Last night was fun--Mom asked Mo out again to join us for dinner and we all had a great time. He asked if we wanted to get an appetizer, so I suggested bruschetta. Which everyone loved--and then Mo wanted some more...and then ordered ANOTHER order just for us to take home later. How sweet is that? The man is adorable. Again, I approve--and we're doing a breakfast with him on Sunday.

Also, the lady we're petsitting for decided to stay another day, so YAY! Just what I wanted, another night to hang out here ;)

As for today, after watching the Rose Parade and gloating that for once I don't have to go back home tonight and back to work tomorrow, we got together with Angelica, Gary, his sister and his sister's friend to try out Sauced, a BBQ joint. I wasn't as impressed as I was expecting it to be, but it was pretty good. Then we went to see the movie Joy, which was interesting. It has some weird moments here and there, but otherwise, well, I wouldn't have expected to see a biopic of a lady who sold stuff on television.

The interesting thing with the casting of Jennifer Lawrence (at least on the part of David O. Russell) is that she's clearly too young to be playing the parts he puts her in, but her attitude and acting absolutely sell it. It'll be very interesting when she's older, I think. Anyway, she plays a girl who wanted to invent things, but got married, had kids, got divorced, still has pretty much all of her family living in her house at one point including her ex-husband and both parents, who are divorced from each other. Her nana and her kids are nice, but her mother literally spends all day every day in bed watching a soap opera.* Her dad runs around with women and after being kicked out by woman #3, immediately hits a dating phone number and hooks up with Trudi, who's rich. Anyway, Joy's run ragged by all of these people and no money. Trudi offers to take her dad (Rudy)'s entire family on her boat, but don't bring red wine, it'll ruin the teak! Naturally, Joy's ex brings red wine, they all spill it, and Joy ends up mopping up the glass and slashing her hands. This leads her to the idea of the Miracle Mop, which (a) is just one giant continuous rope, (b) kinda squeegees up, and (c) detaches so you can chuck it in the wash. She gets money from Trudi to manufacture the mop, but then runs into all kinds of problems.

* Much to my delight, Susan Lucci and Maurice Benard, of All My Children and General Hospital, were on this soap.

She finally makes a hit when she gets interest from QVC--once she talks them into letting her plug her product--but then all kinds of scamming from her manufacturer and the supposed guy who has a patent close to her product ensues, and they get forced to file for bankruptcy, lose the house, etc.. But then Joy figures out that the supposed patent isn't close to her work at all and she's being scammed and could sue for fraud, so she wins out in the end and eventually invents a ton more products.

For the most part, it's an interesting viewpoint on how one sells a product and gets it made (in the 90's, anyway). J.Law of course rocks it. But there are a few weird moments, such as (a) her grandma is narrating the movie from beyond the grave, (b) Trudi gives a freaky interrogation to Joy asking her four important questions that her husband would have asked, which were stuff like "Where did you go to high school?" "What were you like in high school?" (valedictorian), and "If you had to shoot a business rival, would you?" (Whaaaat?) and (c) during the bankruptcy scene, her dad starts yelling stuff along the lines of, "I'm sorry I indicated to you that you could ever do better, you're just another unemployed housewife selling to other unemployed housewives and that's all you are ever going to be, you giant loser who ruined us all." That made me sooooo mad. And by the end of the movie, we find out that Trudi, Rudy, and Joy's sister all sue her for ownership of the company later. God, what jerks. But hey, she made money, so good for her.

Anyway....that's the last Holidailies for the year. I guess the rest of the Hallmark reviews will have to wait until then. Hope everybody comes back.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry