Sibling Rivalry

Fred Claus

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks

Released: November 9, 2007

This is a weird movie that doesn't exactly work. The titular Fred Claus (played by Vince Vaughn) is the older brother of Santa Claus (played by Paul Giamatti). The movie begins in the Middle Ages (according to Wikipedia, but I'll rely on it since we aren't given a certain time period) where young Frederick's mother (played by Kathy Bates) gives birth to a very fat baby whose first words right out of the gate is, "Ho, ho, ho." He is named Nicholas Claus. At first, young Fred is enamored with his baby brother and promises to be the best big brother, but over time he becomes jealous of his perfect brother. Nicholas wants to give all his birthday presents to "the poor orphan down the road" and his mother calls him "my little Saint Nicholas." He likes to be "inventive" and slide down the chimney because "the door was locked" and made himself a red outfit.

The movie explains how it went from olden times to present day by telling us Nicholas fulfilled his mother's prophecy by becoming a saint: "It's a little known rule of saint hood, but when you become a saint, you freeze in time, eternally ageless. The rule apples to the family of the saint and spouses, as well." Oh, that seems convenient. So that means Fred has been around 35 for centuries and centuries. You would think he would have some jokes about all the historical events he's witnessed through all the centuries he's been around, but there are none. It's just a way to explain how Santa's been around all the time and how the movie is set in the present. 

Fred lives in Chicago and Vince Vaughn has a couple scenes with kids where he's doing his Vince Vaughn thing where he's just talking a mile a minute, obviously doing his improv thing. He gets into arguments with these kids about Santa. A little girl tells him Santa brought her a TV for Christmas and in return he tells her that Santa's not looking out for her and she should be outside "playing kick-the-can." A young boy called Slam (his real name is Sam) often drops by to visit him in his apartment. He tells Fred that he asked Santa for a puppy, but he doesn't know "how [Santa] will know where to bring [him] gifts this year, because [he doesn't] know where [he'll] be on Christmas morning." Fred asks him if he's ever really though about Santa Claus and tells him how Santa likes the spotlight and craves the attention and adds, "Don't be a cheerleader for Santa...don't drink the Kool-Aid, you're better than that." I did laugh when Slam replies, "I like Kool-Aid."

Apparently, Slam is living alone because his father died and CPS comes to collect him. I'm not sure if Fred knew about this (he did seem surprised when he hears this news). We will check in on Slam a bit later. 

Fred has been dating a beautiful British woman named Wanda (played by Rachel Weisz) for the past three years and he has forgotten that it's her birthday tomorrow. He tells her he didn't forget, that he has a special surprise planned for her. She's a little skeptical because the last time he told her he had a surprise for her, he told her to brush up on her French and she thought he was taking her to Paris, which she's always wanted to visit but instead he took her gambling on a riverboat in Indiana. They get coffee and she asks him to tell her what the surprise is and he says it won't be a surprise if he tells her. It's so obvious he forgot and doesn't have anything planned. Outside, he sees a sign behind her advertising for a new restaurant called Bonsai Palace and tells her he's taking her to this great new place and names the restaurant. It's funny when she says that sounds familiar (probably because she's seen the huge billboard for it!). I'm surprised we didn't see her seeing it when they left the coffee shop, but they cut from the scene while they're still there. She obviously had to see it when they eventually left!  

Fred is involved in some kind of project involving casinos and real estate. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but he needs $50,000 by the 22nd, which is about a month away. It's not really important what the project is (because, spoiler alert, it will never happen); the main takeaway is that he needs the money. He also needs an extra five grand for bail money because he's been arrested for impersonating a Salvation Army Santa and gets into a huge fight with all these Santas.

Fred calls Nick and at first, it seems like a courtesy call, then he tells his brother if he wanted to send him a gift, he could "send $5,000 to the police station on Michigan Avenue in my name." Nick's wife, Annette (played by Miranda Richardson), doesn't want him to do it, but he tells Fred he'll send it to him. Fred tells his brother he's going to give him a gift in return: "I'm gonna give you $10,000 for Christmas in cash." Of course this confuses Nick because how can Fred give him ten grand when he needs five grand? He points this out and Fred just starts babbling, then adds, "Go ahead and send me $50,000 on top of the five." What the hell? How did we go from five to fifty thousand? It sounds like Fred's done a few scams in his (very long!) lifetime! Nick is firm and tells his brother he'll pay the five thousand for his bail, but if he wants the rest of the money, "then you're just gonna have to come up here" where he can earn the money. Fred isn't so sure, but Nick reminds him he's never come to visit. Really? In ALLLLLLLLLLLL that time, in all those centuries, not once he's ever been curious to check out the North Pole and Santa's Village and see how it all works? 

Fred asks him what he would be doing and Nick replies, "Shave reindeer, sprinkle the doodads on the cookies, put the stars where the little guys can't reach." I'm sorry, but this sounds like stuff that won't make him fifty grand! Fred agrees, but tells him he needs to leave by the 22nd and Nick is fine with that. 

While he was in jail waiting for the bail money, Wanda was waiting for him at the restaurant and breaks up with him because he never showed. Or maybe she didn't break up with him, but just said she needed a break. I'm not really sure because (spoiler alert:) they will get back together. 

Santa's head elf, Willy, has come to pick up Fred in the "company car", which, of course, is the sleigh powered by eight reindeer. When
they land in Santa's Village, the Northern Lights are very prominent and there are many elves running around, wearing greed outfits with red and white striped stockings. Fred meets Charlene (played by Elizabeth Banks) who is also known as "Santa's little helper" and she's the one who keeps Santa on schedule. Her nickname is ironic because she's not an elf and a fully grown person. I would love to know her backstory. She's not an elf, so how did she end up there? Is this a Buddy the Elf situation?  There's a weird storyline where Willy has a crush on her, but she never remembers her name and Fred teaches him how to dance and he ends up wooing her and they're a couple by the end of the movie. It's a very unnecessary plot line and Charlene is really not needed in this movie. There's a million elves that live and work in the North Pole; one of them can't do her job? And at least the title "Santa's little helper" would make sense if it was attached to an actual elf! 

Fred is sharing a room with Willy, no, I take that back. He's sharing a bunk bed with Willy. He's on the top bunk and Willy asks him if he would be more comfortable on the bottom bunk, but Fed tells him it wouldn't make much difference. We see his legs hanging from the end of the bed. I can't imagine how uncomfortable that would be! 

The next morning, Willy gives Fred "a full orientation of the gift giving process" (which was ordered by Santa). They enter the work shop which is full of elves working on and making. toys. Willy explains that kids write to Santa to tell them what they want, then the letter are delivered to the North Pole Post Office, "The busiest in the whole world" (and kids can just write "Santa Claus, North Pole" and they're good to go!). The letters are sent to the toy factory where "each and every toy that a child asks for is handmade by the elves...once built, the toys make their way to packaging...the toys are stored until Christmas Eve when Santa delivers them." I loved Fred's dry reply: "Good to know, thank you, Willy."

Nick shows Fred the "Naughty / Nice Department" which "is the key to the whole process, the nerve center of the entire operation." There's a huge crystal snow globe where you can say the name of anybody in the world and their image will appear at that moment. 

There's a "Ten Most Naughty List" with the names of the kids and what they did. I paused to read some of the reasons for these kids being on the top of the Naughty List:

-bit his dentist and his father

-made her teacher cry every day

-gave mother a nervous breakdown

-got teacher arrested at trip to White House 

-toilet papered house of his vice principal

-stole piggy bank from his best friend

-wore same underwear for 17 days

-poisoned fourth grade class hamster 

-locked little brother in closet 

-changed report card grades

I feel like a couple of these should be higher than the kid who bit his father and dentist, who, at this moment, is the most naughty kid in the world. I don't know, maybe the boy who locked his brother in a closet or the girl who (intentionally?) poisoned her class hamster or the girl who got her teacher arrested? What the hell would she be doing to cause her teacher to get arrested? Biting your dentist seems par for the course for a little kid...a dentist sticks their fingers in your mouth, it seems something a little kid would do. 

Nick tells Fred that sometimes kids are both naughty and nice (duh, I feel like that's the majority of kids) and they do "an up-to-date determination." He demonstrate how the snow globe works by saying a name of a random kid and his location. We see a kid in his sister's room just smashing everything with a plastic bat. I think we all know what list he's currently on! 

