BABBLING BOOKS

Lauzc · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:04 am Post subject:

Un poco de chocolate ~ 4/5
Release Date: 30 April 2008 (Spain)

In a small town in the Basque country, Lucas and Maria are an elderly brother and sister. They share a house with their memories and the ghosts of the people they have loved throughout their lifes. They know that sooner or later they will buy their ticket for their final journey. Marcos and Roma are young and alone. She's a nurse and paints windows that embellish the views from her room. Marcos is a street performer with no home of his own, clinging to his accordion and a pile of questions. They don't know that sooner or later they will all set out on a journey together.

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handmade by Laura Croxson

Lauzc · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:46 pm Post subject:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) ~ 4/5
Joey Drayton brings her fiancé, Dr. John Prentice, home to sunny San Francisco to meet her affluent parents. Their liberal persuasions are now put to the test, for although the young man is an ideal choice (he's highly and internationally respected in the medical field, and he's impeccably mannered, handsome, well dressed and of a respectable California family), he's black. The film, which covers one busy day in the Drayton home, is essentially a drawing-room comedy, a series of cross-conversations between the young doctor and the girl's parents, and finally between all sets of parents and offspring. A simple dinner is extended to include the doctor's parents, who fly up from Los Angeles for the evening, and the crusty but benevolent old Irish priest, a friend of the family. Thus, the title of the film.
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handmade by Laura Croxson

Lauzc · Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:05 pm Post subject:

I had free preview tix for this film today and I absolutely loved it!

Away We Go (2009) ~ 5/5

Mid-thirtysomethings Burt Farlander and Verona De Tessant are a loving couple. Burt has always wanted to marry Verona, but Verona resists, not seeing the point of the institution. Regardless, they are having a baby together, despite questioning their potential parenting abilities. They are happy that they made the decision to move close to Burt's parents, Jerry and Gloria Farlander, as they want to share the experience with the baby's grandparents. Verona's own parents died over ten years earlier, a situation about which she doesn't like to discuss. In Verona's sixth month, she and Burt learn that Jerry and Gloria are moving to Antwerpen, Belgium the month before the baby is due, just because it's something they've always wanted to do. Burt and Verona don't understand what they see as Jerry and Gloria's selfishness in putting this move above spending time with their impending granddaughter. Being mobile people, Burt and Verona decide to move. As they want to share their new family experience with people that they love, they decide to take a trans-continental trip to meet with old friends and relatives. Most of them are married with children of their own, and Burt and Verona want to see where they would like to live and with whom they want to share the experience.
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handmade by Laura Croxson

Karen · Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 8:49 am Post subject:

I've seen the trailer for Away We Go a couple of times and earmarked it for a future cinema trip. I am even more enthused about catching it now I've seen your review, thanks Laura.

Karen · Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:24 pm Post subject:

The Soloist
Saw this at the weekend, an excellent film. Some big names in the cast but not the usual Hollywood Shmaltzy work over given to the story which is based on a true one. I think the journalist in the story wrote a book and I am quite keen to look it up after watching the film, I think it will be a very interesting read.

Lauzc · Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:49 pm Post subject:

I won some free tix to a preview of:

Bright Star (2009) ~ 4/5
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year-old English poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw), and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an out-spoken student of high fashion. This unlikely pair begin at odds, he thinking her a stylish minx, while she was unimpressed not only by his poetry but also by literature in general.

However, when Fanny heard that Keats was nursing his seriously ill younger brother, her efforts to help touched Keats and when she asked him to teach her about poetry he agreed. The poetry soon became a romantic remedy that worked not only to sort their differences, but also to fuel an impassioned love affair.

When Fanny's alarmed mother and Keats' best friend finally awoke to their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept deeply into powerful new sensations, "I have the feeling as if we're dissolving," Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that only deepened as their troubles mounted.

When Keats fell ill a year later, the two young lovers faced no marriage but separation. In Keats' own poignant words, "forever panting and forever young."
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handmade by Laura Croxson

Lauzc · Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 11:14 pm Post subject:

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) ~ 3/5
Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey) is a notorious photographer who has a bad boy reputation of loving beautiful women and dumping them when they fall in love with him. Beautiful models and celebrities flock to his studio to get their picture taken, usually in lingerie, and throw themselves at him. Conner is so overloaded with women that he has to breakup with three women at the same time during a conference call in front of his next prey. His brother Paul (Breckin Meyer) is about to get married, and Connor thinks he is making a terrible mistake. As an incorrigible bachelor, Connor loves his freedom more than ever settling down and loving only one woman. Connor tries to talk Paul out of getting married, and it looks like Connor is about to succeed. Then the night before the wedding, Connor is visited by three ghosts, who take him back to his past, present, and his lonely future. They try to discovery the point in time where Connors became this womanizing jerk. Maybe there is still time to change him into a sensitive, feeling, and caring person that he once was, and he may even find his true love.

My Sister's Keeper (2009) ~ 3.5/5
n Los Angeles, the eleven year old Anna Fitzgerald seeks the successful lawyer Campbell Alexander trying to hire him to earn medical emancipation from her mother Sara that wants Anna to donate her kidney to her sister. She tells the lawyer the story of her family after the discovery that her older sister Kate has had leukemia; how she was conceived by in vitro fertilization to become a donor; and the medical procedures she has been submitted since she was five years old to donate to her sister. Campbell accepts to work pro bono and the obsessed Sara decides to go to court to force Anna to help her sister.
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handmade by Laura Croxson

wonderlake · Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:40 am Post subject:

Let The Right One In (2009)
I recently read and really enjoyed the book of this, but I think watching the film so soon afterwards just left me comparing the film to the book almost side-by-side, and even the best film adaptation in the world cannot match the level of detail and description in the book :<
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Current reading: The Last Temptation, Val McDermid ~ 40 @2009

1001 challenge 2009: 11

Lauzc · Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:19 pm Post subject:

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) ~ 3.5/5

A Chicago librarian suffers from a rare genetic disorder that sends him hurtling through time whenever he is under extreme duress; despite the fact that he vanishes at inordinately frequent and lengthy intervals, he attempts to build a stable future with the beautiful young heiress he loves. Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams star in this dramatic fantasy, which is directed by Robert Schwentke and based on the best-selling book by author Audrey Niffenegger.

Geoff has read the book and said it was much better than the film, so I have bumped it up on my TBR.
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handmade by Laura Croxson

eightlegs · Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:12 pm Post subject:

I've read and enjoyed this but can't see how it would translate well to film so I shan't watch the film. One of those where I'm sure the book is far better

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