Getting ready to go

Well compared to yesterday, today was a breeze.

I didn't sleep well. Crooner's new game is "can I use this cardboard box to drive Daddy completely insane?" and he had a great time playing last night. At 2:30am. Yeah, he could be a throw rug.

Eve called this morning. Dad went into the hospital last night with acute diverticulitis with micro-perforations, but he is being treated at least. From what I read about it today, he should be fine after a few days on antibiotics, and since this is the initial flare-up, isn't something to be overly concerned about.

I got my write-offs done at work, and even carefully negotiated the path of knives to teach the Canadian office how to do something they should already know how to do without pissing them off (at least I don' t think I did). This is a rare accomplishment.

After work, I just jetted home, read a bit, ate some supper, and packed my clothes so I could leave for Columbia tomorrow night.

While I was packing, I watched Cruel Intentions, the remake of one of my favorite movies of all time - Dangerous Liaisons. CI is the teenybopper version, I guess trying to make the story appeal to a younger demographic. They were all pretty, and I think Reese Witherspoon did a tolerable job as Cecile, the lovey model of virtue. The rest of the cast though, seemed to be trying to play roles they didn't understand the motivations for. It is a bit of a stretch to think that high school kids, however rich, are so jaded that they turn to convoluted evil plots simply to relieve the ennui.

Despite the problems with changing the story to be about youths, the script I thought was very well done, and they did a really good job of making the story otherwise plausable. Changing the maid character afraid of losing her position to a football player afraid of being outed was inspired. And changing the setting from barlely pre-revolution French nobility to upper class uber-rich New Yorkers worked so well as to be thought-provoking. I also thought it was clever that they made the two lead characters step-siblings, so that they only needed to get one set of parents out of the way - conveniently off to Europe for the summer, leaving all that luxury and money just lying about, waiting to be used as a backdrop. I also liked the motivation reveal (the content, at least - the delivery sounded kind of whiny) on Mertuiel's character - sexism hasn't changed that much since the times of the French court, apprently. And having Annette there when Valmont died, although a change, did add a "Romeo and Juliet"-like feel to his death that I'm sure younger audiences found poignant. I liked that they kept most of the original names from the story.

The acting though, was pretty atrocious, aside from Reese Witherspoon. Sarah Michelle Gellar, gave it a good try, as did Ryan Phillippe, but basically, they both sounded like the equivalent of a kid walking around in their parents shoes. At times it felt as if they were reading the dialogue without understanding the scene, although they both mastered the "look-up-from-the-chin to show decadence" look - and used it frequently. Sean Patrick Thomas gave a pretty embarrassing performance, although granted he didn't have much to work with - and kudos to him for overlooking the possible "black buck" implications some might have found in the role. The less said about Selma Blair's ridiculous and eye-wincing performance as Cecile, the better. I think her take on the role was envisioned as some kind of comic relief, but the only relief for me was when she left the screen. She did at least offer built-in opportunities for me to go to the laundry room. Christine Baranski was of course fabulous as Cecile's society hippocrite mother, despite being given some fairly lead-weight satire to dish with a straight face; but then she is fabulous in everything. Sadly, her part was greatly reduced in this version.

Anyway, I have no idea why I spent so much time talking about a basically pretty crappy movie, other than that there isn't much going on at the mo, and they were desecrating one of my favorites (however well-intentioned the ambition).