Double Feature

Joe and I just spent the evening at the movies. Only instead of dinner and a movie, we did movie and a movie. Figured it was about the same amount of babysitter time, anyway. :)

Mamma Mia -- What can I say that hasn't already been said by everyone around? Meryl is fabulous. Absolutely fabulous (and yes, even in the BBC AbFab sort of way). Wonderful actress (which we all knew already, of course) and terrific singer (which I sort of knew, but this was way beyond what I'd heard her do before). Screen presence galore, naturally. Pierce Brosnan barely can carry a tune in a bucket. Actually, his pitch was fine, but there's no power behind it. Still, if Rex Harrison can talk his way through My Fair Lady on screen and stage (winning the Tony, no less), I suppose we can just enjoy looking at Pierce and admiring that he pulls off his role rather well without a giant set of vocal pipes. Rewarding and fun. But, as I'm sending Emily away to sleep-over camp for the first time the day after tomorrow, the "Slipping Through My Fingers" number completely did me in and has me blowing off any theatre work tomorrow to spend time off the computer and hanging out with my kids.

The Dark Knight -- Again, much of what I'm observing here has already been said by lots of people. But, I'm saying it, too, because, well ... it's true. This may very well be the best Batman movie yet. In fact, I'm just going to say it is. Christian Bale continues his dark and deep portrayal of our vigilante (which George Clooney didn't) while effectively pulling off the frothy, dippy public Bruce Wayne (which Michael Keaton didn't). Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman rule, as always. And Mike Baker would be so proud of me for remembering the import of the name Harvey Dent immediately. Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger. He was amazing. I love me some Jack Nicholson. But Jack was like "Jack the Joker" the whole way through. Creepy, yes. Nuts, yes. But still Jack. Heath Ledger was the Joker. I can't help but think that playing this part so completely as he did all his roles amplified whatever psychosis and troubled his actor's mind already contained (and all of us have psychoses and troubles...and I honestly believe truly talented actors have more than their share). It was violent and creepy and disturbing, and very, very good. And I cannot believe people brought their kids to it. But, that's a whole 'nother blog post, right there.

So, if you're in the mood for light and wonderful or dark and wonderful, I can recommend a movie for you either way.

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