The heart of the story itself is beyond words (maybe because the first 30-40 minutes of the film use maybe a dozen words in all).

But here are some of the thoughts buzzing in my head...

1. Cross Charlie Chaplin, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and the all around magic of your favorite Pixar film. Then start multiplying. That's just a taste.

2. Best Love Story.... Ever.

3. Wave at Wall*E!

4. Pixar's latest entry shows why, in the world of movies, (not just animated movies... *all* movies), the best of the rest of the movie houses are still just the rest.

5. Cockroaches can be CUTE? Cockroaches CAN be cute.

6. And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to....

So just go see it, already.
Take your sweetheart, if you've got one, and keep your hand nearest her free. You just might find yourself wanting to reach over and hold her hand.

Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet are both trying to get over Mr Wrong. So they meet through a vacation house-swap website, and swap houses (outside London and LA) just to get away from men for Christmas. While swapped, they have adventures, meet some new people... and the general bent of the plot from there towards Jack Black and Jude Law is not particulary surprising.

But the journey to get there is delightful, sweet, and funny.

The film has a great cast, good writing, a few bends in the road, and the small British village and big flashy LA suburbs become supporting characters in themselves.
Now on DVD, and well worth renting (or a Netflix slot) if you like romantic comedies.

platecolorado.com

This place opened several months ago. It's on the Northside of Briargate Blvd, just a little bit East of the Promenade Shoppes. It's had good reviews, and I've been wanting to try it, but it's on the upscale side...

Then I hear that they you can go to the bar, and they have a special bar menu that's very reasonable. So a girlfriend and I went out last night to check out the bar at Plate..

First, since it is a bar, the drinks: they have a small list of specialty cocktails, mostly martinis, that sounded yummy, an extensive wine list, with a smallish but well thought out variety available by the glass, typically priced (not cheap, but not outrageous). House wines are moastly Penfolds brands, which are always good.
We peeked at their full dinner menu, and the selections looked delicious, With a variety of appetizers, salads, and entrees, arranged by type/geography (French, Asian, Spanish, or Steakhouse). Less expensive than I expected, but still on the upscale side (entrees are all in the $20 range)
Then we looked at the Bar menu. Priced from $7-$12, Selections include both munchies and meals: a Kobe Cheeseburger, Ahi Poke, Snow Crab claws, Kalua Pig sliders, Grilled Bistro Steak, Beef Barbacoa with chips, Manchego Croquettes...
We both went for the "Manchego Stuffed Kobe Meatball" (one giant meatball, cut in half and slightly scooped out, with Manchego cheese melted in the divot, on a bed of pureed potatoes with a sweet onion relish.... ). It was absolutely delicious. Very much comfort food, while definitely scaled up and taken to a gourmet level, it managed to do so without losing the comfort element, and without being ridiculous.

The restaraunt's atmosphhere is very serene. Think elegant simplicity, with lots of warm but neutral colors.The food becomes the real decoration.
.. The bar itself has nice padded stools with backs, plenty comfortable for two people to sit awhile and eat and chat.

One point off because there's no really healthy non-seafood choice on the Bar menu. It would be nice to see a salad or other sort of fresh veggie based choice.

At Happy hour (4-6pm 7days) their Bar menu is half price, with wine, wells, and bottled beer at $2... Wow. At those kinds of prices for that kind of food,this place is truly a gem. I just may have a new favorite place to wind down and grab a bite after work...

so I'm way behind on movies, and I finally got this on Netflix. I know, wierd that a Disney animated movie took me so long to get to.
I'd heard it was a pathetic attempt by Disney to do CGI withour Pixar, so I keot pushing it off, And now that I've seen it, I'm sorry I waited.

It was a delightful story set in a bit of a sci-fi background, but with all the heart and humor of a true Disney feature.... and all based on a quote from Walt himself. It was not one of the best Disney movies, but I found it very watchable, entertaining, and endearing... a nice movie making good advatage of the CGI animation medium, but always just as a support to the story, never overshadowing it.

If Walt were still with us, he would approve.

This animated film, originally a graphic novel, is based on the real life of the author, who is also heavily involved in making the film. It's originally in French, so our showing was subtitled.

Synopsis: Marjane Satrapi grew up in Tehran wearing sneakers and listening to rock. She wrote her own commandments and wanted to grow up to be a prophet and meet Bob Dylan. When she was ten years old, her world changed overnight. Girls and boys had to use different doors to enter the school. She had to cover herself with a long dark robe. Marjane has several close encounters with the country's morality police and her teachers at school. Iraqi bombs fall on the street where she lives. Grownups around her are arrested. Eventually, her parents send her to a friend in Europe to keep her safe...

My thoughts: A bit depressing, but well worth watching nonethless, even for people like me who don't do depressing... It's well written, humorously animated, and I believe it really has a shot at the Animated Film oscar tonight. (Then, I haven't seen either of the others yet to compare to, but they are on my netflix list...)
If you've read "Reading Lolita in Tehran", or otherwise paid some attention to the political situation in Iran in the 80s and 90s, it's especially interesting to see the period through the eyes of a young girl and her family.