Fred's job is to review files of kids and either stamp them as "naughty" or "nice." These files also include the letter they sent to Santa. An elf brings him a tall pile of files and he asks if that's it and the elf replies, "Yeah, right. That's just Bethesda, Maryland." As you can imagine, there will be piles upon piles of files all around the room. 

Nick and Annette (remember, that's Santa and Mrs. Claus) are visited by an "efficiency expert" named Clyde Northcutt (played by Kevin Spacey), who has a backstory of hating Christmas and is trying to ruin it for everyone else. He shows the Clauses (Claus's?) a graph of how "the average size of a child's wish list has grown substantially in the last 200 years." The x-axis shows years and the y-axis shows the number of gifts kids ask for. By "present day" 2007, it's up to 25 gifts! Clyde explains, "In the 1800s, children rarely asked for more than one item and usually these items were of an intangible nature - something like a family member's health or the end of war or famine....today, the average child asks for 15 gifts per letter." He tells Nick that his toy line operation is getting "further behind each year...it's simply not good enough." Nick reminds him he doesn't give every child every toy they want as "part of Christmas is being grateful for the things that we can have." Clyde threatens that he might have to shut him down and a new operation will be "based at the South Pole." He tells Santa that he has three strikes. If he can make it through Christmas without three strikes, he'll keep his job. If he gets three strikes, "the entire operation will shut down permanently."  Well, guess what Strike One is? Oh, wait, you wouldn't know because I haven't set the scene up yet.

So while the Clauses were visiting with Mr. Northcutt, Fred was getting tired of hearing "Here Comes Santa Claus" which is the only song they play while the elves are working. Even though they play different variations of it, I would also get tired of the same song being played over and over again. (And they can't play other Santa Claus themed songs like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" or "Up on the Rooftop"?) Fred tells DJ Donny (yes, there is a DJ elf whose only job is to play the same song) that he needs to stop playing the same song because it "becomes like mental torture." Donny refuses to change the song, saying it's catchy. Fred puts him in "the naughty cabinet" and plays a different song. He plays "Rubberneckin'" by Elvis Presley, a song I wasn't familiar with, so I don't know if it's a deep cut in Elvis's discography. 

At first, the elves don't like the song and they're covering their ears, but then they soon find themselves getting into the groove and soon start dancing and cheering on Fred when he starts dancing, front and center. DJ Donny gets out of the cabinet looking mad, but even then he starts to get into the music. 

Clyde and the Clauses are on their way to the workshop as Santa is telling Northcutt the elves are hardworking and dedicated. Now do you see where this is going? When they enter the building, all the elves are cheering on a dancing Fred while all the toys and gifts are getting ruined because nobody is there to work on the assembly lines. It was pretty funny when Fred (a rather tall man) jumps into the sea of elves and crowd surfs. 

Clyde gives Santa his first mark and later we will see him shredding many of the files and letters to Santa the children wrote in a way to frame Fred and for this he gives Santa his second mark.

The next day, Fred tells his brother he didn't do anything with the files. Nick tells him how important they are because without them, they "have no idea what the children want, or whether they've been marked "naughty" or "nice" and how it was Fred's responsibility to keep track of them." 

When Clyde gives Santa his second strike, he feigns concern about Fred and asks Nick if he's "asked for large sums of money recently" or if he's "gotten into trouble with the law?" Nick confirms this and Clyde says Fred is crying out for help and that someone needs to step in and help him. This results in an intervention with the family. Even Wanda is there. At first I was wondering if she knew about Santa being Fred's brother, but my question was quickly answered when he tells her, "My brother is Santa Claus" and she replies, "Yeah, I can see that. The whole thing's been a little bit unusual." For someone who found out Santa Claus is real (and is the brother of her boyfriend) and had to travel to the North Pole (how did she even get there? Did an elf pick her up in the sleigh?), she seems pretty chill about the whole thing. The only slightly funny thing about this scene was Annette saying that her husband was "dangerously overweight" and Nick's mother saying there was nothing wrong with him. 

Fred reminds them that tomorrow is his last day on the job and then he'll go home and be out of their lives forever.

A new kid has taken over "the number one Most Naughty spot" and wouldn't you know it, it's Slam. Fred uses the snow globe to check in on him and we see him in the orphanage with other young boys. One kid asks another kid what he wants for Christmas and he replies, "A family" and the other kid says he's asking for one too. This makes Slam get up from his bed and tell them Santa's not brining them families and that "Santa Claus is a clown. He's a fame junkie." He's basically repeating everything that Fred told him earlier. He proceeds to get into a shoving match with the other boys. One of them tells him he's never getting adopted because he's mean. While not great behavior from Slam, does he really warrant the #1 spot for the Most Naughty Kid? I think Santa is a little incensed that this kid is telling other kids unflattering things about him and that's why he made the #1 spot. 

Fred looks at Slam's letter to Santa (luckily it wasn't one of the ones that got shredded, but really, how many files could get shredded out of the millions and millions of children who have files?) and it's a really cute one asking Santa for a puppy. Fred stamps his file as "nice", then starts stamping all the other letters as nice as well. 

Nick finds out about this and demands to know why Fred marked every nice child as "nice and says they cannot make enough presents for all the kids with three days left and deliver them. This results in him getting his third strike and Northcutt hands him a "notification of termination" card as he says, "You're fired." 

Apparently, Fred was paid fifty grand for stamping a bunch of papers (get me a job in the North Pole!) and he's back in Chicago. He finds a present from his brother and unwraps it to reveal a bird house like he used to make when he was a child. Nick apologizes for cutting down his tree where he hung the birdhouse, which smashed it. Of course, all of this happened centuries ago, but I guess it's the thought that counts.

Fred goes to a support group called Siblings Anonymous which felt like it could be a skit on SNL. In fact, this would make more sense to have it condensed to an eight minute skit rather than trying to make it into a two hour movie. It's basically a group of people (I think they were all men) who have a sibling (they all seemed to be brothers) who is very famous. There's Frank Stallone, Bill Clinton's brother, and one of the Baldwins...I think Stephen. I did laugh when Fred introduces himself: "I"m Fred Claus. I'm Santa Claus's brother" and everyone is just looking incredulously at him. This scene is here for Fred to realize he needs to get back to the North Pole and help his brother. He spends all his money he earned to get back. We see him take a plane, a boat breaking through the ice, being pulled on a sled by huskies, then he snow shoes the rest of the way. Was he not allowed to have Willy pick him up in the sleigh? Did he not tell anyone he was coming because he wanted it to be a surprise? It must have taken him a week just to get there that way when riding in Santa's sleigh probably only takes an hour, if that. (Just speculating.)  

Okay, I guess it didn't take him a week to get there because he returned to Chicago on the 22nd and he's back in the North Pole by the 24th. That's gotta give you some jet lag whiplash! He has all the elves gathered in the workshop and tells them they "gotta make as many presents as they can in ten hours." Ten hours? WTF? He asks what would be the easiest toys to make and they decide on baseball hats for boys and hula hoop for girls. Hmm...are baseball hats considered "a toy"? I would say no. Charlene tells him it's possible to do, but it's not what the kids asked for and he says what's most important is that all the kids get a toy and that someone is thinking about them. 

Nick is in bed because he's thrown his back out and can't drive the sleigh (great timing, Santa!). Fred tells Willy he can deliver the presents, but the elf says he can't because the rule is that "only a Claus can deliver the presents." I'll give you three guesses who delivers the presents.

Fred and Nick have a heart to heart where Fred tells his brothers there are no naughty kids, just that "some are scared and some of them don't feel listened to and some of them had some pretty rough breaks." He convinces his brother that every kid deserves a present on Christmas which is a nice sentiment. 

Northcutt sees the sleigh and tries to stop them from going, but they ignore his orders. Once they begin their descent, Willy tells Fred (wearing the Santa suit, of course) they only have ten hours to deliver and they need to be done "by 5.39 a.m. North Pole time", which is sunrise. That doesn't seen like enough time to me. 

