For Alibelle, from IMDB

You know, it's probably a good thing I didn't see that before I went to the theatre today, or I might not have been able to gear myself up for the bus trip. However, I did see "The Wedding Date," and I thought it was great. I laughed, I grinned, I was impressed with the pretty clothes and the pretty places (they filmed at Lacock National Trust Village! I was there! It's so pretty there! That was totally awesome!).

I don't know. I enjoyed it. It was good, fluffy fun. It was also nice to see Debra Messing play someone who wasn't Grace, and I thought she did a great job with it.

AND there was a short ballroom dancing scene! Which was awesome. But maybe I'm easily pleased. But it was cool, and I think I might want to take up ballroom combat .

The Enterprise confronts some horrible new adversary - and gets blown-up ten minutes into the show. The remaining 35 minutes is just a black screen.

Ha, yes, and the perfect 24 episode would be the one where they all take a nap for an hour.

Saw Phantom. Doesn't this show usually have people who can sing in it? Christine was good, as was the soprano they dubbed in for Minnie Driver*, but yeesh, all the men! For Raoul, it doesn't matter so much, because he's supposed to be a giant tool, but one should not have to suspend that much disbelief during "Music of the Night." (And honestly, the ADR was so bad, I wondered why the didn't just use Michael Crawford's track from the OCR. It couldn't have synched up any worse than what they had.)

Even more depressing was the fact that our movie theatre was two blocks from the Majestic, where the real show was being performed on a real stage by real opera singers. All of the gothic 80's melodrama, none of the weirdly adjusted-for-non-singers musical arrangements! Oh well.

[* who apparently was Minnie Driver. I blame the bad ADR -- when lips and sound synch up that badly, I tend to assume it's because someone else is doing the voice.]

I want a movie where the twist is in the first ten minutes, from which all trailers are made, giving the audience an entirely false impression as to what the movie is actually about.

That's Psycho, pretty much -- none of the trailers or promo materials made it known that Janet Leigh gets killed half an hour in.

And since Dakota Fanning creeps me out even when she's not evil and doesn't have Emily the Strange's hairstyle, I MUST see her as evil!precocious-girl.

SPOILER: The trailer makes it look like she's evil, and it seems like she might be for about half the movie, but she's not. She is being victimized and manipulated, and reacting to such in fairly reasonable ways, and it's REALLY not fun to watch once you find that out.

Plus, they kill a kitty.

That's Psycho, pretty much -- none of the trailers or promo materials made it known that Janet Leigh gets killed half an hour in.

Good point! Now that's what I'm talking about.

Saw Phantom. Doesn't this show usually have people who can sing in it?

Yes. But people who can sing aren't necessarily (A) very young and (B) very pretty. Joel Schumacher cared more about A and B than about singing.

Minnie Driver was dubbed for the operatic parts; she did her own singing only in the big pop ballad over the credits.

And, yes, the lipsynching was unbelievably bad.

That's Psycho, pretty much -- none of the trailers or promo materials made it known that Janet Leigh gets killed half an hour in.

And Hitchcock used his pull as a financially successful producer to require theater owners to prevent anyone from coming late to the show. Before this, the traditional way to see a movie was just to drop by the theater whenever you wanted and go in, even if the film was halfway through, then you just stayed in the next showing until you saw where you came in, then you'd leave. Hitch used his ban on late entry as a promotional gimmick since he didn't want to put too much detail into the trailers, etc.

The Phantom of the Opera is not supposed to be played by someone whose looks people swoon over!

I had no problem with that. But then, the power of the swoon had taken me.

Just came back from seeing The House of Flying Daggers. Pretty, pretty scenery, pretty, pretty people, kick-ass martial arts sequences, especially the scene set in the bamboo forest--whoa. The only thing is, I found most of the dialog deeply silly. I don't know--maybe they weren't meant to be heroic, larger-than-life characters, or maybe the translator did a poor job. But still. Beautiful, mysterious blind warrior goddesses shouldn't be saying stuff like, "Are you for real?" What is she, a valley girl?