# 4 - Contagion

Year of Release: 2011
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Everyone. Ever. But I'll just list those on the front of the movie: Marion Cotilliard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishbourne, Jude Law, Gwenyth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet

"If I could put your computer in jail, I would."

When this movie was first out in theaters ... well, actually from the first time that I saw a trailer for this movie, I wanted to see it. However, as I am pretty much the only person I know who would gladly sit through a two hour documentary on the effects of a pandemic of our society, I could not get anyone to go see it with me.

As a reward for just being awesome, I bought this movie for myself and my Mom and I [and my Dad kind of, he was mostly sleeping] watched the movie this evening.

Wow.

Again, I feel like a disclaimer is needed here. I loved this movie. It was probably the most realistic fictional depiction of a pandemic and what would happen at all levels of society. I liked that there were several different story lines going on at all times, even though they did not all intersect directly. I also loved that it seemed like even the smallest parts of this movie were played by well-known actors and actresses [Jennifer Ehle and Demetri Martin as CDC Scientists, Elliot Gould as a renegade non-CDC Scientist, John Hawkes as a freaking Janitor, Bryan Cranston as some sort of Military Dude to name a few]. Some people might find it a bit dry, mostly because this is not a Michael Bay film and therefore absent of extreme explosions and flying bodies from demolished buildings.

To "briefly" sum up, like I said before there are several different storylines:

Gywneth Paltrow is Patient Zero, a woman from Minnesota in Hong Kong on business. Once we take a look at her and realize that she is sick and totally having an affair with some dude in Chicago, we start seeing other people who are sick all over the place. She comes home to her husband Matt Damon [as I said "Who would cheat on Matt Damon?"] and then proceeds to not only get more sick, but her son also gets sick. *** SPOILER***: Gywneth and her son totally die. It's not pretty. Matt Damon has such a hard time accepting it that after he is told that his wife is dead, he asks if he can speak to her, please. *** END SPOILER*** We then find out that Matt is actually immune to the disease and his daughter might be too, but because there is no test that can be done, he will have to protect the crap out of her. His storyline basically follows the destruction and chaos that follow the Marshal Law put into place in their hometown.

Laurence Fishbourne works at the CDC and he is in charge of making sure that things don't get blown out of proportion and to try and fix the sick people. He sends Kate Winslet into the field to try and figure out what is going on. Her American accent is spot-on [or as my Mom said "She sounds weird."] and she is very good at talking to people and writing in her notebook. She does her best to get centers set up to tend to the ill people, which is good because even on her diet of Taco Bell and room service, she gets sick too.

Jude Law is a blogger who is trying to sell a story about the upcoming pandemic to the Chronicle [I think he's in San Francisco? I'm basing this on the street where his house is located, which goes like this \]. When he is turned down he decides that he can make a profit by teaming up with some shady Alternative Medicine guys and promoting "Forsythia" and its magical healing powers on his blog. He is also considered so much of an expert that he gets to go on-air with Laurence Fishbourne and accuse the CDC of keeping the true cures from the people to try and make money [eventually he is proven an idiot and a terrible person, and the line above about putting his computer in jail is in fact directed at Jude Law].

Laurence Fishbourne tries to do his best and get his fiancee out of Chicago, which is about to be quarantined. Even though he tells her not to tell anyone, she has to tell her BFF, who then posts it on FaceBook ... which is what is wrong with our society today. When someone tells you to keep your mouth shut, that does not mean that you are allowed to type it out and post it on the Internet. This, of course, gets Laurence Fishbourne in trouble with Congress and all sorts of important people.

Last, but certainly not least Marion Cotilliard is a WHO official who goes to Hong Kong to try and determine who the exact Patient Zero is to try and pin-point the start of the pandemic. She verifies that it is in fact Gwyneth Paltrow and that the other original infected people came in contact with her in a casino in Hong Kong. One of the gentlemen she is dealing with tells her how his village is infected and how his mother is dying of the disease. Once she tries to leave Hong Kong, of course they kidnap her and force her to stay with them as a bargaining chip to get the vaccine first. She stays with them for quite some time and even is teaching their children when she is called back and the "vaccines" are brought in.

