Chaos Attraction

Love, Actually

2003-11-10, 5:32 p.m.

The weekend...was mostly good, with some disturbing points.

The good news:

* Managed to figure out one gift to make for my dad- make him a hat. Fortunately I found cheap moose-covered fleece and a pattern and whatnot to do it with.

* Parents both actually gave suggestions as to what they wanted for Christmas.

* Mom suggested that all the jewelry I didn't sell would work for the relatives, especially the larger sized bracelets.

* In bribing gratitude for coming home during the weekend, Mom (a) gave me a free ride home, which she hates to do, (b) got me shitloads of Chinese food, (c) bought me some stuff at Costco, and (d) got me a velvet throw blanket.

* Babysitting Dad on Saturday night was completely uneventful, thank the gods.

* Got to watch Two Weeks Notice, which I loved and found to be much better than I expected it to be. Very well done flick.

* Likewise, got to see Love, Actually this weekend (more on that later).

* Since they kept screwing up our orders at Fuddruckers' after the movie, they gave us tons of free cookies and a sundae.

The disturbing point: God, Dad is getting so much worse.

Y'all don't want me to get into details on this, but let's just leave it as (a) Dad should never eat Mexican food again, (b) especially while not in his hometown, and (c) for that matter, he really shouldn't be going to the movies in public either. I didn't get home until late last night because of uh, cleanup. There were lots of incidents, and I fear I just got lucky that none happened on my solo watch.

I felt soooooo guilty, asking if we could go see the movie. I honestly didn't think it would be THAT popular on opening weekend. Given how the movie theater had only four showings a day and at the bad times, I figured it was going to bomb. I know they didn't want to really go if it wasn't located right in town, and it wasn't, but still, I didn't know it was going to be that bad.

Mom wanted to leave by 12 for a 1:10 showing, but of course we had to call Grandma first (I swear, I need a chatbot for the phone to just answer the same questions every minute and thirty seconds- she's not listening to what I say anyway), and we didn't even leave until closer to 12:45. And by the time we get into the theater, not only is it PACKED, not only does Dad have to go to the bathroom once again...there is no wheelchair space available next to real seats. None. We'd have to leave him alone and then go sit far off, and of course we can't do that, and the movie theater doesn't allow sitting in the aisles. Mom enlists some poor theater girl to arrange a spot.

I felt so guilty and bad for even suggesting the idea. Mom said later no, I shouldn't feel bad, he needs to get out while he still can, etc., but... it was obviously just too damn bad to do. I felt like shit for even wanting to go.

And on the opposite end of the guilt factor, Dave's birthday weekend was extremely up and down, with his friends being rather jerkass on Friday night, being fine and dandy again by Saturday, and by Sunday, his so-called best friend decided that he didn't want to be friends with him any more. Lovely timing, eh?

He's coming over here at the end of tonight. Let's hope the day improves for him then, finally.


On another note, I feel like getting into talking about Love, Actually. There WILL BE SPOILERS. So basically, if you must be a spoiler virgin, run now.

I liked this movie, but I know a lot of people are going to hate it for its premise (skipping around between a bunch of different people/situations) alone. It's not Standard Movie Format, and confuses the slow. But really, if you can get into it/get past that, you can have a good time.

Here's the plots:

(a) Prime Minister David Somethingorother (Hugh Grant) has just gotten into office and has a thing for the tea girl, who everyone but him thinks is a big fat cow. I have to say that the fat jokes in this movie pissed me off in general, but this poor girl Natalie was the worst of all BECAUSE SHE IS OBVIOUSLY NOT FAT UNLESS YOU ARE AN ANOREXIC. If fat jokes piss you off, don't see this movie. Seriously, that was my one big pisser about it. Though that said, it's actually fairly sweet. (He offers to have her ex who insulted her weight killed.)

Then creepy, ugly-ass (there's a line in there about how Billy Bob is supposed to be handsome- MY ASS!) President Billy Bob strolls in and macks on the poor girl when she serves him her tea, and Prime Minister Hugh doesn't notice her obvious "Please rescue me for the love of God" pleading expression and has her transferred, then on Christmas Eve after she sends him a card, goes knocking on all the doors on her street till he tracks her down. Aw.