Willy gives Fred Claus a few pointers and advice like it won't be pleasant going down the chimneys and to eat the cookies because "it hurts people's feelings if you don't eat the cookies." I can confirm this is true. I feel like there was one Christmas where the cookies were still on the plate when I woke up in the morning  and I'm pretty sure my feelings were hurt! Fred delivers all the presents in a Christmas montage sent to "Christmas Wrapping" (underrated Christmas song if you ask me). 

When they get to Chicago, he stops to chat with Slam. He's sitting so he's not facing Slam and the floppy part of his hat is covering his face so Slam can't see him. Although you would think Slam would be able to recognize Fred's voice. It's a nice moment when Slam says, "Santa, you found me" and "Santa" replies, "Yeah, I found you. I find all the good kids." He takes a puppy out of his bag (hmm, if I were one of the kids who got a baseball hat or hula hoop I'd be a little irritated that this kid gets a puppy!). "Santa" tells Slam he got some advice a little while ago and that he shouldn't heed it and gives him new advice: "The world is what you make it...I want you to believe in yourself, Slam, cause you got a lot to believe in."

Slam will have a happy ending and by the next Christmas he will be spending it with a family who adopted him. 

We also find out Clyde has a backstory where he made the Most Naught List in 1969 because he would get into fights with kids who called him "four eyed Clyde" (because he wears glasses, you see) and he was mad at Santa because he had asked for a Superman cape the year before that he never received. I feel like the whole Christmas-hating Clyde was unnecessary. Fine, he can still be the efficientcy expert and he can still threaten to shut down operations, but have Fred be the cause of Santa getting all three strikes (he already was the reason he got two strikes!) and then Fred makes it up by delivering the presents and saving Christmas. 

There's a very sentimental scene at the end where all the elves and Mr. and Mrs. Claus are watching the kids open their presents the next morning on the snow globe. It's set to a melancholy "Silent Night" sung by Sinead O'Connor. It's a sweet scene, but the tone doesn't seem to match the movie. Fred also joins to watch and Nick tells him, "You are the best big brother anybody could ever ask for." 

Fred surprises Wanda with the trip to Paris she's always wanted and they take Santa's sleigh around the Eiffel Tower. Everyone is happy. Whoopty doo.

The sad thing is, I gotta couple more Christmas movies to review and this might be the best one of the bunch which is saying a lot! 

American Gangster

American Gangster

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ruby Dee, Cuba Gooding Jr., John Hawkes, Carla Gugino, Idris Elba

Released: November 2, 2007

Viewed in theaters: November 7, 2007

Oscar nomination:

Best Supporting Actress - Ruby Dee (lost to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton)

Best Achievement in Art Direction (lost to Sweeney Todd)

So after being nominated for Oscars in the same category (Best Actor) in two years (almost consecutive years; 1999 and 2001) and one being an extremely CLOSE race (I'm guessing!), Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe star in a movie together in 2007, this one. But wait! There's a couple of caveats! (That might not be the right word...) First of all, this was NOT their first movie together. No, film nerds (or Denzel and Crowe fans) know that they starred in the 1995 (and truly terrible) film Virtuosity. I caught the last five minutes of it on TV once and even watching that, I could tell it was a terrible movie. This was before anyone knew who Russell Crowe was in the States. I'm not sure how much screen time they share in that movie, but I'm guessing it's more than the screen time they share in American Gangster! That's my second caveat. Are they really in the movie together if all of their scenes (except one at the end) are separate? You have one story with Denzel's character and one story with Crowe's character. It's kind of like when Pacino and De Niro were in Heat together and only had one scene together in the middle. (Well, I guess technically they had a scene together at the end, but there was't much conversing as they were trying to run away from/kill each other!) I would say the ratio for screen time is 60/40 in favor of Denzel, which makes sense, as the story is really about his character. He plays Frank Lucas, a real-life man who smuggled heroin from Southeast Asia into New York and made a butt load of money. He was the bodyguard, driver, and collector for Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson for fifteen years and after he died in the late '60s, Frank took over. He gets the idea for smuggling drugs when he's watching a news report about American troops becoming addicted to opium and heroin, which are "easily available and relatively cheap", that they get from Bangkok and Saigon. He learns that a "high purity of heroin is leading to an epidemic of heroin addiction among U.S. soldiers" and his eyes become dollar signs. He calls his cousin's husband who is in Bangkok and visits him there. He wants to take 100 kilos of heroin in the U.S. and wants to smuggle it in via helicopters. It's 100% pure heroin and Frank calls it Blue Magic (see, when I think of a drug with "blue" in the name, I think of meth! But maybe any drug that is of high quality appears blue? I really don't know anything about drugs or selling them!). Needless to say, business starts booming for Frank and he becomes even more powerful than he was before. One of the most well-known scenes in the movie is when he flat-out shoots Idris Elba in the head in broad daylight. Well, it was a dealer played by Idris Elba who owed Frank money, and Frank was sending a message to others when they don't give Frank what they owe.

Frank makes so much bank he is able to buy his mother (Ruby Dee) a mansion where they celebrate many holidays. Everything I learned about money laundering, I learned from Saul Goodman and Frank Lucas does not do a good job of laundering his money if he's flaunting it like this! He could probably take his own advice, which is what he tells his brother, Huey (Chiwetel Ejiofor) when he wears a super gaudy suit at a club: "The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room." There's a very Godfather Part II moment when he kisses him on the mouth and says, "If you weren't my brother, I'd kill you, you know that?" Oh, and if you happen to get blood all over his $25,000 alpaca rug, make sure you "blot that sh*t, don't rub it!"

At one of his clubs, he meets and falls in love with Eva, a young (much younger than him!) woman from Puerto Rico who won a beauty contest. When she meets Frank's mother, she calls Eva "an angel come down from heaven". Now that's a great mother-in-law to have. (Though of course they meet before she marries Frank.)

On the day of his wedding, right after the ceremony, corrupt cop Trupo (Josh Brolin) confronts Frank and his new bride to "congratulate" him. He tells them he wants "his share" of ten grand at the first of each month and threatens him that he's "special" because he's with the Special Investigation Unit. As you may have guessed, this does not make Frank happy and he responds by leaving him a live turkey at his front door on Thanksgiving, then blowing up his prized car.

In a later scene of the same day, Trupo pulls over Frank and Huey, who tells Frank they have drugs in the trunk. Not surprisingly, Trupo checks the trunks and takes the drugs. The whole interaction between them is great. He asks Frank, "What are we going to do about this?' To which Frank replies, "We don't do s**t about it. We close it up, throw it back in the trunk, everybody goes home, have some pumpkin pie, warm apple cider." Trupo tells him, "I got a better idea. Or would you rather me throw you and your brother in the f***ing  river?" Of course Frank gets the last word in when he says, "Or would you rather your house blows up next time?" Ooh, snap. Since Huey is the one who stupidly left the drugs in the trunk and since they lost a lot of money when Trupo took them, Frank smashes Huey's head against the car window after they both get back inside and breaks the window. Frank may not kill his brother, but he will beat the crap out of him. He has quite the violent streak and if I were his wife, I would be a little scared. 

Speaking of his wife, the most Denzeliest line is when he exclaims, "They tried to kill my wife!" to mafia boss, Dominic Catanno, who had guaranteed him "peace of mind", but he replies, "I don't feel so peaceful" after he and his wife go out one night to get some takeout and when she stays in the car when he goes to get it, he sees someone driving by really fast and realizes what they're going to do and is able to run to his car and grab Eva before she can get shot. He doesn't know who tried to kill her. Was it the mob or was it fellow mobster Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding Jr.)?  Understandably, his wife wants to leave (preferably the country), but Frank refuses. 

Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, the detective who is on the case to track down where the drugs are coming from. His story doesn't really become interesting until he figures out Frank Lucas is behind all of this. For instance, there's an ongoing story line where he and his wife (Carla Gugino) are going through a divorce, and, eh, I don't care. Every time he spoke, I could still hear a trace of his Australian accent, but when he was yelling his New York accent was quite good.

When we first meet him, he is a cop, but he's taking night classes because he wants to be a prosecutor even though he has a fear of public speaking. He and his parter find a million dollars in a trunk of an abandoned car which they got a tip about from a bookie. His partner doesn't want to turn the money in because they'll be pariahs and that, "Cops kill cops they can't trust." However, Richie does the right thing and turns in the money and is called a "f***ing Boy Scout (which is hilarious since it's Russell Crowe) and this becomes an ongoing storyline for him, how people can't believe he turned in the money. I have to wonder, would it be any better if he and his partner had kept the money?

