Movie Review - Match Point

Ok dear reader, I have a small sin to confess. I was watching the movie Match Point with my fav. Scarlett Johansonn and Jonathan Rhys Myers for one really bad reason…..I was told there was a really raunchy sex scene and guess what I felt like seeing something like that tonight. Not porn style just some good lovin’. Well big disappointment folks, and the movie wasn’t that great either. SJ starts off being engaged to the very tempting Matthew Goode (a british babe…lets face it the accent had me) when his friend JRM appears after being a one hit wonder tennis player. MG and JRM are friends and frequently play tennis (the white shorts aren’t hard on the eyes, not as nice as boxers though) and chit chat about what they want to do with their young lives, etc. MG hooks JRM up with his sister and they get along just perfectly. The relationship takes a nose dive between MG and SJ because of a rude and obsessive mother (that being MG’s). SJ has a fit after the mother goes after her about her chosen career and ends up taking a walking trip in the rain, soon to be followed by JRM, and a not really well depicted sex scene is had in a field. The relationship between MG and SJ breaks up because the hottie has found and fallen for another girl whom he soon gets married to and while at the ceremony we find out she is impregnated (with his alien child…end of story…I don’t think so but would have been a good twist). SJ leaves England for a while to go back to the horrid country of America (or so she states) to get some gigs (the posh term for a job in the acting world). JRM ends up marrying MG’s sister which is all fine and dandy till SJ appears back in England because she just couldn’t stand the states anymore. She ends up having this very awkward love affair with the married JRM, there are sex scene but they aren't raunchy at all. There are a few encounters with the wife but he’s able to be sauve and special and avoid any questioning as to if he’s bonking SJ. Key point here, MG’s sister is strange and cannot get pregnant for some reason “But they both were at the doctor and were healthy as can be?!?!?” said by the naïve wife. Then reader, what do you think happens, just ask yourself what would be the next step in a movie like this? That’s right, SJ gets pregnant with JRM”S baby and she becomes a demanding bitch, always wanting to see him and wanting him to break up with his wife and do the right thing (everything after the word AND would be from his perspective of course). He takes it for a while but then decides he just can’t handle having the mistress preggers and look at all the money and job opportunities, and whatever unimaginable things he would be losing out on(MG’s family is beyond loaded). There’s even a point in the movie where he talks with a friend and says “My wife is a retard but has a lot of other good points, her family’s rich, my job was given to me by her dad (he’s got a high up position), their nice to me , I play polo and go shooting with them…. The mistress, if I end up with her, I will have some dead end job working at a local mc donald’s trying to make ends meet, living in a one bedroom apartment (oh no!). Staying with the wife is the better option don’t you think” (the lines he said may have been a bit different but I was paraphrasing…artistic license folks!) So JRM has made the big decision to stay with is wife, what a good guy …NOT. His plan and it’s sucky compared to other movies, hide his hunting rifle in his tennis bag for a while and when the time is right shoot the neighbour who has seen him frequently and then shoot the mistress as she’s coming off the elevator to guess what…. MEET HIM!!!! He does go through with this pathetic plan but eventually he’s a bit sloppy with the fact that IAN the neighbour tried to ask the neighbour JRM killed if she needed anything and THEN he saw SJ on his way out the building and guess what….they had a bit of a chit chat. HA JRM you thought you were so smart with the rifle in the tennis bag, which was really ridiculous when he was carrying it around. People would ask him, “Oh so you going to play tennis or have a match with someone” and he’d act all peculiar and then respond with a nod or a strange YES. I don’t know folks, but that sounds to me like someone with something else going on, maybe an ulterior motive under there somewhere. Then when JRM and wife are at MG”S family’s mansion (using that word is a bit of an understatement) guess what him and wife are going to reveal, after about 3-6 months she’s finally preggers and the evil grand mum, who really likes him, is overjoyed that she can be a “young grand mother”. I found the young grand mother statement pathetic because she definitely looked over 50, and she was a jerk so I’m going to add a few extra years for that. THEN while sharing that the nob-head wife is preggers guess who calls? Come on reader don’t toy with me, you know who it is right? The police, and eventually guess what happens to dear JRM he gets in trouble and the wife is married to a jailbird and will be a baby mama without a papa. So sad when things like this to happen to the rich wouldn’t you say…..(comment works better if you are saying before you eat a scone or a crumpet and are having tea).