The movie ends with a quick montage of how Gwyneth caught the disease in the first place.

I'm going to end with saying that A) For this being the first movie to have Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon and Jude Law since The Talented Mr. Ripley, I was not disappointed, and B) I am going to wash my hands.

Like, right now. You should too.

# 3 - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Year of Release: 2012
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Stephen Fry

When the first of the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies came out in 2009, I was not really sure what to think. Yes, I am a Holmes purist and I love and have read all of the stories. I know that Holmes was in fact adept at many forms of martial arts, but he was more of an armchair thinker like Hercule Poirot rather than Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I suspended my disbelief for the first movie and it turned out that the only item I had trouble swallowing was that Holmes had romantic feelings for a woman, even if it was Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler. Anyone who has read the stories can tell you, Holmes has never show any inclination towards a romantic relationship. This is not to say that he is attracted to men, it's more that he is a Sheldon Cooper when it comes to women and relationships. He does not see the point.

I was also a little disappointed that they just made up their own story for the first movie, but I understand that they needed to do that to keep from making all of the movies total copies of the stories.

And now onto A Game of Shadows.

I saw this on Tuesday and was super excited for a few reasons:

1) Stephen Fry [!!!] as Mycroft Holmes. How perfect was he? It does not help that I love Stephen Fry anyway, but he had Mycroft as that perfect balance between ego-centric and self-aware.

2) Moriarty. Jared Harris was wonderful as Holmes's arch-nemesis. Their bit about playing chess without actually moving the pieces was the best hint into the workings of their marvelous minds.

3) Colonel Sebastian Moran. Seeing him in this movie means that we will be seeing him again, which I am excited about.

Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law were brilliant in their characters, and Rachel McAdams [in her short amount of screen time], Noomi Rapace, and Kelly Reilly were excellent. I am especially glad that Kelly Reilly was given more to do in this movie. After seeing her as Miss Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, I was hoping that she would get some more of an actual character to sink her teeth into.

To Sum Up: See it if you like: Adventure, Action, Gypsies, Mystery, Torture, Romance [a little bit], Urban Camouflage, and of course, a non-Hangover Bachelor Party.

# 2 - The Frog Prince

Year of Release: 1986
Director: Jackson Hunsicker
Starring: Aileen Quinn, Helen Hunt, John Paragon

"Have you forgotten me ...?"

We like to tease my friend Laura a little bit because she did not seem to watch the same movies/shows as the rest of us when we were growing up. She does not understand why her husband Michael and I love Teddy Ruxpin so much, and when I first saw the cover of the movie "The Frog Prince", I was so creeped out by it that I almost lit it on fire and ran out of the house.

See that thing hanging from the moon? That's a "frog".

It actually was not nearly as bad as I had made it in my mind, though in some way it was even creepier than I could have imagined. We meet Princess Zora [Aileen Quinn, better known as Annie from the original movie version of "Annie"] waking up in her beautiful Princess room singing about her "Lucky Day" [yep, this movie has songs. A whole passel of them], calling her stuffed animal toys her friends and singing about the golden ball she keeps under her pillow. Zora notices that there were a million horns blown that morning and someone changed the flag that flies in the back of the palace, but she can't seem to find anyone to let her know what important event has triggered all of these sudden changes.

