Showing posts with label Amy Adams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amy Adams. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

My Life In Movies Flashes Before My Eyes: Enchanted, 2007


Okay, so what does this have in common with the last film? Well, they both have the ever adorable Amy Adams. I wonder if she gets sick of people thinking she's adorable. This time she stars as Gisele, a Disney princess who thanks to an evil witch played by Susan Sarandon finds herself alone in New York, waiting for her prince to come rescue her.

She instead finds single dad, Robert, Patrick Dempsey who thinks she's crazy or at the very least extremely naive. She stays with he and his daughter and tries to help out. You know what's awesome about this movie? It takes everything you grow up to think is lame in Disney movies and makes it live action so it becomes awesome like this scene where Gisele tries to clean up the apartment.


Or when Gisele starts a full blown musical number in Central Park. Robert's reaction is the best part of this scene to me, I mean, the music's nice and all, but I always watch musicals and wonder how everyone knows the words.


It pays tribute to the Disney princess films we were all obsessed with at one time, but also updates them a little such as when Gisele has to save Robert from the dragon. It also features James Marsden as Gisele's prince and the great Idina Menzel as Robert's girlfriend. I love the twist at the end where she joins him in the animated world from the beginning of the film.


Anyway, it's a nice surprise of a film, having intelligence where you wouldn't expect it to. Like I said, I do love the homage to fantasy films of yore. Questions, comments, concerns, Disney princess preferences? Do you think Amy Adams is sick of being called adorable? Should she do a movie where she plays a serial killer so we're all scared of her? Let me know in the comments.

My Life In Movies Flashes Before My Eyes: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2006



I have an odd relationship with NASCAR. My family watches it, I really have no interest, they dragged me along to the Atlanta Motor Speedway one time and I did homework. Yet since it happens around me, I get it through osmosis, like when I discovered most people do not try to clean their tires in slow traffic on the interstate or when I watched Cars and knew Lightning McQueen was going to blow up his tires when he only stopped for gas at the pit stop. I don't want to know these things, yet I do. This may seem like an out of the blue selection, but this is the finest film about NASCAR ever, even better than cars. It stars Will Ferrell as the out of control Ricky Bobby as he deals with setbacks following the arrival of French race car driver Jean Girard played by Sacha Baron Cohen. It also features Jane Lynch as his mom in a really great performance. Gary Cole, Michael Clarke Duncan, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Leslie Bibb, Jack McBrayer and Amy Adams round out the cast.

It has the basic sports movie tropes with Ricky Bobby starting out on top of NASCAR. I've got to say Will Ferrell really nails NASCAR driver for some reason, something about his voice or the conviction in it as he says ridiculous things or maybe it's the now famous grace scene.

Or it ciuld be that the man seems to own sports movie. I also like Semi-Pro, right up until the part where the San Antonio Spurs lose. I keep trying to get them to have a Mega Bowl at the AT&T Center, but nobody's going for it. Anyway, Ricky Bobby loses his confidence and everything else and is pretty much about to hit bottom here in my favorite clip.

Ricky Bobby has to make a ridiculous journey back to the top, complete with learning to drive a live cougar, finding a new girl in Amy Adams and racing Jean Girard to the finish line on foot, which is a great scene that Carl Edwards later emulated in the clip below. There's really too much good in this movie to tell you everything. My favorite part of that whole sequence though is the Applebee's commercial in the middle of the wreck between Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Questions, comments, Mega Bowl plans?