Movie Monday - 11/28/2011

What a week last week!  Hope everyone had a nice time with family and friends and ate too much and stayed up to go to Black Friday on Thursday night and is now ready for Cyber Monday...

Wonder of wonders...I had asked The Husb several weeks ago to put together the tree on the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Well, he did. (I know...right?) It is a pre-lit tree (if you remember), and he and the oldest son put it together Sunday night the 20th.  I didn't want the lights to start coming on until after Thanksgiving, because I'm funny that way.  Interestingly, we took a ride with the grandkids Saturday night, and there are many houses with full blown Christmas decorations going.  Well, technically, it was after Thanksgiving, but still...



(I cannot figure out how to rotate this picture...I've done it before, but all my tricks aren't working...Sorry.)

Now...movies...

Cinema Paradiso (The New Version) is an adorable movie set in Sicily before television.  It is in Italian with English subtitles...Apparently, when the movie first came out in 1988, the studio cut almost an hour from the film.  Years later, it was rereleased in its entirety.  I believe there was some controversy that the older version is the better one, but whatever the case, I saw the newer one, and I thought it was good.  Salvatore (Toto) is a young boy who lives with his mother and his younger sister.  He has adopted the projectionist of the local theater (Alfredo) as his father figure.  Toto's love for the movies leads him to become a successful director.  The movie begins years later when Salvatore learns of Alfredo's death and returns to the village to pay his respects and from there, the story is told in flashbacks.  Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin star in this engaging film.  I really liked it.

Anthony Hopkins, Laura Linney, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Omar Metwally and Hiroyuki Sanada star in The City of Your Final Destination.  A graduate student flies to Uruguay to obtain permission to write a biography about a deceased author from the man's wife, mistress and brother. The three of them are living on the estate in a seemingly amicable existence until the arrival of the student, at which point tensions rise.  I thought the story was good and the actors did a great job.  I was entertained.

MK out.