(b) David's sister, Emma Thompson, is married to Alan Rickman. She's a cheerful, nice woman who takes it relatively well when her daughter says she's playing "First Lobster" ("there are three?" "Duhhhh") in the school nativity scene. (Natalie's brother is also an octopus. In the same nativity.)

Unfortunately for her, Alan Rickman's nasty, skanky, Sally Bowles-rip-off secretary Mia is constantly coming on to him, spreading her legs at him in the office, etc. Frankly, I'm amazed the woman didn't just show up naked on his desk posed like she was in a Y-shaped coffin. And I have to say that casting Alan Rickman as a possibly-adulterous husband is just, well, miscasting. The man seems to not know whether or not to feel aroused or nauseated when looking at her. (Though given her tackiness, perhaps nauseated is how he was going.) Emma, however, is wonderful, especially when she figures out on Christmas Eve, in front of him and the children, what he's doing.

(c) Alan Rickman works with Laura Linney, who has obviously been pining with love for her coworker Carl for the entire term of her employment. He calls her into his office, tells her that EVERYONE including Carl knows, and for the love of God, ask him out already! The poor girl is nervous as all hell, but Carl (who rarely speaks) makes a move, and they're hot and heavy and topless on the bed when... her cell phone rings.

You see, she's got this brother in a mental institution and she's the only one who can take care of him, and he calls her constantly and she's at his beck and call, and... apparently the Carl thing fizzles.

This saddened me greatly, as literally, everyone else in the movie (except for Mia the tacky tart) gets a happy ending but this girl. Why couldn't she have had a date #2 with Carl?

(d) Liam Neeson, who I guess is some friend or something of Emma's, had a kooky wife who recently died. He's raising her son Thomas, who's pining away in love for shiny singer Joanna at school. Liam is shocked at his serious proclaimations of love, but is willing to go along with it. The big moment for me is when Joanna is singing at the school Christmas shindig and points at Thomas for a moment during her song. The look on his face...and then the look on his face when she starts pointing at other people. But it works out in the end. This is a movie where those who pine for love turn out to actually have it reciprocated.

(e) Keira Knightley and uh, some cute black dude whose name I don't know just got married. And yet his best friend acts kinda cold and weird to her, and she doesn't know why. When she asks if she can see his wedding video, he hems and haws and claims to have lost it. She goes to his house, tracks it down, and ahem...finds out that her husband's hardly in it, if you know what I mean.

This was a big touching one for me. The best friend comes by their house on Christmas Eve, playing music to sound like carolers and holding up signs to tell her how he feels- while he'll hopefully be dating someone else next year, he thinks she's perfect. Awwww.

(f) Colin Firth's girlfriend slept with his brother, so he hauls off to Spain, rents a cabin to write in, and has a Portuguese maid. (Who, to be honest, looks dreadfully ugly at the start but cleans up well enough later.) They don't speak each other's languages or have any idea what the other is snarking about them, but they are somehow attracted anyway. This leads to him going home, heading off to language school, and returning to propose despite them not being able to have any kind of actual conversation or even make out much prior to this. Uh, okay...

(g) There's these two porn star movie doubles, who spend all day long naked and humping and groping and faking blow-jobbing each other, and yet spend the day having interesting chit-chat about the traffic. By the time he gets up the nerve to ask her out, it's quite interesting to think that he's already groped her tits and she's seen his willy close-up before this happened. And yet, it's cute.

(h) There's this English yokel boy (incidentally, the catering scene he buggers up was going to be in Four Weddings. I swear.) who decides that going to Wisconsin will get him chicks. Miraculously, this actually does. And when I say chicks, I mean a foursome Uh-HUH. That'll happen.

(i) And finally, there's this utterly skanky former druggie lizard of a singer who's made a crap Christmas "hit", "Christmas Is All Around Us" (gee, ya think Richard Curtis likes that song?), and goes around doing various interviews slagging on his poor "fat" manager, saying the song is crap but buy it anyway so I can be the number one Christmas hit over that boy band, drawing rude things on the boy band's picture, making a nasty Robert Palmeresque video, claiming he'll sing naked on television (and he does, OW), and telling kids not to buy drugs because you can become a pop star and get them for free. I suspect his crap tune became a hit just because of the whacked out interviews. And yet, even he has a touching moment when he shows up at his manager's on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with someone he loves. Awww.

It's a big fat Christmas valentine, really.


And speaking of... happy birthday, baby *smooch*


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