I’m reading Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile in anticipation of seeing the movie next week. It stars Tom Hanks as Wilson, the Texas congressman who helped fund the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets. Having read “Kite Runner” and Rory Stewart’s “The Places In Between,” recently I guess I’ve been on something of an Afghanistan kick, so CWW fit right in.

The movie looks alluring, between Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman (playing a bad-ass CIA agent) and Mike Nichols at the helm, but as someone who spends most of her reading time consuming fiction, I didn’t expect to be that into the book. But I can’t put it down. Yesterday I looked up on BART and realized I’d gone all the way to San Leandro because I was that absorbed. A good sign for the movie.

Speaking of upcoming movies, this Vanity Fair piece by Bruce Handy on Francis Ford Coppola’s new film “Youth Without Youth” is worth a read.

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Much as I esteem the Contra Costa Times, navigating the website is not my favorite thing about it. I’m posting recent reviews here to make them a little easier to find, starting with my pan of “Beowulf.”
UPDATE: The webmaster tells me we AREN’T that dainty on site. Here’s my original description of Angelina Jolie’s privates, which was edited in the newspaper because it was considered too evocative. What do you think, is that line too offensive to read over breakfast?

Having reached these heights, Zemeckis tops himself by bringing Beowulf into the lair of Grendel’s over-protective mother (Angelina Jolie). Monster Mom also prefers to wage battle naked. She’s buxom and so carefully buffed that her Mound of Venus has, just like Barbie’s, no Central Valley. (Wouldn’t you expect someone as politically correct as Jolie to have told Zemeckis, ‘If you want my boobies, the rest of me better be anatomically correct’”?)

So I stayed up until 1:30 last night to finish “The Kite Runner” in preparation for reviewing the movie next month. When a book this popular is adapted for the screen, I feel I’ve got to read it, since so many movie goers are going to come at it from a point of comparison to the source material. And now that I’m done, I wonder, how can this movie work? Any film that includes as many coincidences and contrivances as Hosseini’s novel is going to be hard to swallow. Don’t get me wrong, I cried at the gym reading the book, I took BART rather than driving to two screenings solely to give myself more reading time and I’m still worrying about Sohrab’s future (Amir, what about some therapy for the boy?). But as involving as the novel was, I kept coming up against the fact that I couldn’t buy its perfect, strained symmetry.

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If they gave out Oscars for best speaking voice, Javier Bardem might win it every year. In “Love in the Time of Cholera,” he makes it sound like a whisper, but it’s still completely audible. I won’t even get into how much it seems like a caress, because apparently, that’s Penelope Cruz’ business now (lucky, lucky woman). Here’s my full review of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” which isn’t as good as the book, but still makes for a fun eveningl.

So I’m rattling on about there not being any decent family movies to take my little boy too, and meanwhile, some mother from Oakland is coping with losing her son after a fatal shooting at the Metreon Sunday night. Talk about perspective. According to news reports, an 18 year-old died shortly after 7 pm after being shot multiple times in the lobby in front of the main ticket booth at the Metreon. He’d supposedly been part of a loud argument between a group of youths. They arrested a suspect a block away — the place happened to be swarming with cops because of the big Oracle shindig happening on Howard — but haven’t released many details. So here’s the point where we all freak out and start saying things like “Are our multiplexes safe?”

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That my bio on this site needs to be corrected. I’d do it if I knew how. In the meantime here’s his email, which I think, in and of itself, is perhaps a better illustration of my background and why I came to be a critic (SELF DEFENSE!) than my actual bio:

“From the department of coots, codgers and other grammarians, your blog bio should say “Mary Pols’s first movie was Bambi,” not “Mary Pols’ first…..”

The solo apostrophe to make possessive a person whose name ends in “s” is reserved for important people such as Jesus, Damocles. John Adams, John Q. Adams etc. Mere mortals get “s apostrophe s” and I don’t care what some editors manual of style says. I care what Strunk and White, Fowler and EP would say.

One way you should be able to verify this fact is that even the stupid spell check on this machine tries to correct it to Pols’s.

Grinchily yours, EBP”

I just found an email from a screenwriter/filmmaker from Moraga, Gregg Rossen, who I interviewed way back when when his short “Revenge of the Red Balloon” made it into the Mill Valley Film Festival. Gregg is living in LA, working on a pilot for Fox called “Model Family” (well, technically, he’d LIKE to be working on his pilot, if he weren’t a proud member of the WGA and therefore, on strike). He sent along a link to this short he and his writing partner Brian Sawyer made, starring screenwriters from “Liar, Liar,” “Deuce Bigelow” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Personally, I’d rather not see ANY of those movies again (okay, “Sweet Home Alabama,” on a bleak night) but here’s proof they all have a sense of humor.

When people ask me what the best movies I’ve seen lately are, I usually try to change the subject, because I can’t seem to keep that information in my head (although sadly, I do remember the names of Britney’s children). So this year I decided to start making my Top Ten list early, before the studios start hitting critics hard with screenings of one allegedly tremendous movie after another. I’ve already got 18 (wait, just had to add one, make that 19) films on it and there’s still so much left to see, including already released films like “Gone, Baby, Gone,” which I hear is great. The best thing about this blogging business is having the space to give the contenders a plug. Here they are in alphabetical order:

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The Hollywood Reporter warned today of a dire month for movie marketers should the writers’ strike continue. See, all the late-night shows are going to reruns, which means a drastic cutback on fresh opportunities for celebrities to flack their upcoming holiday films. Apparently this means no Nicole Kidman, giggling like a schoolgirl and crossing and recrossing those giraffe legs in front of an appreciative David Letterman while telling him all about “Margot at the Wedding” (a very good movie Letterman would be highly unlikely to care about, since it features a couple of sisters sitting around bitching at each other). Meanwhile Vince Vaughn …

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