The State of the Cabins (1/5/11)

Things to Click On
* Jason Bellamy's Bests of 2010 post is phenomenal - the best post I've read this year! Full of creative awards for the last year in film. You'll never think of How to Train Your Dragon the same way again, either. (The Cooler)

* Speaking of Jasons, Mr. Soto's latest "Jason Made a Video" is a must watch for the opening minute alone. Yeah, it's an inside joke, but goddamn is it a good one. (Invasion of the B Movies)

* It's been around for a few weeks, but the new game over at Hoping for Something to Hope For is, as you might have guessed, right up my alley. Here's the third one.

* James lets you in on his Top 20 Discoveries of 2010. Love the idea of this post. (Cinema Sights)

* Univarn has been on a tear lately. Just check out anything from the past two weeks or so (I had to skip the film reviews as I've not yet seen the flicks, but the editorials and poster wrap-up have all been terrific). (A Life in Equinox)

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week time:
* About a Boy
You know how, just because someone has a British accent, they seem smarter and more refined than their North American counterpart? Can the same be said for films?

I swear, were About a Boy made with, say, John Cusack in the lead, it would have come off a lot worse than it did. (This might have already happened...did anyone actually see Martian Child?) I, too, was pretty smitten with About a Boy, but I just had this nagging feeling that it was more familiar and cliched than it actually was. Asshole, Peter Pan-y bachelor learns to love someone besides himself, earning a family and a sense of purpose along the way. Haven't we seen this a million times? Was the writing really that much more superior so as to make it stand out from the crowd?


Sadly, I don't know if I have the answers to those questions, and I'm going to do my best to not care. I was charmed by Hugh Grant - ironically, perhaps liking him more in this asshole role than in any prior role of his. Anything's better than watching this suave, good-looking guy stumble and stammer his way through another character, right? I've been somewhat of a basket case over the last two and a half months, so I wasn't surprised that the super-happy ending got to me, either. Yes, it got dusty in there.

A winning film, with a hilarious intro. Who else could threaten to 'shag' their goddaughter and come away smelling of roses?

P.S. - I completely forgot that the Boy was the one that grew up to be Colin Firth's love interest in A Single Man. Jarring, really. He really did look strange in About a Boy - Mrs. Fletch even thought they'd done something to his eyebrows to make him look like a Vulcan.

Fletch's Film Rating:

	Expectation: "It's in the hole!"
	Reality: "It's in the hole!"

LAMBScore:

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
* Nothing in particular. Picked up the latest from The Black Keys, Royksopp, Kanye West and Vampire Weekend...now it's time to take them all in.

Book I'm currently reading:
* Notice a trend here?

Usually, I don't like to read consecutive books from the same author, as it feels better to mix it up. Too much of the same thing starts to blend all together into one giant book. Yet, I guess a desire to continue reading something light took me from the second in the Camel Club series by David Baldacci, The Collectors, to the third one, Stone Cold. Ironically, similar to the second and third books in the Millenium trilogy, The Collectors and Stone Cold do blend together. There's a new story and villain here, but a large portion of Collectors was left on a cliffhanger that's sure to be resolved in Stone. And I'm enjoying this third book probably even more so than the prior two. I think there's a fourth (and maybe even a fifth) novel in the series...I just might take them all on in a row.