Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category

Is it odd that I can forgive historical inaccuracies in the plot more easily than I can in the clothes? Seriously, I’m totally willing to suspend my disbelief and pretend Henry VIII looked like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, for example, or that Lord Bothwell Duke of Orkney was a good guy, but damn, put the right shoes on them!

I love a good period film, I really do, and I love bitching about inaccuracies in the timeline or perceived characterizations of historical figures, and I even love giggling over who Hollywood casts to play those figures (that’s who you think Achilles looked like? Really?), but I really need them to wear the correct clothing to the time period. Inaccuracies in jewelry are a pet peeve of mine to a lesser degree, I don’t get nearly as worked up over using modern faceted gems in a time period hundreds of years before gems were faceted as I do about, for example, Richard III wearing a motorcycle jacket and pretending it’s a doublet.

This is why I love Rome right now. I got one look at their shoes and went into transports of archaeological delight. Yay HBO! Maybe you should show Showtime how to do garb research before they start filming the next season of the Tudors, eh? It gets progressively worse every year, despite plenty of archaeological evidence from the time period for the cut, construction, fabric, stitching, accessories, etc.

So I watched L’auberge espagnole tonight. And it was lovely. It was very French, and I love that about it. It had some very funny parts, but mostly it was just interesting. Extremely watchable. Really loved the main character, Xavier. Audrey Tautou was overbilled on the DVD cover, but the scenes she was in were excellent. Whole thing was excellent, honestly. I highly recommend watching it.

I put the subtitles on, figuring it had been so long since I watched a movie in French, I wouldn’t understand much of it. But I did. More than I thought I would. The longer the movie went, the easier I found it to understand and the less I glanced down at the subtitles (except for the parts in Spanish, which I do not speak). It was very encouraging. Je n’ai pas parlé français depuis plusieurs années, mais je me rapelle plus que j’ai craint. Je suis un peu rouillée, mais c’est pas mal. I knew my reading French was still fairly fluent, but my speaking and listening is not what it once was. I majored in French my first two years at BYU, then turned it into my minor when I switched to archaeology. I still read novels in French, for fun, but I don’t get much opportunity for conversational French these days.

And I have to say, it’s a relief to have a laptop with a number pad so I can do alt code accents again. Fabuleux.

Updated post on July 13 to reflect new version

Amazingly hilarious production up on YouTube called A Very Potter Musical. I watched the entire thing this afternoon, laughing my head off. It’s so hilarious. Adore the guy who plays Harry, he’s cute and has a great voice. Their Ginny was far more annoying than I see her, but it was funny. Ron was great with his snacks. Hermione was funny too, and had a nice voice. Voldemort was hilarious and – once he was off Quirrell’s back – sexy as well.

My personal highlights:

• Voldemort tap-dancing – and motorboating Bellatrix
• Drunk Voldemort
• The Death Eater chorus line
• Harry talking about how awesome he is
• Ron’s giant chocolate bar
• The Ron/Hermione kiss, if you can call it that
• Draco rolling around randomly on the floor
• Goyle’s voice, and the Indian Burn Hex
• Dumbledore’s twanging accent
• Voldy and Quirrell’s bromance
• Texan Cho Chang
• Cedric “find” Diggory
• Molly Weasley’s brief and extremely New Jersey appearance

The music was excellent. Sound quality’s not great, I had a hard time hearing some dialogue while music was painfully loud. I wish I had this on DVD, I would watch it far too often.

Here’s the playlist. If you have trouble with it in the embedded player, click here.

I need a babysitter.

One that’s reliable. I’m tired of people who flake out at the last minute. Now, I’m a Pisces, and I understand that sometimes flakiness happens, but dammit, if you said you were going to babysit my kids on a certain date at a certain time, then you forget and make plans to go to dinner with your friends instead, it’s rude to NOT TELL ME THIS until an hour before you’re supposed to be here and only because I called you to ask when you’d be here. Shit. Ditch your friends, not me. Freakin’ cousins.

There’s a teenager down the street from me. She was perfect for a while there, cause she could just walk over and walk home later. Very nice. Two doors down. Then her family moved away for a while, inexplicably. Now they’re back, and I’ve asked her to sit but she’s busy whenever I’ve needed someone.

So what this amounts to is that I still haven’t seen Star Trek, or Wolverine, and I’m worried about how I’m going to go see Harry Potter, cause you KNOW I’m not going to miss that one. I don’t mind hitting Wolverine at the dollar theater, if I can find a freakin’ sitter, but I really wanted to see Star Trek.

DH says maybe I can wait to see Harry Potter until Hawaii so we can go see it together. Um, no. I’m seeing it on opening night, thank you. I can’t wait three weeks to see it. Nope. We’ll have to find a babysitter in Honolulu, I guess.