Movies and Books, Oh My

I won tickets to see a sneak preview of Duplicity a few weeks back. The tickets were care of Philebrity. L. came along. This movie was like Oceans 11 only without as many funny guys. The method of story telling, of giving the viewer one set of information, then rewinding and filling them in...well, it was done one too many times for my taste. Julia Roberts and Clive Owen did good jobs of acting...Roberts is definitely older now, I was sort of surprised by how they didn't hide some of the signs of this (not that they should exactly, just that I would have expected they might). But the movie went on too long, and though the acting was good, I didn't really care about any of them. Never good.

Last night I watched What Happens In Vegas. It was entirely predictable. Cameron Diaz is buff as hell, as is Ashton Kutcher. There were a few laughs, no tears.
Terry Gross loves Richard Price, so I figured I should give one of his books a spin. It was a mystery, but not in that formulaic sense exactly...transcending that in favor of themes of redemption, or something. I need to be quiet.
This movie made me decide that Michael Cera is probably gay.
I love cheese. I love eating cheese with other people. I really wanted to like this movie. But it was like the first 2/3 of the movie was going one way, then all of a sudden the movie was pretty much over but completely different. I like Bonnie Hunt.
This movie was ridiculous.
This movie was not good either.
Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle really reenforced my not-so-secret desire to live in the country with a spouse and children and animals, which was totally not the point of the book. It also made me very aware of how the choices I make in my eating could be better, and certain steps I could take to be at least a little better. I don't think I have the capacity to be as strenuously local as Kingsolver's family was (especially with my new found love of grapefruit) but I'm hoping to do right by the city's local farmer's markets this summer...and maybe get better at making huge batches of things then freezing them for later in the year.
This movie was entertaining.
Here is a passage from Jasper FForde's The Big Over Easy. He is clever. Really, really clever.

"Dog Walkers Face Body-Finding Ban

Citizens who find a corpse while walking their dog may be fined if proposed legislation is made law, it was disclosed yesterday. The new measures, part of the Criminal Narrative Improvement Bill, have been drafted to avoid investigations looking cliched once they reach the docudrama stage. Other offenses covered by the act will be motorists declaiming in a huffy tone, "Why don't you cathc burglars/real criminals for a change?" when caught speeding, if there is a documentary crew in attendance. Civil liberatarians, motorist groups and dog walkers are said to be "outraged.""

Oh Jodi Picoult and the tangled webs of point of view and terrible things and court room drama and teenage occult you weave. She's good at it. Whatever.
James Macavoy is cute, but it's clear that he is short. How short is the question I'd like answered. How short?
Relatively entertaining...not really in terms of story, but in terms of individual actors' performances.
Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River was surprising. I don't know what I expected from a Scottish late night talk show host, but this wasn't it. The book definitely has a Tom Robbins feel to it, but with a Scottish twist?
Oh man, I finished the third season of The Wire and I feel a little empty inside.