On her way running down the hall [and being interrupted by the Emissary because "Princesses don't run"] we meet Zora's older sister Princess Henrietta ["The Eldest"] and Henrietta's Best Friend Dulcey [she is actually introduced in that way later in the movie. Poor Dulcey]. Henrietta, of course is both a nasty little bench and played by Helen Hunt [better known as still acting in movies to this day. And being awesome]. Henrietta sends Zora in to interrupt their Uncle, the King, who is conducting some very important business with his Advisers [who mimic each other and him, and later on walk around blindfolded for some unknown reason]. Henrietta then tells Dulcey that she has intercepted a letter for her Uncle that states only one of the girls is a True [with a capital T] Princess, the other one apparently is just nothing. From the way everyone acts about this, it seems like whichever girl is not a Princess will either be murdered or become a slave, or worst of all have to take Dulcey's job and be forced to be Henrietta's friend.

Zora intrudes on her Uncle and the Advisers singing about the impeccable nature of the King's Word of Honor[ "A Promise is a Promise"] and her Uncle starts freaking out because there is no way that Zora is the True Princess because she is clumsy and young and has no friends, but he wants her to be the True Princess because she is much sweeter and kinder than her sister [I think that a rabid badger would also be sweeter and kinder than Henrietta, but they did not have any available in their kingdom full of palm trees and cactuses].

Zora then goes to Henrietta's room [still with no idea that she might not be a True Princess]and she totally ignores the "Zora, Go Away" sign on the door, walking in on Dulcey and Henrietta pulling a "The Princess Diaries" and looking through a book of eligible Prince Bachelors, including the Prince of Freedly who was cursed by a witch and has not been seen for a year. This is what we call foreshadowing. Henrietta uses one of the favorite insults of an older sister ["You are such a child!"], inspiring Zora to show up in a drag queen's cloak for their Royal Dinner that night. Once Zora is laughed out of the room, she ends up outside where she wraps the hideous cloak over the perpetually sleeping guard and drops her Golden Ball into the pond. Thankfully, the Frog Prince [or Ribbit as Zora calls him] pops out and sings a song ["Too Tall Frog"], dances, and is a little creepy towards the twelve year old girl in front of him [he keeps calling her "Sweet Lady". Little things like that]. Zora asks him to get her ball back for her and he makes her promise that she will be his Best Friend no matter what, and that she will take him back to the palace. Of course she agrees [she wants that ball, man!], he gives her the ball that was somehow hidden in his spinning and open umbrella and they sneak back into the castle.

Of course the rest of the film is fairly predictable. Ribbit does back flips in the hall, he pretends to be an inanimate object when Zora's Uncle comes into her chamber, there is a book called "How to Be a Princess" that is used to improve Zora's posture over the course of one evening, and Ribbit has a pocket full of Frog Feet Dance Step Stickers to help Zora learn to dance. Henrietta and Dulcey see Zora almost looking like a True Princess, and of course Henrietta cannot stand for that. A few more songs happen ["Friendship" and "Have You Forgotten Me?", one of the saddest songs in a children's movie]. As anyone who has ever read or heard the story before can tell you, Ribbit is turned back into his True Self at the end, but thank goodness Zora just kisses his cheek. I've already seen the creepiest girl/man kiss of all time [Kirsten Dunst and Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire] and just the thought of Zora kissing a man twenty years older and two feet taller just made me sick.

Fun Fact: John Paragon, who played Ribbit and the Prince of Freedly, is better known as Jambi the Genie from Pee-Wee's Playhouse and the voice of Pterri the Pterodactyl.

To Sum Up: Worth seeing, for sure. It's nice to have a protagonist who is allowed to be earnest and peppy [mostly because she's so young] and they actually did a good job of showing the dynamic between the older and younger sister [I have a sign on my door that says "Ashley, Go Away!", but that never stops her]. I'm kind of sad that I never saw this when I was younger [it would have been fun belting those songs], but I saw plenty of obscure 80's movies [like that one with the weird puppet kids where they go through the mirror. Does anyone know that that is?] to make up for it. I would just not suggest watching this alone and in the dark, as the Frog make-up may give you nightmares.