I was looking up on IMDB about the movie so that I could properly name the people for you found out a few things:
1. firstly it’s a woody allen film, never would have thought that
2. the tagline = passion temptation obsession = CRAPPY for all 3, none of the characters really loved each other and the last two I guess I will let slide but they weren’t acted out well
3. Plot Outline: At a turning point in his life, a former tennis pro falls for a femme-fatal type who happens to be dating his friend and soon-to-be brother-in-law ( I would hardly call SJ a femme fatale just because she has promiscuous sex and is hated by MG’s mother, AND that she’s an aspiring actress)
4. Brian Cox (who has been in Braveheart, Troy and many more) was under cast, he was only MG’s father and he was good but I would have rather he make a better movie then this one, it shouldn’t go in his good books

Now I will leave you on a quote which was supposedly said at the front of the movie before everything all played out by none other then JRM’s character “The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a litte luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.”

Question time: Is life dependent on luck or is it what we make it?

I believe it’s what we make it from all the mess and toil we have to deal with on a daily basis. Luck is for if you win money in the lottery or at a casino, not something for life. For life, there’s co incidence but that’s not luck either. The fact that the ending lines relate to a ball kind of bother me too because it was JRM”S balls (literatlly) that got him into trouble and if he just stayed with his boring wife then none of this would have happened (it probably would have happened to his friend MG!!!!)

Well dear reader at the end I will ask you a few questions. I was watching How Stella Got Her Groove Back (the movie with Angela Bassett and the oh so tasty Taye Diggs). Stella thought she had everything, a good job, a nice house and a son that would make her breakfast. Her son goes to stay with his father for 2 weeks, and then she was left to entertain herself on lonely rainy night. She sees this commercial with the perfect images of Jamaica, you know the images that make it that paradise in the sun that you want to go to, (if only you could just afford it). Well, Stella having an amazing job as a stock broker decides that her and her best friend (Whoopi Goldberg) are going to Jamaica and let their hair down and party like they used to. One morning when she is out for her ritual run (yeah I know she has a disgustingly beautiful body in the movie…what does she need a run for?) she comes back to the resort for breakfast and meets the young (20 year old) Winston who ends up being the object of her affection. Stella happens to be a 40 year old divorced woman with a son, which Winston later finds out. When Stella gets back from her 2 weeks in Jamaica she gets canned from her job because her boss is a selfish son of a bitch who didn’t want to lose his job. It didn’t matter how much money Stella had made the company or anything, her train at that station had left. Anyway needless to say her relationship carries on with Winston and she goes back and then eventually he comes to America and blah blah blah. My question is “How does one going about getting her/his groove back?” Does said person have to lose their job, or source of stability? Do they have to find a younger person to have a relationship with? Do they have to take an amazing vacation to an ‘enchanted’ land to meet said relationship person? If the ‘groove’ is lost, doesn’t there have to be some stage of admittance and then you go on the journey to get it back? Did in this case, the character Stella, really lose her groove or did she just hit a bad patch? I guess the answer lies within each of us and every person has their own reasoning and answers behind it, it just makes me wonder, doesn’t it make YOU?

Stuff & Book Review - For One More Day by Mitch Albom

Well dear reader, a few things have happened since I last wrote you. I have been a busy little bee if you will. On Nov. 24, 2006, I hosted a euchre party at my house for a few close friends. From the response I got from the attendees, everyone said they had a really good time and that they really enjoyed the food. My mum and I prepared a variety of foods for the guests, they included: Super Nachos, Pumpernickel bread with spinach dip, shrimp with cocktail sauce, bacon wrapped scallops (they were president’s choice), and for desserts we had butter tart squares and nanimo bars. Mum said she would take care of the savoury and I could prepare the sweet. The food turned out really well, and everyone left very happy and very full.

Next Topic: Book Review – For One More Day by Mitch Albom

This book was pretty close in comparison with Tuesdays with Morrie. It made me sad but also happy at the end, which was the same reaction. It was very much along the same lines as Tuesdays, topic wise. Lastly but not least, it was a feel good book that made you appreciate things as you were reading it (the simple things in life is what I would be referring to). The main character is a has-been semi professional baseball player. Mitch is traveling somewhere and he is taking a walk in this park. The park co-ordinator who happens to be cutting the grass, notices Mitch is not a local person and decides to give him the low down on this has-been character sitting in the bleachers looking sorry for himself. After hearing about this person from the park co-ordinator he decides that he wants to meet this person and hear his story from him. (I must say it’s a good thing he did that because what the parks guy had to say was gossip and we all know how that can get turned around. Mitch introduces himself and proceeds to have a conversation with the main character, he asks him what he’s doing with himself, where he’s from, etc. Through such conversation with the main character, he is told a fabulous story that makes all of us think about the things we have done in left and the things we regret in life. Mitch warns the reader that the story may seem to real to be to, but to the main character this is his soul recount on what happened.

Some quotes in the book really grabbed me and I am going to share them with you. For one reason or another it is noticeable why I choose the quote and how it may relate to the story.

First- conversation between main character’s mother and friend Rose

“Children get embarrassed by their parents,” my mother repeated.

