Movies

Yesterday was one of those days when people talked to me even though I had no need for them to do so. I'm at the box office at the Hollywood Hits movie theatre in Danvers, and I ask for a ticket to Julie and Julia. This is a difficult enough task if you're a guy, but I did it. The woman who had just purchased a ticket asked me if I was going to go home afterward and cook something. I chuckled. Chuckling is the only non-scatological response to something like that. Then I go into the theatre and two women sitting together in the last row of the virtually empty room see me and one of them says, "Hope you can find a seat!" I thought of chuckling again, but this one deserved a response. So I said, "I'll do the best I can." People wanted to be friendly yesterday for some reason. They had no idea whom they were dealing with.

Julie and Julia is a thoroughly engaging movie spiked by not only a monster performance by Meryl Streep, but also by an equally monster dual performance by Streep and Stanley Tucci, who plays Julia Child's husband, Paul. My God, these two actors conducted a cinema master class in timing, connection and truth-telling. The marriage depicted is supposed to have been a special one, and these guys, and Nora Ephron, brought it to the screen as if they'd been rehearsing since graduate school. They were getting laughs from barely audible voice rumblings and slightly arched eyebrows. There has been a lot written about the supposedly sub-par performance of Amy Adams as Julie, but...come on. Give her a break. The character is written and played as a kind of driven lunatic and Adams, I think, is letter perfect throughout. Chris Messina, as Julie's husband, is also terrific, and reminded me of the husband in...

Paranormal Activity.

Both these guys deserve medals of honor for dealing with the wives/girlfriends they've hooked up with.

The thing about Paranormal Activity is...the hype. You're going to see it or rent it or download it because of the hype. And...you know...it's not all that bad. But if you are bored by looking through a night-vision camera at two people sleeping, this movie is going to drive you to the concessions stand pretty quickly. Yes, there are a few nice moments of boo!, but you can see the ending coming for miles and there's really nothing new about all this unless you count the fact that it cost them about 37 cents to make it. Blair Witch Project pissed me off because the hand-held camera made me nauseous, but I do remember at least being shocked and spooked throughout the movie. This one, not so much.

But those husbands/boyfriends in these movies...saints. Saints!