Currently Backdraft (2 Disc Anniversary Edition) By Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Jennifer Jason Leigh see related

My Christmas List:

1.      I want the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie to be one of the best I’ve ever seen.

2.      I want to give at least two gifts this year that people never knew they always wanted.

3.      I want “Carol of the Bells” to give me chills at least once.

4.      I want to stand outside at night and watch my breath turn into vapor in front of me and feel the energy in the air.

5.      I want to feel giddy on Christmas Eve.

6.      I want to reconnect with someone I haven’t talked to in a while.

7.      I want to eat at least one extraordinarily good meal.

8.      I want to laugh really hard with good friends.

9.      I want to hear a Christmas song on the radio that I actually like.

10.  I want to enjoy this Christmas not because of what I get, but what I already have.

Here's hoping you all are in the midst of a great holiday season; I'll be back for at least one more entry before my holiday hiatus. If some of you bloggers want to make your own Christmas lists, I'd love to read them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There will be no substantial post for this week, as I will be spending the next few days celebrating Thanksgiving with my family and friends. I hope that you will be able to do the same, and I'd like to give a heartfelt thanks to all of you for being who you are and taking the time to read this blog. God bless you all, and have a wonderful weekend.

Currently The Proposal (Single Disc Widescreen) By Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Betty White, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson see related

Really?

I’ll begin by saying that I know it’s technically Sunday morning now, which means I’ve missed my weekly deadline for a blog post. But since I just remembered that deadline, and since I haven’t yet gone to bed, I figure this is as good a time as any to make my weekly contribution. So, moving on:

I’ve come to believe that each one of us has our own threshold for suspension of disbelief. I think my favorite college professor said it best when he put it this way: Everyone can accept that Superman is an alien from a distant planet, but no one believes that he’s unrecognizable as soon as he puts on his Clark Kent glasses. My mother can easily accept that Julia Roberts and Richard Gere can get together at the end of Runaway Bride, but she got hung up on an “unrealistic” point of police procedure the other day while watching FlashForward the other day. Personally, I tend to look at movies the other way around: I had no problem believing that Bruce Willis can take out a small army of terrorists on four separate occasions in the Die Hard series, but I couldn’t quite swallow all that The Proposal tried to feed me when I watched it about two weeks ago.

This is not to say that the movie isn’t funny. Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) is the hapless assistant of publisher Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock). Margaret is not a very nice person. Ice queen, evil witch, she-devil—take your pick of well-worn phrases, but the point is that Margaret does not appear to have a sympathetic bone in her body. Case in point: when she is informed that her work visa is about to expire (she’s a Canadian living and working in New York), Margaret forces Andrew to marry him. In order to convince an immigration agent that their planned marriage is genuine, Margaret and Andrew take a trip to visit his family and friends in Alaska. Complications ensue.

Now, this being a romantic comedy, and shamelessly billed as such, there are several things the well-educated moviegoer can assume, though you may want to skip this paragraph if you’re very serious about preserving the element of surprise in this particular film. First, Margaret’s heartless exterior masks charming idiosyncrasies and inner turmoil, thus making her “surprisingly” relatable to the audience. Second, all sorts of things happen in Alaska that force Andrew and Margaret into the very situations they try the hardest to avoid, thus forcing them to see each other in a new light. Third, they fall in love and realize that they cannot be without each other. These plot points really go without saying, and I really have no issue with this sort of plot, either; it’d be like watching Die Hard and being surprised to see Willis save the day. Nor did I have a problem with the execution of the plot; I can’t say that there was anything really original in the film, but Bullock and Reynolds have chemistry, and I’ve grown to really enjoy the latter’s comic delivery and timing. No, my issues came at the end of the end of the movie (again, pretty major spoiler alert). It is at this point in the story that Andrew realizes he’s fallen in love with Margaret after three days in Alaska, and he wants to marry her so he can get to know her better.