It was true, as a teenager, I had pushed my mother away. I refused to sit next to her at movies. I squirmed from her kisses. I was uncomfortable with her womanly figure and I was angry that she was the only divorced woman around. I wanted her to behave like the other mothers, wearing housedresses, making scrapbooks, baking brownies.

“Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won’t they Rose? You want to ask, Who’s child is this?”

Rose chuckled.

“But usually, they’re just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out.”

This diddy I chose because it’s true. Most of us when we act like a jerk, there’s a driving force behind it that we choose not to deal. I know that many times I have freaked out on someone when really I am reacting to them in a negative way, but the real problem has nothing to do with them. Lashing out, would be the technical term. I also chose this part because the other day I was being a dinkus to my mum, when really the problem was not with her but I had a problem with her boyfriend and how he was disrespecting her. I love my mum to bits and I didn’t mean to come off like a dinkus, it’s just I get a little hostile when I see someone treating my mum inappropriately. It’s a protection system I think, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. I’m sure you dear reader have possibly had situations where you “lashed out” at someone when they really had nothing to do with the situation at all. I put this quote in because I find it grounded me and made me re-think about the way I was treating my mum and how to approach the situation differently.

Second- spoken by the main character

In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word “divorce” came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant “divide”. In truth, it comes from “divertere,” which means “to divert”.

I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother’s girdle and whether she should marry someone else.

Now this I chose, because well it will eventually happen to my family. My parents are already living separated and it’s bound to happen eventually. I like it though because it is spoken in a way that semi conveys anger about it. Yeah I will admit my dad was a dinkus, but the hardest thing I will have to go through is the divorce I’m sure. The separation I still have trouble being totally used to it but I manage. When the proverbial ‘shit’ will hit the fan I know that I am going to be a mess though. It will be like a division of everything, and that’s not an idea that I really want to get used to. As for now, I have enough on my plate, too much to worry about the future.

Three- Letter from main characters’ mother to main character, given to him on his wedding day.

Here is what you are going to find out about marriage: you have to work at it together. And you have to love three things. You have to love:
1. Each other.
2. Your children (When you have some. Hint! Hint!).
3. Your marriage.

What I mean by that last one is, there may be times that you fight, and sometimes you and Catherine won’t even like each other. But those are the times you have to love your marriage. It’s like a third party. Look at your wedding photos. Look at any memories you’ve made. And if you believe those memories, they will pull you back together.

This quote was a must on the blog. It’s kind of a diddy that tells you what is to be important when you are marrying someone. Not that they’re a babe, wealthy, or anything else. It’s the things that you create that you will love and that’s what will keep the marriage strong, no matter what the time frame may be.

Four- Main characters mother to the main character, parting words

“You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.
“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”

This one is special because it’s really the main basis of what family means. For all the cheaters out there, you can’t trade what you already have in, you can only try and fix it and make it better. IF there really is no hope, then yeah there is divorce, but that’s a very last option. This quote hit me hard reader, it’s what I wanted, the ideal of what a family should be. My mum and I are good now, my dad and I not so much, but with that said we are both making a conscious effort to fix what is broken between us. Essentially we don’t live all in the same house, but we still are a family, if you use and understand what this quote says, at least that’s my perception of it.

So reader, I hope you enjoyed the quotes I pulled from the book. I hope it makes you want to order it or go buy it or borrow it. It really is a book worth reading. Some of the things said really change your perceptions about life, family, and other things. I know it did that for me, and really I think that’s what I needed. Sometimes life is too short and you can’t get what you want to do done, or what you want to say said, hence from what I took from this book, you have to live each day as if it were your last and make your life as full as possible because you never know when the rug will be “pulled out” from underneath you.

Book Review - The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

Dear reader, I am very passionate about reading books and trying to educate myself on things I really don’t know a lot about. In my travels I came across The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet. The book is about her sex life while she was traveling around Rome and Paris, which was very promiscuous. Some would consider her book as erotica (I did), others may describe it as passionate detail about the bond between people in a sexual relationship (another way I looked at it), and others may consider it a kind of book about a slut (I did not think this way). There were many things I liked about the book, first being that I had never read about anyone’s sexual experiences or travels in this type of writing. In each chapter written, she refers back to many of the same experiences she has had and how they are able to be viewed descriptively in another way (preferably the chapter title). The thing I most enjoyed about the book is how passionately she wrote about what it was like to touch someone, how the skin felt against another’s, and what emotions would be caused by such intimate reactions. The way the whole book is written is in a very analytical and descriptive sense. She had many different partners but the ones that actually made an impact on her sex life and her life are the ones she consistently refers back to. There are many times though for the sake of adding some sort of drama to the book, she will talk about rugged sex she had in an alley with a complete stranger, or maybe how other people would create a conflict when they were deciding at parties who would get to BE with Catherine. It’s a book of a very different sort. It definitely got me thinking about my own sex life, and how little I have actually experienced, not just in the sense of having few partners but also the lack of certain feelings. I am in no way saying I want to be a lady of the night and do everything and everyone in the next 2 or 3 towns, but some of the experiences she had might lead to interesting tales, endings, and what have you.

