"Viva La Robotolution!"

I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving! The Christmas music has now started playing in my house. I try my best to wait until after Thanksgiving, although to be honest, I could listen to it year-round. I have just over 6 hours on my computer, but several songs are repeated, including five different versions of O Holy Night. :o)

Anyways, this is what I have been watching lately...

Because of my love for Kristen Bell, I went to see Astro Boy. While it did not get very good reviews, I thought it was cute and worth seeing. I probably would not have seen this if Bell had not been in it because I tend to not have a huge desire to see most animated movies, at least not in theaters, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also rented Serious Moonlight OnDemand before it came out in theaters. It's about a woman (Meg Ryan) who finds out her husband (Timothy Hutton) is in love with another woman (Kristen Bell), so she duct tapes him to the toilet right before their home is invaded by burglars. It was written by the late Adrienne Shelley who also wrote and directed Waitress. It was not as good as Waitress and it was a kinda weird, but definitely interesting.

From my Netflix queue I got The Ugly Truth, and while I found parts of it to be funny, I mostly did not like it. A romantic comedy should not be that vulgar. I am not a prude person, but seriously, there are other things besides sex and the human anatomy that are funny. I also think that Katherine Heigl is over-rated. I liked her in 27 Dresses, but she is starting to annoy me. I have not missed Izzie during her absence on Grey's Anatomy this season at all.

Next from Netflix, I have How To Be, Scotland PA and Apocalypse Now. Seeing as most of my TV shows have gone on winter hiatus, I should have time to watch these soon.

On my list of movies coming out by the end of the year, I can cross two more off my list: The Blind Side and New Moon.

The Blind Side was very, very good and I definitely recommend that everyone see it. The story is predictable, considering it is based on a true story, but I thought that Sandra Bullock was excellent as Leigh Anne Tuohy. There is some Oscar buzz going on around her performance and I definitely think she deserves a nomination for this movie. Also, the actor who plays Bullocks son, Jae Head, is super adorable as S.J. Tuohy.

Last year, I saw Twilight opening weekend and I swore I would never do that again. Teenage girls need to learn that when you scream at a movie screen, the actors cannot hear you! I do not remember being that obsessed with anything when I was that age. Anyways, because of the screaming-teenager factor, I just saw New Moon yesterday. I thought it was better than the first one, but still not that great. The special effects were much better (probably because of a bigger budget for this movie) but the story was still too choppy. There is so much in the books that are important to the story and they have tried to keep most of it in the movie, so it means you jump from scene to scene way too quickly. I do have to say though, since it was pretty much exactly what I expected, I did enjoy it.

I still want to see The Messenger, Precious, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Me and Orson Welles, Brothers, Invictus, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes and Nine.

I have said it before, but the best part of being unemployed is that I can go to the movies in the middle of the day :o) Although, I probably will not get them all in before the end of the year.

During the previews of New Moon, I saw a new movie with Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum that looks pretty good. It is called Dear John and it is based on another Nicholas Sparks book (The Notebook, Message In A Bottle, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe). He basically writes his books to be movies, which irritates me a little bit because it means the books themselves are not that well written. Why write books in the first place? Why not just write screenplays? But I digress, Dear John looks like it will be just like the rest of his movies - sappy, and definitely not Oscar-worthy, but entertaining. Even the trailer made me cry:



I really like Amanda Seyfried, and am glad to see her getting more recognized as being a good actress. Most people know her as Karen from Mean Girls (the one who could predict the weather with her breasts), but I fell in love with her as murder victim Lilly Kane on Veronica Mars. She was also in a few episodes of Wildfire on ABC Family and has most recently been on Big Love and in Mamma Mia! and Jennifer's Body.

Random question: Why do we say someone is "on a tv show" but "in a movie"? I will see if I can figure it out and get back to you :o)

I hope that everyone has a very happy holiday season! After all, it is the most wonderful time of the year!

xoxo
c

Veronica Mars is smarter than me.

So, I've already told you how I found my favorite actor, Ryan Gosling. Now it's time to talk about my favorite actress, Kristen Bell.

I had seen her in the one episode of American Dreams that she did in 2003, but had no idea who she was at the time.

