Now screening: The Mists of Avalon
About this film: The legend of Camelot, retold.
More details: Sci/Tech, SFF
Aeon Flux
Aeon: [narrating] Some called Bregna the perfect society. Some call it the height of human civilization. But others know better. The Goodchilds built Bregna to ensure us a future. They built the Relical, a memorial to remind us of what we've survived. They built walls to protect us. They tell us that outside, nature has retaken the world. But the real problems lie within. We are haunted by sorrows we cannot name. People disappear and our government denies these crimes. The Goodchild regime provides for us, as long as we stay quiet. So we trade freedom for a gilded cage. But there are rebels who refuse to make that trade, who fight to overthrow a goverment that silences us, who fight in the name of the disappeared. They call themselves the Monicans. I am one of them.
...
Aeon: I had a family once. I had a life. Now all I have is a mission.
From: "Aeon Flux"
About: When disease wipes out most of the earth's population, there is only one city left; the protected city-state of Bregna.
Trading safety for freedom, the citizens of Bregna are completely controlled by the governing powers.
When underground rebel Aeon Flux is sent on a mission to assassinate a government leader, she discovers that there's much more at stake for the surviving human race than the death of a single man. Directed by Karyn Kusama.
Tagline: The future is flux./The perfect world meets the perfect assassin.
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The Interpreter
Silvia Broome: Do you think I'm making it up? Why would I report a threat I didn't hear?
Tobin Keller: People do.
Silvia Broome: I don't.
Tobin Keller: Some people like attention.
Silvia Broome: I don't.
Tobin Keller: Maybe you don't want Zuwanie at the U.N.
Silvia Broome: I didn't make it up.
Tobin Keller: How do you feel about him?
Silvia Broome: I don't care for him.
Tobin Keller: Wouldn't mind if he were dead?
Silvia Broome: I wouldn't mind if he were gone.
Tobin Keller: Same thing.
Silvia Broome: No, it isn't. If I interpreted gone as dead I'd be out of a job...
Tobin Keller: Your profession is playing with words, Ms. Broome.
Silvia Broome: I don't play with words.
Tobin Keller: You're doing it right now.
Silvia Broome: No. You are. If I wanted him dead, I wouldn't have reported it. I would sit back and let it happen.
...
Keller: Of all the people I've looked into since this thing started, the one with the darkest history is you.
From: “The Interpreter”
About: U.N. interpreter Silvia Broome allegedly overhears a death threat, "The Teacher will never leave this room alive," spoken in Ku, a rare African dialect that few people can understand.
The target, Silvia says, is Dr. Zuwanie, aka The Teacher, an African head of state, who'll soon be arriving in New York City to address a U.N. assembly.
Federal agent Tobin Keller is assigned to investigate Sylvia's claim; he thinks she's either confused or lying, but as he delves deeper into the mystery, he believes that she's telling the truth -- an assassination attempt will take place.
But as Keller digs deeper into Sylvia's troubled past and current links with the war-torn country of Matobo, he's troubled by suspicions that
Sylvia herself might be part of the conspiracy.
After a NYC bus is decimated in a possible terrorist attack, Keller races to uncover the truth, before it's too late: Who is Silvia? Is she a victim? A killer? Is she just an unwitting pawn in a violent political conspiracy? Or is she something else entirely? Starring Nicole Kidman, Catherine Keener, Sean Penn.
Trivia: Ku is not a real language; it was created by the filmmakers, based on the basic grammar and vocabulary of Swahili and Shona.
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Ultraviolet
Hemophage 2: How can you hope to defeat us? We're as strong as you.
Hemophage 1: We're as fast as you.
Violet: But are you one-tenth as pissed off as I am?
...
Violet: I think I had to know what I was willing to die for.
...
Violet: The only reason I saved your life is because whatever's in your blood can save mine. If they corner us, suffer no delusions; I will kill you.
...
Violet: Nothing can stop me.
