New Zealand

So this last weekend was spent Down Under, cinemaly-speaking. Friday night I watched Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger and I noticed that I had seen the character who played Sunni before. It kept bugging me throughout watching it (the movie itself was rather fun, very much a teen girl coming-of-age type film), and so I looked her up on IMDB. Low and behold she's the one who plays Mary in The Nativity Story and is also the one who played Paikea in The Whale Rider. My thought process though was like this: Oh, she's the one in The Nativity Story, wait, I heard that was like 100% accurate, like the chick who played Mary was actually preggers. But wait, this chick was born in 1990, which would only make her like sixteen years old during the filming of that movie! So I looked it up and though she was not pregnant during the filming of the movie, she became so just after shooting was over; which would make her seventeen when she had her baby. Crazy!

I told an Australian friend of mine this startling information and she nonchalantly says "well, yeah, she's from New Zealand." I thought that was kind of a funny thing to say until I talked with my co-worker (whose husband is Kiwi) and she said the exact same thing. She said it was extremely common for New Zealanders to get pregnant at very young ages and never get married. This is all a bit weird for me, to try and understand why, but it's also kinda fascinating. Anyway, I'm not sure what my point is, other than useless movie trivia, but there you go.

By the way, the chick's name in all these movies is Keisha Castle-Hughes. She's quite talented and delivers a great performance--especially in Whale Rider, she's heart-breaking--and I look forward to watching her in future films.

Old Man My Ass!

K, so I just watched Red. When I first watched the preview, my interest was piqued. I mean, Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman in an action film was not too surprising. Even Mary-Louise Parker wasn't too much of a stretch. But the image above is what got me. John Malkovich and --even more surprising--Helen Mirren sporting guns and kicking butt! John Malkovich is probably the best part of the movie. It's got a pretty catchy plot and is overall just plain fun without being just plain stupid. And its oh so entertaining to see Helen Mirren shoot really big guns with a slight smirk on her face that seems to say "yeah sure I may not be winning any Oscar nods with this flick, but holding this gun thingy is quite good fun!"



Like I said, John Malkovich is pretty great in this flick. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out.

Jane Eyre

So one week after barely surviving The Biebs, I watched this amazing film. I loved it. I didn't want it to end. I've never read the book before, and now I really want to. The lighting and cinematography in this movie was of the highest quality as was the music. But the thing that hooked me the most were the performances of the actors. They understood their roles and effectively executed them. I highly recommend this film to anyone. It's such a good story and so well done.