Then, about three and half years ago, I was visiting some high school friends in New York City. They had started watching this new show called Veronica Mars on UPN and said it was awesome. It was the middle of the second season and they had the first season on DVD. I watched the first episode, really liked it and by the end of the weekend, had watched the first four episodes and could not wait to watch the rest of the season.

I came home from NYC and literally drove all over town looking for the DVDs. None of my local rental places had it and neither did the two Border's or the Barnes and Noble near my apartment. Defeated, I went home and ordered it online. When I got it in the mail, I watched the entire season within a matter of days...and then proceeded to watch the whole thing at least two more times.

UPN was in the middle of airing the second season and at first I was not going to watch it because I had no idea what was going on. Then I found the website marsinvestigations.net and it gave awesome episode summaries. It also had character descriptions (even for the obscure people who were only in one episode), a time line of events, quotes from every episode, cultural references, mystery speculation and much much more. This is probably the best fan site I've ever seen, and I was soon brought up to speed on what was happening in season two.

Unfortunately, even though it was a brilliant show with an amazing cast (I heart Sheriff Lamb), it was canceled after the third season due to lack of viewers. There is a very slight possibility that they will make a movie, but it's not looking too good at the moment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though that Warner Bros will do the right thing (wink wink, nudge nudge).

The creator of Veronica Mars, Rob Thomas, has a new show called Party Down, which she has guest starred on, and is about a group of aspiring actors who move to L.A. and end up working as waiters. Sadly, I don't get Showtime and have not yet seen it. Although, I have heard very good things about it, and plan to watch it when it comes out on DVD. I mean, how can you go wrong when the main cast includes Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen, Jane Lynch, Adam Scott and Lizzy Caplan?! Most people (at least my friends) are probably going, "Who are those people?" But if you check them out on imdb.com you should recognize at least a few of them...because they're awesome.

But I digress....

After becoming hooked on Veronica Mars, I watched her in Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical which is an awesomely hilarious adaptation of a 1920's anti-marijuana propaganda film. It also starred Neve Campbell and her brother, Christian, as well as, Steven Weber, Alan Cummings and Ana Gasteyer. This actually came out during the first season of Veronica Mars but I don't think it was ever in theaters...or at least only in limited release.

She was hilarious in Forgetting Sarah Marshall which was written by and starred Jason Segel as well as Mila Kunis and Russell Brand. And, of course, every fan boy needs to see Fanboys :o) She's also the voice of Gossip Girl, which I love, and was on Heroes for a short while. I was already watching Heroes when she joined the cast, however, I was starting to lose interest and actually stopped watching before she left the show.

I've also seen Fifty Pills and Pulse and then the few things I have not seen are in my Netflix queue...of course :o)

The next couple movies she has coming out are:

Astro Boy - an animated film about a young robot (voiced by Freddie Highmore) created by a scientist in the image of the son he has lost.

Serious Moonlight - written by Adrienne Shelley (who wrote Waitress) and directed by Cheryl Hines. It's about an attorney who duct tapes her cheating husband to the toilet just before their home is invaded by burglars. It also stars Justin Long and Meg Ryan and should be out at the end of the year.

Couples Retreat - written by Vince Vaugn and Jon Favreau. A comedy about four couples who go on vacation together and, while one couple is there to work on their marriage, the other three don't realize that the resort's therapy sessions are not optional. It stars Vaugn and Favreau along with Jason Bateman, Malin Akerman and Kristin Davis.




When In Rome - She plays a talented real estate agent who is unlucky in love. She travels to Rome to visit her sister and steals some coins from a supposed "fountain of love" and is consequently pursued by a band of wannabe lovers, including Josh Duhamel (not too shabby if you ask me).


When Veronica Mars ended her career totally took off. Which made me a little sad only because I feel like if people had been paying better attention, they would have discovered her earlier and VM would still be on. But I am glad that people are noticing her now because she's an amazing actress and, though I don't know her personally, I really do believe she deserves all the attention and success.

Now if only Kristen Bell and Ryan Gosling would do a movie together...

xoxo
c

ps. i started using the "xoxo" to sign all of my emails thanks to Gossip Girl