From: "Ultraviolet"
About: Instead of creating a breed of tougher warriors, a genetically-engineered virus turns humans into Hemophages, a sub-species with superhuman abilities.
Sensing a threat to the stability of the ruling powers, a totalitarian dictator orders that Hemophages be exterminated on sight.
A single warrior survives; Violet, who has to save her life and that of a young boy, who might be carrying the only antidote that can make her human again. Starring Milla Jovovich.
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The Fifth Element
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The Reckoning
Lord De Guise: Do you really believe that your God has the power to protect you?
Nicholas: No. Nor the inclination.
Lord De Guise: Ah. Then what kind of God is that?
Nicholas: The kind who allows innocent children to be murdered.
From: "The Reckoning"
About: In 14th-century England, a disgraced priest joins a band of traveling players. They travel from town to town, performing their plays.
They arrive in a town where a deaf-mute girl has been condemned for witchcraft and murder.
Intrigued by the story, the actors stage a performance based on the crime; based on the re-enactment, they realize that the accused girl must be innocent.
The fugitive priest sees a chance to redeem himself, and sets out to save an innocent woman from death, even if it costs him his own life.
Starring Willem Dafoe, Vincent Cassel.
Lt. Green: If you keep knocking on the Devil's door long enough, somebody's gonna answer you.
From: "Four Brothers"
About: Four juvenile delinquents are adopted by a social worker. Years laters, they return to town together, to unhttp://theonecover the real reason for their mother's violent death.
Tagline: They came home to bury mom...and her killers.
Will: Look at me. Look at what I've become. I sometimes don't talk to another living soul for fucking days, weeks. I'm always on the move. I trust no one, nothing. And it's got fuck-all to do with escape or withdrawal or fear. It's grief. For a life wasted. And now there's Davey. Another fucking wasted life. And I'm gonna find out why.
From: "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead"
About: Will Graham is a former gangster who tries to make amends for his violent past, by walking away from everything he knew. He's living in isolation in the remote countryside, when he hears that his younger brother has died. Will returns to his life of crime to find out the truth about his brother's death.
Tagline: For three long years, Will Graham led a quiet life. Things are about to change.
As a young woman, Camille Claudel (b. December 8, 1864 – d. October 19, 1943) was recognized for both her artistic talent and her physical beauty; nevertheless, she spent most of her adult life as a recluse.
Her love for portraying the human form resulted in certain sculptures that the state and an infuriated press censored as overly sensual and inappropriate for public display.
These circumstances may have contributed to the decline of her career and her mental state. In 1913 Claudel was committed to a mental asylum, where she remained until her death 30 years later.
Source: NMWA
"Je réclame la liberté à grands cris."
- Camille Claudel
Other: This title should be available today, via Netflix.com. Free trial period lets you try out the service before you commit. Monthly flat rate. No late fees. Line up your want-to-see titles ahead of time. DVDs delivered right to your door.
Netflix is a great option if you're lazy, absent-minded, or just like the idea of good movies showing up in your mailbox when you least expect them to. Also a good option if you love movies, but don't necessarily want to own 500 movies on DVD. Or if you want to screen movies before you decide to go for it and buy them on Amazon.com. Just watch 'em and send 'em back by tossing the courier envelope into any mailbox -- the postage is already pre-paid. Seems like they only thing they don't deliver is popcorn. Bet someone's working on that.
This movie should be available to ship out, today. If you're thinking about trying Netflix, feel free to look up a few titles you'd like to see, including new releases: Netflix.com
Lytton Strachey: I tend to be impulsive in these matters, like the time I asked Virginia Woolf to marry me.
Dora Carrington: She turned you down?
Lytton Strachey: No, she accepted. It was ghastly.
...
Lytton Strachey: If this is dying, I don't think much of it.
from: "Carrington" (1995)
About: Movie based on the long-term relationship between painter/Bloomsbury bohemian Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey. Platonic, due to Strachey's homosexuality, their complex friendship lasted until Lytton Strachey's death in 1932.
