Sense & Sensibility

Another Jane Austen story. And one I had seen a few times before, as well as having read the book. Like Pride & Prejudice, many of the characters from the book were not in the movie. But there were too many extraneous characters in the book, making it hard to keep track of them all. I liked this story very much. The costumes & scenery were great, but I wasn't thrilled with the casting. Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay & it was wonderful, but I just couldn't buy her as playing a girl who was supposed to be 19 years old. She looked great for someone in her mid-30's, but let's fact it, was not believable as a teenager! Kate Winslet was much closer to the age of the character she played, but still seemed too old to be playing a 16 year old. If you can look past that, they played the parts well.

I liked Hugh Grant's portrayal of Edward Ferrars, but the movie version of his character was made to seem much less involved with Lucy Steele, whereby allowing him to be more likable than he probably should have been. All in all, a classic Jane Austen happy ending romance, and I can never get enough of them!

American Dreamz

I chose this movie to watch b/c it was new to HBO. When I saw that Hugh Grant was in it & that it had something to do with singing, I figured it was the movie with Drew Barrymore in it. It wasn't. That one is called Music & Lyrics & too new for cable I would imagine. I was pretty far into it before I realized that Drew was not going to show up, but I continued watching it anyway. I didn't really know anything about Mandy Moore and I'm really an American Idol fan, so I wasn't too crazy about this movie. If it weren't for Hugh Grant I probably wouldn't have finished it. Since I wasn't that into it, I spent the whole time web surfing, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. I'd say I wouldn't have minded seeing this if there wasn't anything else on to watch, but after seeing Little Miss Sunshine, this was kind of disappointing.