Once upon a time, Shelley Darlington (played by Anna Faris) was a lonely orphan. She grew up to be a great beauty and moved to the Playboy mansion at age 18. There she lived happily for nine years, considering the friends she made there to be her family.
Then she's kicked out of the house the day after her 27th birthday for being "too old." She doesn't exactly have a great education or job skills, but she manages to land a job as a house mother to an unpopular sorority on a college campus. The sorority is about to lose their house unless they can get 30 new pledges.
Here's where Shelley's area of expertise comes into play. She helps the girls--all socially awkward misfits--look sexy and learn to flirt. They start attracting the attention of guys and potential pledges.
Shelley, meanwhile, falls for Oliver (Colin Hanks), a nursing home administrator and perhaps the only straight guy on earth who is immune to her more bunny-like charms. To his credit, he wants to be with someone he can actually have a conversation with, which leaves her at a loss. So now the girls help her improve her knowledge base, a rather formidable task.
The basic premise of the movie is to be yourself, but it's not exactly a movie you go to for its redeeming social value. It's fun, though. Faris is wickedly funny as Shelley. Also great is Emma Stone as Natalie, the leader of the sorority girls.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
It Only Takes a Moment, by Mary Jane Clark (Book Review)
Those of you who read Mary Jane Clark's novels may remember Eliza Blake. All of Clark's novels center around the staff of the fictional KEY news team, including Eliza. I have some trouble keeping all of the characters straight, since usually too much time passes before I read another book of hers, but generally it doesn't matter. The stories stand on their own and you don't really need to remember details of the previous books.
Eliza is a single parent of a seven-year-old daughter, Janie. Her husband died some years before. She has a boyfriend, Mack, but he is overseas. She has just been re-assigned to do the morning show, which will enable her to spend the summer afternoons with her daughter. She is basically content with her life, but then one day the unthinkable happens. Janie is kidnapped, along with their housekeeper, Carmen Garcia. Terrified and guilt-ridden for allowing her daughter as much public exposure as she has, Eliza and her friends, not wanting to sit around and wait for the FBI and local authorities to find Janie, launch their own investigation. Eliza even gets some help from a psychic, though the authorities are rather disinclined to trust what the psychic says, and her intuitions do seem to be pretty vague.
The story alternates between different points of view, including that of the kidnappers, and the reader learns that money isn't the motive for Janie's kidnapping, but what is it? Clark also does a wonderful job of making everyone look guilty, so even though you get an idea of what the kidnappers are thinking, you don't know who they are until the end, at which point there is a surprising twist. It's a great book for mystery lovers.
Eliza is a single parent of a seven-year-old daughter, Janie. Her husband died some years before. She has a boyfriend, Mack, but he is overseas. She has just been re-assigned to do the morning show, which will enable her to spend the summer afternoons with her daughter. She is basically content with her life, but then one day the unthinkable happens. Janie is kidnapped, along with their housekeeper, Carmen Garcia. Terrified and guilt-ridden for allowing her daughter as much public exposure as she has, Eliza and her friends, not wanting to sit around and wait for the FBI and local authorities to find Janie, launch their own investigation. Eliza even gets some help from a psychic, though the authorities are rather disinclined to trust what the psychic says, and her intuitions do seem to be pretty vague.
The story alternates between different points of view, including that of the kidnappers, and the reader learns that money isn't the motive for Janie's kidnapping, but what is it? Clark also does a wonderful job of making everyone look guilty, so even though you get an idea of what the kidnappers are thinking, you don't know who they are until the end, at which point there is a surprising twist. It's a great book for mystery lovers.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Book Review--A Wolf at the Table, Augustin Burroughs
The universe sure didn't do Augusten Burroughs any favors in assigning him parents. Running with Scissors details his mother's mental illness and how she gave guardianship of him to her crazy psychiatrist when Augusten was 13. His life at the psychiatrist's house was truly chaotic and was actually painful to read, though very well done and very funny at times.
A Wolf at the Table is a prequel to Scissors, in which the focus is Augusten's life with his parents before he and his mother left and he started living at the psychiatrist's house. This is a departure from his earlier books in that it is very serious. While Augusten's mother may have been mentally ill, his father seems to have been truly evil. I'm not sure if it was alcoholism that made his father that way, or maybe something in his genes or early life experiences. Probably some combination of all three. Augusten's father actually had a pretty good life until he was about eight or so. He was born to teenage parents, and to help them out, his paternal grandfather and three teen-aged aunts took him in and took very good care of him, which was great until the teen-aged parents, now in their 20s, reclaimed him. Then things weren't so great. His father, Augusten's grandfather, was a very angry man, though no one was sure what caused the anger. He also drank to excess. Augusten's grandmother, Carolyn, was terrified of her husband's anger and thus not much help in protecting her son.
