Just got back from a very fun movie day with ChiKat! We did manage to see both Paris, je t'aime and Once back-to-back, and I liked them both very much. (ChiKat can share her issue about Once if she'd like).

PJT was a wonderful series of 18 5-minute long vignettes about the city, most dealing with love in all of its forms (from familial to romantic, from new love to old and lost loves). The most bizarre (but strangely amusing for me) one was about Mime Love (I hate mimes, but the depiction was goofy enough to help me get over my dislike), the Elijah Wood one was very Gothic Silent Film in style, and the Gus Van Sant-directed one had a nice French New Wave feel. But my two favorites were one about a quiet young man who falls for a Moroccan (possibly--could have been Algerian) girl wearing a hajib, and one co-directed by Gerard Depardieu about an older couple meeting before she finally signs her divorce papers, with Ben Gazarra and Gena Rowlands as the couple. Overall, a movie well worth seeking out.

Once was filled with very real performances and directing style (very cinema verite), and Glen Hansard's performance was all in his eyes (it helps that he is damn sexy in that beard, too!). Loved the music, and just loved the whole film. See it if you can!

I am halfway through Stranger Than Fiction and am finding it less engaging than I had anticipated.

Oh I lurved that movie! Maybe it loses something in the translation to small screen.

It had its charm. I'm not sorry I saw it, but it won't stick with me.

Until the next time I think about killing off a character... I halfway think they're real anyway. Pests.

Just saw Knocked Up. Compared to The 40-Year Old Virgin, this one didn't work as well for me. It had moments, but ultimately, I would rather have seen a movie about Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd's characters.

Paul Rudd is awesome.

I saw both Once and Knocked Up this evening. Enjoyed them both in heir wildly different ways. Particularly loved the Apatow Supporting Players in KU. Martin Starr has grown out of his awkward stage, but not adorkable Jay Baruchel. Paul Rudd IS awesome. How totally fabulous was the whole chair sequence in Vegas?

Once I liked, but felt there was about 30 minutes of movie in there and the rest was just good songs being sung over pretty pictures which didn't do anything to move the story forward. I liked the dialogue scenes and could have used more of them.

The Prestige

I know the person who wrote the original novel of this. Personally, I thought the movie was okay. It was always going to be hard to adapt to the screen as the book is set over a few hundred years or so, with lots of characters, subplots etc. So for the movie they just dropped a lot of it. The author sold the movie rights decades ago to an indy movie company, who sold them on to Nolan and friends, so he basically got bugger all for it.

Children of Men is still my favourite movie of 2006, by a wide, wide margin.

Paul Rudd rules-- I think that was his best movie. The cake and chair scenes were straight-up brilliant. Leslie Mann was awesome. I didn't quite buy any chemistry between Rogen and Heigl (and would lay that at Heigl's door); the consequences for Heigl were never explored; and I thought Virgin was funnier-- but there's no director today that approaches what Apatow is doing. During the scene where Mann and Rudd meet the baby for the first time it felt like we were in the room, it was so real and unmediated.

Just got back from P3, and I'll happily sit in the corner with those who loved it. Yes, it was long, but I always expect extended battle scenes to bore me. (The multiple Agent Smith fight in Matrix Reloaded nearly made me pull my hair out.)

I'm not sure why motivation didn't come across for so many viewers. Seemed to me that everyone's motivation was simply a carryover from P2, with the exception of Elizabeth, whose new goal was rescue Jack and thus relieve her guilt. I'll grant that the relationship between Tia/Calypso and Davey Jones was a bit muddled, but I still adored the scene where she touched him and we got to see the man beneath the monster.

All in all, it was an enjoyable romp, if a bit of a bloated one. Ben said to me, as we were leaving, that he liked having all of the storylines tied up and questions answered, finally, and I agree. The very, very end -- post-credits -- was entirely predictable, but also highly satisfying to a romantic like me (although it does chafe that Elizabeth gives up her life at sea, presumably because of the baby on the way. She proved herself -- again, to me, especially in this film, after the events of all three -- as a capable ship's captain, if not necessarily as a pirate, and definitely as a woman who still had battles to fight in her. ) Still, I loved the last shot.

Oh, I didn't know about post credit stuff AmyLiz.