Tag Archives: Anne Hathaway

Ten Thoughts About Les Misérables

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les-miserables

Before you read this, I think it’s important that you know a few things. First, I’ve never seen Les Misérables the musical on or off Broadway (I did see the 1998 movie based on Victor Hugo’s novel starring Liam Nesson and Geoffrey Rush). I’m familiar with many of the songs (it was impossible to go to NYU and not hear “I Dreamed A Dream” blasting out of someone’s dorm room) but I’m not one of those people who grew up worshipping it. I’m not a big musical guy in general but while I was in New York for the holidays, almost everyone I hung out with praised this Tom Hooper directed adaptation. It stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe. How bad could it be?

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Movie of the Week: The Dark Knight Rises

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After the credits rolled, I wondered aloud if The Dark Knight Rises was even better than The Dark Knight. I walked into this movie expecting to be entertained but also mildly disappointed. The Dark Knight was probably the pinnacle of comic book movies. I don’t even like to call it a comic book movie. I prefer “crime thriller using characters originated in a comic book.” It really deserves it’s own category. To prepare for the final part of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, I re-watched the first two Batman films. I realized I may have thought too highly of The Dark Knight (TDK) and not highly enough of Batman Begins. As amazing as Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker was and as intense an experience watching that film was, there were some things that bothered me that I may have ignored in my previous viewings. The movie went a little downhill after the Joker was defeated (truth be told, it should have ended there). While The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) definitely had it’s flaws, I think it was a more consistent film from start to finish.

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Movies I’m Interested In Seeing: Summer 2012

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Despite having movies I have been anticipating for years, this looks like a pretty lame year for summer tentpole films.  This year, “summer” starts on March 4th.  I don’t imagine that I’ll be seeing a lot of movies this summer but I am definitely going to try and see these five.

5. The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3)

Even though Spider-Man 3 was pretty bad, I still hate how quickly they rebooted it (I know there are legal reasons they needed to do it but still).  I think Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone (as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy respectively) are well cast and appreciate that they are going back to the mechanical web shooters (which highlights Parker’s intelligence) but tying Parker’s parents into the origin and that horrible suit have me shaking my head. All I know if J. Jonah Jameson appears in the sequels, they better get J.K. Simmons back.

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Overdue Movie of the Week: Love and Other Drugs

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It’s funny that this movie was set in the 90′s because halfway through the film I thought, “They used to make these kind of movies in the 90′s all the time and they would start Mary Stuart Masterson and/or Christian Slater.”

There wasn’t anything special about this movie.  It ends the way you think it will.  Actually, there was a five-minute or so stretch that were interesting – [START SPOILER] when Jamie (Jake Gyllenhall) tries to do whatever he can to find the best treatment for Maggie’s (Anne Hathaway, she was actually very good) disease tearing apart the relationship [END SPOILER]  – but then it goes right back into being a somewhat formulaic romantic dramedy.  One of my biggest pet peeves in romantic movies is when the couple breaks up over something serious but then get back together without ever really resolving the actual issue that broke them up.  I know this happens all the time in real life but, in the movies, when they get back together, that’s when the lead single from the soundtrack plays, the credits roll and we’re to believe they lived happily ever after.

Maybe I’m the only one who wants to see a movie when whatever kept the hero couple apart is actually dealt better than with something more than “Because I love you.”

I guess that’s why I liked The Break-Up (and a lot of people I know didn’t).

Shakespeare in the Park: Twelfth Night

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Photo by Sara Krulwich, The New York Times

Photo by Sara Krulwich, The New York Times

I got to Central Park at about 6:30 AM to wait on line for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park production of ‘Twelfth Night’. As a person who’s done this three times now, my best recommendations is to try and go in the middle of the run on a weekday (it’s playing Tuesday-Sunday until July 12th).  The closer you get to the end of the run, the earlier you have to get there.  Anyway, when I got there, there were only about 40 people ahead of me.  Luckily, my roommate lent me her chair so I was sitting quite comfortably while I caught up on some reading and took a couple of naps while swatting away mosquitoes…

I’m rambling, you don’t care about how I got tickets.

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