When he is assigned to head the investigation of where the new drug is coming from, he meets his ragtag team which includes John Hawkes, who always seems to be chain-smoking (I think there's one scene where he isn't smoking!), and RZA from Wu-Tang Clan. He tells them their mandate is to make major arrests; they are looking for the suppliers and distributors, not just random "street guys." They discover the new drug called Blue Magic is twice the potency as the  regular stuff for only ten bucks on every street corner. Richie muses, "Who can afford to sell s**t twice as good for half as much?" Be patient, Richie. You'll meet this man soon. As Frank himself will say, he sells a product that's "better than the competition at a price that's lower than the competition."

Richie decides that the Narcotics Squad needs to start from scratch because they aren't getting anywhere. He "borrows" $20,000 from his boss where he pays someone at a Newark car wash to buy Blue Magic and he tells them it will be there tomorrow. When he and John Hawkes see the guy leave with the money, they follow him to see where he will take them. He's headed towards the city and John Hawkes isn't sure if they should follow him because the city is not in their jurisdiction, but Richie tells him to follow him because he wants to stay with the money that he's responsible for. Richie sees the guy enter some kind of fast food joint and just waits outside while he watches a group of men led by our corrupt cop, Trupo, take the bag with the money. He follows the men and stops them to tell them the money is registered and he needs it back. Trupo gives it back and says he can have the money "this time" and threatens him to never come into the city unannounced again.

Both Frank and Richie are at the Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier fight on March 8, 1971 at Madison Square Garden. It was called the Fight of the Century so Richie figures anybody who's Anybody will be there. He notices Frank shaking Joe Frazier's hand and wearing a fur coat and sitting even closer than Dominic Cattano, the mafia boss, and takes picture of him, knowing that he's someone important. His team gets the plates of the limo he rode in. Frank is not only wearing a fur coat (a gift from his wife), but he's always wearing a fur cap that he doesn't take off. His wife was also wearing a fur coat, but at least she takes it off. Not only is this coat just the ugliest thing and makes him look ridiculous and stick out (maybe he should take his own advice that he told his brother!), but I don't know how he can stand being in a crowded arena with that thing on! Gah! The flashy coat is how Trupo found out about Frank and started exhorting him, so he angrily throws it into the fire with his wife watching him right there. I mean, honestly, I hope he would have thrown that hideous thing in the fire regardless, but it was a little rude to do it in front of the person who gave it to him!

Richie's group gathers intel about Frank. They learn about his connection to Bumpy Johnson and that he has his brothers and cousins working for him. They check out his brothers at their jobs which are spread out across Jersey and the five boroughs - one works at a dry cleaners, one makes custom furniture, one works at a hardware store, and one works at body shop (Frank has a lot of brothers!). All of those businesses are distribution and collection points for Frank's drugs and money. They track Frank's moves and note that he gets up at five every morning, has breakfast at a diner in Harlem by himself, takes a meeting with the accountant of his lawyer, usually stays home in the evenings, and if he does go out, it's to one of his two clubs or to a handful of restaurants with his wife. He takes his mother to church every Sunday. He is never seen hanging out with any organized crime guys. As Richie notes, "Everything about Frank's life seems unpretentious, orderly, and legitimate." He doesn't think they're going to get informants inside the family.

They are able to obtain one of Frank's cousins, Jimmy, when they see him attempt to kill his girlfriend when they're having a fight outside their home and he shoots her, but doesn't kill her. They bring him in and tell him they have him for attempted murder which could be fifteen years in jail unless he helps them bring down Frank. They tell him he can avoid that if he straps a tape recorder to his body under his shirt (and remember, this is the early '70s, so this is a bulky piece of equipment...I'm surprise nobody even noticed!). He ends up recording a conversation when he's nearby Huey who's at a payphone, calling Frank, who is in Bangkok at the time to set up more drug shipments. The only thing the Narcotics team hear Frank say is, "Newark, short term, parking lot three" and a plate number. They know whatever it is, it's where the drugs will be coming in. 

While all that is going on, Trupo and his men barge into the mansion where Frank's wife and mother are and while they watch helplessly, tear apart the house to look for his secret stash of money. Not only does he find and take the money, but he shoots Frank's German Shepard since the money was buried under the dog house and the dog (who was on a leash) was guarding it. 

So as I was watching this, I really didn't understand why Ruby Dee was nominated for an Oscar other than it was a career nomination, but there is a scene between her and Denzel when Frank comes home and finds out what has happened and is ready to go get revenge, and this is when I realized it was this scene that got her the nomination. She tells Frank to not kill any cops and that his brothers look up to him and that "Even they know you don't shoot cops." She tells him, "I never asked you where all this came from because I didn't want to hear you lie." She then proceeds to slap Frank (the only person in the world who could get away with slapping Frank Lucas across the face is his own mother!) and yells, "Don't lie to me!" She tells him that his wife will leave, and that "I will leave you." This is really the moment where she gets to shine. 

So Frank has a nephew named Steve (played by T.I.) who has a great arm for baseball and Frank knows the Yankees' manager or coach (of course he does) and sets up a meeting for Steve to meet with him, but Steve skips it and tells his uncle he would rather do what Frank does. Really, Steve? You'd rather be a drug dealer than a world-class athlete? I mean, sadly, he probably does get paid better as the drug dealer. Unfortunately, it also cuts his life short. You could say he did not live his life. 

With the information they have, Richie and the Narcotics Squad is able to find the apartment complex where the drugs are being made and there's a lot of shooting and running and chasing. Definitely the most action-packed and tense scene of the film. Richie chases and apprehends Huey. While this is going on, Frank was at church, so when he comes out with his mother, Richie and the others are waiting for him. More than two hours into the movie, this is the first scene we get with Denzel and Crowe.

There must have been some kind of time jump in the movie because one minute Richie Roberts is the detective who captured Frank Lucas and the next minute he's the prosecutor in Frank's case. It feels like there's a conflict of interest there, but I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know? Literally, everything I know about law I learned from The Practice or Legally Blonde and I'm dead serious. Oh, and maybe that one season of Law & Order (thud, thud) I watched.

This is when we get the first scene (and only) of dialogue between our two main actors. Frank tries to bribe Richie, but it doesn't work on him. In the end, they come to an agreement with Frank giving the names of the cops that took the bribes and there are a lot of names. As more and more cops are being arrested, Trupo shoots himself in the head.

At the end of the movie Richie asks Frank if he wants a drink for his "good work" to celebrate and Frank asks him, "You got any holy water?" and they both laugh like they're best friends now. Yeah, that was a little weird. The tone just seemed off for them to be buddies. We get some information about their characters written in text on the screen such as Frank Lucas was convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and sentenced to 70 years, but for his cooperation his sentence was reduced to fifteen years and he was released in 1991. Now that is a good deal; he shaved 55 years off his sentence! Frank and Richie's collaboration led to the convictions of 3/4 of New York City's DEA and Richie quit being a prosecutor to become a defense attorney and his first client was Lucas. So first he was this guy's prosecutor, and now he's his defense lawyer? There's gotta be a conflict of interest with that! 

Cooking Class

No Reservations

Director: Scott Hicks

Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson

Released: July 27, 2007

Viewed in theaters: August 4, 2007

I haven't seen this movie since the theaters, so the only thing I really remembered was the rivalry between chefs Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Nick (Aaron Eckhart), although the rivalry seemed to be one-sided, and that they fall in love. (But even if I had never seen the movie, I could tell you that was going to happen). I had completely forgotten that Abigail Breslin was in this and plays Kate's niece, Zoe, who she takes in after Zoe's mom, Kate's sister, unexpectedly dies in a car accident. This is the second movie Abigail Breslin has been in where she plays a young kid who loses her parents in a car accident (her dad is out of the picture in this movie) and has to be raised by her aunt. She was also in Raising Helen where that happens and she and her two other siblings have to be raised by Kate Hudson. At least in this movie, she's an only child and CZJ is older and more mature and makes a steady income as a chef. (Although didn't Kate Hudson have some fabulous job working at a fashion magazine in NYC...God, that movie was so f**king stupid!) 