Devastated by Strachey's death, Carrington died shortly thereafter, at the age of 38.
Tagline: She had many lovers but only one love.
Other: Netflix.com title. Should be available to be shipped to you today. If you're interested in requesting this film through Netflix, please double-check to make sure that the title is available: Netflix.com. If you're not a member of Netflix, you can still order this title during your trial offer period.
See if they have this title available
to ship out to you today: Netflix.com
Based on the chaotic love affair between novelist George Sand ("Indiana") and poet/dramatist Alfred de Musset. His autobiographical work, "La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle"(1835), is a fictionalized account of the relationship.
About: Sand was a disciplined writer, and as a divorced woman at a time when all property belonged solely to the husband, she wrote to support herself and the children. De Musset had a destructive personality and found solace in opium and prostitutes. These differences came to a climax during a sojourn in Venice, a time that brought de Musset to the brink of death and Sand to another lover.
Source: Marta Barber/"Miami Herald"
"My profession is to be free."
- George Sand
Trivia: The film was shot in the actual rooms at Hotel Danieli which Sand and de Musset stayed in while they were in Venice. Co-leads Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel were a couple in real life.
Journalist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings leaves her husband and career and moves to Florida to write her first novel.
About: Based on the memoirs of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of "The Yearling".
Calendar Girls (2003)
Cora: It's not naked. It's nude.
Marie: What's the difference?
Celia: Art.
...
Annie: None of us have been here before, love. I mean, for God's sake, my John didn't see me naked until the spring of 1975.
Chris: What happened in the spring of '75?
Annie: There was a lizard in the shower block at Abergele. Quite a few people saw me naked that morning.
...
[matter-of-factly, to Jessie, over breakfast]
Richard: You're nude in the Telegraph, dear. Can you pass the bacon?
...
[viciously]
Chris: You know, loads of people lose their partners to this disease; I bet they don’t all get fan mail. Doesn’t that make you a little bit of a success? A very successful bereaved woman. A celebrity widow. Saint Annie of Knapley. Eh? Eh?
Annie: I’m not a saint. Because I’d rob every penny from this calendar, if it would buy me just one more hour with him.
...
Chris: I don’t know what to say to her.
Rod: She’s your oldest friend, Chris. You don’t have to say anything.
About: A funny and touching dramedy about a group of women who work together to raise funds to buy an offbeat memorial for an old friend.
The Women's Institute (W.I.) in North Yorkshire produces a fundraising calendar each year; usually a bland calendar featuring images of the Yorkshire dales.
In 1999, the partner of one of the W.I. members is diagnosed with leukemia. As he goes through rounds of chemotherapy, he jokes that if the ladies plant sunflower seeds, he'll have to get better so that he'll be around to see them bloom.
His condition worsens and he dies. In order to raise funds to buy a memorial couch for the hospital visitor's lounge, the women decide to create a calendar of themselves in the nude.
They hope that they can sell a few hundred copies around their village, to raise funds to buy the sofa and have enough left over to donate money to organizations supporting leukemia research.
They get a little more than they bargained for...
The movie co-stars Helen Mirren ("Prime Suspect") and Julie Walters ("Billy Elliot"). DVD extras include two mini-documentaries about the real calendar girls.
Tagline: They dropped everything for a good cause.
Trivia: The members of music group Anthrax make a cameo appearance.
The film is based on a true story. The W.I. calendar became an unexpected hit, and raised more than a million dollarss -- enough to pay for a new leukemia unit at the local hospital. And, as noted in the closing credits, a new sofa, too.
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Stage Beauty
Maria: Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die. I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought. You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight.
From: "Stage Beauty"
"New York Times" investigative reporter Nicholas Gage returns to Greece to track down the men who tortured and executed his mother.
About: The movie is based on the book "Eleni", the real-life story of Eleni Gatzoyiannis.
The mother loved her children enough to die for them. The son loved his mother enough to kill for her. In both stories it was children who transformed the situation. The power of forgiveness bent me in half.