# 1 - Dr. Strangelove or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Year of Release: 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens

"Peace is Our Profession"

For years I have heard about this movie; have seen it listed on "Top 100 Movies", "Top 100 Comedy Movies", and "1001 Movies You Have to See Before You Die". I bought the movie a few years ago and put it on the shelf with my many other movies, thinking "I will get to this one when I am in the mood for something funny".

I am not going to lie to you; I found the movie extremely funny. My sense of humor is also as dry as the Sahara desert. This is not a slapstick comedy by any means [regardless of George C. Scott's Olympic-worthy back roll in the War Room or Dr. Strangelove's uncontrollable Nazi right arm], it is pure satire.

A friend of mine saw the movie "Shoot 'Em Up" not too long ago and after viewing it she told me that it just seemed too over the top and ridiculous. I then informed her that the movie itself was supposed to be a satire of action movies, which is why it was tongue-in-cheek representing the over-the-top tendencies of the genre.

Even though Dr. Strangelove starts out looking like newsreel footage from the 1940's, don't let the serious narration and the serious classical music fool you. Slim Pickens [as Major T.J. Kong] is the only actor who was allegedly not informed that this movie was supposed to be comedic. His performance of himself as a US Air Force Pilot is perfection. Most of his lines consisted of him reading from the instructions for their mission [Plan R] or requesting the other men on the aircraft to push buttons and flip switches, but yet he lent it such a realism that I was half tempted to look him up online and see if he had ever actually been a pilot. One of the first hints that this movie might not be entirely serious is when the camera shows the activities of the Air Force pilots while waiting at their fail safe point - reading a novel, looking at a Playboy magazine, eating, and sleeping.

Peter Sellers [in one of his three roles, here as Group Captain Lionel Mandrake] works in what has to be the loudest room in history; completely full of old school computers and printers and what look like several reel-to-reel machines. When he is told about Plan R being put into place, his initial reaction is that it will certainly get a rise out of the men [thinking that it is a drill, not the real thing]. His stiff-upper-lip Britishness and absolute refusal to give in to the madness of those around him make him a little neurotic, but who can blame him? He gets locked into an office with Sterling Hayden [Gen. Jack D Ripper] whose infatuation with preserving the purity of our water supply [keeping it free of fluoride] and thus maintaining the security of our "precious bodily fluids" would drive anyone over the edge.

We are then introduced to Tracy Reed [who looks eerily similar to Natalie Wood], lounging around in her severely underwired bra, underwear and [of course] heels. I'm thinking that she [or Kubrick] may have started the fad that "bad girls" keep their shoes on while performing bad deeds. While she has one of the most obnoxious conversations ever [second only to the later phone conversations with Dimitri, the Russian Premier], speaking in a low voice to the person on the telephone then "playing telephone" by shouting the responses to the man in the bathroom, who is none other than the great George C. Scott [Gen. Buck Turgidson], we learn that George is being called by the President to the War Room in the Pentagon. Though George promises Tracy that he will be back before she can say "blastoff", I've seen enough disaster movies to know that poor Tracy will be going to bed alone.

One of the things that crossed my mind while watching a movie full of "Top Secret" documents is that I would like a huge "Top Secret" stamp to have. I'm not sure what I would use it on, but it would be an interesting conversation piece:

"Is that a Top Secret stamp you have there?"
"I'm sorry, I can't talk about it. I'm afraid that's classified."

Sterling Hayden [pre-locking Peter Sellers in his office] requests a grain alcohol with rain water. I wrote that down because I thought that was odd and was sure that it would not be brought up again, but it turned out that it was actually a somewhat valid plot point. Still, it's just a weird thing to have a bottle of rainwater in your office. [See above note about fluoride in the water and "precious bodily fluids"]

When I was researching this movie a little bit, I came across an interesting fact. When Kubrick was designing the War Room, he requested that the huge round table [with its infinite supply of telephones] be covered in green felt like a poker table because the politicians and leaders were gambling with the lives of their citizens [if they played their cards rights, only like 10 - 20 million of them]. Because the film is, in fact, black and white, you can't really tell. It's a greenish shade of gray, though, if you look at it correctly. One character says "Today, war is too important to be left to the politicians" and I think [in that one case] he was absolutely right.