When we first meet Kate, she's been seeing a therapist. She tells him her boss makes her see him and hasn't the "faintest idea why" she needs to see a therapist, but it's soon clear to the viewer why she may need to see one. She is the head chef at a trendy Manhattan restaurant called Bleeker 22. Her job is her life and she takes it seriously.  She is very focused on her job and wants everything to be perfect, so she usually ends up doing everything herself, coordinating all the dishes so they're perfect. I have to say, watching this made me super hungry! There are some delicious looking dishes in this, especially that pasta dish that Nick makes for Zoe. The desserts look mouth-watering too, although they also look much too gorgeous to ruin! If I had to choose my favorite movie that revolves around food, it would be Chef. 

Kate hates leaving the kitchen, even to talk to customers who love her food and want to compliment her, but her boss, the owner of the restaurant, Paula (Patricia Clarkson) makes her go out to the dining room to talk to her admirers. However, she does not take well to any criticism and we see an example of this when a customer tells her that his foie gras isn't cooked properly. This is a dish that Kate has cooked probably well over a hundred times in her life and she knows it's properly cooked. She even tells him exactly how she cooked it. The guy tells her he's going to go somewhere else and she insults his intelligence by telling him there's a hot dog stand down the street. Her boss, who witnessed the whole thing, tells her that if she wasn't one of the best chefs in the city, she would have fired her a long time ago because apparently this wasn't the first time Kate had gotten into an argument with a customer. Paula tells her she needs to remember that "the customer is always right." Whoever came up with that motto needs to be bitch-slapped, because, you know what? The customer is NOT always right. Sometimes the customer needs a giant dose of reality like this guy did.

Kate is expecting her sister and her niece, Zoe, to arrive for a visit, but on the way, they get into a car accident and Kate's sister dies. Kate goes to visit Zoe in the hospital and tells her that her mother is dead, although Zoe already knew that. Kate goes back to work the next day, surprising everyone because they thought she was going to take a few days off. When Paula catches Kate crying in the cooler, she orders Kate to take a week off. It does make sense that Kate would want to go back to work after a tragic event because work is her life and it's something she can focus on and not think about her sister's death. I would imagine if you took a week off after someone close to you died, it's all you would think about and you would almost want something to distract you. However, Kate doesn't have much time to be distracted by her sister's death because she's now the sole guardian of Zoe (something she knew about since Zoe was born as we see in a letter she reads from her sister..unlike Kate Hudson in Raising Helen who had no idea she would be the guardian of her sister's kids). Although, I feel like if your dead sister's daughter was living with you and you were now raising her, then all you would think about was your dead sister. Everyday when you woke up and fed your niece breakfast, you would think, Oh, yeah, my niece lives with me because my sister is dead. Or when you take your niece to her first day of school, you would think, I have to take my niece to school because my sister is dead. Geeze, this got really depressing. Not to mention that Kate is reminded of her sister every time Zoe brings out a photo book of her and her mom.

I have no idea where Zoe and her mom were from; I'm guessing upstate. Or maybe New Jersey or Connecticut. It was in driving distance of Manhattan, at least. Zoe has to start at a new school and has to wake up Kate so they're not late. The school starts at, get this, nine o'clock. NINE O'CLOCK!!! Is this a real thing? Do schools actually start at 9:00 in Manhattan and if so why couldn't I have grown up in Manhattan and gone to a school that starts at nine, rather than eight? Surprisingly, even though their school doesn't even start super early (and anyone who says that nine am is early needs to STFU right now!) they are still late because Kate sleeps in. (I can't really blame her because most morning she wakes up super early to go to a fish market). Despite that, they probably would have made it on time, but Zoe insists she can't leave without her scarf, even though Kate tells her she can borrow one of hers and they'll look for it later. Zoe needs to have her scarf, not just any scarf, but a certain one. So while Kate is going through her boxes, Zoe is just sitting there, watching her. This kid is, what? Eight, nine, ten years old? She is old enough to help her aunt look for the damn scarf!

When Kate goes to the restaurant during her required week off to check on things, she discovers that Paula has hired a new chef, Nick, who is trained in Italian cooking. He is very different from the no-nonsense Kate who keeps order in her kitchen. He's joking around and singing Italian opera music, telling the other cooks to join in with him and everyone is smiling and having a good time. This infuriates Kate because she thinks Nick is trying to steal her place. Like I mentioned earlier, this rivalry is one-sided because Nick has no intention of doing that and just wants to work with a great chef like Kate. He even tells her that he'll leave unless she tells him to stay. Paula pleads with her to get along with Nick and Kate grudgingly tells Nick that he can stay.

Even though (probably moments before she died) Kate's sister told her that Zoe "eats anything, she's a vacuum cleaner", Kate finds that not to be true. Zoe doesn't seem to have much of an appetite. It probably doesn't help that she just recently lost her mother at such a young age, but it also probably doesn't help that Kate would do horribly if she were on Top Chef and the challenge was to feed a group of school children. She makes Zoe a fish dinner where the entire fish still intact, head and all. I'm not sure I would want to eat something that was staring back at me. Even though I like fish, that dish didn't look appealing to me, so I can't blame Zoe asking to be excused.

Kate brings Zoe to work with her where she just hangs around, out of the way, while the other chefs work. This is when Nick makes the aforementioned pasta dish which she gobbles up. Zoe is often brought to the restaurant where she ends up helping with peeling vegetables or whatnot. At one point, when Kate is away from the station, Zoe takes a whiff of one of the two truffles laying on the cutting board and throws them both away. Luckily, the garbage is only full of vegetable peels, so Kate is able to fish them out and use them since there weren't any used Kleenex or anything really disgusting in there. I've never had truffles in my life (it's possible I've had truffle oil, but I know it's nowhere near the same thing!), but I know they're super expensive. When Kate is dealing with the truffle seller (who is obviously selling them illegally because during the scene, another cook, who is pregnant, starts to go into labor and when Kate tells him to dial 911, he says, "No police!") he tells her the white truffles are $2200 a pound!

When Zoe is working in the kitchen, all I can think of is, there's got to be some child labor law that wouldn't allow that. Sure enough, in a later scene, Zoe's principal asks to speak to Kate and tells her that Zoe often falls asleep in class and has told her friends she's working late hours at the restaurant. The principal tells Kate that she's going to have to stop this, otherwise she's going to have to call Child Protective Services. Kate promises it won't happen again, but when she tells Zoe, Zoe gets angry and says she likes working in the kitchen, but we learn she's really upset because she misses her mother.

Zoe tries to play matchmaker and suggests that Kate invite Nick over for dinner on Sunday as neither of them work that day since the restaurant is closed. He and Zoe make pizza, telling Kate that they don't need her help and they'll let her know when dinner is served. Now I don't know about y'all, but when I make pizza, I just buy some Boboli pizza crust, put some sauce, cheese, black olives, and pepperoni on it, and throw that sucker in the oven. Not Nick, a true chef. He makes his dough from scratch. The three of them have a "safari" picnic where they've laid a blanket out on the floor and Zoe's stuffed animals surround them. It's a cute scene and we see a beginning of a spark between Kate and Nick. Shortly after, they start dating. When Kate asks him how they're going to work together now that they're in a relationship, Nick tells her, "We'll do what we always did: you tell me what to do, and I'll go behind your back and do whatever I want." When they kiss, Zoe moans about how it's "so embarrassing." Little girl, please, this is so what you wanted.

Things go south when Paula offers Nick Kate's job. Kate thinks this is what he wanted all along. Nick tells her he didn't accept the position, but it's too late and the damage is done. He has quit working at the restaurant and they have broken up. When Zoe goes missing and isn't at home or school or the restaurant, Kate asks for Nick's help to find her, which they do at her mother's grave. (I'm not even going to get into the logistics of how Zoe even got to the cemetery...I'm presuming her mother is buried in her hometown, wherever that is. Did Zoe steal money from her aunt and take a bus there? Did she hitchhike there?) Nick and Kate have a heart to heart and she apologizes to him, but he tells her he wants to thank her for going after what he wants and has gotten a job as an executive chef in San Francisco. Kate congratulates him, but you can tell she's not thrilled about this news.

