Good Movies with Better Soundtracks

Until last night, I hadn't seen Shrek since it came out in theaters. That was one of the best family outings of my life. It's a cute movie and I really like.

But my mom, who owns less than 7 CDs, did get the soundtrack and always had it in her truck.
Our choices while being driven about were the Shrek soundtrack or Gloria Estefan. I think she also acquired Faith Hill and the Black Eyed Peas by the time I graduated from High School. We had a limited yet wide variety.
The Shrek soundtrack is outstanding. The movie is great, but the music absolutely definietly outshines.

Another movie in the same boat - My Best Friends Wedding.  Cameron Diaz is the only link between the two but I think it's an arbitraty thing to consider.
It's a good movie. I love to watch it every now and then. The soundtrack though, the soundtrack is a treasure.

Any other movies with this same situation?

On the Contrary

I love contradictory descriptions.

This helps explain my life-long complete adoration of Oscar Wilde.

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain."

The Importance of Being Earnest.

I recently watched The Picture of Dorian Gray.
A movie made from my favorite book with one my favorite actors (Colin Firth).

They used that line and I still don’t know what I think about that.
Wrong Oscar Wilde work – but it’s still delightfully cheeky to incorporate it in…. anyway that’s a side note.

Back to my love of contradictory descriptions. Everyone has heard Crazy by Gnarles Barkley. I inexplicably came into ownership of the entire album, St. Elsewhere,
for free.
I fell truly madly deeply in love.
Here are some of the lyrics that make me go weak at the knees:

Basically I'm complicated
I have a hard time taking the easy way…..

….It's deep how you can be so shallow
And I'm afraid cause I have no fear

-Who Cares. Gnarles Barkley

When J.R.R.Tolkien describes Samwise’s first sighting of the oliphaunt I about died:

“To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight….”

I mean come on…. 

I think I’ll send out a mass text questions asking “what two seemingly contradictory adjectives would you positively relish in being described as?”

My answer: Ethereal and Down-to-Earth.

Google: How Tall is.....

I don't know how I lived before IMDB and Google.

I was watching The Hudsucker Proxy last week. The plot was eh. The costumes austere. The Coen brothers directed and produced it.
Much like True Grit, they take a medicore plot and make it fun to watch. As I recently learned (from my last post, you see) the word auteur, the directors unique stamp. I can use it here, with the Coens way of creating films that you can tell are their very own.

Anyway - back to the Hudsucker proxy. Tim Robbins (ew) & Paul Newman (the salad dressing guy - ps I'm totally kidding by labeling him that) are standing face to face.
Google images didn't find exactly what I wanted, but look at them side by side.



Tim Robbins looks HUGE!
so I had to Google... "How tall is Tim Robbins?"

6'5

WOW!!!!

So that sent me on a roll...

How tall is Paul Newman. 5'10 (wow my height, he's less sexy in my book now, something I never thought would be possible after seeing Butch Cassidy)

Kobe Bryant 6'6 (shorter than I thought but still quite nice)

Vince Vaughn 6'5 (he always looked tall to me, so I finally decided to learn exactly how tall)

...and I decided I needed to get back to the movie and continue to take in their enticing costumes.


Well now... I can't watch anything without not only IMDBing them to make sure I know all other characters they have played, but now I have to know how tall they are. Sometimes it's a shock!!!

Jon Hamm 5'10 (lame)

Mos Def 5'9

Zack de la Rocha 5'10

Will Farrel 6'3

Greg Kinnear 5'10


These ones popped in my head the next day at work so I had to check.

She's 5'8 - awesome
He's 6'1 - acceptable


Zach (2nd on left) - 5'10
Tom (2nd on right) - 5'11
Short Band

Love Walked In - Vocab Test

I read a decent book. Perfect for airports becasue the writing style was so easy to focus on and conversational. I did have to look up a zillion words though. Not really that I didn't know what they meant or couldn't at least figure it out from context clues - but if I didn't know EXACTLY what it meant I liked to highlight it and see what my good friend dictionary.com had to say about it.

Marisa de los Santos, the author, took some liberties in stretching what some of the actual definitions meant so it was pretty neat to see what they actually meant and how she was using them.

Clever.

Here they are:

• rueful: pitialble
• palpably: tangibly
• harbinger: one that initiates major change
• denizen: inhabitant
• blowsy: sloppy, unkempt
• beseeching: beg urgently
• spangly: small piece of glittering matieral to decorate with (especially a tree)
• hackels: erectile hair on back on neck
• futility: uselessness
• fluted: having grooves, like a column
• auteur: filmakers personal and unique stamp
• benighted: intellectually or morally ignorant
• imperially: pertaining to an empire or whole
• mellifluous: sweet/smoothly flowing
• stentorian: loud powerful sound
• sonorous: loud, deep, resonant sound
• conduit: pipe to convey liquid, passage of liquid
• tumult: violent/noisy commotion
• trepidation: tremulous fear
• lithe: slim
• aria: elaborate melody
• superlative: highest quality
• unimpeachable: about suspicious
• unassailable: not open to attack or dispute
• lilting: rhythmic swing or cadence
• convivial: friendly
• restive: impatient, resltess
• enervated: without vibor/force/strenth
• attrition: reduction
• obviate: to anticiapte and prevent or eliminate
• unregenerate: opposing new ideas, not renewed
• ostensibly: outwardly appearing as such
• claret: a burgendy color, or wine
• garish: crudely/tastelessly colorful/showy/bright
• ellipsis: ommion of words that would have been repeated
• prescient: knowledge of things before they exist or happen
• solicitous: anxious or concerned
• bereft: deprived
• incorrigible: bad beyond correction
• asinine: foolish
• obliquity: divergence, sometimes from moral conduct
• chaise: carriage, lounge chair
• accretion:growth in size
• extemporaneous: done without advance preparaton
• peignoir: womens dressing gown
• petulant: sudden impatience
• plaintive: expressing sorrow, melancholy
• blithe: joyess, merry, carefree
• beatific: blissful, bestowing happieness
• cheogsam: oriental dress
• ad nauseam : to a disgusting degree
• ad infinitum: without limit
• transubstantiation:changing of one substance into another
• capacious: capable of holding much, roomy
• inscrutable: incapable of being investigated, inpenetrable, not easily understood
• sluiced: artificial channel for holding water