I found my new favorite movie on Netflix the other day. It is called “Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story.
Lifetime’s “Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story”
I will say right off the bat that this is an unauthorized biography. So all the facts are probably not 100 percent true. They may have had to make up situations to string together actual events. It comes across in some spots as cheesy and sugar-coated. And it is a Lifetime movie, so there is the requisite woman getting knocked around scene.
But the end result is like a Cinderella story for aspiring writers.
At the end of the movie, we are given the info “In three years, J.K. Rowling went from being a welfare mother to one of the richest women in Great Britain.”
That just astonishes me.
The movie is loaded with suppositions about where Jo Rowling may have gotten her inspirations for Harry Potter. Her best friend in high school is a boy with red hair that she labels “weasley”, whose car looks like someday movie magic might make it fly. Jo’s school teachers bear more than a passing resemblance to Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape.
Weasley look-alike and young Jo with awesome hair and eye makeup
I was surprised at all the money Lifetime put into the movie. There were several special effects shots to illustrate Rowling’s creative process. There was everything from a symmetrical building turning into Gringotts bank to chess pieces engaging in physical battle with one another to candles floating above her head as she pecked away on her ancient typewriter.
The movie shows the joy as Rowling receives her first book advance check. She is seen buying her toddler daughter a giant teddy bear. And maybe, just maybe, that would be the first purchase. But I bet a close second was the purchase of a computer. That would make working on her follow-up book immensely easier.
The movie portrays Rowling as always wanting to be a writer, but she was influenced (mostly by her parents) to have a practical career. Then her writing suffered, never more than just a hobby. When she put all her concentration into it, that is when she became successful. I can highly relate to that.
If you only think of your writing as a hobby, that is all it will ever be. And if you are convinced that you need a practical career and writing isn’t it, then writing will never be your career.
My first book, The Wind Could Blow a Bug is NOW AVAILABLE!
This was one of the best books I have read in a long time. I couldn’t put it down. I have that problem with all books, but this one I couldn’t take a break to go to the bathroom or make lunch or take a shower. I believe I heard about this book a long time ago, but just picked it up last week, because I saw it was being made into a movie. So, the whole time I was reading the book, I was picturing actor Robbie Amell, who I loved in The Tomorrow People, as the male lead character Wesley. Which, is really hot. But we find out right away:
Wesley Rush doesn’t chase girls. They chase him.
This book was realistic in ways other books are not. Like how Bianca has had two (dysfunctional) relationships, yet has never been out on a real date and had no idea how to get ready for one. TV shows always portray that the nice, innocent dates come first. Real life doesn’t happen like that. Real life if messier.
What got me most was that I loved Bianca’s voice. I really related to it. Well, not her cynicism of love in high school. But even she comes around to changing her opinion on that.
I also liked that nothing in the book was cut and dried. The bad boy wasn’t all bad. The perfect guy wasn’t perfect. The mom who deserted her family wasn’t evil. The perfect Dad could fall off the wagon. The moral of the book is similar to the ending of the movie The Breakfast Club; each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case… By the end of this book, you find out that each one of us is a duff, a slut, a whore, a bitch, a prude, a tease, a ditz. It is an important lesson to remember. This book would make a WONDERFUL movie as it is written. I love Robbie Amell and Mae Whitman. Too bad that from the trailer, it looks like they totally turned it into She’s All That 2.
My first book, The Wind Could Blow a Bug is NOW AVAILABLE!
It took me a long time to realize this, what with the evil robots, dystopian future, car chases, and death—things I do not normally look for in a movie choice. But I found myself watching The Terminator over and over again.
One day I realized that the scenes that hit me the hardest were the ones between Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese.
Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) is young and innocent. She is put into danger. Emotionally damaged (and hot) Sergeant Tech-Com Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) shows up from the future to rescue her. He is like a knight in shining armor. Except, of course, he showed up naked in a ball of energy, then stole a homeless guy’s pants. Details, details.
Reese saving Sarah Connor in The Terminator
Most of the movie, she only refers to him by his last name. The first time she spots Reese, she fears he might be a killer, so she quickly escapes away from him to a public place. The next time she sees Reese, he is loading up the future governor of California with bullets. As she runs screaming from the building, Reese pulls up in a car in front of her and screams one of the most romantic lines in the movie:
“Come with me if you want to live!”
You can say a lot of things about James Cameron, but you can’t doubt this this franchise is highly quotable. This line is used in most of the following movies, and is sometimes used in other pop culture references as well.
