David Nicholl's One Day becomes a movie

Hey remember the book One Day by David Nicholls? It's been turned into a movie with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. This is the lovely poster for it:

I love the implied motion in the image, like he's going in one direction and she's going in another, but they clash in the kiss. The sepia colouring is gorgeous too.

Jim Sturgess looks much as I'd imagined Dexter while reading the book (cocky, a bit rumpled but charming - a little something like Dylan Moran), but I'm not so sure about Anne Hathaway as Emma. For some reason I imagined Emma as a blonde (I can't remember how the book describes her) or a bit smaller or whatever. But I like Anna Hathaway. She can do the gorgeous-loser insecurity thing well (like a girl who doesn't know how pretty she is) but I hope her British accent's up to scratch.

If you haven't read it yet, get yourself over to the library/bookstore/Book Depository and get onto it. It's hefty but a good one.

How Do You Know: 2 minute movie review

This movie has copped a fair bit of flack by reviewers, quite possibly because it's not your typical romantic comedy. Directing producing legend James L Brooks (Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire, As Good As It Gets, etc) has created a more grown-up type of rom-com, where we meet two of the main characters at their lowest points.

While most rom-coms have the metaphorical neon 'they get together' arrows pointing to the love interests throughout the movie, this one's not so sure-footed with the characters, which makes for an interesting film even if it isn't bursting your sides with laughter.

Jack Nicholson overplays his part a bit, but Reese Witherspoon is quite charming in a totally non-Legally Blonde way. Most of the comedy comes through Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd is... well Paul Rudd. A little bit of a bumbling nice-guy who you root for.

I have two free tickets to the movie at any cinema if anyone wants them. Up for grabs. Anyone? Leave a comment or email me by Friday 18th Feb and they're yours.

Air Kisses, Zoe Foster

This is a hard review to write, because I really like Zoe Foster. She's the type of person I'd like to have as a friend.

I know she can write, because I follow her beauty blog at primped and I'm not even keen on beauty products. I read it because her posts are funny and informative. From what I can tell, she's funny, self-deprecating and rather charming, so I had high expectations for this book.

Air Kisses is about unlikely beauty editor Hannah Atkins, who works at Gloss magazine and is a thoroughly modern young woman. Like the best chicklit heroines, she's not too highly polished. She's a little klutzy, well grounded and pretty-despite-herself (we know this because of the number of times she spills food on her clothes, and is informed by other characters how adorable she is).

The book starts with Hannah getting dumped by her hunky newsreader boyfriend, but we don't feel anything particularly about this because we (the readers) haven't met him. She then blunders through a number of unnecessary and unfulfilling relationships before ending up in the arms of the guy we knew she should be with all along, causing agonising tedium and predictability along the way.

Parts of the novel have Foster's own brand of charm (the little humorous asides and observations), but much of it is cluttered with unnecessary details that don't progress the plot, increase our understanding of the heroine or even act as a humorous anecdote. Case in point: something about toenail polish in a taxi and wearing strange slippers. Wha...?? It's like one of those times your friend tells you something HILARIOUS that happened to them and falls over laughing, but it's a you-had-to-be-there moment that loses its humour in the telling.

As a result, the book is way too long and meandering. The most satisfying bit, the part you wait for the entire book, is then shuffled into the last few paragraphs on the last page. The guy she ends up with is the only one she has practically no meaningful contact with throughout the book, which again leads to us not caring very much instead of oohing and aahing like we're supposed to.

Hannah as a heroine is mostly likeable but too weak to admire or aspire to, and every single stereotype you could possibly imagine in chicklit is represented here: the one-dimensional glossy working girls, the supportive best friend, the gay pal who gives bitchy advice, the good-looking guy who falls in love with the heroine, the second good-looking guy who falls in love with the heroine... you've seen them all and you've seen them better.

The best part of the book are the little beauty editorial bits that begin each chapter. For example, did you know that you can kill a cold sore with nail polish remover? 

As I've said, I know Zoe Foster can write. What I think she needs is a good editor to bounce the plot, pacing and characters off. It's like this book came straight from her computer without the necessary shuffling and editing and re-editing that a good book needs. There are lots of examples but the one I can think of off the top of my head is where Hannah wryly mentions that her best friend's word of the month is 'fierce', but she only uses it once, then Hannah uses it several times throughout the book herself in the narrative. I know it's a little thing, but it's these sorts of inconsistencies repeated that the editor is meant to pick up on. Someone needs to be ruthless with the manuscript to turn it into good reading material.

With Air Kisses, the bare bones are there but they haven't been sculpted into anything worthwhile. Just, unfortunately, more blah in a genre overloaded with it already.

500 Days of Summer

Shakespeare wrote, 'the course of true love never did run smooth' (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1959) – a statement Hollywood has been trying to debunk since the inception of romance films. And this is why 500 days of Summer is so refreshing – love doesn't go smoothly and the guy doesn't get the girl. We're told that from the outset (the film's tagline is 'Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.'), yet this is a more truthful, energetic and enjoyable romance film than most.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, a greeting card writer who meets, falls in love with, is heartbroken by and finally gets over Summer in 500 days – hence the title. Summer (played by Zooey Deschanel) is a beautiful and complex character who is cynical about love, but does like Tom. The fact that love doesn't work out perfectly between these two already gives this movie an edge over its predecessors in the genre – it's more realistic, more grown up.

