Yay! A new game!

Okay so there are a few variations on this game, I'm sure you've encxountered one or more at some time. But hey I thought it might be fun. I think Kurt will enjoy it at least : )

Take the name of a movie and replace significant words with "Your Mom". The longer the title and/or more famous the movie the better.

For example:
The Lion, The Witch and Your Mom
Star Wars VI: Return of Your Mom
and who could forget the classic Your Mom Goes To Washington?

All right blogosphere, whatcha got?
: )

Bite Size...

"Luke, I am your father!"

"Noooo! That's implausible!"

Life Imitates Art, or, The Downfall of Ben Affleck.

While we're waiting for the last few Secret Sketch entries to come in (deadline is Tuesday night, y'all) here is a bit of celebrity-related nonsense to amuse you!


Apparently this guy, Big Lips McGee*, I mean Chris Pine, is in talks to reprise Harrison Ford's famous role as CIA agent Jack Ryan.


Hey wait... it says that Ben Affleck played Jack Ryan too. Does anyone even remember that movie coming out? I sure don't.

Poor old Ben Affleck. I guess when your career pretty much starts with winning an Oscar there's no place but down... No wait, that doesn't work because (a) he was in movies before Good Will Hunting and (b) his good buddy Matt Damon has gone from strength to strength since then.

Remember that scene in Good Will Hunting when Affleck says to Damon that the best part of his day is hoping Damon won't show up because it means he's moved up to a better type of life? I'm starting to think maybe that happened in real life. Damon saw his friend through the whole Bennifer thing, maybe he even still returned Ben's calls after Daredevil, but once he started hanging with Clooney and Pitt he realized that he was never going to truly succeed in life with the Affleck millstone tied around his neck. So he cut his best mate loose, and now Steven Soderbergh is hanging entire movies on him - and Time Magazine is writing about it.

Meanwhile, Affleck is where? At home making babies with Jennifer Garner.

... Well, I guess that's probably not actually that bad of a life. Carry on, Affleck.


*I mean come on. I spent the whole of the new Star Trek movie thinking about two things: how freakishly giant his lips are, and hot damn Leonard Nimoy is old!

Unrecommended Viewing: Crank 2 - High Voltage

Crank 2: High Voltage is not the worst movie ever.


It's just really, really close to it.

I know what you're going to say - "But Soda & Candy, Jason Statham takes his shirt off!"
This is very true, but he does that in literally every movie he's in, and all of them are a gazillion times better than Crank: High Voltage.

Full disclosure: I enjoyed the first Crank movie. The "plot" was ridiculous, the dialogue was ordinary and the acting was sub-par, but it was cheeky and reasonably fun and I seem to remember the action sequences being decent, which let's face it is the selling point of most Statham movies.

Crank: High Voltage on the other hand, had terrible plot, dialogue and acting, but the action was also super ordinary, not to mention the bonus graphic sexualized violence, racism, homophobia and just incredibly-high-level misogyny which I don't seem to remember the first one having.

What's your worst movie ever?

Recommended Viewing: In the Mood For Love

We recently watched In the Mood For Love, a Chinese movie by Wong Kar Wai.

I don't want to go into the plot too much, because I seriously want y'all to see it for yourselves. It's a melancholy sort-of love story, just quiet and gentle and sweetly sad. Every single frame is achingly beautiful. I'm not exaggerating. The set design is pitch-perfect (if it's not technically period-perfect, it's emotionally perfect), the color palette is used to great effect, and the way the camera lingers on a wisp of smoke or views a scene from down a hallway and with a slightly blocked view instead of right there with the characters, just infuses the film with a sense of longing, but at the same time it's very peaceful.

And I covet the lead actress's wardrobe to an obsessive degree. Like, I would wear the shit out of every single thing she wore. Ridiculously fantastic. It's set in the 1960s, so she had these incredible modern-style cheongsam type dresses, with elegant high collars, neat little cap sleeves, and glove-like fitting to her curves (and it didn't hurt that she had a smoking hot bod). I was literally gasping with joy and envy every time she had on a new outfit. And then demanding to be taken to China.

These pictures are kind of terrible quality, but you get the idea:







Also, now I'm really craving wonton soup and char siu bao (BBQ pork buns).

Conversations With: Beyoncé the Dreamgirl.

We Netflixed Dreamgirls the other night because it was my turn to pick one. We've been watching horror and action for a while, so I decided to go super-girly.

I forgot that musicals, especially modern ones (except for Sweeney Todd which rocks), are like baths; I don't have the attention span for them. I got bored and impatient lots of times, waiting for them to stop warbling on and get back to the plot.

Husband livened things up a bit with this comment: "I guess Beyoncé had it written into her contract that she'd be the only good looking one."

...which then had us imagining Beyoncé on the phone with her agent:

Beyoncé: So it'll be me, a fatty*, and a girl who could devour me whole through a picket fence**. Done.

Agent: Yeeeesssss... You do understand you'll be playing the inferior singer, don't you?

Beyoncé: But there's a fatty, right? I'm in.




*Note: Jennifer Hudson is beautiful and has an awe-inspiring set of pipes on her. But she should not wear figure-hugging satin***.

**She's got big teeth. Like, Secretariat big. I was going to say Phar Lap, but y'all wouldn't have heard of him.

***Of course neither should pretty much anyone, including me. It's Horrendoville. Just look at that photo.

Recommended Viewing: Mongol

Mongol is the story of Genghis Khan's early life. I really enjoyed this movie; it has beautiful scenery, drama, a moving love story and copious amounts of blood & violence.

... Wait, what?

Seriously. I usually hate violence, especially when it's really graphic, but:
(a) this movie could not have been made without some violence, being the story of Genghis Khan,
(b) all the violence is contextual and moves the story forward, and
(c) it makes the quiet moments and the love story all the more poignant.

Plus, the cinematography throughout the whole movie is just beautiful. The sweeping Mongolian landscapes are incredible. They spend a lot of time close in on the actors' faces - not in a horrible Pore-Vision way, just kind of natural & intimate. The acting seemed to me to be very subtle, so I liked the close-ups because I felt I needed it to be able to catch those tiny flickers of emotion.

The really striking part for me was in the battle scenes. They use this particular style of filming where everything is super sharp and defined at every moment, almost like the way they shoot hi-def sports - you can see individual drops of blood spraying out when a guy slices another guy across the chest. The only other movie I can think of that had action filmed like that was Brotherhood of the Wolf, a movie I also enjoyed despite being in a genre I don't usually care for.

I don't know how historically accurate Mongol is. According to my husband (who likes to do more research than I do), very little written history ever survived about this period; there's, like, one written account that was later translated into Chinese and even that is more like a legend than an accurate record. So it's really anyone's guess what Genghis Khan was actually like or what drove him to do whatever he did.

But still an entirely enjoyable film. You may like to watch it with a cushion in front of your eyes if the sight of blood gives you the willies though.