“No, No, absolutely not! I hated dying my hair! I’m sick of the blonde!”
(This is a quote)
More here on the tragic breaking news.
J-Hutch Says Ixnay to Mockingjay Epilogue
April 3, 2015 at 3:21 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: adaptations, Fall movies
Movie Quote of the Day: Saturday, 22nd of November (2014)
November 22, 2014 at 5:20 pm (Eavesdropping, Links, Movies, Recommended)
Tags: adaptations, blockbusters, Fall movies, humor, performances, previews, review, Saturday, The Hunger Games
From Carla Meyer of the Sacramento Bee:
Team Peeta members will be disappointed that Hutcherson, who is such a reassuring presence in these movies, appears infrequently in “Part 1.” Hemsworth appears more often. But not only is Gale the less compelling love interest, Liam is the less compelling Hemsworth brother.
Speaking of Hemsworth brothers, yesterday, at Palo Alto Square off Page Mill Road, self watched Eddie Redmayne play Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” His performance was very, very good.
Before “The Theory of Everything” began, there were six previews, two of which featured People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, Chris Hemsworth.
In Preview # 1 Chris Hemsworth is a raw sailor on a whaling ship (The movie of course is In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard’s attempt to channel Peter Weir, which to self appears an unwinnable task LOL), and in Preview # 2 he plays a hacker. With the casting of Hemsworth in the latter movie, hackers of the world have with one stroke been elevated to the sexy. Bravo!
The final question is: Who is James Marsh?
She knows he directed “The Theory of Everything,” but who is he really? Has he directed other movies that self has already scene? Indubitably. Good thing self has time on her hands today, Saturday. And it is raining. So she can spend time on the internet doing research on this fellow.
Stay tuned.
Yesterday, Second Friday of November (2014): “Interstellar” (Spoiler Free)
November 15, 2014 at 4:29 pm (Movies, Recommended, Surprises, television)
Tags: Fall movies, performances, praise, review, Saturdays, science fiction
The year is almost done. Incredible.
Yesterday, self watched “Interstellar” in her local Century 20.
Matthew McConaughey was brilliant. Just. Brilliant.
Self also liked Jessica Chastain in the role of the grown-up “Murph.”
Self was likewise pleased about the casting of Casey Affleck. For a rather slight guy, no one (with the possible exception of Ben Foster) can project steely — i.e. unhinged — menace better than Casey Affleck. Wonder how it would have played out if he, not his brother Ben, had been cast in “Gone, Girl.” Self thinks it might have been a more interesting movie. More nuanced.
As usual, Anne Hathaway’s doe-eyed teary moments had self cringing. But, thankfully, her emo scenes were not saccharine enough to derail the movie.
Which means — “Interstellar” was one heck of a good movie! Maybe her favorite movie of the year!
All hail, McConaughey! All hail, Christopher Nolan! All hail, sentient rectangular slabs (Take THAT, Transformers!)
Yesterday was also self’s first time to watch “Constantine” the TV series adaptation. She loved it. So creepy.
Last night, Liam Hemsworth, guest on Fallon, visibly much more relaxed (because not in the presence of his two children — er, co-stars), donned high-heeled stilettos and showed the world that he is indeed capable of pulling off some sexy moves. Especially when not feeling/looking like an odd-man-out in a love triangle.
In the meantime, Channing who?
This is incredibly surprising, but self actually did find herself wiping away a few tears towards the end of “Interstellar.” In fact, “Interstellar” may just have become self’s favorite Christopher Nolan movie. That scene on the watery planet? It just may be the BEST moment of suspense you’ll see in any movie this year, dear blog reader. And, before self forgets — Topher Grace was in the movie, too! Self loooves Topher Grace! Where’s he been hiding all these years? Topher is a participant in the second-most-suspenseful scene in “Interstellar.” Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for bringing this fine actor to the attention of the film-going public once more.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
“Gone Girl”
October 18, 2014 at 2:59 am (Movies)
Tags: adaptations, duds, Fall movies, Fridays, previews
Ludicrous.
Self can’t even.
Just.
Self has no words.
In the end, self was not the only one laughing.
David Fincher, shame on you!
Self still likes Rosamund Pike, though. Did the poor thing think she was in a serious drama? Because it became pretty hard to distinguish between the cheese and the drama, by the end. Self almost choked on her scarf, she was laughing so hard.
