You are from Texas, not England.

The Movie: Bridget Jones's Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire
Recommendation: H
Reason: Hugh Grant is funny.

Renee Zellweger's really starting to bug me lately (I love Empire Records, I love Chicago...I love Empire Records, I love Chicago...). I keep seeing movies with her in them that bite. Bridget Jones's Diary wasn't awful, but it wasn't spectacular, and I'm really starting to get pissed at the Academy for equating 'physical alteration' with 'great acting'. I mean, goddammit! Renee Zellweger was nominated for an academy award for this movie, playing the same half-crazy, supposedly cute, slightly rebellious character she plays in everything (even Chicago, but her performance was more nuanced there, and she wasn't speaking in an English accent) after putting on 25 pounds. Christian Bale dropped 80 pounds for The Machinist, and he didn't get nominated for squat, despite an excellent performance in an alright suspense film. At least she didn't win. We got Halle Berry instead, who I'm still not quite sure about.

Taking a peek into the trivia I could find about this movie, it looks like it was a bit of a circlejerk, since the director's a friend of the author of the book and the two leading men are mentioned in the book (as themselves, not as the characters they played). I wasn't that much enamored of the story. I think the pinnacles of the British romantic comedy ala Working Title Pictures are still (and probably always will be) Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral. They've got a few good films on the way that I'm looking forward to, so huzzah for the upcoming Hot Fuzz!

To continue this scattered rambling, I spent half of the movie peering intently at the screen, trying to figure out who the hell that squeaky-voiced chick was, and why she sounded so familiar. Shock and awe! It's Moaning Myrtle, from Harry Potter! So imagine my chagrin at learning that Moaning Myrtle's fortysomething. That just adds a whole new level of goddamn creepy to the bath scene in Goblet of Fire, seeing as she was forty and Daniel Radcliffe was fifteen. Ewwwwwwww.

-63/365 down, 302/365 to go