that girl allison

On Sunday afternoon I stumbled onto the movie adaptation of Rent on Fox.  This was random because I haven’t watched the movie since 2006, and I don’t know of any network stations that would ever show it.  I watched though, of course, and got reacquainted with the score, despite the cuts made for the movie and made for TV (basically everything good was cut, which was kind of annoying).  

The movie is, in retrospect, horrifically cheesy and could possibly be described as bad, but I remember loving it the first time I saw it at the New York premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre.  It was probably because I was surrounded by the cast, crew, Jonathan Larson’s friends and family, and Rent alumni so the energy in the theatre was unparalleled.  

I saw it three more times in theatres (including twice the night it came out, yeah, yeah) with different friends and my family.  I was a sophomore in college, thus I had the time to go to the Bloomingdales appearance that the cast did, the soundtrack signing in Virgin, and probably a few other events too.  It was fun.  I kind of felt like I was fifteen again, except much cooler because now I lived in the city.  I bought it on DVD when it came out and watched it maybe around the time Rent was closing on Broadway in 2008, but not since then.  Watching it again today reminded me of the amazing score again and I’m now excited to see the off-Broadway “revival” on July 14th.  

I’m always a tad sentimental when it comes to this show.  It was a huge part of my adolescence.  Maybe one day I’ll reveal just how many times I saw it on Broadway.  Not yet though.  

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Saturday night was the kick off of Kevin Smith’s national tour to promote, and screen, his newest movie Red State.  Once I heard the premise of the movie (evangelists taking their god-worshipping to the next level - murder) and watched the trailer, I knew I had to see it.  Spoilers ahead!

The god-obsessed family, the Five Points (I think that was their “church” name), live in a compound in middle America that is completely guarded by a hideous makeshift fence with an underground chapel.  The town they live in has recently suffered from two homicides with no clues as to who the culprits are.  Surprise, surprise!  It’s this family.  They’ve taken to doing “the lord’s work” and killing sinners themselves by knocking them unconscious, then wrapping them from the night down in shrink wrap and hoisting them onto a cross in their chapel.  After they’ve said some prayers for the sinner, they finish them off.  I won’t give it all away but three local teens are captured and the audience watches their struggle to get out of their compound.  The local police have also caught wind that this family has recently purchased enough machine guns and riffles, and bullets, to keep an army at war satisfied for a few years.  The investigation starts, and the movie doesn’t stop until the final line, “Shut the fuck up!”

Prior to tonight I’d never seen a Kevin Smith movie, and I don’t plan on going back and watching Mall Rats, but he did an excellent job with Red State.  He never gives you what you want, keeping you on the edge of your seat, and is always surprising you with who will and won’t die.  The cinematography is interesting with a lot of up-close and in-your-face angles. The ending is also hilarious. I’m pretty sure everyone in Radio City tonight thought that shit was really about to go down.    

Even though the story is obviously fiction, when you think about it, this doesn’t seem so far fetched from something people like the Phelps’ could eventually do.  But let’s cross our fingers for the best.  Kerry Bishe and John Goodman gave the stand-out performances, with honorable mentions for Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun, and Ronnie Connell who portrayed the three boys who were kidnapped.  

After the movie, Kevin Smith took part in an audience Q&A with a majority of the leads from the film, including recent Academy Award winner Melissa Leo.  I’d heard his Q&A’s were epic but this one left much to be desired.  A lot of people walked up to the microphone to pitch their movies, or tell Smith or Goodman that they were huge fans.  Luckily, Kevin Smith fans do not sit idly by while crap questions get asked.  They boo and shout obscenities.  

Red State is being released on October 19th, 2011.  For more information about Kevin Smith’s Red State Tour click here.  

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There are a couple of movies every month that I’ll see previews for and go, “Oh, I want to see that!” but never actually see.  I have no idea what the last movie I saw was to be honest.  Maybe The Social Network?  But since I was up around 9 on Sunday morning and Alice texted me saying that she was game to catch the 10:40am showing of the new movie The Roommate, I hoped off my couch, got dressed, and headed to AMC (where movies before noon on the weekends are only $6!).   

If you haven’t seen any of the commercials for it, The Roommate is about a girl going off to college for the first time, Sara (Minka Kelly), who has the misfortune of being saddled with a psychotic roommate, Rebecca (Leighton Meester).  I love bad horror movies and the worse the better (Prom Night remake anyone?) and The Roommate looked like it ranked an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 of bad horror movies, so I was eager to see it.  It was bad, but it wasn’t Prom Night-bad.  I was upset that Meester’s character was a psycho right from the start - there wasn’t even any build up to revealing her as a psycho.  You met her and you already knew that Kelly should run for the door with all of her belongings.  Cam Gigandet, who plays Kelly’s love interest Stephen, is also really creepy for the first half hour of the movie.  He eventually becomes normal-ish and saves the day (duh) but was it really necessary for him to have so much of a “creepy older man” vibe?  I don’t think so.  

The director/writer did have the good sense to confuse the hell out of the audience at the beginning though.  I had seen the commercials and previews and thought I knew who the psychotic roommate was going to be but then when the movie started, Sara was the one who wanted to stay behind from a party to wait for her roommate and I was immediately confused and thought maybe SHE was actually the crazy one.  

Was this movie worth my $6?  Totally.  But is it okay to wait for Netflix to get it?  Yes, absolutely.  

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This was one of my favorite movies of 2010.  It was witty, crude, and kind of meaningful too.  I watched it today while snowed in with my mother, aunt, and two cousins.  They all enjoyed it.  Emma Stone is amazing.

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I read this book two years ago so I didn’t remember specifics but I do remember that I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was very excited to see what they did with the film adaptation.  

It was nearly three hours long but it felt like it was maybe an hour-forty-five.   I think Julia Roberts did a fantastic job with the role and I thought the screen writers did a great job with writing a script that was true to the book - except for the end.  I don’t remember there being a dramatic refusal-of-boat-ride at the end and Liz pushing Felipe away right before she left.  Am I not remembering things correctly?  

The film made me want to re-read the book again, do more yoga than I already do, and start meditating.  It also made me kind of want to pick up everything and go away, or at least go on a weekend yoga retreat.  

This is definitely a feel-good movie, and certainly worth a viewing, especially for women.