Silly Little Country

What Would you Pick?

Imagine you worked for a company so great that on the second Friday in December each year it required its employees to watch a blockbuster movie, well some movie. It has become a lovely tradition to spend that morning, after some speech-making from management, to enjoy geek movies.
For years the geek movies were easily identifiable. Each year for a long time there has been a James Bond or Star Trek or, even worse, Lord of the Rings film (I have suffered through three years, and I just utterly loved the Bag End first hour of the first movie, and spent most of the rest of it asking myself "When will this end?").
This year was tricky - the James Bond came out too early, and wow I would have liked to see that - I love Daniel Craig, even if I think he should be Clive Owen.
So we have decided to allow a choice for tomorrow - a blow-em-up flick (the trailer includes several explosions and one chiseled Leonardo de Caprio - I laugh as I recall his youthful genius in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape") - and what looks like a chick flick - I will go see "The Holiday". So for me it is between bathing in images of Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz vs Jennifer Connelly. Just having Winslet in the list made my decision. How would you pick?

UPDATE: I corrected the title of the movie and now owe readers the review. It was pretty much what I expected, though there were unexpected elements in the plot - the lead male characters were a little too sensitive for my taste (or credulity). The performances were uniformly excellent, though it took me a while to warm to Cameron Diaz' neurotic character - somehow once Jude Law appeared on screen she was fine.
The love stories are ok if barely credible (but this the hallmark of a romantic comedy); there is a separate vanity section for the screenwriter, as she has Eli Wallach play a retired screenwriter who educates the Winslet character about what are in fact truly great films (we see 'His Girl Friday', and at least 'The Lady Eve', and Irene Dunne are mentioned (and I am not sure of the Dunne film context, though I would hope 'The Awful Truth' or 'My Favorite Wife').
I don't see movies often in theatres, and it really is nice to have larger-than-life images of such attractive humans as Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet displayed for a couple of hours.
The other enjoyable aspect of the day was the stream of sounds emanating from the person seated at my left as Jude Law flashed his smiles and batted his eyelashes. He clearly has some committed fans.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:41 PM