SPOILER ALERT
This is a teensy tiny question but self has to ask it anyway: Why, at the end, after it has been determined that poor Amy has been the victim of a sado-masochistic creep (played of course to cheesy perfection by Neil Patrick Harris), after she’s been examined in the hospital and placed in a wheelchair — why is she allowed to give a televised conference, without any attempt to clean the thick layers of blood swathing her throat? What self-respecting hospital would allow a person to walk around still caked in buckets of dried blood? Allow her, in fact, to go home in that condition? And why, after arriving home, does this alleged rape victim walk out of her car — the wheelchair only went as far as the hospital driveway, apparently — and enter her house completely unaided? She’s not just walking, either — she’s gliding. Actually, gliding. Shoulders back like a queen! Since Amy’s just gotten the media to swallow a line about her being used and abused, seeing her walk that way is just a little bit much.
Just saying.
And another thing: that “Fifty Shades of Gray” preview? Self adores Dakota Johnson. But the guy — self could not suppress a feeling of chagrin at the thought of how well Charlie Hunnam (of Sons of Anarchy) would have filled that suit, and how he would have looked, smoldering at Dakota Johnson from across a desk.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
The White Guy Trapped in a Den of Iniquity: J-Hutch’s New Movie
October 10, 2014 at 10:07 pm (Links, Movies)
Tags: action movies, adaptations, Bourne, Fall movies, Fridays, humor, Matt Damon, review, The Hunger Games, websites
Don’t get self wrong: she is a huge Josh Hutcherson aka Peeta Mellark fan. So huge that it took her a year to get to Catching Fire (the book) because she was under the impression Peeta would be off-ed. A day after she saw the Catching Fire movie, she went to B & N and bought the book. Then she bought Mockingjay. And since it’s been a long time since she’s seen Josh Hutcherson (All of 21. Or 22. Whatever) in anything other than SNL, which he hosted November 2013, she’s been reading fan fiction about Peeta Mellark. Like crazes.
Apparently, J-Hutch has a new movie coming out that is NOT Hunger Games. In Escobar: Paradise Lost, he has to play the innocent seduced by exotica. Which is, admittedly, quite a stretch from the Hunger Games LOL.
The film also stars Benicio del Toro and a lovely, scorching hot babe who is a much better match for Hutcherson as she is way more petite than Jennifer Lawrence.
Anyhoo, the Escobar movie has been making the rounds of the Film Festival circuit, and was recently at Telluride.
The writer assigned to review the movie on Indiewire is obviously a man (even without having to read his by-line, which self just did), because only a man would need to ask such an obvious question:
At some point you may wonder why we’ve devoted an entire first paragraph to Josh Hutcherson when the title character is played by Benicio freaking del Toro . . .
Self will dispense with the movie’s plot points, as it is so obvious that the only reason to make this movie was — EXACTLY. Josh Hutcherson.
LOL!
And to provide J-Hutch with a new love interest because, ya know, J-Law has given her heart to another!
Musing over the current crop of screen hunks, self would have to say that Channing is quickly losing her interest (Those ears! Why did self never notice until now?), and Liam (Hemsworth, not Neeson, Neeson still totally rocks) just never did it for her, and Loki is fine but damn could they hurry up with another movie, and she was never into Ben Affleck, not even after Good Will Hunting, and Bourne was for a while the epitome of hotness but now they’ve replaced Damon with Renner (albeit playing different characters in the Bourne universe) and self still can’t get over the sense of betrayal, not to mention the fact that Josh is just so cute, especially in hijacked Peeta mode. Let’s just say self can understand 100% why Katniss, with Gale standing right by her side, completely loses it when she sees Peeta’s face projected on a large screen in the District 13 cafeteria — self means that it makes complete rational sense, and she thinks she’ll get a big kick out of Josh trying to evade Benicio del Toro. Because Benicio del Toro. Man. It’s enough to give self all sorts of FEELZ.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, Dec. 15 & 16, 2012)
December 16, 2012 at 11:58 pm (Books, Links, Lists, Memoirs, Movies, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Wall Street Journal, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, biographies, book lists, discoveries, Fall movies, happiness, historical fiction, history, memoirs, novel, performances, Sundays, Wall Street Journal, war literature, weepers, World War II
Today self is peaceful and content. Which means she is happy.
She managed to get a mani/pedi from Belle Nail Spa on Broadway. She left before fingernails and toenails were quite dry, but she wanted to collect The Man and make it to the first screening of “Silver Linings Playbook” (Only $7 per ticket). Despite all the hectic running around, she somehow managed to avoid getting the slightest nick on any of her fingers or toes. Quelle magnifique!
Second, she really liked that movie. Even though it only got a wan endorsement from Eric B. Snider. And even though, OK, she’ll concede this point: the odds are pretty slim that two people that good-looking, both emotionally damaged, live in that close proximity to each other . . . OK! So what! Self knows this movie is totally in the land of make-believe! She’d rather see Jennifer Lawrence end up with someone who looks like Bradley Cooper than with someone who looks like, like — John C. Reilly? Even though chances are the right man for her would look just like John C. Reilly? (Not to knock John C. Reilly — self thinks he is a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL actor. But given the choice between John C. Reilly and Bradley Cooper — oh, NEVAH MIND!)
