Movies, Men and Me

Okay, so I broke down and went to see The Other Boleyn Girl this weekend. I just decided that if I'm going to bitch and moan, I might as well know exactly what I'm bitching and moaning about. The good news, Eric Bana managed to capture some of what Henry might actually have been like, and he certainly was made to look like him in the sheer bulk of his body in the costumes. Still, the dark brown eyes and dark hair and the broody charisma sort of got in the way particularly towards the end of the film. SPOILER ALERT! Especially when the film shows him raping Anne. Natalie Portman, an actress that I can usually take or leave, I thought was fabulous as Anne Boleyn. The weakest link was Scarlett Johanssen. In a way, it's not her fault since the script made her out to be an innocent little virgin who gets caught up in her family's ambitions, when Mary was anything but (despite what Philippa Gregory might want to believe) and she was Anne's elder sister, not her younger. For once you have a historical fiction writer who makes a real life personage less interesting than she might have been and the film compounds it.

I had a hard time believing that Peter Morgan who wrote The Last King of Scotland, Frost/Nixon and The Queen wrote this screenplay. While the scenes of the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Thomas Boleyn plotting were interesting, the one person who should have been in this movie was Cardinal Wolsey, who is nowhere to be found. Another plot point, what happened to Mary's first husband William Carey? He disappears in the film and we have no idea that he's dead until Stafford asks her to marry him. WTF? Was there a scene where he died and it got cut from the film?

The costumes were beautiful (loved Anne's green number in the poster), and it was nice to see Kristen Scott Thomas on screen.

Saturday however, I saw a great film, Hal Ashby's Being There, starring Peter Seller's in one of his last performances. The Philoctetes Center showed a screening as part of a Brain Waves festival. The movie was so beautiful and profound that I couldn't concentrate on the roundtable afterwards. Something to do with a Mirror and a Lamp, and autism or something like that. Nice looking Scotsman on the panel in his fifties. A little older than I normally like my men. I had fun listening to him talk even though what he was talking about kind of escaped me because I was to busy listening to the accent.

Went out Saturday night with the SWAT team. Met up for the pre-pre party of photos and champagne, and then on to the pre-party which is where I ended the night around 1 a.m.

Oh and the men in the title of this post? I don't have one but today is St. Patrick's Day, so I may go out later and try to flag down a drunken Irishman on his 9th pint of Guiness.

Wish me luck!

EKM