Kyle is crazy protective of Sarah. Sure, it’s his job. But then we see him in the future, back from a dangerous mission, sweaty and dirty, studying her face in a worn picture. He longs for her, just by looking at her picture. Cut to him gently brushing the hair off her face as she sleeps with her head in his lap. (I bet he is rocking a bad case of morning wood.) When they get up to leave, he gives Sarah his coat. Always hot.
Reese (Michael Biehn) in The Terminator
Later, when danger takes a break for them to hold up in a sleazy hotel room together, Sarah asks Reese if he has a girlfriend in the future. He admits that he has never been with a woman. From what he has already told her about the future, she knows it is not a place where love is treasured, only survival. Reese tells Sarah about the picture. He says:
“You seemed just a little sad. I used to always wonder what you were thinking at that moment. I memorized every line, every curve. I came across time for you Sarah. I love you; I always have.”
Panties melting.
He STALKED her through time!
We find out at the end of the movie that in the picture, she was thinking about him, and their one night of [unprotected] love-making together.
Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) in The Terminator
It is touching later when Sarah has to yell at a badly wounded Reese using terminology from his world to get him moving out of the path of the now nakid Terminator.
“On your feet, soldier!”
It is heartbreaking when he parishes trying to save her. Now we know. She was not just a military mission, but a mission of the heart.
[Did that make you throw up in your mouth a little? Good. Am I getting my point across?]
Terminator 2 has no romance at all. It is all action and scary melting cops. I don’t like that one and almost never watch it.
Terminator 3 I think of as romantic, but I don’t think that it actually is. I think I just like Nick Stahl and Clair Danes in it, but they don’t really have much chemistry. I like Claire Danes in My So-Called Life, but I don’t think she was the right person to cast opposite Nick Stahl. Her strength of personality overpowers his wounded rebellion against his future.
T3 sets it up, that John Conner (Stahl) and Kate Brewster (Danes) once made out at a party together, and she has never quite gotten over it. Her father is a general in the Air Force, who has first hand access to Skynet, a dangerous factor leading to Judgement Day. That is how the script reads, but most of the time on screen she is giving John the unfriendly stink face. Imagine her surprise when John shows up in the vet clinic where she works. Kate locks him in a cage. This makes for one of the cutest Nick Stahl scenes ever. I love the scene where Kate looks down on John in the dog kennel.
Conner in a cage
Stahl has mastered the wounded look. That is what made him so good as a child in “The Man Without A Face.” He just looks so pathetic (-ally hot) trapped in that cage. Maybe they hired him so that his wounded look would remind us of his father, Reese. The difference is that I believe Reese could be a kick-butt soldier when he needed to be. I don’t really believe that Stahl’s John Conner could ever lead a revolt. But, I like him in this movie well enough. I have read that Shane West was up for the role. After my recent Nikita-fest, I have to say that maybe he would have been better. No matter, there needs to be more sex in this movie.
I realize that almost no one saw Terminator 3. But I saw it in the theater. Twice. And for not having James Cameron involved with it, it had kick ass action sequences. The best one is between Arnold’s outdated Terminator in a firetruck, and the slutty T-X in a mobile crane. And I don’t just mean it is the best action sequence in T3, or all the Terminators. I think it is the best action sequence of any movie ever. (Transformers? Lord of the Rings? There is so much happening at once that I have to look away from those movies, or I will not get a headache. And, well, I don’t really care about any of those characters.)
Terminator: Salvation was just ick. All action, and no character development. It is how Terminator will be when they reboot it someday. Or maybe that is what this movie was supposed to be. I can’t even tell. That is how bad it is. And I don’t like Christian Bale. In anything. Not even Newsies or Swing Kids (although both of them are decent movies).
I liked how in the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, they gave Kyle Reese a brother, Derek. It made me feel better, that Kyle was not all alone in the horrible, nasty future being chased by robots. He had a brother’s support, someone to lean on. I liked that the brother was played by Brian Austin Green. I was very happy that he had gotten much hotter in the years since Beverly Hills 90210.
Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese
Kyle Reese is a bad-ass soldier, but he isn’t all muscled up like a football player. That is the villain. I like that Reese is vulnerable. Cameron shows us Reese’s past scars the first time he appears on camera. Each time he is hit or shot, it weakens him more. Not only do we see that he is physically vulnerable, but then we learn that his heart is vulnerable as well. This is true toward Sarah, but also when he talks about fighting alongside John Conner, John’s trust, his strength. We get the idea that Reese loved him like a brother. When really, well, John was Reese’s son. And John Conner would have always known that. It is too bad that Reese would never know John as his son.
