Oh Blockbuster, you sucked. I go in to rent some movies. I rent Little Miss Sunshine. I asked the little teenage girl when Half Nelson comes back in. I have asked about when movies come back in before. They check their little computer and tell me, "Oh, one is coming in tommorow. Try tommorow." But this girl is all, "Um, well, I can't really check cause there are no more late fees." Okay, that wasn't really the question. "So you can't even check to see when one is due, I'll just come back and check?"

"Well, I can't give you like a time of day...so no. And you don't have rewards (which, by the way, she never asked me about. Maybe I do. I don't. But she didn't know), so you can't reserve it anyway."

I'm standing there, speechless because of how dense this girl is. Just check the computer, or check the pile videos that just came in, you gnat. I don't need a time of day!! So I give her my card to rent Little Miss Sunshine. And she randomly says "try Tuesday, cause that's when like, the new movies come out." and I elaborate what she just said :" So people return movies to get new ones..." "Umm....yeah. Do you want to like, renew your rewards for like $7.99..." she says, kind of spacey. Okay, I think we already established that I don't have rewards, thus I can't renew them. So no. And then my video cost me $6.03. For one video. So whatever, Blockbuster.

Little Miss Sunshine kicked ass for about half it's run. And then two of the things that made it awesome ended. One was that the older son Dwayne, who had taken a vow of silence until he got into the air force, started talking. As Steve Carell's Frank (the suicidal, gay, Proust scholar) says "Who is that? Nietzsche? So you stopped talking because of Friedrich Nietzsche? Far out." Yes, yes it was far out. Dwayne's vow had lasted for 9 months and he wrote all his communications on a little notepad for people to read. And Carell pronounces it "Neat-cha", very precisely. Which I enjoyed.

They other thing they did was they(spoiler) killed off Grandpa (end spoiler). He kicked ass. He tells the silent Dwayne in the back of the yellow VW bus, "Fuck a lotta women, kid, I have no reason to lie to you. Not just one, a lotta women." He yells at dinner, "Every night it's the fucking chicken! Holy God Almighty! Is it possible just once we could get something to eat for dinner that isn't the goddamn fucking chicken?" He snorts heroin, got kicked out of a nursing home he loved (where the women outnumber the men 4:1) and teaches his granddaughter stripper moves for her pageant talent. "I can say what I want... I still got Nazi bullets in my ass!" He was totally raging against the dying of the light. And then they kill him off. He dies. I kept hoping he had faked his own death and had run away. But no. Actually dead.

The little girl, with her big glasses and pot belly, and how she kinda vibrates back and forth before unleashing her famous scream, is really cute too.

Watching Alfonso Cuaron's film Children of Men last week, an absolutely beautiful film, there were a few scenes that reminded me of two of Cuaron's previous films Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien.

There is a playful car scene with Theo, Julian, Kee, Luke and Miriam. Julian is trying to catch a ping pong ball in her mouth. The playfulness and the close camera work reminded me of some of the car scenes in Y Tu Mama.

And there are a few scenes, including one in which Theo (and the viewer) view from a distance what happens to Michael Caine's Japser that completely reminded me of the whole Hermione and Harry rescuing Buckbeak from his execution sequence.

So I had a busy day. I had a job interview, I went to the movies and I met a guy in the park. I'm only going to talk about the movie. The Devil Wears Prada looks like a good movie. The trailer was amusing. I have an actor crush on La Streep. Anne Hathaway reminds me of my childhood best friend (who also had giant, doe-like brown eyes and was kinda nerdy in an adorable way). Plus, fashion is fun. I watch Top Model in it's various incarnations (America's, Canada's, Britain's, Australia's. Thanks YouTube). But I know it's not real fashion. I think Project Runway might be the greatest reality tv show ever. Interesting/ crazy contestants that have actual skills and are creative. I want Tim Gunn to re-arrange my life and tell me to "make it work". Heidi "either you are eeen or you are owt" Klum is kinda awesome and keeps having Seal pups. I pray one day I look as radiant as she while pregs.

Anyway, I digress. Miss Nerdy Doe-Eyes plays Andie, a journalism graduate, who takes on the job of 2nd assistant to Miranda Priestly(aka Anna Wintour aka La Streep) who is the editor en chef of Runway Magazine (aka Vogue). The first problem is that Runway is a stupid name for a magazine and a character as unforgiving/awesome as Miranda would never be editor of a magazine with such a stupid name. Anyway, Andy (Aaaaandrea as Miranda calls her) has this granola/grungy boyfriend she lives with played by Adrien Grenier. He's a wannabe chef or something. She has a few other New York friends. There is also Emily, Miranda's first assistant, played by the very lovely Emily Blunt. She is English and sexy and looks great in green eye shadow and all these various fashion things. Stanley Tucci is the only "good" character that didn't annoy me. He plays a photo editor and the only one Miranda doesn't frighten and totally calls Andy on her bullshit. The granola grungy boyfriend keeps giving her speeches about how she needs to be true to herself and how she has lost her integrity or something when she actually starts enjoying her job.

Miranda is pretty much awesome. Yes, she is demanding and ridiculous and frightening. But she is powerful, eccentric and interesting. And apparently, if Andy works as her assistant for a year, a million different jobs in journalism and publishing will be open to her. And then her friends annoyingly start bitching that she is changing and not spending enough time with them. Anyway, I say suck it up, wear the fabulous clothes and dump the whiny friends. Then get a fabulous job. But the movie doesn't believe that, and that makes it kind of suck. Looks great though. Great soundtrack.

So instead of Devil Wears Prada, rent anything with Ms Meryl Streep. Try Adaptation, she's droll in that and it's a weird ride.

Emily Blunt was completely sexy and some kind of wonderful in a small English film called My Summer of Love. Doomed teenage love affairs.

Adrien Grenier was awesome in a film called The Adventures of Sebastien Cole. He plays a young kid in a dead end town, who wants to be a writer. The wisest character in the film is his step father, who is a transsexual about to have a sex change operation.

As for our star, Anne Hathaway, she was in a lot of teen type movies. See The Princess Diaries, even though I haven't. She's also in Brokeback Mountain. Her wigs are awful and she can't yet play middle aged convincingly, but she is rather good. Plus, hot men hot for each other. That's always fun. Plus, more doomed love. And cowboys.