three quarters

three quarters of the way through our four day intensive at the Sarasota Film Festival... today was my heaviest lifting- LOL- four film slots with a total of a dozen films (9 shorts and 3 features) so here is the run down with my comments -BTW it's late and I am tired - tomorrow more and then we are done because we leave for Chicago-I say this so you will understand that these are my opinions without a lot of supporting reasoning- I just have run out of time LOL

we started the day with Breakfast at Ina's and it began with two shorts-

Wow- - wish I had known Ina when she had the restaurant open- what a terrific lady and amazing story - worth seeing -

notice this one is ONE MINUTE long! but it managed to get its message across just fine Thank You!

this one was really really cute - about a young lady mistaken for a terrorist due to a set of circumstances that look very suspicious but are actually quite innocent...

 and then I went into the shorts selections while Phil went off to meet his trainer- and here are the seven films we saw- varying amounts of time - I LOVED Piece of Cake and Rated.. the Dynamic Double Standard was very short with an excellent message. Not so keen on Centrepoint Kidz but liked the Apollo81 (intellectually interesting)- Sumo Road was just plain stupid and Twisted was bizarre.... sorry I don't have time to go into them in further detail but look out for the two I really liked!

and then we got back together for two more films in the evening- the terrific and funny "gangster" picture with a body double plot line.

then the seriously unfortunate Elbow Grease- it was SO BAD we got up and left in the middle of the movie- just completely effing awful stupid people doing more stupid things - horrid- and the only one worth watching was the woman who actually seemed to be reasonably intelligent surrounded by a whole family of dumb f**ks- and the movie makers packed the audience with equally moronic folks who thought these characters were the funniest things ever.... I LOVED Napoleon Dynamite and thought this might have potential - boy was I wrong. STUPID STUPID STUPID...thank god my date felt the same way I did and we looked at each other and nodded and got up and left.

so a rather full day at the movies- and tomorrow is pretty much more of the same- we are headed to Chicago for ten days beginning Wednesday so we will miss the second half of the Festival and also that put us in a position where we had a really concentrated four days of films...so more to come before we are off to pack and move the household goods...

Laughed til I cried

So how frequently do you see a movie of a book you read and say how crappy it was and how much better the book was? Pretty much all the time right? Well I can't honestly say that "This Is Where I Leave You" was as good as the book - but given how absolutely hilarious the book was I had no real positive expectations of the movie. AND - I was surprised at how good the movie was... it truly captured the feel of the book.  Of course, not every nuance was there but the sense of it was...

Tina Fey and Jason Bateman were perfect in their roles as siblings Judd and Wendy and Jane Fonda filled (wink wink) the role of the mom, Hillary, quite well. When I read the book the characters all looked pretty much like they ended up looking onscreen except for Judd's wife (did she even have dark hair in the book? I thought she was blonde- LOL) and I thought Philip (the youngest brother of the four sibling family sitting shiva after their father's death) should have been waaaay more attractive. The hottie guy in this movie is the "boy-next-door" the brain damaged Horry played by Timothy Olyphant (why hasn't he been named sexiest man of the year by People magazine???)

Anyway- I figured there was no way they would make this movie even one tenth as funny as the book and they made it about 75% as funny as the book - so I give them lots of credit.  Missing in action the scenes where Judd sets fire to the balls of his wife's lover/his boss and the scene where Judd's sister in law sexually assaults him in the basement of the family home in a quest for viable sperm- LOL... I know, I know - those may have been a bridge too far for Hollywood... and extraneous details went missing such as the large stash of cash Judd withdrawals from the joint account he held with his adulterous wife... but that is getting really niggly -

I laughed - and I laughed really loud and hard and long in the theater - and I was not the only one. This is a funny funny movie.  And, this is a touching movie.  So I would say two things- read the book AND see the movie... both worth your time and attention.

and move over Colin Firth- this guy has taken over your spot (maybe not forever- LOL- but certainly for a bit)

OK - so he's a few years younger than I am - LOL - so is Colin Firth (my mother always swooned over Johnny Depp- LOL)

so after the movie we tried a new hole in the wall Vietnamese place and it was only OK - but here are some photos anyway-

the spring rolls with shrimp were good but most of the rest of the meal was fairly pedestrian and they didn't have Banh Xiao at all (my personal favorite) and the menu was limited..however they were pleasant and the place was extremely clean... still in a quest to replace the late lamented Tien Gang.