Nicole Kidman

To Die For
$14.94
"Murder in New Hampshire" is a much better movie, is a True Crime story, and was made before "To Die For". They are both accurate depictions of the Pamela Smart story, and are extremely similar. "To Die For" was hyped as a comedy. Unbelieveable. I'm sure that the victim's loved ones don't find it the least bit funny. Neither do I.

Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
$14.99
Cold Mountain / B0001MDP3G

*Spoilers*

I just know this review is going to get buried in "unhelpful" votes, but I truly hated this movie. I can't imagine what anyone could get out of this movie - the depictions of the actual war on display are either non-existent or cartoonishly exaggerated to attempt some kind of heavy-handed good vs. evil narrative. The 'love' story is laughable, the characters are fantastically annoying and irritating, and I'm convinced that Zellweger got her Academy Award on the grounds that her whole character is based around mocking the 'main' characters and highlighting how stupid and useless they are (which is, for what it's worth, a pretty awesome reason to win an award).

Let's deal with the war first - I *think* someone mentioned, briefly, in this three-hour movie that slavery might have something to do with this whole war-thing. It's good that mention is made, because otherwise I might have accidentally believed that the war was orchestrated by fate to keep Inman from Ada. Slavery and its ugly implications are pretty much NEVER mentioned in this 'epic', and the one time African Americans are allowed on the screen, they're immediately shuffled off within 30 seconds. God forbid that black people be allowed screen time when we paid money to see Jude Law and Nicole Kidman - naked, no less.

There *is*, to be fair, a more immediate reason for the war than as a plot device to keep Inman out of Ada's eager arms, and that's so that Ada can constantly hover at the edges of potential abuse at the hands of the local Blatantly Evil Guy (BEG). The BEG wants Ada's property and, by extension, Ada herself, and decides that the most effective way to woo a lonely, vulnerable, naive young woman is to show up at her house once a week and scream at her, rather than try the more risky scheme of shaving his ratty beard and bringing by some flowers and/or beef jerky as presents. You can understand him being confused, though, because he appears to have coasted through life on pure charisma - the only explanation *I* can think of for why, when he and his small group of thugs start terrorizing the entire village and no one so much as peeps in protest. Well, there is *one* more reason I can think of - that in a reality-based, shade-of-gray world where no one is 100% good or evil, the tension between the security patrols and deserters was fraught with all sorts of moral ambiguity and difficult choices - at least a few of the deserters were a legitimate source of concern, what with the poaching, raiding, occasional rapes, and just generally being a drain on an already stretched infrastructure. But why would we consider difficult moral questions like the implications of helping starving soldiers while that food is needed for the starving locals - such things would take up valuable screen time and we've got an epic love story to unfold!

As much as I hate movies where the hero and heroine inexplicably fall inextricably in love with each other in the first five minutes and then spend the rest of the movie declaring their undying love for this near-stranger, "Cold Mountain" taught me that the effect is even *more* irritating when the characters continually acknowledge how much this conceit doesn't make sense. Thus are we given Inman and Ada, two lovers who are drawn to one another by their mutual awkward manners, muddy accents, and impossibly wide eyes. Ada is a refined gentlewoman without a single useful skill, apparently because cooking was considered 'beneath' her station, an odd feeling to nurture in a family that ostensibly is against slavery. I guess you can be against making other people do your dirty work without actually wanting to, you know, do your own dirty work. Inman is the perfect opposite of Ada, in that he can do pretty much anything, but never talks - an Informed Trait, because by gum he will *not* shut up about how much he loves Ada even though, he repeatedly reminds us, he doesn't know the first thing about her. Seriously, he doesn't know her middle name, what her childhood pet was, or whether or not she's allergic to shellfish - but he's willing to cross the entire country three times over to fling himself into her arms. Isn't that romantic?

Indeed, I can't decide if the best parts of "Cold Mountain" are the *painfully* awkward dialogue between the two lovers ("What color is the sky when it rains?!" and "[Our love] is like a bag of tiny diamonds!!") or Renee Zellweger brutally mocking said dialogue. Poor Zellweger is the one bright spot in this movie, as she shows up to rescue Ada from starvation, while proceeding to harshly chew her out for everything from mooning over a guy she's barely met to starving to death rather than figure out how to kill and skin a rooster to lounging in bed like a queen all day - basically, everything that the viewer would LIKE to say to Ada, but is denied the chance to. My one regret is that Zellweger couldn't have had a twin sister to follow Inman around and gripe HIM out for being such an idiot, but I suppose the Wise Old Woman of the Woods character does a fairly good job of it, even if it does mean we have to listen to *more* Wangst about how Inman lurves Ada even though he doesn't *know* Ada, etc. Really, if anything could have made this movie better, it would have been more Zellweger.

This is probably as good a place as any to insert my plea that Hollywood stop making characters deliberately dense for plot-furthering purposes. When your friend and neighbor has been tortured and nearly killed for 'harboring deserters' by the local BEG, and (1) you've been harboring deserters habitually (and carelessly!) for the last few months and (2) the BEG openly hates you and makes no secret of his obsession with you, it should at least OCCUR to you that you might be in a smidgen of danger. It should definitely occur to the aforementioned tortured neighbor who cheerily hangs out with these new deserters. That's just bad writing.

Oh, yeah, and you get to see Kidman nude in this movie. It's for all of 30 seconds, but that's still 30 seconds that *could* have been devoted to good dialogue and characterization and it wasn't, so it's a waste. But that's just my opinion.

~ Ana Mardoll

Nicole Kidman
$15.95
I REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK ABOUT MOVIE ACTRESS NICOLE KIDMAN. I REALLY DIDN'T KNOW A WHOLE LOT ABOUT HER. AFTER READING THIS I GOT A CRASH COURSE ABOUT HER LIFE. THE BOOK ITSELF HAS FACTS ABOUT NICOLE AND ALOT OF IT HAS FACTS CONCERNING HER MOVIES AND SOME OF THE ACTORS IN THEM. ONE COMPLAINT I HAVE IS THAT I WAS HOPING TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT NICOLE AND LESS ABOUT HER MOVIES. SHE CERTAINLY IS VERY TALENTED AND IS EXTREMELY NICE LOOKING. LIKE MOST OTHER READERS I FOUND THE PARTS ABOUT EYES WIDE SHUT WAS THE MOST INTERESTING. WE ALSO FIND OUT A BIT ABOUT HER MARRIAGE TO TOM (FULL OF HIMSELF AND OTHER THINGS) CRUISE AND OTHER RELATIONSHIPS WITH RUSSELL CROWE AND OTHERS. ALL IN ALL IF YOU LIKE NICOLE THIS IS A NICE READ AND HAS A SECTION AT THE END OF THE BOOK THAT COVERS ALL HER MOVIES WITH A CAST LIST AND A BRIEF SUMMARY ABOUT THE MOVIE. WORTH IT.

Australia
$29.99
Good movie, Longer than some but that gives it time to develop the story line and people.
Historically, very accurate.