i'm cooking the veggies and valuing myself! (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
themeletor) wrote2005-02-04 08:23 am
themeletor) wrote2005-02-04 08:23 am
Morning... report?
Yeah, no, so, there's not a lot of news this morning. At least, not that I feel the need to display. Eh.
Oh, wait, one thing just popped up from the NYT.
February 4, 2005
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE WEDDING DATE'
A 'Pretty Woman' Scenario With the Roles Reversed
By ANITA GATES
I am willing to bet money that the director Clare Kilner adored "Four Weddings and a Funeral." Either she or Dana Fox, a screenwriter, must have a serious soft spot for that movie, because their new romantic comedy, "The Wedding Date," struggles from beginning to end to capture the charm and ebullience of "Four Weddings," Mike Newell's 1994 film about bad timing and a British-American romance. The new movie's effort is mostly unsuccessful, but there are bright spots.
Debra Messing stars as Kat Ellis, a good-looking New Yorker with half a dozen pieces of good-looking matched luggage, whose younger half sister has the nerve to be marrying first. The ceremony is in London, where their blended British-American family lives, and the groom's best man is Kat's former fiancé, who broke off the engagement. (The exposition begins immediately, with the heroine sharing information with the bicycle messenger at her door.) Naturally, Kat has to show up with some fabulous guy, and since there is no such man in her life she turns to the classified ads for "male escorts."
Now the film turns into a gender-reversed "Pretty Woman." That film posited the notion that a businessman might hire a Los Angeles streetwalker with the looks, charm and self-possession of Julia Roberts. "The Wedding Date" suggests that a woman could pick a male prostitute out of a newspaper ad and have him turn out to be a hunk with beautiful manners and a degree in comparative literature from Brown University. Seriously.
I missed the part where Dermot Mulroney became a sex symbol (in "My Best Friend's Wedding," it was never clear why either Ms. Roberts or Cameron Diaz wanted him so much), but as Nick Mercer, one of those film characters who know everything and are never flustered or unsure, he is highly appealing. This can't be easy, because he is given ridiculous behavior, like the aggressive parading-around-naked-in-the-bathroom scene (although the $6,000 Kat paid him, from her 401-K, does not include sex), and aphorisms that don't quite deliver. "Look people in the eye," Nick tells Kat. "They'll never know what you're wearing."
Ms. Messing, best known as the increasingly wacky interior designer Grace Adler in NBC's sitcom "Will and Grace," manages to keep her dignity too, sometimes by deliberately losing it. When she wakes up on the plane at the end of the flight to London, she actually looks like someone who has slept all night, fitfully, in an airline seat.
During most of the film, though, she is striking, glamorous and beautifully dressed, like the rest of the cast. Holland Taylor, who has carved out a film and television niche as the quintessential affluent mom of a certain age, is appealingly brittle as Kat's mother. Sarah Parish, as T. J., a British cousin, fills the role of the humorously blunt relative nicely. As Amy, the self-involved blond bride, Amy Adams is suitably unlikable, prone to icky comments like "You're my half sister, but I whole love you." Her groom (Jack Davenport) and Kat's ex-fiancé (Jeremy Sheffield) don't have much to do until the big happiness-threatening secret is revealed near the end.
The scenery is equally good-looking. After the rowdy bachelor and bachelorette parties in London, everyone heads for the glorious English countryside for family-bonding activities, most notably an amateur game of rounders; solemn, plot-advancing talks inside a boathouse beside a poetry-worthy lake; and the actual wedding at the perfect old country church. "The Wedding Date" proves that there is nothing inherently magical about a group of adults frolicking on a lawn with an old pop-music hit in the background. But the various scenes' charms would be far more enjoyable if the movie weren't so in love with its own supposed cuteness.
"The Wedding Date" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has four-letter words, sexual discussions and situations, brief partial nudity and an innocuous attempt at a fistfight.
'The Wedding Date'
Opens today nationwide.
Directed by Clare Kilner; written by Dana Fox, based on the book "Asking for Trouble" by Elizabeth Young; director of photography, Oliver Curtis; edited by Mary Finlay; music by Blake Neely; production designer, Tom Burton; produced by Nathalie Marciano, Michelle Chydzik Sowa, Jessica Bendinger and Paul Brooks; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Debra Messing (Kat Ellis), Dermot Mulroney (Nick Mercer), Amy Adams (Amy), Jack Davenport (Edward Fletcher-Wooten), Sarah Parish (T. J.), Jeremy Sheffield (Jeffrey), Peter Egan (Victor Ellis) and Holland Taylor (Bunny).
(c) 2005 The New York Times Company
Fletcher-Wooten. fomg. *headdesk* Edward Fletcher-Wooten. How... flawless ^.^
(To see a trailer, go to here. There are clips there as well, but none of them mention any Fletcher-Wooten. I'll watch them when I get home, and if he makes a show in any I'll tell y'all.
Inothernews-- Went to the library last night and did borrow Cruel and Unusual after all. Also wrote another several hundred words of Existentialism, but haven't posted them to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rainbows1984 yet. Haven't taken Cruel and Unusual to school yet, though, because it needs brown paper bookcover before I can. It's illicit reading material at that place.
Also: I claimed Errol Flynn! Meheheheheh. Purr.