Now, I love a good love story probably more than the next guy; I freely admit to owning A Walk to Remember, after all. But three days? Really? Andrew actually says that he thought he despised Margaret at the beginning of that time, and after less than a week he’s willing to declare his love? I’ve probably done dumber things under the influence of women, and maybe it’s just the bias I’ve accumulated from past relationships, but I just couldn’t make myself believe that Andrew and Margaret could really fall for each other so hard in so short a time, not based on what I saw of their interaction. Putting that aside, I also don’t think I care for the cavalier attitude toward marriage that the characters display. Yes, I know it’s a comedy, and it’s supposed to be more fulfilling than realistic, and it was necessary for Margaret to get married in order to stay in the country, but marriage to me is a very sacred act, and there was a limit to the amount of time I could accept it as a means to an end. A small detail in the grand scheme of the movie, but there it is.

So: The Proposal is funny. It is charming and romantic, if not particularly original. It is everything you’d expect to find in a romantic comedy, especially if you’re a big romantic comedy fan. Just be prepared to abandon realism for a little when you turn on your DVD player. Then again, isn’t that the very reason we go to the movies?

Currently Glee: The Music, Volume 1 By Glee Cast see related

Just Right

There’s really not a more eloquent way to say this: It’s kind of weird for me to watch a disabled character on TV. It’s one thing when a fictional character shares my name (the Jason Bourne movies were fun in that way), and another when a character is a current or past resident of Ohio (I happen to be really thrilled that Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo of “NCIS” used to play for the Buckeyes). When those sorts of similarities occur, I experience the same pleasure I’m likely to get while discovering a common interest at a party: I can appreciate the coincidence without expecting that the other Jasons should act like me, or that the other Ohio-dwellers should like the same restaurants I do. But when a movie or television show introduces anyone with a mobility impairment, I compulsively require the writers to get things just right. Such was the case when I watched Wednesday’s episode of “Glee”, entitled “Wheels.”

Maybe the similarities were already a little overwhelming. “Glee” is a television comedy about the glee club (some have called them show choirs) at a Lima, Ohio high school. It’s a clever comedy with well-rounded characters and plenty of great music, and I’d probably give the show a great review even if one of the members of the glee club wasn’t in a wheelchair. This character’s name is Artie, and Wednesday’s episode was pretty much devoted to him; the school did not have enough money to pay for a wheelchair-accessible bus to take to competitions, and to get his students enthusiastic about raising money, the teacher running the glee club had each kid spend three hours a day trying to get around in a wheelchair. I’d argue that everyone I know should see this episode (check it out here), but imagine watching it as a disabled guy who loves to sing and wanted to be in show choir when he went to his Ohio high school. This time around, I really wanted the writers and actors to get things right. This was a big chance to show the world exactly what it felt like to be disabled.

Long story short? They didn’t get it exactly right, and I found that it was probably better that way.

The part of me that loves the spotlight would have loved for Artie to have cerebral palsy instead of paralysis, and a walker instead of a wheelchair. I would have loved for the actor portraying Artie to actually have a disability, and for him to say the things I would have said and acted the way I would have—really, I’d love to guest star on that show, and if anybody who has industry connections happens to read this, than by all means, get the word out! But when Artie acted in a way I wouldn’t toward the end of the episode, I remembered something important—not all disabled people are just like me. None of them are, really, and for all my talk about being viewed as an individual I should have been the first to realize that. Artie did not have to have CP to be a well-portrayed disabled character, nor did he have to be portrayed by a disabled actor. “Glee” simply needed to paint Artie fairly, as a complex human being with real talents and limitations, and that’s exactly what they did. I laughed during Wednesday’s episode, I nearly cried in a couple of places, and I was thrilled out of my mind when the hour ended with a musical number featuring the whole club in wheelchairs. It was enough to make me wish I was part of Artie’s world, and I’m indebted to the creators of “Glee” for creating a character who is, in a way, part of mine.

My apologies:

There was no blog last week because I completely forgot about it until I was driving home from church twenty minutes ago; there will be a blog this week provided I don't completely forget about it again. Hope all's well with each and every one of you.