Source: User Reviews/Amazon.com
Paco: You’re the height of selfishness! Can’t you think about anyone but yourself?
Leo: No.
from: "The Flower of My Secret" (1995)
Original title: "La Flor de mi Secreto"
Tagline: Every woman has a secret.
About: "The Flower of My Secret" tells the story of a romance writer whose own real-life romance is falling apart...[Marisa Paredes] runs the gamut of every possible emotion and creates a character that is memorable and moving.
Source: User Reviews/Amazon.com
Review(s): I agree with what the second reviewer says about this sensitive, passionate, lyrical portrayal of a courageous, strong, disciplined woman...the betrayals she suffers are as profound as her love is...Nothing misfired about this genuine masterpiece.
Source: User Reviews/Amazon.com
Lovely and touching...and maybe those aren't words fans normally associate with Almodovar... I disagree with the reviewer who termed this a misfire -- it's simply a more thoughtful film by this usually over-the-top director. Visually, one of his most arresting films, Almodovar chooses to focus this time on the distance between true love and idealized love as seen in romance novels and how they sometimes intersect in surprising ways. Marissa Paredes shows stunning range as the main character -- at times both critically stung and deeply needy and yet passionate and cocky; boy, do you root for her. And the scene in which she is literally pushed by a mob of protesters into the arms of the man she could be truly happy with is one of the best in movies.
Source: User Reviews/Amazon.com
Trivia: Flamenco superstar Joaquín Cortés plays a supporting role as a moody, streetwise dancer. Flamenco legend Manuela Vargas plays his mother.
Frida Kahlo: At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.
from: "Frida" (2002)
From 1926 until her death, painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking, images that reflected her turbulent life. She did not originally plan to become an artist. A polio survivor, at 15 Kahlo entered the premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, this training ended three years later when Kahlo was gravely hurt in a bus accident. She spent over a year in bed, recovering from fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and shoulder and foot injuries. Despite more than 30 subsequent operations, Kahlo spent the rest of her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age 47.
Source: NMWA
No, poetry. And an enduring horror classic; Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was written on a literary bet during a summer retreat in Geneva, Switzerland.
Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin, Claire Clairmont and Dr. John Polidori spent the summer of 1816 together; Byron dared each of them to write a horror story.
Polidori wrote "The Vampyre". Mary Godwin (she married Percy Shelley in December of 1816) wrote the classic horror novel, "Frankenstein".
Trivia: Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft was the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a 19th century feminist who wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", and philosopher/novelist William Godwin.
Mary Godwin married Percy Shelley in December 1816. They settled in Italy (1818), living in Rome, Florence and Pisa. Percy Shelley died only four years later, in the summer of 1822.
Aldonza: You know what the worst crime of all is? Being born. For that you get punished your whole life.
...
Miguel de Cervantes: I shall impersonate a man. His name is Alonso Quijana, a country squire no longer young. Being retired, he has much time for books. He studies them from morn till night and often through the night and morn again, and all he reads oppresses him; fills him with indignation at man's murderous ways toward man. He ponders the problem of how to make better a world where evil brings profit and virtue none at all; where fraud and deceit are mingled with truth and sincerity. He broods and broods and broods and broods and finally his brains dry up. He lays down the melancholy burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined -- to become a knight-errant, and sally forth into the world in search of adventures; to mount a crusade; to raise up the weak and those in need. No longer will he be plain Alonso Quijana, but a dauntless knight known as Don Quixote de La Mancha.
From: "Man of La Mancha" (1972)
About: Writer Miguel de Cervantes is arrested and tossed into a dungeon. The other prisoners stage a mock trial. Cervantes wants to save his manuscript from being destroyed, so he stages his defense by telling them the story contained therein -- a tale of Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha.
Joyeux Noël/Merry Christmas
About: During World War I, as Christmas Eve, 1914, approaches, soldiers in the trenches defy the orders of their superior officers to declare a temporary ceasefire for Christmas Eve.
