Pedro Almodóvar is one of my favs. I was introduced to him by a roommate of mine in college. 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' is a great film. I also enjoyed 'Bad Education' and the others Stroup mentioned above.
I want to try and catch 'Volver'. If I miss it, I'll be sure to rent it. :)

I wish Women on the Verge was available on DVD. I LOVE that film.


We watched Accident the other night. If you are a Dirk Bogard/Joseph Losey fan, see this film. The pacing would probably drive the MTV generation insane, but I loved it. Dirk Bogard was so wonderful - major crush going on here. The movie also starred a young Michael York.

Laemmle's did a retrospective month and we caught Women on the Verge this summer. Delightful.

We loved Volver too. One of my favorite movies of the year, along with Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen.

Women on the Verge... is out-of-print in the US, but is available at amazon.co.uk for around $20... or you could just pick it up at HMV in March...

Watched Vagabond (French title: Sans Toit ni Loi), 1985, the other night.

There were some things in it that were interesting but for the most part when people denigrate the stereotypical French art house movie this is what they're talking about.

There is one great line in the movie though:

We've been watching a series of Dirk Bogarde pics, an interesting peak into British Cinema of the early 60's. Tonights feature was the Mind Benders, which had "brain washing" as a plot device. I recall how prevalent that term was growing up and how it seems to have faded from the current vernacular. The film was billed as "sci-fi" on the cover, but it was nothing of the sort - more psychological drama than anything else.

Interesting... Mel's movie went from #1 last weekend to #6 this weekend. Awwww. Poor Mel.
:D

Happy Feet seems to be the movie that won't die. Still doing well.

I expected Charlotte to do better than it did...

But wait - what did you see on the plane?

Gemini, I hope you don't have internet in Hawaii, because I don't really want you to read this till after you get back from your hopefully delightful homecoming Christmas....



Your thing about Mel Gibson completely perplexes me ... in light of your approval of Borat. I understand that Gibson's personal life is abhorent to you, and that you don't like what he might do with the profits from his films.

Borat, on the other hand, just had yet another lawsuit filed against it for again (allegedly) duping people into participating by representing the film as a documentary. Here, bad deeds were done to innocent people in the actual making of the film ... while in Gibson's case, his despicable thoughts (I know of no actual deeds) have nothing to do with his movie, Apocalypto.

But because you enjoyed Borat, you seem to be giving it a pass. I find this stance hypocritical, and I'd like to know why one's ok with you and the other is not.

Don't read too much into that. Apocolypto had a pretty standard 49% weekend-to-weekend drop. 1st to 6th isn't so much a sign of a huge dropoff as quite a few new movies opening this weekend.

Unless the movie completely tanks overseas he is still going to make a pretty penny.