I have seen mentioned where they are making a 5th Terminator movie. I peeked at the cast. Kyle will not longer be vulnerable everyman. He will be Mr. Muscles Macho Man. Sigh. Where can a girl watch a nice wimpy guy get it on in a movie anymore these days? My demographic is under-serviced.
A Terminator movie today is just not as impressive as it was in 1984, or even 1991. The Terminator was one of the first moves to introduce us to this idea of the computers as our enemies. The effects were cutting edge for their time. Now, giant CG machines are trying to save us or kill us or both every week in the theaters. I think the only way anyone could stand to attempt to recapture the magic of the original story is to make the humans and their love story just as important as the machines again.
I have always had a problem when someone (or an Internet quiz) asks me what my favorite movie is.
1. Movies are not my medium of choice. Television is.
2. Several come to mind, but none seem good enough to be called my all-time favorite.
But when I pulled Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael off my overflowing DVD shelf today, I knew that I might have a winner. I have watched this movie numerous times over the years.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael is a movie starring Winona Ryder. Now, you might think that an 80’s movie starring Winona Ryder was of course a huge hit. But it wasn’t. You probably have never even heard of it. It was more offbeat than her usual offbeat.
In the movie they talk about how bad her hair is. But I would look at this pic and wish mine looked that good. Photo: TV Guide, April 13, 1991
I think the biggest reason it was not a hit was that it was a very 80’s movie…that came out in 1990. By then, the world was moving on from big hair and poofy clothes. It actually works in the movie, because it takes place in tiny Clyde, Ohio. You are supposed to get the impression that they are rural and behind the times. But that didn’t come across in the movie previews.
The main young guy in the movie that has a crush on Winona’s character, and she on him, isn’t exactly heartthrob material. Instead of a Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, Gerald is more of a wannabe Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. We see how much he cares for Dinky by how he stalks her.
Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael also suffers because while it stars Ryder, much of the action and story of the film focuses on the adults around her in her life. Her adopted parents struggle with Ryder’s antisocial behavior. Ryder herself clings on to her guidance counselor and the local landscaper as mother and father role models, respectively. (Whoa. I never quite realized that until I just now typed it.) We also become involved in the life of the former best friend who is returning to town, which leads us to…
The fact that while the movie is called Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, and Winona Ryder is the lead, she does not, in fact, play Roxy Carmichael. Ryder plays Dinky Bossetti. The audience never even SEES Roxy Carmichael’s face, and SPOILER ALERT, Roxy never, in fact, returns home.
So, it is a teen movie featuring adults. Or an adult movie with teens, I’m not sure. It is a movie behind its time in fashion and moral. But a bit ahead of its time, in that it does contain a big gay reveal for two of its characters. And a disappointing departure for a Winona Ryder film, in that she does not in fact lose her virginity in this one 😦
I believe I always deeply connected with this film not because of the large amount of carpet samples, but because it shows that no matter what your family looks like, as a teenager, you just don’t fit. Anywhere. EVER!
I watched this movie the morning of my high school graduation on HBO. It perfectly echoed everything I felt about my school career that would be officially ending in a few hours. From the scene where Dinky tries to make herself more attractive, only to end up on the school bus floor, to finding that you can’t make the world fit what you want it to be, you have to find a way to fit into your world (wow, deep).
The bus floor grime is highly realistic. So are the cafeteria horrors that she endures. The costumer dresses her in dog tags, hoodies, and boots to illustrate her anti-social tendencies.
Wait…that is what I wore in high school. Hmmm. Was I too cool to care what I looked like? Ahead of my time? Or just horribly dorky? These are rhetorical questions.
There was something fitting about her sitting on the lawn in the pink floofy dress, eating ice cream with Gerald and his new braces at the end that made me know everything would still be hard, but it would be OK.
Many other great things about this movie that I would rather list than try to fit into paragraph form:
My favorite quote from the movie:
“It’s good to want things.”
Dinky says it to Gerald, and he later turns around and uses it on her. It is applicable to tons of real-life situations.
Gosh, and I forgot to mention Melissa Etheridge’s great version of the central song in the movie “In Roxy’s Eyes (I Will Never Be The Same)”. We find out that Roxy Carmichael is only famous because a singer made her the object of a hit song. But, as an audience, we believe it, because Etheridge wrote and belts out a REALLY great song.