The men share rations, drink together, swap chocolates and cigarettes, play soccer in No Man's Land, and help each other bury their dead.
Based on actual events during the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Tagline: December, 1914. A true story which history forgot.
Trivia: Benno Fürmann, who plays Nikolaus, starred in "Der Krieger und die Kaiserin/The Princess and the Warrior."
The song the soldiers sing is "Christmas in the Trenches," by folk singer John McCutcheon.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes,
and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away
from families of their own
...
Soon daylight stole upon us
and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared
to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart
that lived that wonderous night:
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
...
My name is Francis Tolliver,
in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I,
I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots
won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same
Movie based on the complicated, real-life love triangle between writers Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, and Miller's eccentric wife, June.
Anaïs Nin is best known for her diaries but also produced a number of novels and a prose poem in surrealistic style, as well as wonderful erotic short stories, published posthumously. Characterized by the use of powerful and, at times, disquieting imagery, her work reveals great sensitivity and perception.
Source: Anais-Nin.de
"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
- Anaïs Nin
Mallefille: You promised to love me.
George: I didn't promise to succeed.
...
Marie: She's in love with Chopin.
Franz Lizst: The Polish corpse?
...
Alfred de Musset: Her memoirs? Am I in it?
Publisher: No. It's about her childhood. I expect you come in later, after she chews up her husband, and about a hundred other fellows.
Alfred de Musset: It's true. She's a cannibal. She would drink the blood of her children, from the skull of her lover, and not feel so much as a stomach-ache.
Publisher: [exasperated] Alfred, go home. Put it into verse. I'll publish it -- and then, and only then, will you get paid.
from: "Impromptu" (1991)
About: Based on the real-life love affair between writer George Sand and composer Frédéric Chopin.
"The trade of authorship is a violent and indestructible obsession."
- George Sand
Hildy Johnson: I just said I'd write it, I didn't say I wouldn't tear it up. It's all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day. [She hangs up emphatically].
And that, my friends, is my farewell to the newspaper business.
from: "His Girl Friday" (1940)
About: Screwball comedy about feuding newspaper reporters.
Iris Murdoch: There is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever -- that of the mind.
from: "Iris"
About: Movie based on the relationship between novelist Iris Murdoch her husband of 40 years, literary critic John Bayley.
Iris Murdoch wrote her first novel, "Under the Net", in 1954, having previously published works on philosophy, including a study of Jean-Paul Sartre. She went on to produce more than twenty novels until 1995, when she began a four-year descent into Alzheimer's disease. She died in February, 1999.
Henry Crawford: There is only one happiness in life -- to love and be loved.
Fanny Price: Mr. Crawford, do not speak nonsense.
Henry Crawford: Nonsense?
Fanny Price: You are such a fine speaker that I'm afraid you may actually end in convincing yourself.
Henry Crawford: Fanny. You are killing me.
Fanny Price: No man dies of love but on the stage.
From: "Mansfield Park" (1999)
About: As a child, Fanny Price is sent away by her penniless famiy, to be raised by distant relatives, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park. Despite her unstable social position, Fanny is determined to become a writer -- if only life would stop disrupting her plans...
Based on the novel by Jane Austen. Written and directed by Patricia Rozema.
First Official: One, you are legally dead and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever.
Orlando: Ah. Fine.
First Official: Two, you are now a female.
Second Official: Which amounts to much the same thing.
from: "Orlando" (1993)
About: Based on the novel "Orlando: A Biography" by Virginia Woolf. Immortal youth Orlando learns about politics, war, sex, society, and birth -- first as a man, then again as a woman. A visually stunning, clever commentary on gender and society.
Dear Mr. Ash: I live circumscribed and self-communing. It is best so; not like a princess in the thicket, more like a spider in her web, inclined to snap at visitors or trespassers, not perceiving the distinction until too late. Thus it is unwise to call.
from: "Possession" (2002)
Marianne: Did you see him? He expressed himself well, did he not?
