It's much like the game of "Who can make Pete make the squinchy face?", which is really popular with our friends.

I LOVE THE SQUINCHY FACE!!

Edith Piaf must have been really annoying, because I found her to be in the movie like whoa.

Heh. I saw the annoyingness, but found it endearing. Or was willing to allow it to be endearing, I guess.

I was also intrigued by what I saw as similarities between young Edith and the character of Nikita before she was fully transformed into La Femme Nikita, if that makes sense. It made me wonder if there's a certain type of irreverant young French girl that Edith was and Nikita was meant to be.

I just totally skim read that and thought you were comparing Edith Piaf and Nikki Finke for a microsecond. I need sleep.

It's much like the game of "Who can make Pete make the squinchy face?", which is really popular with our friends.

Is it as popular as the "beep" game?

I went and saw Juno. Again. It was sold out, and the audience loved it.

Also, the script (thank you Fox): [link] . Quite a lot of dialog has been jumbled around by the time it got to filming, it appears.

If you go to the movies between now and March 20th someone might mumble something to you about buying a gold heart for $2. This is a fundraiser for the Variety Club. Variety is a children's charity that funds local programs for children in need. Money collected in your neighborhood goes to fund programs in your neighborhood. {/end shameless charity plug}

The Tolkien estate is suing New Line Cinemas: [link]

Essentially, they're claiming they didn't see a penny off of the LotR trilogy.

But didn't they (actually, JRRT himself) sell the rights to Saul Zaentz back in the '60s/early '70s? I know that he owns the rights and had leased them out to the Weinsteins due to some convoluted issue with The English Patient, which is why they're still listed as exec producers.

If so, they don't have any claim on any of the profits from the trilogy.

I'm honestly not sure whose side I'm on here. On the one hand, Chris Tolkien is an utter asshead who I don't trust as far as I could throw, but this isn't the first time New Line's been on the wrong end of a LotR money-related lawsuit.

Watched 3:10 to Yuma! I liked it, I really did. Must rewatch.

Although I'm still trying to wrap my head around why Ben Wade did what he did, specifically: decide to help Dan Evans look like a hero in his son's eyes and murder his entire crew. And the most obvious answer is that he truly loved Dan. That's the one that makes sense to me. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a sucker for the truly bad guy who has that hint of redemption-potential about him and I just wanted to see Ben ride off into the sunset with Dan because of my shiny new slashtastic glasses.

I mean, Ben was a bad bad man, and he had his lines he wouldn't cross, and then he had those lines that could be crossed on a whim. Fascinating character, and I rooted for him even though side by side with my love was "OMG, psycho!". Even at their first meeting, he was offering courtesies that I was surprised at. Was it because he met Dan as a father, with his sons behind him? He shoots one of his own crew for endangering them, and yet he approaches Dan easy as you please and polite to boot, and returns the horses. Again, fascintating.

And Dan. I didn't feel horrified or terribly sad that he'd died, because he got everything he wanted. His son respected him, his family was taken care of, his land was safe, which meant that his youngest was safe and secure in the land that would keep him healthy(ish). And again there was a complicated and shifting reasoning behind what he was doing, and I didn't quite understand it until he mentioned Doc Potter's death in regards to not giving up at the point of suicide.

And omg, you killed Wash again, you bastards! Small part, and not a lot of full character allowed to peak out until the electrocution where he steps forward and declares it immoral, and then I truly loved him as a character, because it was brave, and principled, and then Wash is dead. Again. After being heroic. Again. Bastards.

Ben Foster was deliciously insane and obsessed. I actually felt more sad for him when he realized that Ben was going to kill him, than I did for Dan's own death. His character Charlie was so devoted to Ben, everything he did was for Ben, and he fucked up. His love for Ben got him killed.

By the time the sheriff and his posse were hired to get Ben to the train at the end, I was giggling at each deputy filing through the screen crying out "dead, dead, dead! You're next!" I just didn't expect it to happen all at once!

One thing that bugged is that the accents seemed to slip in and out, at least in the beginning. And the casting of the banker, whom I can't place, seemed... he grew on me, and I suppose maybe it worked for the character, but he seemed like a kid playing dress-up. Maybe because in my minds eye I'm still seeing him as a young'n, or the actor just really does look like a little kid wearing big kid pants. It was kinda like seeing Anna Faris in Brokeback Mountain. No matter the talent, they just stuck out like sore thumbs to me as "one of these things isn't like the others".

I'm not the best at psychoanalyzing characters or sussing out the validity of their actions and choices, so maybe some of my confusion is because they weren't so well drawn, or maybe there's more to them that I'm not getting yet. I'm hoping for the latter.