It's only April and already we have seen our second movie, in the theatre, for the year! (In a good year we average about 3-4 movies a year, compared to about 60 stage shows.)
When I took my friend Ruth for her post-op appointment last week, we were talking about what fun we had on our trip to Half Moon Bay to meet author Michael Connelly and about how the movie, based on his book, The Lincoln Lawyer, should be in theaters now.
I suggested that we should try to go to see the movie together, since we had been discussing Connelly books for so long. Also, Ruth has been cooped up in her house following her hip surgery, and now that she is starting to get mobile that sounded like a good idea to her.
Walt decided he wanted to see the movie too, so we picked Ruth up this afternoon and the 3 of us headed to the theatre. Until about 2 minutes before the show started, we thought we were going to be the only people in the theatre, but three other people arrived before the lights went down.
I'm always a little leery about seeing a movie about a character I know well. Lincoln Lawyer follows Connelly's character, Mickey Haller, a defense attorney who practices law out of his car on the streets of Los Angeles. I wondered if the actor could match my image of Haller, but I was happy to see that Matthew McConaughey makes a very satisfactory Haller and will now be the image I see when I read a book which features that character.
Haller's stories are always very gritty and I was pleased that the film version didn't pretty them up. It remained quite true to the book itself and I can see why Connelly was pleased with the film.
If a Harry Bosch book is made into a movie I will probably not see it, because I have my own image of Harry Bosch and don't want it spoiled.
(I remember how disappointed I was when they made a cartoon movie of The Hobbit. Since the movie came out, I can only picture that image of hobbits, though prior to the movie, my mental image was quite different._
It's an entertainment weekend. I hadn't reviewed a stage show in quite awhile, but we saw the touring Broadway production of Young Frankenstein last night. I was glad to see it, though it wasn't on a par with Mel Brooks' earlier The Producers. Still it has that unmistakable Brooks humor, the crude Catskills comedy (which, at its best, includes an awful lot of jokes and physical comedy about male genitalia and female breasts). The dances were good, "Puttin' on the Ritz" brings down the house, and there are costume changes that will have you gasping and wondering how they did that!
I was up at 5 a.m. this morning finishing the review and sending it off to the theatre.
Still to come over the weekend are tapings of the radio show Says You on Friday and Sunday and Charlotte's mother's memorial service on Saturday.
I probably will not review the memorial service, though I'm sure it would get four stars if I did.
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