While I found the character of Summer annoying at times, both leads were quite believable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was also a much better fit in this film than his role in G.I. Joe.

The most enjoyable parts of this film were the creative quirks, like the sudden breakout song and dance, the reality/expectation sequence, and the back-and-forth calendar countdown throughout the movie. I also loved the chalkboard wall.

500 Days of Summer is worth watching in my books – especially if you like your movies with a good dose of clever creativity.

The Young Victoria, movie review

The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend, is a snapshot of the youthful years in the life of Queen Victoria. It's a lovely movie without too much melodrama, which manages to encapsulate very elegantly the difficulties faced by the young princess who then becomes queen, and makes her relatable to a new generation. The life of royals is always of public interest, and this movie allows a glimpse into this privileged yet restricted world.

The actors were all very good - particularly the two leads (who are too good looking to be royals – not a buck tooth between them). Emily Blunt did a great job portraying the strength, stubbornness and occasional self-doubt of the young Victoria, and Rupert Friend was the perfect blend of gentlemanly concern and masculinity as Prince Albert, seeking how best to serve and partner his powerful young wife. The courtship and love between them is really the central focus of this movie, and the peripheral aspects of political powerplay are only touched on in direct relation to its effect on Victoria.

The sceenplay, written by Julian Fellowes (who wrote Gosford Park and has just been signed up to write Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) is quiet yet effective, which seems to be his trademark. The positive halo-view of England and English politics is more subtle than the usual in-your-face patriotism of US movies, but despite the unspoken monarchic-apologetic undertone of this movie, one can't help but feel that within the stifling palace walls, the royals can never really know what it is to be a normal person, and could it ever really benefit a country to have a leader so far removed from the common man?

Politics aside, The Young Victoria is an enjoyable movie and recommended viewing for those who enjoy a good drama that doesn't require things to be blown up to be fun.

The Ugly Truth, movie review

With a better script, this could've been a smarter movie. As it is, it relies heavily on the good looks of the two leads, the funny but misogynistic and shallow comments of Gerard Butler's character and Katherine Heigl's ability to embarrass herself. In short, it gives you exactly what you could expect and nothing more.

There are some very funny moments, like Katherine Heigl hanging upside down from a tree, but the plot is like something out of a sweet dreams book (does Kiss Me Creep ring a bell for anyone else?) extracted for an older audience with the addition of some crude humour – although when that crude humour is delivered by Gerard Butler, you can't help but be charmed by the smarm. The Ugly Truth tries so hard to be a funny movie that the attempt to bring in some depth towards the end flounders entirely and becomes psych 101 cliché. Anyway, who's going to believe that someone who looks like Katherine Heigl is a loser at attracting guys?

But it is a funny movie – the audience laughed a LOT during the showing I was at – and a particularly good date movie for its feelgood factor and gender-balanced humour.

Village bride of Beverly Hills, Kavita Daswani

Like a cleaned up Bollywood version of The Devil Wears Prada, The Village Bride of Beverly Hills is about a young woman thrust virtually unwillingly into a glamorous high-flying career in the magazine world. The hook in this novel, however, is that the heroine is a young Indian bride in LA - a genuinely nice person who, through a series of somewhat unbelievable events, is led to the career she's always wanted. Leaving her saris behind, Priya becomes a hot new name in the media world and is forced into a double life which she hides from her very traditional new in-laws and rather diffident husband.

Kavita Daswani does a nice job with this light-hearted story, but the lack of realism and extremely light attempt to portray Priya's emotional growth prevent it from being a work of any substance.

Rating: A passable afternoon read.

Music and Lyrics

Despite its title, not all was in harmony in this movie. In particular, there was no sense of romantic chemistry between the characters played by Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, so the crossover from feuding-sibling-type friends to lovers would’ve been really hard to believe if it wasn’t coming from a mile away.

Even just the idea of Hugh Grant as an ageing pop star is quite funny, but to see him in the whole 80's get-up singing and dancing is quite hilarious. His character is not quite as comical, hedonistic, old and unique as Bill Nighy in Love Actually, but still very good. However, Drew Barrymore’s eccentric hypochondriacal character with hidden depth just didn’t work for me. She may as well have been on auto-pilot with a character derived from a dozen previous movies.

Towards the end they try to tear away from the shallow simple plotline and bring some depth to the movie, which only turned it from mildly amusing to clichéd and contrived. The whole grand-gesture-stadium-declaration thing was a ho-hum expected climax, with Drew Barrymore wearing the exact same expression as in Never Been Kissed (now that's a painful movie).

There’s a light poke at the music industry and the rising young divas whose main talents are gyrating and panting into the microphone, but it clearly was not meant to offend the industry or make any real statement.

To expect anything more than close to two brainless hours of standard romantic comedy would be like trying to extract meaning from A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ – you know it’ll never be a meaningful ballad so you have to just enjoy it for what it is. Oh, and it's definitely a DVD movie - forget paying more than ten bucks for it!