Mrs. Dashwood: With great decorum and honour.
Marianne: And spirit and wit and feeling!
Elinor: And economy -- ten words at most.
Based on the novel by Jane Austen. Screenplay by Emma Thompson.
[Rival theater manager] Richard Burbage: The Master of the Revels despises us all for vagrants and peddlers of bombast. But my father, James Burbage, had the first license to make a company of players from Her Majesty, and he drew from poets the literature of the age. We must show them that we are men of parts. Will Shakespeare has a play. I have a theatre. The curtain is yours.
From: "Shakespeare In Love"
Tagline(s): A comedy about the greatest love story almost never told./Love is the only inspiration.
About: Set in London, in the 16th century. The manager of a failing theater is hounded by creditors, and his playwright, Will Shakespeare, has writer's block. He's all out of inspiration as he tries struggles to write a new play.
Young gentlewoman Viola loves the theater, and auditions for a part, disguised as a boy. Will thinks he's found a great actor for the new play. Viola thinks she's met the man of her dreams -- except that she's engaged to marry the oafish Lord Wessex.
Dramedy ensues, as the forbidden love affair provides fresh inspiration for Will's new play: "Romeo and Juliet."
Jack Lewis: How could Joy be my wife? I’d have to love her, wouldn’t I? I’d have to care more for her than for anyone else in this world. I’d have to be suffering the torments of the damned.
from: "Shadowlands" (1993)
"Your bid -- for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity -- will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high. Nothing will shake a man -- or at any rate a man like me -- out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself."
from: "A Grief Observed", C.S. Lewis
Trivia: C.S. Lewis was called "Jack" by close friends, among them J.R.R. Tolkien.
Investigative reporter Veronica Guerin’s coverage of Dublin’s criminal underworld exposed corruption, angered organized crime figures and led to her eventual assassination. Guerin was killed on June 26, 1996, when one of two men on a motorcycle fired six rounds from a pistol at close range as she waited in her car at a traffic light just outside Dublin. She was 37. Guerin was murdered two days before she was due to address a conference in London on "Dying to Tell a Story: Journalists at Risk."
Her death led to Ireland’s largest criminal investigation, resulting in over 150 arrests and a crackdown on organized-crime gangs that her assassins could never have foreseen.
Source: International Press Institute
About: In "Jane Eyre," a madwoman escapes from a locked room and wreaks havoc on the household.
But who was this mysterious woman, and what was she like, before later events turned her into a monster?
In "Wide Sargasso Sea," we see her life during an earlier period of time, witness her hasty marriage to a naive young Englishman, and learn that she is hiding a terrible secret which will eventually destroy both their lives. The film is a turbulent romantic drama set in 19th century Jamaica, based on the novel by Jean Rhys.
Mr. Brocklehurst: And what is hell? Can you tell me that?
Young Jane: A pit full of fire.
Mr. Brocklehurst: And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?
Young Jane: No, sir.
Mr. Brocklehurst: What must you do to avoid it?
Young Jane: I must keep in good health and not die.
From: "Jane Eyre" (1996)
"But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall: I'll nail up the front door and board the lower windows: I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here with my wife...Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when my wife is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on-- "
"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate, with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel; she cannot help being mad."
...
"I am a fool!" cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her...Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?"
"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once."
"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?"
"I have understood something to that effect."
"Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner betimes.
"Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed.
"When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me..."
Girl Scout: Is this made from real lemons?
Wednesday: Yes.
Girl Scout: I only like all-natural foods and beverages, organically grown, with no preservatives. Are you sure they're real lemons?
Pugsley: Yes.
Girl Scout: I'll tell you what. I'll buy a cup if you buy a box of my delicious Girl Scout cookies. Do we have a deal?
Wednesday: Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
from: "The Addams Family" (1991)
Tagline: Weird is relative.
Trivia: Based on the cheerfully macabre comic strip by Chaz Addams.
Jess: Anyone can cook aloo gobi, but who can bend a ball like Beckham?
...