After Kate quits her job (she quits before she can get fired because after sending out two steaks that aren't rare enough for a picky customer, she takes out an uncooked steak and slams it on his table, asking, "Rare enough?"), she goes to Nick's apartment and tells him she doesn't want him to go to San Francisco. In the end, they open up their own bistro that is brimming with customers. In an earlier scene, where they were all cooking together, they said they would have a restaurant named Kate and Nick and Zoe's. This is what they name the bistro. Terrible name. First of all, who wants to say, "Hey, let's go to Kate and Nick and Zoe's for lunch"? No one. Way too long. It's a ridiculous name for a restaurant. The logo of the restaurant is very confusing. It's an upside down triangle that says Bistro in the middle and on each of the three sides it has the three names. Zoe's the only one that is in possessive form. The triangle moves, so you can have any name at the top, while the other two names are on the sides. We see Zoe fix the triangle so it has her name on top and it says "Zoe's Bistro" and not "Kate Bistro" or "Nick Bistro" which just sounds weird. Why didn't they just name the damn bistro "Zoe's Bistro" and just be done with it? I bet you they dropped the "Kate and Nick" and just called it that. Their customers are able to see them from the kitchen and they all applaud when Kate and Nick kiss. Uh...I feel like in real life, most customers would not want the cooks doing that while they're preparing their food!

I like the clever double meaning of the title, even if they did take reservations at Bleeker 22, so the "No Reservations" doesn't work for that. Kate used to have reservations about dating/being in a relationship, but that changes once she meets and gets to know Nick. We know this because her therapist asks her how long it's been since her last relationship and she tells him it was three or four years ago. There's also a seemingly nice and decent-looking divorced man named Sean who lives in her building and has asked her out a few times, only to be turned down. She tells him she doesn't date people from her building, which is actually a good enough reason, but shouldn't that same rule apply to people she works with? I think dating people you work with is worse than dating people you live in the same building with because it would be harder to avoid them at work if the relationship didn't work out. I did feel a little bad for Sean when he sees Kate and Nick get back from a date.

Despite the tragic subplot, it's a cute movie with delicious-looking food and lots of popular Italian music. Sure, it's predictable because you know the main characters are going to end up together even after they have a fight and break up, but would you really want it any other way?

Since Bleeker 22 is a trendy restaurant in Manhattan, I thought I would tell you about the trendy restaurant I ate at the one time I visited Manhattan with my mom, my friend, and her mom. We usually ate at the hotel's restaurant or Seinfeld-esque diners, but on our last night we ate at a very nice Scandinavian restaurant, Aquavit. The menu was very interesting and the meal was served in courses - some of them were only a bite, literally! The first thing was a little square of raw salmon arctic. Next we had barely cooked tuna with a little dot of beet sauce served on a glass tile. We were then served bread and I had Swedish dry bread. The next course was the first course aka the appetizer. I had the lobster roll with a yogurt base dotted with salmon roe eggs, which looked like orange tapioca. It came with a shot of ginger ale mixed with vodka. My next course, the main course, was the seafood stew. Its was covered in a dill sauce with a piece of lobster, tuna, salmon, scallion, and thin slices of cucumber and potato. Before we got dessert, we were served a tiny sorbet to cleanse our palate. It was butter cream and Japanese lemon with bits of chopped up citrus fruit. For dessert, I ordered the arctic circle which was goat cheese parfait with a lemon filling in the middle topped with a blueberry sauce and chocolate on the side. The very last thing we had were petite fours; there was coconut marshmallow, chocolate-covered fava beans, and a cranberry jelly square. I know some of these things sound questionable, but I promise, everything was absolutely delicious and it was the most sophisticated restaurant I've ever been to in my life! No idea how much the bill cost!

Bridge to Sadness and Despair

Bridge To Terabithia

Director: Gabor Csupo

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Robert Patrick, Zooey Deschanel

Released: February 16, 2007

We're going straight into spoiler territory right away with this one so if you have never seen the movie which has been out for eleven years or read the book which was published in 1977 (!!!), then you have been warned!!!! 

This would have been a good movie to do a double review with My Girl because they are very similar.  (Yeah, spoiler alerts for that movie too!) The obvious thing they have in common is they're both about a friendship between a boy and a girl, about eleven or twelve years old and at the end of the story one of these friends will die in a horrible accident caused by nature. In that one, it was the boy, and in this one, it's the girl. There are other similarities and I'll point them out, but that is the main one. I actually read this book around the same time I saw My Girl, so yeah, my childhood was pretty traumatizing around that time! I saw My Girl when I was in fifth grade and I read this book either in fourth or fifth grade. I've never revisited it, so I'm not sure how faithful the film is and whether or not it changed anything or added any characters. 

I would say another thing they have in common is that they're both set in the '70s, but actually, I think the film version of Terabithia is set in "present day" 2007. The school they attend looks very antiquated...they're using blackboards, for god's sake. By the late nineties, I definitely remember teachers using white boards with dry erase markers. Also, everything is rundown and shabby; nothing is new and modern, something you would find in a school in 2007. But then we see a scene where a teacher is telling a couple students to put away their "electronic devices" and we see the main character's sisters watching MTV, so that defintely nixes this movie being set in the '70s! The story is set in a rural part of the country where the characters don't have too much money, so I guess that's why everything looks the way it does.

Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson) strikes up a friendship with the new girl at school, Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb), but it takes a few days to warm up to her because she beat him (and a bunch of other boys) in a footrace and he's known as being the fastest kid in the class. Jess is the middle child of five kids and has two older sisters and two younger sisters. The only one that's really relevant to the story is his sister May Belle (and I thought her name was Mabel for the longest time) who is the second youngest child. This is mainly because she and Jess share a room (a blanket hangs up to divide their halves of the room) and they go to the same school. The two older sisters are in high school and the youngest child is a baby. I was really confused by this school. May Belle is probably second or third grade and according to Wikipedia, in the book, Jess and Leslie are in fifth grade. I would say they're probably in sixth grade in the movie...the actors were around 13 when they made this, so I think them being fifth grades might be pushing it. However, there's a girl named Janice who is the school bully who also goes to this school and she's in eighth grade. What kind of school combines elementary and middle school? I have never heard of this. Maybe it's because they live in a small town and don't have the funds to create a middle school so they combine K-8 all together until they go on to high school? At first I thought they were in a middle school and May Belle rode on the same bus as her brother because her school was nearby, but no, they both go to the same school! I know, I know, it's a stupid thing to get caught up on.

Jess has a huge crush on his teacher, Ms. Edmunds and who can blame him because she's played by Zooey Deschanel so he's entranced by her pretty blue eyes and her lovely singing voice. She's the music teacher so she pretty much treats her classroom like it's School of Rock and all the kids are singing and playing instruments. They sing song such as "Why Can't We Be Friends" and "Ooh Ooh Child". This is another similarity to My Girl as Anna Chlumsky's character, Vada, had a crush on her teacher. 

Leslie lives next door to the Aarons with her liberal free-spirited parents who are both writers. I have to wonder if her parents actually make any money. Jess has more strict, grounded parents, especially his father (played by Robert Patrick) who tells him he needs to "keep his head out of the clouds" when he releases a wild animal (a opossum maybe?) that got caught in his dad's greenhouse because he didn't want his dad to kill it. One of the reasons the two become such good friends is not just because they share a love of running, but because they're both bullied. Jess is bullied because he has to wear a pair of one of his sister's hand-me-down pink sneakers to his first day of school. He tries to cover up the pink with a black marker, but it doesn't really help. Leslie is made fun of when she tells her teacher she doesn't have a TV after the teacher assigns the class to watch a nature show. All the kids laugh at her like she's the biggest loser to ever exist and when she explains, "My dad says TV kills your brian cells", she gets in a good comeback to one of the bully kids who tells her, "I watch TV everyday" by replying with, "I rest my case." 

