We had a busy weekend - I went out two nights in a row and made it to our friends' St. Patty's Day party Saturday evening!! - so we didn't have a lot of movie time but fit in two DVDs:
- Friday night, after our lovely dinner out, Ken and I watched Amelie, a French movie (with subtitles) I've wanted to see for years. It was nominated for 5 Academy Awards and lauded as The Feel Good Movie of the Year (2001). It's the sweet and funny story of a young woman, Amelie, who is the product of two very strange parents and an isolated childhood. She's living on her own in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris (I got out my photo album of my high school trip to France after the movie!) and is searching to find both herself and love. Partway through the movie, Ken said, "Did the box say this movie was "quirky"?" Yes, both Amelie and the movie are quirky, but they're also full of humor and fun. It was a nice light-hearted change from some of the more serious movies we've seen lately.
- With the kids this weekend, we watched Get Smart, the recent big screen adaptation of the classic TV show. We all enjoyed this funny, action-filled movie starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Dwayne Johnson. The kids have never seen the original Get Smart, but Ken and I enjoyed this remake which stuck closely to the spirit of the original. In fact, Anne Hathaway played a perfect Agent 99, very reminiscent of her predecessor. Jamie said he wants a copy of Get Smart for our own DVD collection - he says it will be perfect for cheering him up on sick days!
I loved Amelie and it's hard for me to watch movies with subtitles. But someone told me I could just enjoy the music and the action and indeed I did!
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning Get Smart. Somehow, I missed getting that into my Netflix queue and I think Steve Carell is very funny. I'll be getting that one for sure.
I've had no luck with movies lately but we do get HBO and so we watched the first installment of Spielberg and Hank's The Pacific. Everything about it was top-notch. Even when I couldn't keep the characters straight, I was completely immersed in the story. I'm going to be learning a lot about the war in the Pacific in the next few weeks!
My kids loved Get Smart, too. I might have to check out Amelie -- I love foreign films.
ReplyDeleteI've started d-ribose, myself, and I think it's helpful. I'm just not sure what the proper dosage is. I think I'm doing too small a dose right now. What do you use, if I might ask?
I love Amelie so much!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a cheer me up when I'm sick film.
I LOVED Get Smart! I do not get most humor in movies now days. I tend to get the British type of humor. Anyhoo, I laughed through this one!
ReplyDeleteI watched, Taken, Surrogates, and Charlotte Grey, this weekend. I really enjoyed Charlotte Grey which takes place during Hitlers reign.
Surrogates was mind blowing. But the underlying message about being ourselves was impressive and a big Ah hah for me.
Toni -
ReplyDeleteYes, Amelie is a visual treat! There's so much to see - it was hard at times to concentrate on both the subtitles and the picture, but I loved it. We don't get HBO, but I've been hearing a lot about The Pacific.
Shelli -
The recommended dose of d-ribose for people with CFS is to start with 3 doses of 5 grams each with food every day, then go down to two doses of 5 g after a couple of weeks. I did OK on 15 g a day for the first 5 days or so, then starting having trouble sleeping at naptime and bedtime, so I quit the dinnertime dose and moved the noon dose to 3 pm, after my nap. That seems to be working well so far. I'll blog about it soon - I'm waiting so I can tell what's actually from the d-ribose and what's from other sources - always hard to tell! But I do think it's helping so far...
Dominique -
All three of those sound interesting, though Taken might be too suspenseful for me. We used to watch thrillers all the time, but now if we do, I have chase dreams all night long! Such is the life of a CFS lightweight...
Sue
I know that feeling... when I was less tired I would sometimes do some small task on Sunday night, just to take away the pressure of feeling like you have to get up on Monday morning and spring into action. That isn't always an option, though.
ReplyDeleteAmelie was a really cute movie! I saw it again a while back. Happy colours and good music plus a lot of charming art objects in the scenes.
We saw a German movie called "Schultze Gets the Blues" about a recently retired German miner/accordion player who discovers the music of the Louisiana river delta on his radio one evening. It's a quiet movie, which makes only very sparing use of music as Schultze lives his ordinary life in a small German town that is overshadowed by a slag heap. The photography is really good. He makes a journey to America and goes in search of Zydeco music, in his own quirky innocent way. It is definitely a quirky movie, but in a low-key, fairly slow paced way.
A good movie for a quiet evening.
I remember Get Smart... it sounds like good fun!
D.
D -
ReplyDeleteI really liked Schultze Gets The Blues! Definitely a very quiet, understated film - sort of the opposite of Amelie! - but very sweet. Of course, we love anything to do with Louisiana!
Sue
We watched Get Smart with Youngest Nephew a few weeks ago - it was a big hit all around. This weekend, I watched a bunch of flops, three movies that left me wondering "Why were these in my queue anyways?" Since my queue is now 300+ strong, that happens more often than you'd think.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment: I'd love the information on CFS and anesthesia, to pass along at the very least. I'm still undecided, but I do want to go into it with as much info as I can. (And no - my appendix was almost 10 years ago; I was just glad that I didn't have to decide then whether or not to have surgery.)
Hope your week runs smoothly!
I loved Amelie - one of my all-time favorites I think. A bit quirky like mu hubby, I must like that sort of thing ;) I love foreign films but don't watch them much anymore b/c of the mental capacity needed to follow the subtitles!
ReplyDeleteWe actually watched two movies this weekend, too - my first chance to report back to you! We watched Flash Of Genius about the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wipers - good story but could have been told a little better, my husband & I both thought it dragged a little but had good potential.
Second movie was The Duchess with Keira Knightly. I really like period pieces & thought it was delicious. My husband fell asleep ...