Or the other fine quote: “I’m gonna laugh at you someday Gerald Howells.” I want to say that to many of my former classmates.
Or the work of the always excellent Jeff Daniels, proud Michigan native, resident (30 miles to my north in the land of Jiffy Mixes), and friend of Adrian College. Daniels always plays such likeable characters, and he is good-looking. My best friend and I were going to stalk him one night, but she was driving and she chickened out. (I would not have.)
The school counselor: That’s a funny analogy.
Dinky: I’m here to amuse.
AND ALMOND ROCAS! Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael really plays as a giant Almond Roca commercial. I had never heard of this candy until I saw this movie. And then it would be another 20 years before I would actually see them in stores and try them. Soooo yummy, by the way.
“Dave, don’t be a cliché.” In the movie, this is told to a pig trying to steal another animal’s food. I tell it to my dog when she tries to pee on fire hydrants.
The movie also featured a great supporting cast of Dinah Manoff, Stephen Tobolowsky, Robin Thomas, and Micole Mercurio.
I feel like I am the only person out there who ever saw and/or loved this movie. Although that cannot be true, because it was released in DVD. So, if you are out there, please give me a shoutout.
BONUS MOM RANT: Oh, and FYI, the morning of my high school graduation my mom wanted to clean the bathroom after her shower, but before mine, so that when my gramma came, it would be clean. Except my gramma came over once a month or so, she had seen our bathroom dirty before. And my mom almost made me late for my own graduation because she just had to clean the bathroom.
This week I got to see the movie Divergent. I have been waiting to see this movie for eight months! From the very first time I had ever heard of it in Entertainment Weekly. You can read more on the birth of my obsession here. My primary motivation for reading all the books and anticipating the movie release is because of Theo James’s good looks.
Theo James as Four Photo: Summit Entertainment
My asbestos friend pointed out that Theo James, who plays Four, looks a lot like the boy I had a crush on all through school. Except that Theo is British. And Theo is probably a good 5 inches taller and 9 years younger than the boy I liked in school. And Theo has amazing model/actor good looks.
Now that I have given you a little background, I will share with you that…
This week I learned that the only actor I liked in Divergent was Theo James.
Oh wait, that’s not true. I liked Mekhi Phifer as well.
It was a good movie. A very faithful adaption to the book about a teenage girl, Tris, choosing her future in a dystopian world. Of course, some things had to be cut for time. Many things I thought would be cut were still included, which was nice. They cut out the scene where Peter stabs someone in the eye. Removing that scene makes it seem uncalled for later when Tris shoots Peter very deliberately when she and her crew are sneaking back into Dauntless headquarters.
I just find that Shailene Woodley bothers me. She has a squeaky voice. I don’t enjoy watching her on screen. (It took me seven years to decided that Kristen Stewart was a bad casting choice for Bella in Twilight. But I knew right away about Shailene.) The actor playing Al wasn’t fat enough. Zoe Kravitz was alright as Christina, but she had a much smaller part in the movie compared to the book. I don’t like Ashley Judd. I don’t like Tony Goldwyn (He will always be the bad guy from Ghost to me!). I don’t like Kate Winslet. Maggie Q is not the look I pictured for Tori. I pictured Tori as Caucasian with blond dreadlocks, and a little chubby.
None of these actors did a poor job. It is just not the casting I would have chosen. And that greatly distracted me while watching the movie, except for scenes that Four was in. He keeps you glued to the screen.
Also this week, “U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman on Friday ruled that the state [Michigan]’s ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in a landslide in 2004, the ballot box is no defense to a law that tramples the rights of same-sex couples.”
This made me happy. (I voted against that law in 2004. The vocal man in front of me in line that day did vote for it.)
I thought that some other law would have to be passed in order for gay marriages to proceed in Michigan.
Nope. Apparently, we just needed to REMOVE the law that was PREVENTING it from happening. On Saturday, some county clerk’s offices around the state had special hours to perform the state’s first gay marriages. My county was not one of them (Not a big shocker). But, when I followed some links from a news story about the topic, I did find an officiant in my county that would perform such ceremonies.
I was SO PLEASED to see that it is the same woman who performed my wedding back in 2003! I knew she was open-minded about getting married in jeans, but I am happy that she is open to all types of love as well.
I tell my son that I don’t care if he grows up to be gay, but it would be a lot easier on him if he didn’t.
I'm not stalking you. 