Tropic Thunder

This movie had a lot more moments of me saying “That is funny” than me actually laughing.  But it was still pretty funny.  The two stand out stars are Tom Cruise, who really has an extended cameo in a fat suit as an filthy mouthed hardcore studio head and Robert Downey Jr.  Downey is the funniest in the movie, especially when he is the first to figure out what is going wrong but can’t turn off his method acting.  “I am a lead farmer!”  Good stuff.

Vicky Christina Barcelona

From the trailer, I thought I had a pretty good bead on what would happen in this movie.  A bunch of pompous pretty American’s in Spain would lie and have sex and get in angst ridden relationships.  Except for the sex part, pretty much all of that was off. 

All of the characters are likeable and have their own point of view (well, except for random New Yorkers that show up in Spain to remind our characters how great Europeans are; all from NYC are boring and pretentious) and all have their own story.  I did not know where anybody’s story would end up, the movie managed to surprise me several times.  The film also is half a travelogue of Spain and Barcelona, showing us how gorgeous the whole damn place is and what idiots we are for being stuck in an office all day.

Donnie Darko

I just re-watched this for the first time in years, and what a phenomenal movie.  This time I watched the directors cut, which has almost 20 minutes more of the movie, a lot of it explaining the whole time travel deal, but a lot of it just some more character moments.  Which is really what I was looking for.  Some people get caught up with what the actual overarching plot is, but really, if you take it as the coming of age story of an odd teenager, it movie works just as well.  The characters, acting, and music are really what my main draws are for this.  One of my favorite movies.

Weeping Willow: Volume One: Welcome to River Bend

I read a free chapter of this online years ago, and it captured me even then.  This is the story of a down on his luck man getting stuck in a small quirky town and trying to put his life back together.  If this sounds like a script for a sitcom or quirky comedy, I thought so too.  It is very quirky, and very meta; the authors often interrupt the narrative to interject or have arguments with each other.  But they write very compelling characters and love writing about food.  My biggest disappointment with this novel is that despite the title, there is no sequel.