The first time Jess and Leslie hang out, they come across a wide creek near their homes with a rope

swing. Let's just call it the Rope Swing of Doom. Leslie is intrigued by it, but Jess tells her it's been there forever and it's probably not safe. (Yes! Listen to your new friend, Leslie! He is the voice of reason!) However, she swings to the other side and back and tells him how much fun it is, so they both take a few turns on it. Leslie decides they need a place just for the two of them and swings to the other side where she jumps off and Jess follows her. They call this new place Terabithia and both kids, especially Leslie, the daughter of two fiction writers, have vivid imaginations (or maybe just really good drugs!) They imagine that the trees are giant trolls, that the dragonflies are small warriors, that the squirrels are these creatures out to get them, and the sound of an old wind chime is the sound of prisoners rattling their chains. I guess you need a wild imagination when you don't have a TV! They come across this pretty amazing run-down tree house which they fix up and make their own. 

So cute!

Jess is very artistic and loves to draw, so for his birthday, Leslie presents him with a (rather nice) set of paints and brushes while they're on the bus on their way to school. Jess tells her it must have cost a fortune, but yet, later, decides to give Leslie a dog. I think giving someone a dog is a much bigger deal than giving someone a paint set! They name him Prince Terrian, P.T. for short, and take him on their adventures to Terabithia where they use him as a troll hunter. Okay, I have a few questions: how was he able to afford the dog? Did he ask Leslie's parents permission first before he got the dog for her? And most importantly, how the hell did they get the dog across the creek? They didn't swing on the rope with the dog in one hand and their other hand holding the rope, did they? Or did the dog swim across? 

After Janice, the 8th grade bully (maybe she would be a little nicer if she didn't have that horrible haircut with the awful bangs...just saying!) is mean to May Belle AND purposely falls down on the bus and blames Jess for tripping her so he is booted off the bus, both Jess and Leslie decide it's time to teach her a lesson. They write her a note, pretending it's from the cutest boy in eight grade, Willard, (seriously? The cutest boy in the eight grade is named Willard?) because surely she has a crush on him. In the note, which Jess writes while Leslie dictates, "Willard" tells Janice that he really likes her and hopes they can ride home on the bus together and see where things go from there. While Janice is waiting outside the bus for Willard and tells him she got his note and she saved them a seat on the bus, he's very confused and of course he's with all his friends and they just laugh at her as well as everybody else on the bus who witness this embarrassing display. However, a few days later, Leslie hears Janice sobbing in the girls' bathroom and wonder if they went too far. She talks to Janice and we later find out that Janice is mean to everyone because her dad hits her. I looked up the plot summary of the novel on Wikipedia to see if that was part of the book, and it is. Even down to the boy named Willard, so that explains the old-fashioned name. 

Another similarity this movie shares with My Girl is the foreshadowing of the impending death. We get it in that movie when Macaulay Culkin asks Anna Chlulmsky what heaven is like. It's done a lot more nicer in that movie; in this one, it's a little dark! Leslie, who is an atheist (although that word is never uttered), goes to church one Sunday with Jess's family. BTW: her white coat is totally amazing. She seems to enjoy the experience and on the way home, she sits in the back of the pickup truck with Jess and May Belle. She tells them she thinks the whole "Jesus thing" is really interesting, but the two Aarons kids disagree and think it's scary. May Belle tells her, "It's because we're all vile sinners, God made Jesus die." Leslie asks them, "You really think that's true?" and Jess confirms, "It's in the Bible." Leslie tells them, "You have to believe [the Bible] and you hate it. I don't have to believe it and I think it's beautiful." May Belle then drops a huge bomb on her and tells her, "God will damn you to Hell when you die if you don't believe in the Bible." Eeshh! I like Leslie's response with, "I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to Hell...he's too busy running all this!" and waves her hands around her to indicate the world around them. 

The final goodbye

Jess gets in big trouble when he loses his dad's set of keys and if they have to be replaced, it will cost $600. Except he didn't misplace them; May Belle took them because she knew Leslie was looking for something that clanged and clinked to sound like bells. She thought Terabithia needed bells after hearing the church bell from the service she attended. Rightly, Mr. Aarons is super angry with Jess because these keys cost a fortune and are a part of his job. I find it ridiculous that neither May Belle nor Leslie thought it would be wrong to take the keys. Did they not think that someone would need this set of keys? Leslie claims May Belle told her she found them on the ground, but still, you would think someone lost their keys and they weren't just junk. When Jess and Leslie go to fetch the keys, it will be their last adventure together in Terabithia, unbeknownst to them. :::sniff::: 

The following day, a Saturday, Ms. Edmunds calls Jess to take him on a date, I mean, a field trip. I'm sorry, I know they say "field trip", but this was totally a date! They go into the city to visit an art museum and have a cappuccino at the cafe! And when she drops Jess of at his home, he says, "Maybe we can do this again sometime" and she replies with, "Absolutely!" Okay, let me back up. Ms. Edmunds knows about Jess's artistic side and calls him up that morning to invite him to an art museum because she was planning on taking her nephews there, but they weren't able to make it, so she decided to invite Jess in lieu of them. I understand the point of this was to get Jess out of the house and have his parents not know where he is (he does ask his mom, but she's still sleeping and barely says "yes" when he asks if he can go). They also can't make this a class field trip because otherwise Leslie would be there and another point of this is for her not to be there, although when they pass her house, Jess almost seems to want to invite her along (which he will regret not doing for the rest of his life, poor kid), but decides against it because he wants Ms. Edmunds' company all to himself. If this ever happened in this day and age, that teacher would be arrested in a hot minute! I think it would have been a little better if she still took her nephews, but also invited Jess. At least it wouldn't look like a date! Yes, I did look this up, and yes, this does happen in the book, although maybe times were much different in the '70s and nobody blinked an eye if they saw a teacher having "one on one" time with her student.

When Jess returns home later that afternoon, his parents are relieved to see him, as they already know about Leslie's death and think maybe something had happened to him too. Jess gets a weird vibe from his family and asks what's going on and his father bluntly says, "Your friend Leslie is dead." They tell him the rope swing broke and she hit her head on a rock. This is around the time I lose it and start crying. Poor Jess is in denial and when he sees Ms. Edmunds at her service, he tells her, "Next time we should invite Leslie to go," as if Leslie is still alive. Oh, God, poor kid, you know that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He even tells his dad it's his fault, that he didn't want to invite her to the museum, when he finally breaks down and realizes that his best friend is dead, but his dad tells him it's not his fault. I then get another fresh set of tears when Jess is afraid that Leslie has been damned to Hell, but his dad reassures him that "God would never send that little girl to Hell". Mr. Burke tells Jess that he was the best friend Leslie ever had. Seriously, stop making me cry, movie!

There's quite a change in the music class. Instead of being happy and dancing around with the instruments, all the students are singing a song, something about "I wanna know what's over that rainbow" while looking sullen. Poor Jess has his arms folded on his desk with his head resting on them and it's the saddest sight. I bet all these kids feel bad for making fun of Leslie now for not owning a TV! That has got to mess you up, though. To be a kid and have another kid in your class die. Though not everybody is sensitive about her death. One of the bully kids tells Jess, "Guess you're the fastest kid in class now." Good Lord! What kind of a-hole says something like that? Jess punches him. The kid totally deserved it.

The rope swing has been replaced with a bridge that Jess has built with lumber. It's actually pretty impressive what he built.  He invites his sister to enter the world of imagination that he and Leslie created and makes May Belle the Princess of Terabithia. I love how she says it like it's two words: "Tera. Bithia."

David Paterson, the son of the book's author, Katherine Paterson, helped co-write the screenplay. I was actually surprised it took them thirty years to make this a feature film, especially since it was based on a popular book, or at least a well-known book. Yes, it shares similarities with My Girl. To me, it's hard to think of one without thinking of the other, but they also have plenty of differences. Also, My Girl came out fourteen years after Bridge to Terabithia was published and they didn't make a movie about it in those years? Although I discovered it was made into a TV movie in 1985. Apparently it's terrible and that's probably why I wasn't aware of it! Okay, I just watched a clip of it on YouTube, and eesh, the kids who play Jess and Leslie are godawful actors - it's not a surprise neither of their careers took off! It's nice that they finally got a good adaptation of the book, although it took awhile, but sometimes you have to be patient!

