Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to....me?

Things worked out! (As far as I know) Jenny & I are going to be rockin' out at the Molson Amphitheatre to the White Stripes on September 16th, as close as we can shoulder our way to the front! Jack & Meg, Meg & Jack, Jenny & Andrew, Andrew & Jenny. Jenny has red pants that I want her to wear. I don't know what I'll wear yet. I have a red-white-and-black wrist band that I can throw on, but I'd get arrested if I just wore that. I'm right now contriving ways that I can sneak backstage, but all of them involve thievery or broken windows. I'll have to think harder.



I went to see "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" last night with Jenny and Simac. It was great! Johnny Depp is so stinkin' talented, not to mention Freddie Highmore. I'm really impressed with this kid. He's only 13 and he's out-acting his grown-up co-stars! I hope he doesn't pull a Drew Barrymore and enter rehab at 15, then pose nude for Playboy and marry Tom Green. But I digress. The Oompaloompa's were amazingly funny, all of whom were played by Deep Roy, in such permutations as the Oompaloompa Therapist, the Oompaloompa Chieftan, the Oompaloompa rock band, and the Oompaloompa narrator who wears a turtleneck sweater under his little blazer! Mrs. Beauregarde played by Missi Pyle is one hard-lookin' woman, but perfectly cast. When Willy Wonka explains that chocolate releases endorphins which gives one the feeling of being in love and she sends him a look and says "Really?" I nearly died. I wanted to kill Mike Teavee the entire time, but it was really funny watching Willy Wonka yell "MUMBLER! I can't understand a word you're saying!" at the little bastard. If I ever have a kid like that, he'll get a smack or two. I can't decide if I like this one better than the original. They're like apples and oranges, and to quote Stephen King, "They're both deeelicious, but in different ways."



On the topics of movies, everyone and their dog should see "A Very Long Engagement" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and starring the imcomparable Audrey Tautou. It's the story of a girl whose fiance goes missing after he is sentenced to death for self mutilation at the Somme during WW1. He is thrown over the trench into No Man's Land with four other men who were found guilty of the same crime. But if he were dead, she would know. It's probably the best war film I've ever seen (though I don't watch many) in that it perfectly captures the futility and fear not just of those on the front lines, but of those waiting at home, and it's a really beautiful love story. Matilde (Audrey Tautou) makes little gambles with herself throughout the movie, such as "If the train enters a tunnel or the ticket taker comes before I count to seven, Manech is alive." When Manech departs for the army, Matilde, despite her crippling polio races across her family's farm, repeating "If I make it to the bend before the car, he will come back alive." She makes it to the bend and waits. Just as she is about to turn back, she hears a car approaching. It is the car! But when it approaches, she sees that there is a different person inside. It's not the car after all, and it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen on film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, having already written and directed "Amelie" rocks my world.