In My Queue

We signed up for Netflix last week, in large part because I have a couple of good friends, Sean & Jami, who do something on their blog each week called Netflix Fridays.

They order these movies and watch them, um, on Fridays. And in their blog they discuss the movies they've selected. (They also have something called Margarita Classics in which they describe watching incredibly bad movies while drinking ... um ... margaritas.)

Anyway, they're a fun couple, they have the second-cutest little girl, Ryan, I've ever seen**. And I have been a friend of theirs and Jami's sister, Gianna, since back in the Pajama Game days. (Ask them the reference someday. It's Jami and Sean's favorite community theater story..)

Anyway.

Netflix.

Here's what Corrine and I watched this week:


The Impostors. A comedy with Oliver Platt and Stanley Tucci. And a shitload of other actors.

Why I love This Film: The story revolves around two out-of-work, down-on-their-luck actors before WWII. There's a scene where they sit on the edges of their beds in their one-room NYC apartment doing "exercises": facial expressions based on an emotion their partner gives to them. Like "Ecstatic" and "Fortunate". All you see is a close up of each man's face and I go into hysterics every time I see it. The scene ends with Stanley's character standing and looking straight up into the camera as he does an Oliver Twist sort of impression, cockney accent and all.



Vicky Christina Barcelona. A drama? Comedy? By Woody Allen that takes place in well...somewhere overseas. I don't know. I fell asleep. Then I woke up and realized it was still playing, so I fell back asleep.

I didn't like it, in case you missed the sarcasm just then.

All I could do was hope that Javier Bardem, who plays the male lead, pulled out the cattle gun he used in No Country For Old Men and used it on the females. (You have to admit, that cattle gun was way cool. Wish I kept one in the trunk of my car)

Well, not on ALL the females. Corrine thinks Penelope Cruz is hot, so any woman my wife thinks is "hot" I think is hot too.

Coming Attractions

A Room With A View

I watched this when I was a senior in high school and then had a crush on Helena Bonham Carter for the next 20 years. I'm not sure but I think this was her first feature film.

Why I Love This Movie: Wow. So many reasons. It's Merchant & Ivory; it's got English actors, and I'm a HUGE anglophile; (I used a fake British accent to seduce Corrine.) it takes place in Florence, a place I've never visited but have always wanted to; (After going to the U.K. of course); and it's historical; and it's well-filmed; and...well, I watched it at a time when I went to see every movie that came out.

Howard's End

Another Merchant & Ivory and therefore with English actors, this time taking place in England, and starring Helena, who, in my dreams as an adolescent, gave me shivers with the way she said "How do like your tea, Luv?"

Man.

Anyway, there's a really good story here too. About class distinction, the power of wealth, the weakness of the poor, and all those fancy story-telling techniques they used to have in movies, back when movies had messages.




** But THE cutest in New Hampshire

:-)