This Week's Top 10
- Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($29 million)
- Eagle Eye ($17.7 million)
- Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist ($12 million)
- Nights in Rodanthe ($7.4 million)
- Appaloosa ($5 million)
- Lakeview Terrace ($4.5 million)
- Burn After Reading ($4.08 million)
- Fireproof ($4.07 million)
- An American Carol ($3.8 million)
- Religulous ($3.5 million)
What I Watched
- What a Girl Wants (2 stars): My sister convinced me to watch this because of Colin Firth. And, sad to say, that's probably the only reason to watch this. Granted, without the silly B-story love interest, I think this movie might have been perfectly respectable. Well, maybe that's going a bit far, but you get my drift. As it is, save yourself some time and just watch this.
- Final Draft (2 stars): I did learn a very important lesson from this movie. Cutting yourself off from the outside world by locking yourself in an apartment to finish a screenplay is a very bad idea.
- Woman of the Year (3 stars): See the full review here.
- Son of Rambow (3½ stars): I was highly amused by the reasons behind the PG-13 rating for this film: "violence and reckless behavior." This is a story about unlikely friendship and love of movies, so I, of course, loved it. The two leads were wonderful, and the story (if a little uneven at times) is funny, sweet and emotionally authentic.
- The Full Monty (4 stars): The story of down-and-out steel workers who convince themselves that performing in a strip show would be a good idea. As you can imagine, chaos ensues. It's hilarious and touching, and it walks the line between feel-good and schmaltz better than I've seen in a while. I'll also note that, despite the plot, the movie is monty-free, though butts do abound from time to time.
In Other News
I finished Voyage of the Dawn Treader
earlier this week. I think this may be my favorite of the Narnia books so far. I was a bit let down by the ending (I wanted to see Caspian's interaction with Ramandu's daughter), but surely that's something that will be improved upon in 2010's film version. (As an aside, I just checked out who they cast as Eustace for the film, and it's none other than Will Poulter who was *fabulous* in Son of Rambow. Well done!)I've since moved on to Neil Gaiman's collection of short stories, Smoke and Mirrors
. I only started reading it three or four days ago, and I'm already halfway through, which is generally a good sign, especially since it's been a rather busy week.
Last but not least, it's nearly time for National Novel Writing Month! Get thee to the Web site and sign up! If you have no idea what NaNoWriMo is, check out Matt's post about it. He sums it up quite nicely. And, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. This will be my fourth year participating, so I'm a bit of a veteran as far as NaNo goes.Edit: Matt says this post is better, but I say you should check out both. There's no such thing as too much when it comes to NaNo-related motivation.
