It wasn't Better Off Dead, was it?

Steph, I think the running gag there was the paperboy determined to collect. It also got a shout-out in "Say Anything."

Radio Flyer?

Better Off Dead is what came to mind, but I know it's not it. This is very familiar, though. Crap. This will drive me nuts.

The kid making deals question rings dim bells for me, too, but I also can't place it.

The Criterion Spinal Tap's been out of print for ages. There's another version out there, that's the one most people have.

I just checked, and I have the Criterion one. Is it worth anything?

Oh, and THANK YOU everyone for going on about The Incredibles until I felt I had to see it. It was really an amazing movie.

The kid-making-deals thing put me in mind of Fresh, which I haven't seen for a while, but it's not that. Do you remember the main plot at all?

I just got back from seeing National Treasure. It was good, cheesy fun. It was what The DaVinci Code would have been if the author had enough sense to realize that the story's premise was inherently silly.

Ugh. I had someone at my work trying to argue that the DaVinci Code was historically true. I had a really rough time with not smacking him.

I saw Alexander this weekend. Mainly because I like Colin Farrell. I was kind of meh about the whole thing, although I was expecting that so it wasn't a surprise.

If anyone else has seen it, there was some stuff I was confused about. It looked like someone was trying to poison him (Alexander) when that boy brought him the cup and then he threw it away. How did he know that? Also, the movie implied that both Alexander and Hephaestion were poisoned. Was it supposed to be unclear who was behind that ?

Still waiting for a Teppy report on Moulin Rouge. Double spaced in APA format, please.

Just watched it. So. There were some good things, and some bad things.

The good:

Ewan! The man was just incandescent. He knocked my socks off, and, in fact, was the only thing that kept me from disliking the film more than I like it.

[This is a sub-category of the Ewan factor]: I'm a sucker for a love story, but for reasons I mention below, the other aspects of the movie almost ruined the love story between Christian and Satine for me. However, due to Ewan lighting up the screen every freaking time he looked at Nicole Kidman, he managed to keep me invested in the love story all the way to the end.

The movie is, I'm pretty sure, the most visually stunning film I've ever seen. God, it was gorgeous all the way around -- the sets, the costumes, the makeup -- everything.

The bad:

Well, I can sum up most of my negative impressions about the film by saying -- I liked it better when it was the opera La Boheme, with a dash of Shakespeare in Love (the whole play-within-a-movie thing, which enables one character to declare love for another character, while the audience of the play thinks it's actually part of the play).

I don't know how other people felt about the music, but the contemporary music damn near ruined the movie for me. Hearing people in the year 1900 sing U2, Elton John, and the Beatles to each other (we will not even speak of Whitney Houston) absolutely yanked me out of the story. Every. Single. Time.

[Though, I will note, I liked the score a lot, as well as the non-contemporary music, particularly the can-can scene where they're pitching the play to the duke.]

Is it considered a musical? I can forgive a lot of outlandish things in a musical, and god knows they all burst into song a lot. But honestly, it felt to me like it wanted to be at least 4 different genres (musical, love story, fantasy, and farce). And I had a lot of trouble buying into the love story because of the farcical aspects of it. Was I supposed to be laughing? Crying? Sighing? Buying the soundtrack? For me, the mishmash of genres didn't work, and it almost made me turn off the VCR.

Overall:

I'm glad I rented it, and it was stunning to watch, and I have new Ewan-love. And I'm thankful that we have medicine for consumption these days.