The cycle was repeated with Augusten's parents. Augusten and his mother would sometimes move out of the house because his mother believed they weren't safe there. While his mother had some serious problems of her own, she was right in believing that her husband was capable of violence. In reading this, I was only sorry that it took them as long as it did to make a clean break. With Augusten, there was a complete lack of an emotional connection, and it was heartbreaking to see the little boy rejected time and again by his father.
This was a difficult book to read because it was so disturbing, but very readable and well done.
A Wolf at the Table is a prequel to Scissors, in which the focus is Augusten's life with his parents before he and his mother left and he started living at the psychiatrist's house. This is a departure from his earlier books in that it is very serious. While Augusten's mother may have been mentally ill, his father seems to have been truly evil. I'm not sure if it was alcoholism that made his father that way, or maybe something in his genes or early life experiences. Probably some combination of all three. Augusten's father actually had a pretty good life until he was about eight or so. He was born to teenage parents, and to help them out, his paternal grandfather and three teen-aged aunts took him in and took very good care of him, which was great until the teen-aged parents, now in their 20s, reclaimed him. Then things weren't so great. His father, Augusten's grandfather, was a very angry man, though no one was sure what caused the anger. He also drank to excess. Augusten's grandmother, Carolyn, was terrified of her husband's anger and thus not much help in protecting her son.
The cycle was repeated with Augusten's parents. Augusten and his mother would sometimes move out of the house because his mother believed they weren't safe there. While his mother had some serious problems of her own, she was right in believing that her husband was capable of violence. In reading this, I was only sorry that it took them as long as it did to make a clean break. With Augusten, there was a complete lack of an emotional connection, and it was heartbreaking to see the little boy rejected time and again by his father.
This was a difficult book to read because it was so disturbing, but very readable and well done.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Movie Review--Wall-E
When I am visiting my family, which includes my 5-year-old niece and 8-year-old nephew, I sometimes see movies I wouldn't otherwise see. Wall-E was one I probably wouldn't have thought of seeing on my own, but the kids wanted to see it. When I heard it was about robots, I hoped it would be a short movie.
However, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the main characters are robots, but the movie is clever and engaging, for adults as well as kids.
We first meet Wall-E, a solar-powered robot, several hundred years into the future. He is back on planet Earth, apparently by himself, cleaning up garbage. Since he doesn't speak at first, the viewer learns what is going on indirectly. A stray newspaper indicates that the Earth is covered with garbage, and indeed Wall-E is surrounded by garbage to clean up. Skyscrapers around him are actually constructed out of garbage. He has a big storage area where he retires at night which has electricity and is festooned with Christmas tree lights. He watches old movies on TV, and at one point we see an old advertisement, from which we learn that all the people on earth went aboard a giant spaceship while the garbage was being cleaned up.
Wall-E's world changes dramatically one day when a spaceship lands and dispatches another robot named Eve. Wall-E is instantly smitten and tries to impress her by showing her his few treasures. The tiny green plant he found one day and and transplanted into an old shoe gets the biggest reaction. Eve takes the plant and both of them end up aboard the spaceship Axiom, where they find many extremely overweight and lazy humans who are used to having everything done for them, waiting to one day be able to go home again. Wall-E and Eve get caught up in a plot regarding the fate of the plant and the people aboard the spaceship.
The story is just so clever that it is difficult to do it justice in describing it. Much of the story of the robots is told through their actions rather than dialog. It's a science fiction story with a message, and one that is important for adults to see as well as children.
However, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, the main characters are robots, but the movie is clever and engaging, for adults as well as kids.
We first meet Wall-E, a solar-powered robot, several hundred years into the future. He is back on planet Earth, apparently by himself, cleaning up garbage. Since he doesn't speak at first, the viewer learns what is going on indirectly. A stray newspaper indicates that the Earth is covered with garbage, and indeed Wall-E is surrounded by garbage to clean up. Skyscrapers around him are actually constructed out of garbage. He has a big storage area where he retires at night which has electricity and is festooned with Christmas tree lights. He watches old movies on TV, and at one point we see an old advertisement, from which we learn that all the people on earth went aboard a giant spaceship while the garbage was being cleaned up.
Wall-E's world changes dramatically one day when a spaceship lands and dispatches another robot named Eve. Wall-E is instantly smitten and tries to impress her by showing her his few treasures. The tiny green plant he found one day and and transplanted into an old shoe gets the biggest reaction. Eve takes the plant and both of them end up aboard the spaceship Axiom, where they find many extremely overweight and lazy humans who are used to having everything done for them, waiting to one day be able to go home again. Wall-E and Eve get caught up in a plot regarding the fate of the plant and the people aboard the spaceship.
The story is just so clever that it is difficult to do it justice in describing it. Much of the story of the robots is told through their actions rather than dialog. It's a science fiction story with a message, and one that is important for adults to see as well as children.
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