Mrs. Bhamra: What did I do wrong in my past life?
From: "Bend It Like Beckham"
Tagline: Sometimes, to follow your dreams...you've got to bend the rules.
All Jessminder "Jess" Bhamra wants to do is play soccer. All her strict Sikh family wants her to do is get married. Chaos (and hilarity) ensues when Jessminder sneaks away to join a soccer team, and tries to keep her training a secret from neighborhood busybodies.
When a critical match falls on the same day as her sister's lavish wedding, Jess is forced to choose what's most important to her -- her family or her dream.
Phil: Why didn’t you tell me?
Shelley: Maybe because you haven’t spoken to me for ten years, good enough reason?
Phil: Sandra?
Shelley: She thinks I’m still in clear, don’t she? Waiting for it to grow back. I can’t tell her.
Brian: You told us.
Shelley: Yeah, I told you. I can tell you ‘cause you don’t care. Not really. She cares so much her heart would burst, silly cow.
-
Sandra: Oh, you liar. You fucking liar.
Shelley: Sand-
Sandra: Out. Everybody out. Come on, don’t you have homes to go to? Scram, shoot, bugger off.
Brian: Hang on, Sandra.
Sandra: Oh, knew, did you? Of course you bloody did. And you and all, Phil? Yeah. Traitors all, everyone knew except the dizzy cow, here: ‘Don’t tell her, she’s only her fucking girlfriend, after all, what would she know?’
Phil: Sandra...
Sandra: Don’t you dare. You come around to my house after ten years of blanking me in the street, telling me I’ve got no elegance. Well, you’re bloody right, I’ve got no elegance. But I’ve got a big boot, and I’m gonna kick you out with it. Now get out. Out! And you, get out of my shop.
Girl in Chair: What about me highlights?
Sandra: Bugger your highlights, get out.
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Sandra: Go on, love. It’s been waiting ten years, after all.
About: The hippest salon artistes in London descend on insignificant Yorkshire town Keighley with their most over-the-top, wigged-out hair design creations in tow. Stress and sabotage are de rigueur, as duelling hairdressers compete for first place in the National British Hairdressing Championships.
Former hair design genius Phil and his son Brian run the local town barbershop; Phil's ex-wife Shelley and her lover own the town beauty salon.
Phil and Shelley haven't spoken in ten years, ever since she left him for Sandra, but when Shelley gets heartbreaking news, she goes all out to bring her fractured family together to work for one final, glorious win -- before it's too late to make amends.
A frothy mixture of high camp and light farce, balanced with scenes of greater emotional poignancy and depth; another engaging dramedy from Simon Beaufoy, who also scripted "The Full Monty." Supermodel Heidi Klum plays a supporting role. Veteran actor Warren Clarke (Tony/Mayor of Keighley) played the role of Dim in "A Clockwork Orange" (1972),
Quirky re-telling of the story of Cinderella. Ariadna Gil ("Belle Epoque") stars as Ana, who leaves her fiancé at the altar and hops a plane to Paris to fulfill her dream of becoming an opera singer.
About: Directed by Fina Torres, whose first feature film "Oriane" won the Camera d'Or at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Torres went on to direct "Woman on Top", starring Penélope Cruz.
The film's soundtrack includes arias from Rossini's "La Cenerentola" (Cinderella) and art songs by Schubert and Schumann.
Connie: We've gotta go someplace where we can just blend in; somewhere where they'd never look for us, because there's no theater, no musical theater, no dinner theater, no culture at all.
Carla: Los Angeles.
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Connie: Do yourselves a favor -- let your eyes crinkle, let your skin wrinkle. Our lines show that we've lived. If he doesn't love you when you look like a map, tell him to hit the road.
About: Musical theater geeks Connie and Carla witness a shooting and go on the lam, winding up in West Hollywood. After they lose their jobs at a snooty spa, they hit a local dive bar, where a drag queen stage set of "Shake Your Groove Thing" gives Connie a loopy idea -- which just might pay off...
