Okay, I hate to interrupt the intelligent movie discussion with my blathering cheese, but: I just saw Phantom and freaking loved it.

It was everything I hoped it would be: huge, sweeping, over-the-top, craptacular melodrama. With songs! It's entirely possible that most of my love is due to nostalgia, but I'm okay with that.

Gerard Butler? Sex on wheels, baby. The "Point of No Return" scene was reeeeeeeeeally hot. Too bad his voice didn't quite measure up. Not enough oomph for my taste.

Emmy Rossum did a fine job as Christine (really, there's not much you can do with that role except sing, have curly hair, and act all entranced). Her voice is lovely; a bit too scoopy, but so much more pleasant than Sarah Brightman.

Oh, and Patrick Wilson is so pretty, but had a really bad wig.

Can I buy this on DVD yet?

But as I recall you still had time to see (a) Freddy vs. Jason and (b) Blade: Trinity Whatev.

::AHEM::

I saw Freddy vs. Jason on DVD, and I *still* have not seen Blade: Trinity, Mr. Smarty McSmartypants.

Of recent movies, I went out of my way to see Lemony Snicket, for obvious reasons, thankyouverymuch.

It was everything I hoped it would be: huge, sweeping, over-the-top, craptacular melodrama. With songs!

Excellent. Now I just have to figure out when I'm going to be able to go see it ...

Hubby and I are planning on either The Incredibles or Lemon Sniket for our Christmas excursion. Heck, we could do both, the two together are as long as an LotR movie--and without the health curse!

After squeeing over something directed by freaking Joel Shumacher, I feel like I have to validate myself:

I do actually like good movies, too. I finally saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few nights ago and loved it extremely.

So yeah, don't kick me out of your club!

I thought it was a "truism of contemporary pop culture" that any movie with Bill Cosby in it has to be a horrible, awful, avoid-at-any-cost disaster.

How many people got suckered into seeing Ghost Dad at the theaters? Surely that experience was horrific enough to serve as aversion therapy for any subsequent Cosby movies...

I rented Sugar and watched it last night. Weird little movie. But after taking a recent series of hits from Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ian Somerhalder about how very uncomfortable they were acting out scenes of affection with male costars, it was refreshing to run into Brendan Fehr's total lack of self-consciousness. I mean, he did stuff I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing in view of a third party, much less a camera.

My father is asking me if I've heard the hype about Aviator. Which is weird, because what's he doing thinking about movies? Ray is to blame, I'm told. He was so blown out of his seat by Jamie's performance, that he's started paying more attention to not just movies, but movie press.

I've not seen Ray yet, though I mean to. I asked him how Denzel's Malcolm X and Steve Biko hadn't already awakened that interest in black actors in biopics. Denzel's not that great, he told me.

After I recovered from the shock, he explained that while he's not saying that Jamie Foxx has Denzel (or Freeman) range, but that that one individual characterisation was the best he'd ever seen.

I'm still impressed by Denzel's Malcolm, just because when Spike put in archival footage of the real Malcolm at the end of the movie, my thought was that they'd aged modern film very well (it's a beef of mine). It wasn't till the movie ended that I realised it wasn't Denzel in those scenes. I can't think of any other performance where I so totally forgot.

What biopic performances do you guys like the best?

Does Ed Wood count? Because Landau's Lugosi performance may be the best I've ever seen by a male actor.

If I had a bazillion dollars, and was doing a film version of King Lear, I'd cast Ben Kingsley.

If I had a bazillion dollars, and was doing a film version of King Lear, I'd cast Ben Kingsley.

You'd need a midget Cordelia for him to carry in at the end.