Jennifer Lawrence is a wonder. This is the first movie where self actually believed in a Bradley Cooper character. But, back to Jennifer Lawrence: Self cried at the end! She actually cried! Something she hasn’t done in a movie theater since watching Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in treacly The Time Traveler’s Wife!
And then, when she and The Man got home from the movie, she got to peruse the Wall Street Journal weekend edition and — Holy Cow! — it’s the one where they list Books of the Year!
But it’s not Books of the Year that self wants to post about — Ixnay! (BTW, it took self almost an hour to speed-read the entire books section. But more about that later)
They interviewed all kinds of celebrities to get their lists of favorite books of 2012. Self found a few choices enlightening. Also, she was surprised at WHOSE choices she liked the most. And here’s the list of people whose book choices self found the most intriguing:
- Judd Apatow, Director and creator of the phenomenon that is Seth Rogen: He said he wanted to read Henry Wiencek’s book about Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Master of the Mountains. He also recommended Dave Eggers’s latest novel, Hologram for the King.
- Craig Brown, British, writer of satirical columns: He recommended Robert Caro’s latest installment of his life of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power (like almost every other person interviewed by the Wall Street Journal), and Mimi Alford’s tale of having sex with JFK when she was a White House intern, Once Upon a Secret.
- Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking: She recommended a first novel, The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, and Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, by Chris Matthews.
- Joseph Epstein, essayist and cultural commentator: He recommended a novel, Only Yesterday, by S. Y. Agnon, and Once Upon a Secret (also recommended by Craig Brown, see above)
- Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: He recommended Robert Caro’s book on LBJ, The Passage of Power; John Keats, a biography of the Romantic poet by Nicholas Roe; several classic westerns: Saint Johnson and Goodbye to the Past, both by W. R. Burnett; a novel about telephone linemen, Slim, by William Wister Haines; That Winter, by Merle Miller, a “pre-Kerouacian group portrait of the disaffected generation of the postwar 1940s”; Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth and The Innocent; and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.
- Robert Harris, bestselling novelist: He recommended Soldaten, a book by Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, “based on secretly recorded tapes of German prisoners of war held in Allied camps during World War II.”
- Thomas Keller, chef: He recommended Killing Kennedy, by Bill O’Reilley and Martin Dugard, which “is not about a conspiracy. It’s about how a presidential assassination can be at once a tragedy and a human-interest story.”
- Ted Leonsis, Founder and Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment: He recommended The End of Illness, by David Agus, “a smart look at how to extend a life of vigor by playing offense with life.”
- Joe Maddon, Manager of the Tampa Bay Rays: He recommended Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth (Self has been meaning to get to these books, for quite a while), and the first two books of Follett’s Century trilogy, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.
- Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning novelist: She recommended The Yellow Birds, a first novel by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran; and The Lifeboat, a first novel by Charlotte Rogan, “set in the summer of 1914” and centering “on a shipwreck in the Atlantic.”
- Karl Marlantes, author of What It Is Like to Go to War: He recommended The Snake Eaters, by Owen West; Blackhorse Riders, by Philip Keith; Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails, by Anthony Swofford; and Westmoreland, by Lewis Sorley.
- Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius: She recommended Gulag, by Anne Applebaum, a book which “takes readers back to the events that triggered the half-century long standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”
- Arthur Phillips, author of The Tragedy of Arthur: He recommended The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, by Mark Leyner, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, and A Partial History of Lost Causes, by Jennifer DuBois.
- Marcus Samuelsson, chef: He recommended This Is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz, and The Click Moment, by Frans Johansson.
- Colm Toibin, novelist: He recommended Edmund Spenser: A Life, by Andrew Hadfield and Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power.
- Jim Webb, senator from Virginia: He recommended The Last Lion, by Paul Reid (the last installment of a trilogy begun by William Manchester, on the life of Winston Churchill), and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, by Barbara W. Tuchman.
Self is pretty sure she can get to these books in about five years.
Self was going to make a count of the men who recommended women writers, but, alas, today self is very — and she does mean VERY — short of time! She thinks Jim Webb did. Yup, he most definitely did. And Arthur Phillips. Yes, most definitely Arthur Phillips. In fact, the good man recommended three books by women writers. Good for you, Arthur! And Gary Giddins recommended Louise Erdrich.
(She won’t single out women who recommended women writers because — hey, just because! Let’s get on with it, or self will never get free of this post!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
