01. Oh Eric Bana, how I love you so and how I would so have ten thousand of your babies. Why are you one of the most handsome incarnations of man to ever walk this fine green earth? I’d also like to thank you for not having bigger boobs than me in this movie; you were not so kind to me previously in Troy. Can you stop being in crap movies? You’re a good actor, you should be making better choices. * itches to watch Munich *
02. Drew Barrymore has officially become my second least favourite actress. I say second because while I don’t like her, she doesn’t irritate the hell out of me the way Cameron Diaz does. Aren’t they BFF in real life? That should explain a few things. Anyway. My god, this woman cannot act and I don’t know how I never noticed it until Music and Lyrics. She also cannot sing, so I don’t know why anyone thought she’d be perfect for the role of a singer. Granted, she only sings twice and the kinds of song she sings suit (relatively speaking) her fairly thin and weak voice, but still, that was two songs too many. What the hell.
03. Her character had a “quirk” (*eyeroll*) where she likes to eat fortune cookies before her meal at Chinese restaurants because then she has something to think about and ponder over dinner. Uh huh. They took this a wee bit too literally because every single line she had sounded like a freaking fortune cookie and made about as much sense as one. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had randomly uttered a list of numbers at one point, like the kind they print on the back that you’re supposed to play the lottery on.
04. Haha, oh, Robert Duvall, I love you.
05. When we first saw the trailer for this movie many moons ago, it was billed as a sort of father/son rivalry film revolving around poker and we thought “Ooh, this looks fun.” Then a second trailer came out and suddenly it was rom-com central and nauseating; they had delayed the release of this film at that point (it was originally supposed to come out in March, I think), obviously to market it to a completely different audience. Of course, turns out the movie isn’t a romantic comedy and they should have just stuck with the father/son rivalry and axed the stupid love story all together. My god this movie would have been far superior without a completely random and unnecessary love interest.
06. I’ve only been to a casino twice in my life. The first was when I was seventeen and I was with my grandparents, so we just walked through and didn’t gamble or anything. The second time was when I went with my dad to see James Brown at a casino last year and if they makers of this movie were trying to replicate the pathetic, lifeless, depressing feel of real casinos, they did a bang up job. I suspect this was not their intention.
07. A lot of people don’t like product ad placement in movies. I usually don’t mind it because I just plain old don’t even notice it most of the time, but there was this promo material that really kept throwing me off. There’s this scene where Drew Barrymore is fleeing in a taxi and on top of the taxi is a sign advertising a Bob Dylan concert. This is too bizarre to not have been deliberately placed there, so I imagine some sort of arrangement was worked out to have it there. Later on in the casino, you hear “Like A Rolling Stone” playing in the background but I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be on a loudspeaker in the casino itself or if they thought they could trick us into believing that Bob Dylan in concert in 2007 sounds like Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965. [Guess what: I was not tricked.] Then they use a recent Dylan song (don’t know which one, but by the sound of it I assume it was on the last album) in the closing credits and… I just have no idea what’s with all the Dylan. If it was Celine Dion, I could understand, since she’s firmly planted in Las Vegas and makes her fans come to her. But Dylan is still incredibly active and has been on the never ending tour since the dawn of time… so WTF?
08. They played Bruce Springsteen’s “Lucky Town” at the start and I died.