Dec. 31, 2003 - 10:45 pm
alright, i know i haven't been "at the show" for nearly a month now. well hopefully i'm back. while Stacey was here, we didn't watch tons of movies. we mostly vacationed and went to see people. well i'm watching some stuff now. i've recently seen Return of the King twice, The Two Towers again, Fellowship again, The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Billy Elliot (2000) and I think that's about it.
so everyone knows that I was severely wanting to read this book and see the movie since before this time last year. well i never got around to reading the book, although it's still sitting on my shelf. i was originally intensely interested because Natalie Portman was supposed to be in it. my obsession has died down over the past 9 months or so. those things can come in waves i guess.
i told Keith (as we finished watching the Oscars on ABC much earlier this year) that Cold Mountain would win Best Picture of 2003. i stand by that. my picks for Best Picture nominees: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Cold Mountain, Big Fish, Mystic River, and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. actually i'm very very interested in seeing Big Fish, so i might actually be rooting for that when the time comes. it would be a very non-traditional winner though.
Cold Mountain is sort of a two-taled story set in the Civil War with one side of the film following a cross-country trek of Jude Law and the other following the day-to-day struggle with mountain life of Nicole Kidman. they met each other just before the war broke out and fell in love after only a few brief moments together. they wrote to each other fervently during the war and relied on each other's memory in order to pull themselves through their struggle. it's a film about struggling to live a happy life in a time that won't allow good things to surface.
i guess i got pretty much what i was expecting out of this film, but definitely not more. i expected to be amazed by Anthony Minghella and his creative team, but I just wasn't. it was more focused on the actors and the plot. it's a good film, but there's nothing revolutionary at all about the style of it and i guess i found that disappointing.
my mom's right in saying that Ren�e Zellweger didn't seem out of place in this film. she actually seemed more in place than most people. what i find hilarious about this film is that she's one of the few actual real life Americans in the film. think about it. there are so many people from the U.K. and its territories in this it's literally stunning. the two main guys from 28 Days Later (2002) were in this film. bad accents ran rampant. i kind of liked the fact that Jack White played Georgia. he's the lead singer of the popular band The White Stripes...in case you didn't already know that.
and Natalie was of course awesome. i only wish she had been onscreen more often. but then i always say that don't i? more Oscar nominees to follow once they're announced...