Dec 17th, 2010 by Annie
‘Tis the Season to Catch Up on Flicks
My college kids are home for the holidays and one of our favorite activities when we’re all together is watching movies. We always try to catch a few new releases, but we also enjoy renting the movies we missed at the theater and rewatching old favorites. So, yesterday evening we dug through my collection of DVDs and decided on Bottle Shock. I was so surprised my son hadn’t seen it yet!
I just love this movie. It’s a fictionalized account of the real-life French-California Wine competition held in Paris in 1976 and has one of my favorite actors, Alan Rickman. My son groaned as I gave him a brief synopsis, his mind already made up that he would hate the movie. Well, I convinced him to give it a chance …..
… He loved it! Of course, it is very difficult to watch Bottle Shock and not open a bottle (or two) of wine. I didn’t have any Chateau Montelena Chardonnay (one of the California wines featured in the movie), but I did have a couple bottles of my favorite California white: Ferrari Carano Fume Blanc. It’s under $20 a bottle …. and is fabulous!
The Holiday Releases … My two oldest daughters and I are going to see The Black Swan with Natalie Portman tonight. I have to leave my youngest behind (definitely NOT appropriate for a 14-year old), but I promised her we’d see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and we’ll all go see The King’s Speech with Colin Firth, another favorite actor.
Every Christmas season, my dear friend Tina and I make a kid-less, husband-less escape to catch a chick flick. We also include some big city shopping and lunch at a nice restaurant. This year we’re going to see How Do You Know with Reese Witherspoon. And, hopefully, with the release of True Grit starring Jeff Bridges and directed by the Coen brothers, we may actually be able to drag our husbands out of the country and into a movie theater for this remake of the John Wayne classic! Jeff Bridges has some pretty big shoes to fill!
DVDs of Movies I Missed … two movies my kids & I will be renting are Everything Is Illuminated starring Elijah Wood and Never Let Me Go with Keira Knightly. The novel Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer has been on my TBR list for a couple years, and I have read and posted on the excellent Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Both movies have received much praise.
Our Favorite Rewatch Movie DVDs: Family Stone (great cast), The Red Violin (haunting), The Count of Monte Cristo (Jim Caviezel is pure eye candy), A Very Long Engagement (quirky and moving)
, and Chocolat
(Johnny Depp) among others.
What flicks do you plan on seeing this holiday season?
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The The Black Swan was really good! I would recommend it! I recently watched Dead Poets Society and Last of the Mohicans….both really good movies!
Comment by Leigh2002 on December 20, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I look forward to seeing Black Swan (probably when it comes out on DVD though, can’t remember the last time I was in a movie theater). Natalie Portman is one of my favorite actresses. The holiday movie I most look forward to is Polar Express. The little kids singing on the back of the train gets me every time.
Comment by Lisa on December 21, 2010 at 5:35 am