pretty much tell the same story. The movie is very good, and, in this role, Paltrow looks a lot like the writer. The Bell Jar is so good that the reader may even feel varying degrees of sadness after finishing it. I have a feeling that reading the words of depressed people can affect the reader.

They are both worthwhile, even though I normally prefer the book, and they may stay with you past the credits and the back cover.

Movie Trailer

Control

Control
Control chronicles the life of Ian Curtis: the late lead singer of Joy Division. The movie follows him from his late teens until his death. He was intense and the music is excellent. If you don't know this band...go get educated...go find the song Love Will Tear Us Apart. Members from Joy Division went on to form New Order. If you don't know them...find Bizarre Love Triangle and the original Blue Monday.

Movie Trailer

Love Will Tear us Apart - Joy Division

Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order

Mea Culpa

How typical...

I said I would be writing about movies and books...

I said it wouldn't have to be perfect, so I would write in a more free flowing manner...

This is supposed to be a light blog on books and movies.

This doesn't mean I will only cover light fare, but the idea of a movies and books blog is light.

Now I am wrestling with the concept...

I am also trying to decide if a report on a book is so important it should be done yesterday, or if I should wait and see if I can get permission to post the picture on the book jacket and perhaps put up a link...

This little rant is just to say that I am still here and will be contributing again.

Thx

In the Hot Zone - temporary dispatch

I am not especially ready to post, but to keep a certain amount of fresh copy on my site, I would like to inform people that I am enjoying and amazed by Kevin Sites' In the Hot Zone. Kevin Sites reported on 20 wars in one year. In the Hotzone shows the human side of those conflicts. He risked a lot to tell the stories of people living in warzones around the world. Furthermore, he told those stories with a lot of empathy and complete dedication to his work. He writes with an amazing lack of the melowdramatic. Many times I found myself thinking, "I just read what". He just slips the story by you with no shock value or hyperbole. He doesn't make it his story. He just tells the story.

I hope that this blog will be more than I like this CD. If it's not, at least I get to write as much as I want on my blog.

Charlie Bartlett

This movie is the funniest I have seen in a long time. It is a quirky teen flick with some strange and entertaining twists. It doesn't stop making people laught. Throughout the movie, teenaged Chatlie Bartlett gets into the kind of trouble that precocious and mischievious teens get into.
Robert Downey is great in a supporting role. Especially when his character finds his wit and spunk. Degrassi fans will be happy too. Go see it.

Movie Trailer

In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars

In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars
Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is shaping up to be quite the ultimate reality show in print. Kevin Sites was the first Yahoo! correspondent. He would go off armed with a laptop, video camera, satellite modem and satellite phone as an embedded war correspondent and on his own. If I could just sit and read it I would do nothing else.

Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe and Playing with Slut
This movie is so cute.
It's a romantic comedy. Not a family movie. A family could go see it because it's not particularly racy, but don't let the presence of the kid fool you.
Ryan Reynolds (Mr Ex Alanis Morrissette) is a good looking young professional single father with a mature elemetary school aged daughter played by Abigail Breslin. One day she inquires about her mother and he tells her about three romances all the while changing names and facts - except for one of the women. Breslin gets the ultimate line when she asks Reynolds what the male version of the word slut is. He gets an equally excellent line when he answers they haven't come up with one yet.
The week point of the movie is that we get the feeling that Breslin has never met her mother, yet one day her mother walks up to the father daughter duo and it feels like she knows her­. She doesn't run up to her and hold on for dear life because she has missed most of her daughter's life, but she still seems to care. The meeting is like the one of a good morning kiss not a I haven't seen you since you were born kind of thing. It left me somewhat confused.
As for the slut comment, it bothers me so much that in these pollitically correct and enlightened times that women are still not permitted the same freedom as men. It's almost worse. No one will stop a woman from being free with her body, if it's her choice, but she'd better be ready to live with the consequences if it gets out. Whereas the guy just gets to keep on going with his daily and nightly life. Even on talk shows on TV, Girls are questioned about their self respect with regards to teenage or underaged physical dalliances, but the screws are never put to the boys. What's up with that. It's almost perverse. It's almost like society is jonesing for a reason to be misogynistic. Women and men persecute these women and girls. If men are so wonderful, why is their freedom not reciprocated. Why aren't the boys grilled like the girls.
What angers me even more is that no one points out the fact that a girl does not normally act this out alone or with another girl. Society just keeps turning a blind eye to the boys because boys will be boys but girls will be sluts. Sounds a little Orwellian. If there is not slut word for men people won't be able to even think the thought.
I did call this blog Movies & Books Etc

Movie Trailer

Homework not Done

I need to find out about things like being allowed to put links to websites and links to Youtube before I continue because there are a lot of movies and books that should be spotlited as much as posible for important reasons or just because I like them.

Feels like I should be devoting my time to more important endeavours, but I think this is the spark I needed to realize that I miss writing regularly. And not being bogged down by the need for the perfection, that is so far out of my grasp, is liberating but difficult to maintain. Must rememeber...perfect is a bad word.

Now, I must just reread my text to find the errors and get it to publishing perfection...

Movies & Books and Barney's Version

I seem to be in a book review mode. When in reality, I see a lot more movies since a movie is consumed much more quickly than a book.
As well as Brand New Friend, I am also reading Barney's Version by the great Mordecai Richler and In the Hot Zone by Kevin Sites (this is something and I haven't finished it due to hectic work. I've slept three to four hours in the last three nights and should stop blogging to go home, have dinner and relax since it is past eight and I must be at work for 9:00 in the morning (partly my own doing and partly out of necessity).

Other books to come - in no particular order
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Some Douglas Coupland books
Some Chick Lit
And maybe some Cultural Studies perhaps

A Book I Would Suggest: Brand New Friend by Mike Gayle

A Book I Would Suggest (but who am I?): I am currently reading Brand New Friend by Mike Gayle. It is fun and entertaining. It is about a man who is forced to move from London to Manchester or lose his girlfriend. The cost to him is his friends. Once uprooted, he has the daunting task of trying to find friends of his own when he works from home. After a long period of drought and evenings out with his girlfriend and her friends, who he just doesn't click with, he finds Jo. Jo is his friend. Can men and women just be friends...Stay tuned.

For now, I will go against conventional wisdom and just list some movies I've seen and enjoyed. I should have prepared many postings before going live. However, I've tried that in the past and lost the motivation to proceed:

Here is a list. Not a favorite of all times list but a list of recent films that range from fine to good. And they are not in any particular order.
Clontrol (the Ian Curtis story) Wonderful with good music especially if you like rocker biopics
The Other Boleyn - Time not wasted...
27 Dresses - Lots of fun (especially in the chick lit sort of way) + Ed Burns
One Missed Call - Pretty good but my friend would probably tell me to see the Japanese version
Atonement - I like the British literary films + James McAvoy
Micheal Clayton - A good intrigue movie
Sicko - I like Moore and perhaps he went to the right hospital in Canada, but sometimes people have to wait for hours.