Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Bridesmaids

Funny movie.

Recommended.  Better than the trailers made me think it would be.  Went to see it in large part because I know Ellie Kemper from college, and think she's terrifically talented and has a huge, huge career ahead of her.  And my wife and I both thought the movie really worked and was very entertaining.  I can nitpick-- it felt to me like there must have been tons of scenes that were filmed and didn't make it in-- the movie jumps from scene to scene, there are plot threads that are established and then dropped, the emotional journey of some of the characters didn't quite make sense to me-- but in the end, it didn't really matter, because not only was a lot of the movie very funny, but it did hang together for me, I thought Kristin Wiig was really terrific in the role, the script was smart, the big moments were earned, and the whole thing just really worked.  Great, very winning performance by Chris O'Dowd, who I've seen in the (terrific) British version of The It Crowd, a sitcom about computer help-desk workers that I highly recommend....  Can't imagine this doesn't end up very high on a lot of end-of-year lists of the best comedies.

London

My wife and I are in London -- have been here for 4 days, heading to Paris this afternoon for 4 more days, then back to New York.  Turned out to be a neat coincidence that we were here over the Royal Wedding -- I thought it would just make everything closed, crowded, or difficult, but it turned out to be pretty cool to see the huge crowds of people gathered in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park watching it on huge TV screens, and to see the (very orderly and well-controlled) celebration.

We've noticed that every time we say we don't see [whatever] here in London, we almost immediately then see a bunch of examples contradicting our claim.  "We haven't seen many ice cream shops."  And then we turn the corner and there are three.  "We haven't seen Mexican food."  And then we do.  "We haven't seen any piles of garbage on the street."  And there they are.  "No pizza places."  And then we see one.  "They don't seem to have homeless people."  And there they are.  Yesterday we were talking about how there aren't the kinds of situations in the U.S., like the Royal Wedding here, where people just gather in the streets, celebrating as a country-- not really July 4th, maybe sports team ticker-tape parades but that's in one city, and a much smaller percentage of people, not really the Presidential election or inaugurations, the Obama celebration in Chicago limited to one city (and one political party)... so, nope, we concluded, Americans just don't have reasons to gather in crowds like that.

And then, of course, we have the images this morning of Ground Zero and the White House in the middle of the night, after the bin Laden news.