Alsoalso:ima_pseudonym has written genius. Genius, I say! a PotC/HP crossover. Read it, and bugbugBUG her to write more. Because the universe needs it.
Oh, wait, one thing just popped up from the NYT.
February 4, 2005
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE WEDDING DATE'
A 'Pretty Woman' Scenario With the Roles Reversed
By ANITA GATES
I am willing to bet money that the director Clare Kilner adored "Four Weddings and a Funeral." Either she or Dana Fox, a screenwriter, must have a serious soft spot for that movie, because their new romantic comedy, "The Wedding Date," struggles from beginning to end to capture the charm and ebullience of "Four Weddings," Mike Newell's 1994 film about bad timing and a British-American romance. The new movie's effort is mostly unsuccessful, but there are bright spots.
Debra Messing stars as Kat Ellis, a good-looking New Yorker with half a dozen pieces of good-looking matched luggage, whose younger half sister has the nerve to be marrying first. The ceremony is in London, where their blended British-American family lives, and the groom's best man is Kat's former fiancé, who broke off the engagement. (The exposition begins immediately, with the heroine sharing information with the bicycle messenger at her door.) Naturally, Kat has to show up with some fabulous guy, and since there is no such man in her life she turns to the classified ads for "male escorts."
Now the film turns into a gender-reversed "Pretty Woman." That film posited the notion that a businessman might hire a Los Angeles streetwalker with the looks, charm and self-possession of Julia Roberts. "The Wedding Date" suggests that a woman could pick a male prostitute out of a newspaper ad and have him turn out to be a hunk with beautiful manners and a degree in comparative literature from Brown University. Seriously.
I missed the part where Dermot Mulroney became a sex symbol (in "My Best Friend's Wedding," it was never clear why either Ms. Roberts or Cameron Diaz wanted him so much), but as Nick Mercer, one of those film characters who know everything and are never flustered or unsure, he is highly appealing. This can't be easy, because he is given ridiculous behavior, like the aggressive parading-around-naked-in-the-bathroom scene (although the $6,000 Kat paid him, from her 401-K, does not include sex), and aphorisms that don't quite deliver. "Look people in the eye," Nick tells Kat. "They'll never know what you're wearing."
Ms. Messing, best known as the increasingly wacky interior designer Grace Adler in NBC's sitcom "Will and Grace," manages to keep her dignity too, sometimes by deliberately losing it. When she wakes up on the plane at the end of the flight to London, she actually looks like someone who has slept all night, fitfully, in an airline seat.
During most of the film, though, she is striking, glamorous and beautifully dressed, like the rest of the cast. Holland Taylor, who has carved out a film and television niche as the quintessential affluent mom of a certain age, is appealingly brittle as Kat's mother. Sarah Parish, as T. J., a British cousin, fills the role of the humorously blunt relative nicely. As Amy, the self-involved blond bride, Amy Adams is suitably unlikable, prone to icky comments like "You're my half sister, but I whole love you." Her groom (Jack Davenport) and Kat's ex-fiancé (Jeremy Sheffield) don't have much to do until the big happiness-threatening secret is revealed near the end.
The scenery is equally good-looking. After the rowdy bachelor and bachelorette parties in London, everyone heads for the glorious English countryside for family-bonding activities, most notably an amateur game of rounders; solemn, plot-advancing talks inside a boathouse beside a poetry-worthy lake; and the actual wedding at the perfect old country church. "The Wedding Date" proves that there is nothing inherently magical about a group of adults frolicking on a lawn with an old pop-music hit in the background. But the various scenes' charms would be far more enjoyable if the movie weren't so in love with its own supposed cuteness.
"The Wedding Date" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has four-letter words, sexual discussions and situations, brief partial nudity and an innocuous attempt at a fistfight.
'The Wedding Date'
Opens today nationwide.
Directed by Clare Kilner; written by Dana Fox, based on the book "Asking for Trouble" by Elizabeth Young; director of photography, Oliver Curtis; edited by Mary Finlay; music by Blake Neely; production designer, Tom Burton; produced by Nathalie Marciano, Michelle Chydzik Sowa, Jessica Bendinger and Paul Brooks; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Debra Messing (Kat Ellis), Dermot Mulroney (Nick Mercer), Amy Adams (Amy), Jack Davenport (Edward Fletcher-Wooten), Sarah Parish (T. J.), Jeremy Sheffield (Jeffrey), Peter Egan (Victor Ellis) and Holland Taylor (Bunny).
(c) 2005 The New York Times Company
Fletcher-Wooten. fomg. *headdesk* Edward Fletcher-Wooten. How... flawless ^.^
(To see a trailer, go to here. There are clips there as well, but none of them mention any Fletcher-Wooten. I'll watch them when I get home, and if he makes a show in any I'll tell y'all.
Inothernews-- Went to the library last night and did borrow Cruel and Unusual after all. Also wrote another several hundred words of Existentialism, but haven't posted them to
rainbows1984 yet. Haven't taken Cruel and Unusual to school yet, though, because it needs brown paper bookcover before I can. It's illicit reading material at that place.Also: I claimed Errol Flynn! Meheheheheh. Purr.
Alsoalso:
ima_pseudonym has written genius. Genius, I say! a PotC/HP crossover. Read it, and bugbugBUG her to write more. Because the universe needs it.