The next book I am reading is For One More Day by Mitch Albom, who is the author of the amazing Tuesday’s with Morrie. I must say that this book is very much like Tuesday’s, which is good because I really did not enjoy The 5 People You Meet in Heaven. I found that book was very religious and it got me distracted from the actual story, which was too bad. For One More Day may have the same effect as Tuesday’s because I have a feeling that it will leave the reader with a couple of tears at the end of the book. I have a positive attitude and look forward to reviewing it when I have finished it.

My Blister Bubble Burst Badly!!!

Well dear reader, I will tell you my story from the start so you don’t get confused about the ‘blister bursting’ title line. Yesterday I was making some treats for a friend of mine. I used a pot with water and a metal bowl to create a double boiler. I was supposed to be melting caramel and peanut butter at a LOW heat, but silly me I thought if I turned the heat up, I would be able to make it melt faster. Mum kept turning the heat down and stupid me, I would go and turn it back up again thinking “Silly mum, I want this to come together quickly.” Silly me though, something happened, mum proposes that a vacuum was created by the metal bowl on top or something, but the pot with the boiling water exploded and I got boiling water on the stomach, left hand and right arm. My arm and hand aren’t doing too terribly, but my stomach it is an absolute mess. I was beginning to think that I was going to end up with a Quasi Modo stomach it was so blistered. Well me being a picker, I couldn’t help but playing with this extremely large blister bubble. Well this aft. it finally had had enough and burst spewing clear liquid all over. I was trying to dab up the spew when I noticed that as I was wiping up the liquid my skin was actually wiping off too. So now I have a large spot that is red like a lobster with not developed but severely injured skin showing. I decided to be smart and use the bandaging tools that mamma bought me and slathered up with Polysporin (one of the world’s best ever creams made) and then put together a bandage of 2 large gauze pads together with some surgical tape. There was no duct tape involved but I am pretty pleased with the bandaging job that I had to do, and all by myself too, WHAT A BIG GIRL I AM!!!!!

Next topic: Da Vinci Code (the movie).
I have read the book and I don’t plan on giving the ending away or anything but I thought it was done amazingly well. One of the best book to movie translations yet. Although the main character is Tom Hanks (who I dislike with a passion), he actually did a great job of playing the main character Robert Langdon. The cast was quite stellar; several big name stars were involved, Hanks himself being one, Paul Bettany, Sir Ian McKellen, and another fav. of mine Jean Reno. Of course I’m sure Ron Howard was able to convince them to be in the fabu movie for a reasonable price. I don’t like that Ron Howard directed the film because he is great friends with Hanks and therefore the duo had already made their team, if you will. The movie is a bit religious but it’s not overpowering, it actually investigates the mystery behind some certain religious items and objects. I actually have to say it was a lot better then I thought it would ever be, when in comparison to the book.

I will be giving a book review for the book I am reading shortly because I am almost done reading it. It’s title: The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet. I won’t go into any detail about it right now but I did give the title so browse for it if you think it sounds interesting.

My Newbie Post

Well reader, let me introduce myself. Some of you may already know me, others this may be your first time being here.

Name: Sarah Gall
Age: 23
Birthday: November 4, 1983 (I enjoy presents!!)
Location: A small town outside of Toronto (about 45 minutes) known as UXBRIDGE or as I like to call it the
U-dot
Occupation: None at the moment and unsure what I want to be
Spouse (?): I am single and semi-content with it
Sign: Scorpio
Smoke/ Drink: No/ No but the occasional pot usage is a YES

That’s the basics for me, from that it sounds kinda boring but I am sure there are ways that I will eventually spice this blog up with. I have a dry sense of humour but lots of people consider me hilarious….I will leave that up to you, since you will become my personal fan club, (BEWARE I don’t give out free smiles or any personal written letters). I am used to blog writing, I used to have one on MYSPACE but the doinks never addressed my problems regarding my MYSPACE being hijacked, so now my MYSPACE is non-existent, just a figment of my imagination if you will. I really missed writing my blog, so after a long waiting period of anger and hesitancy to make another one I have finally decided to do it. I look forward to sharing the quirky and not so great particles of my life story. The idea of having a fan club is making my head grow with nice warm air, I guess I will have to see what the reality is after a few days of actually having this thing. I hope you get to enjoy the stories and educational factoids I have to share with you and by the way, have an amazing day because mine, well it’s not going to great at the moment (but since I started writing a NEW blog, I feel a little bit better).