Movie reviews: Thank you for smoking and The Devil Wears Prada

Its now the end of the mid semester break, which means that demonstrating and my basic car maintenance course starts again, and things will become a bit more hectic. Plus the fact I'm going to be on the radio as a part of the Dr What program on SYN FM - woo hoo! :) (if I get through training, that is) And that stupid 6 month confirmation. But that's not what I want to write about. Its been movie season at the moment - I've seen two movies this week despite the fact that the majority of movies are aimed at the kids that are on school holidays.

Movie number 1: Thank you for smoking

I have to admit, I had no idea what to expect from this movie. I went and saw this one because I was going with my lab, and this was the only one we could all agree on. I'd already seen Kenny; Roza doesn't like scary movies, which eliminated Silent Hill; I don't think Geordie or Jess were too keen on Monster House; and the sessions in the Half Pipe at Melbourne Central (which is where Brett wanted to go) were not at the right time, and were showing Silent Hill and Kenny. No one wanted to see Garfield 2, or The Wild.

Luckily we had discussed this before we had left the lab, so buying tickets was a speedy process and also ensured we were in time for the previews (the new Hugh Jackman movie, The Prestige, looks interesting). As the movie has been showing for a while, we did hope that we would be the only ones in the cinema, but alas, that wasn't the case (I still haven't been to a movie where I'm the only person in the cinema). It was still pretty empty though.

Hmmm, the best way I can think of to describe what it is about is to imagine a long winded battle. On one side, you have the anti smoking people, who fight to have smoking outlawed due to its effects on your health. On the other side, you have the tobacco companies, who are fighting to sell their product. The twist to the movie is that it is told from the tabacco company's point of view, rather than the anti smoking guys. I know its a very simplistic view, but I watched this movie thinking of it as a battle, so as a result, I was barricking for the tobacco company (?) as they were fighting against "poison" stickers to be placed on cigarrette packets to the American senate. There's betrayal, secret deals, love and comradeship galore in this movie. On the whole, it was very entertaining, the acting and characters gets a big thumbs up and I'd recommend to anyone who wants to watch a well made movie.

Movie number 2: The Devil Wears Prada

After some frantic text messaging, Mariam, Despina and I arranged to see The Devil Wears Prada last night. Just a warning to anyone who orders dessert at the Groove Train at Melbourne Central - the slices of cake are HUGE! I ordered a slice of the Mars Bar cake (yum!) but it was absolutely huge! It was literally death by chocolate, and I was feeling a bit sick as we walked into a packed cinema. Ironically, it was the same cinema that I saw Thank You For Smoking. In a nut shell, the movie is about a recently graduated journalist, Andrea (Andy) Sachs, who becomes a personal assistant to Miranda Priestly, who is the editor-in-chief of Runway, THE fashion magazine. She is also the boss from hell. As I'd read the book, I already knew what would happen, and had wanted to see this movie mainly b/c I wanted to see how it would be done.

The key to enjoying this movie is that you need to leave your brain at home and don't think. Oh, and check out what kind of clothes they're all wearing. Some of what they were wearing was just plain wrong, but there were other things that were ok. At one point, Andy was wearing a VERY nice pair of boots, and when she's in Paris at the launch party, she's wearing a really sophisticated black dress. *sigh* They looked really nice, but I wouldn't be able to wear them anywhere. Well, the lab, since I'm always there. The soundtrack to the movie was quite good as well, very upbeat and poptastic. Overall, I'd say the book is better, but I think with movie adaptions from a book, the book is usually better.

This has nothing to do with the movie, but we were looking for a place to have coffee afterwards. I was feeling pretty sleepy. You would think that it isn't that hard, as it was only 11pm. But all the places in Melbourne Central around the cinema were closing, as were Starbucks. How hard is it to find a place to have a coffee? We ended up going all the way to Lygon St and choosing one of the many cafes there. It was quite funny as we were hunting for a place, as there was people everywhere celebrating West Coast winning the Grand Final. A lot of drunken antics. *lol*