P.S. The Book Was Better

P. S. I Love You

Director: Richard LaGravenese

Cast: Hilary Swank, Gerald Butler, Kathy Bates, Harry Connick Jr., Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Released: December 21, 2007

Viewed in theaters: December 23, 2007

This is a perfect example of a perfectly acceptable book being turned into a crap movie. I saw this movie in the theater because I had read the book two years prior and had enjoyed it. It is the first book by Cecelia Ahern who wrote it when she was only twenty-one years old. She is the daughter of Bertie Ahern, a former Prime Minister of Ireland, so I have no doubt that helped her launch her writing career! I've read many of her books and many of them very whimsical. For the most part, I have really liked getting lost in her novels. They're just mindless fun. 

The only book of hers I really don't like is If You Could See Me Now which is about a 30-year-old woman's childhood invisible friend coming to life and only she and her young nephew can see him and she doesn't know he's invisible to everyone else. I was thinking there was going to be some kind of Fight Club-esque twist where this was all in the woman's mind, but nope, the invisible friend was actually real and worked with other invisible friends. (Cut me a break...this was only the second Cecelia Ahern book I had read so I didn't know how whimsical she could get!) And she falls in love with her invisible friend, so ick! Totally creeped me out! 

The Gift is Ahern's take on A Christmas Carol as it is set around the holiday season and one of the few times where her main character is male. He is a rich businessman and he meets a homeless man outside the building where he works and offers him a job. This one has an interesting twist that lets the busy working man spend more time with his family thanks to the homeless man. 

Then you have There's No Place Like Here which is about a 30-year-old woman (you will soon notice that all of Ahern's protagonists are all 30 or thereabouts) who is obsessed with finding missing things and works with people who want to be reunited with long lost loved ones. This was the fourth Ahern book I had read so by this time I was used to her whimsical and quirky story lines. She ends up in a location aptly named Here (I am not joking!) and it's where all the missing people go. If this had been my first Ahern book I had read, I would have thought this was a weird purgatory where all the people who have been adducted and killed gathered. But no, that would be much too dark for Ahern's writing. The whole thing was just weird. Interesting, but weird. 

The Time of My Life is about a, yep, you guessed it, 30-year-old woman who finds herself stuck in a rut with family problems, boyfriend problems, and job problems. She finds out that her Life wants to meet with her. Her Life is an actual person, a man, oddly enough. (You would think if your life was another person, it would at least be the same gender as you!) I didn't mind that her life was a person...in this universe it is normal, but it didn't make sense that her life had his own life too. Someone asked him if he was allowed to have a girlfriend and he said yes. How does that even work? Would that mean she would have a girlfriend as well as her new boyfriend? Luckily that doesn't happen but it is so weird. I think Ahern wanted to make him his own person but it got in that weird territory where a lot of things didn't make sense. I give her props for trying something new and it was a charming, original story. 

The Book of Tomorrow actually has a 17-year-old spoiled teen as the main character and she finds a book that tells her what's going to happen the next day and uses it to her advantage. From this she finds out her real dad, who she had thought had died in a fire, never died at all. That's all I really remember. 

Thanks for the Memories is really weird. It's about a woman who falls in love with the guy who donated blood to her after a terrible accident and because she has his blood, she's able to see his life...yeah, I know very weird! They fall in love but it takes forever for them to meet even though you know it's going to happen. 

So those are all the books of hers I have read. I would say that The Gift, The Time of My Life, and P.S. I Love You are my favorites. Despite being super weird, There's No Place Like Here was pretty interesting. The rest are either meh to non memorable, but If You Could See Me Now is the worst. There's also a handful I haven't read.

Ironically, P.S. I Love You is probably the most realistic of all of Ahern's novels (the ones I've read anyway). There are no people with magical abilities or invisible people or books that predict the future or made up places. It's just a straight-forward story about a married couple, Holly (Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerald Butler). He dies from a brain tumor and leaves behind messages for his widow, one for each month and encourages her to do things to stay strong. The book, like all of Ahern's novels, is set in Ireland, obviously as she is Irish herself. This was set in New York, so Swank does not have an Irish accent. I really hate it when a book that is set in a country that is not America is made into a movie and then the city is changed into a big American city. I guess I understand because probably it will sell more tickets. To me, the casting of Hilary Swank in this didn't work for me. I'm used to seeing her in these dramatic movies and this film, despite the fact that one of the main character dies, is a fairly light and frothy movie. I think someone like a Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson would have worked better (you know, if they had to absolutely keep it set in the U.S.). I defintely feel like this movie was only made for the people who had read the book because if you hadn't read the book, you would probably be going, what is going on? The first scene starts with Holly and Gerry arguing in this long drawn out scene that goes on forever (and by God, she is super annoying...I'm surprised he stayed married for her for ten years or however long they were together!) By the end, they have made up and are making out.

Then, in a new scene, we're at a funeral and it turns out it's Gerry's! What the huh! Of course I knew this was coming up because I had read the book. (Oh, I suppose you would know it you saw the previews...I don't think they keep it a huge secret that he dies, but still! His death comes out of nowhere!) Now I don't have the book....I lent it to someone and never got it back (insert angry emoji here) so I don't have it to see how things differ. I'll just have to look it up online like I do for all my other reviews!

I do remember in the book, Holly receives one message from her husband beyond the grave each month for one year. In the movie, it was more like one per season. They definitely cut out a lot of the letters he left for her.

Is it bad that all I could think of throughout this movie is that I bet their friends wished it had been Holly who had died instead of Gerry? He was obviously the more fun one, the life of the party while Holly was more uptight and needed to take a chill pill. Although, since Gerry is from Ireland (at least one character is from the country of origin!), that would mean Holly has known their friends the longest. They are much more fleshed out in the book, obviously, as is her family.

Holly's 30th (of course!) birthday is not long after Gerry's death and she's still mourning him when her mom (played by Kathy Bates) and friends come over to surprise her with a cake and presents. The cake comes with a recorded message from Gerry telling her she's going to be receiving messages from him and he doesn't want her trying to figure out how he's doing this (the real reason for this is they never explain how a dead man set this up months in advance. Yes, I realize he knew he was going to die, but obviously people were involved in this, but yet Holly's mom and friends are all shocked by this, so we never have any idea who was helping him as the movie never says. I can't remember if they reveal it in the book).

The first letter is fairly simple and just tells Holly to buy a lamp for the bedside table. I remember this from the book. Whoever was the last up had to turn off the overhead light and that person would usually stub their toe. How can you have a bedside table, but not a lamp? Gerry signed it, like he did with all his other letters, "P.S. I Love You". The next letter tells her to buy a new outfit so she can wear it when she sings a karaoke song and overcome her anxiety of that. We see a flashback where Jerry goaded Holly into singing and she does, but ends up breaking some bones when she trips into the wires of the karaoke machine. Then there's a letter where Gerry has planned a trip to Ireland for Holly and her two friends (played by Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon) and her friends find letters from Gerry at the little cottage they stay at. Holly meets a guy named William (William Dean Morgan) and it is so obvious she has a type because this guy is not only Irish, like Gerry was, but also looks similar to him with the same build and coloring. They end up sleeping together and Holly is SHOCKED and MORTIFIED when she finds out that William knew Gerry. Well, duh! Any idiot could have figured out that. One of the requests Gerry gave to them was to go to a pub and see the performers. William was one of them and he ended up singing a song that touched one of Holly's nerves. It was a song that Gerry would often sing to her, so obviously he had called up his friend William and asked him to sing it when Holly and her friends would be there. But the kicker is that William had no idea that the woman he had slept with was the same one he had played for a couple nights earlier - just how drunk was he to not remember that?

I don't remember William from the book, although obviously she didn't go on a trip to Ireland since she already lived there. However, I do remember the character of Daniel who is played by Harry Connick Jr. There is a small spark between them, but once they do kiss, the realize it's like kissing their brother/sister, so really, what was the point of that character?

One of Holly's last letters from Gerry is him telling her to get a new job. I think she's a real estate agent, but she hates it, so she decides she's going to design shoes! And she's a huge success! Uh huh. (And her dad wasn't even the President!) The movie ends with her finding closure with Gerry's death as he writes in his last letter that he wants her to find love again and it looks like she will...with his good friend and lookalike, William!

Ugh, I hated this movie! The only good thing about it was that it introduced me to the song "Love You Til The End" by The Pogues which I really like. Who knows if I would even still like the book if I ever read it again...though I'm sure it would still be better than the movie!