I'll stop with the play-by-play and I certainly do not want to ruin the movie for anyone, but I certainly think that it is worth watching. Peter Sellers plays two other characters: President Merkin Muffley [the only sane person in the War Room and who has a super awkward conversation with the Russian Premier while fifty people were listening in] and Dr. Strangelove, an ex-Nazi scientist whose right arm did not get the memo about the "ex" part. Sellers is such a brilliant character actor that every character is treated as a different personality by Sellers rather than just a different "mood" or expression. His President is contained, his Dr. Strangelove is zany and permanently smiling, and his Mandrake is stodgy and not willing to engage. I don't want to overuse this word, but seriously, this man was brilliant.

I read several notes that stated George C. Scott was upset because Kubrick convinced him to do "test shots" of scenes where he was made to overact, which were then used in the movie. George's manic and passionate character felt more real than any of those leaders in the War Room [besides the President]. He also may have chewed nine hundred pieces of gum at the same time, which were hopefully not swallowed when he did an unscripted back roll on the floor and then kept walking and talking as if nothing had happened.

As an added bonus, James Earl Jones is in this movie as a bombardier on the aircraft with Slim Pickens. If you don't recognize his young face, the moment he starts talking you will go "Oh, wait a second ... I know that guy ..."

So, to sum up: The Big Board in the War Room is pretty big, you just can't trust those "Ruskies", Nuclear War is bad, "Prevert" is apparently the correct way to pronounce the word "Pervert", you can call the President collect in times of emergency, don't ever call the Russian Premier because he will act like a whiny little brother, and of course "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

A New Year

If you know me, then at some point in our friendship you have probably either thought or uttered aloud "Holy Cow, this girl watches waaaaay too many movies". I have a habit of quoting and referencing movies, television shows, and books much to the annoyance of my friends and family. Sometimes I get lucky and reference something fairly well known, so I get a smile or a nod or at least someone else understanding what I am talking about. Most of the time, though, I reference something that apparently only I and a handful of other people know about and then I get stared at like I have several heads or my face just turned purple [but not in a good way].

One of the things that people find odd about me is that there are a lot of movies that are considered "classics" or "awesome" or "the best chick flick ever" [gag] that I have never watched. One of those is the Back to the Future movies [my friends Jackie and Michael will probably go to their graves insisting that we need to have an all day marathon if I don't add those movies to my list].

When I was going through a list of things that I wanted to do in 2012, some of the most common thoughts were occuring to me. I want to work out more regularly, I want to eat better, I want to excel at my job and be kinder to people. One of the other parts of my personality that I have been working on lately is that I want to try new things. I tend to find a few things that I like [quesadillas, my core group of friends, movies and books I have experienced a million times] and just stick with my comfort zone. In the past year or so I tried to branch out in trying new foods and discovered that I love blueberries, Laura's Spinach and Artichoke Dip, and my friend Matty Satty's delicious Lasagna.

I decided that one of my many resolutions [and probably the only one that will last] is that I want to watch one new [to me] movie each week for 2012, giving me at least 52 new movies to see this year.

I have already started, even though it technically did not count. My friend Stormi lent me the original The Day The Earth Stood Still and I watched it on New Year's Eve to kick off my new year with a new movie.

I'm hoping to blog a little bit about each movie [though I am fairly long-winded, so a "little bit" may end up as a "lot bit"] after I see it. I've asked for suggestions for movies to watch and I am adding them to my list [yes, even the sappy, dopey, romantic comedy ones. I'm drawing the line at Lifetime and Hallmark movies, though. There's only so much I can take].

Will you come along with me on this journey? Will you help support me when I just cannot bring myself to watch another movie?

Also, will you please bring the popcorn? No kettle corn, though. That stuff is gross.