A few weeks ago, we went to the first public showing of Disney's newest broadway-bound show - The Little Mermaid.
If you'r not familiar with the process of getting a show to Broadway, Being the first preview in the "out of town tryouts" in Denver, the show is not yet "complete" or at its peak... the actors are still figuring out the roles, and the show itself is likely to be tweaked before both the official opening night in Denver, and then probably even more before it actually officially opens on Broadway (in November)

So give some leeway for all that as you read this review. I have left off a star because there is definitely some work to do - but from what we saw, I think it's likely they'll reach that 5th star by opening night. (Maybe not quite as awesome as Beauty and the Beast or the Lion King on Broadway, but still pretty darn awesome).

That said, here are my notes on the show:

The downs:
--A few of the numbers didn’t quite flow—but I guess that’s the sort of thing these tryouts exist to figure out.
--Triton, Ariel's father, was bland bland bland -- not sure if it was the writing or the actor (probably some of both)
--Sebastian was pretty weak in the first act. (just the actor. The role was well-written.)

The middlings:
-Ariels’ sisters had a number (at the spot in the movie when they are all sitting around deciding Ariel must be in love…). Some of the sisters were a hoot, and their voices were great… but the number jsut didn't quite seem to fit into the flow.
-"Under the Sea" was neat, but not as showstoppingly awesome as it should have been.
-Some of the old songs from the movie were performed a little too exactly like the movie, and just didn’t feel like the actors or the show has made them their own yet.
- Flounder (played by a kid) was good, but hasn’t quite found his niche..

The good:
-Costumes were imaginative and well-executed.
(the mermaids had their tails sticking out behind them, with matching skirts covering their legs. Tough to describe, but it really worked; to make the swimming/gliding effects, most of the undersea characters were on shoes with wheels (think like those “Heelies” sneakers. It worked really well. )
-Sets were fairly simple, but in the same way a Vera Wang dress is simple… they were just incredible (they have these shims of a plasticy watery-looking substance they’d bring up and down that really worked well – Apparently they actually worked with 3M to develop a new material just for the show to have all the properties they wanted. And the ship was this whimsical thing that came down from above, as the water moved down… very cool.)
-The actors playing Ariel and Ursula were incredible. So were Eric, Grimsby, Carlotta, Flotsam & Jetsam, & Scuttle…. And Sebastian warmed up by the second half (and may have had some mike adjustments) and then was awesome.
-Additions to the story and some of the new songs and edits of existing songs were really good. (Eric got fleshed out a little more, the search for the Voice became a singing contest to try to find the girl… And in this version, he chooses Ariel anyway *before* he knows she is the voice (even after he hears the voice coming from somewhere else, he decides to stick with Ariel.)
-Scuttle and his backup gulls were hilarious.
-Kiss the Girl was every bit as showstoppingly awesome as it should have been.
-The cast was largely race-neutral in a way that really worked. (the sisters were a mix, Triton was black, they have 2 flounders thay play alternate nights, and one’s very black and one’s very white.)
The Little Mermaid is not one of my husband's favorite Disney movies anyway, so he was just kind of eh. But allowing for it being their first performance for an audience, it was pretty awesome. I’ll have to see it again someday, maybe when it goes on tour, or if we ever make it to New York, to see how they tweak it.

We caught this at the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs Friday night.

Facts: This is one of those broadway musicals where a story was created around the existing music of a popular musician/group... in this case, ABBA.
The basic plot is that a youg woman is about to get married. Raised my a single mom, she doesn' know who her father is. She finds her mother's diary from 1979 (the year she would have been conceived), and figures out it could be one of three possible men, so she secretly invites them all to her wedding, in hopes that her real father will end up walking her down the aisle...
So naturally, chaos ensues.

One star off because there were several points where the orchestra drowned out the singing... but otherwise, I realy enjoyed the show.
Rather than the typical broadway show playbill format of listing the songs in order, with the characters who sing them, this show simply listed all songs in alphabetically, so we never quite knew what was coming next.
Some of the old Abba songs (Dancing Queen) came in just where you expected, and others (Take a Chance on Me) popped in at more surprising times, giving me giggle fits as I recognized the opening words.... All in all a very effective trick... especialli since the denoument of the story itself was fairly predictable (but in that good old cheesy broadway way - which is not a bad thing!)

And most importantly, I left singing.

The show is well worth the time and money for anyone who likes broadway-style shows, or who ever willingly listened to Abba (even if you won't admit it).

Last time I saw this movie in the theater, it was 13 years ago with over a dozen dorm-mates, all piled into my Puke green '79 Chrysler Newport... and it was every bit as great as I remember it on the big screen.. and even better with the 3-D. I was a little worried, as I sometimes have trouble with 3-D movies. (I'm also one of those people who could rarely see the image in those posters everyone used to have in the 90's, where 3D images were supposed to "pop" out if you just looked at it right)... But I had no troubles at all with this, and it looked amazing. And the story and animation themselves were of course as good as ever. Worth even the extra 1.50 they tacked on to the regular movie price.... (though I'm taking a star off for the extra cost - movies are expensive enough!)