Lee Daniels Precious is a rare gem, a raw and realistic depiction of someone dealt the worst of hands and dealing with it with spunk. Fully deserves to be nominated for Best Picture Oscar.

Kristin Thompson has me considering to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

EDIT: Which promptly left town before I could see it.

So will its its title portrayer and her monster mother, for starters.

What a Face! Girl Power. Finally, someone gives obesity a good name.

The director......Lee Daniels should not be overlooked. He was able to show the multi-varied range of black females in this drama and have his actresses disappear in their roles. (find Mariah Carey......)

Today was my day to see Avatar in 3D. No IMAX here. I always check by phone to see if the movie is in English with Spanish subtitles or Spanish. I was worried that a 3D film might not be amenable to subtitles. I was right. It is dubbed in Spanish. No Avatar for me for quite a while. I guess I can hope for it to be re-released after the Oscars and maybe I can catch it back in Winnipeg.

Can't imagine the originally cast Dame Helen would have been any more kickass, seriously

And it came back for New Years. It's a lot better than the trailers suggest. It's often very funny, looks, well, unique, and actually has a rather delightful love interest in a weather girl (Sam) who actually is a genius herself but has deliberately disguised it to be pretty and ditsy. She's not quite as mad as the mad scientist but they make a nice pair. The parents had almost as much fun as the kids without the movie going very far down the Shrek route. All in all a pleasant surprise.

The reason for the invention of the food machine is that the town fell into hard times after the sardine market collapsed (because people found out that sardines were totally gross), so Flint, our hero, decides to invent a machine that turns water into food. By accident the food machine is shot into the stratosphere and Flint is able to use radio commands to make it rain food. Naturally, since Flint is a mad inventor, things go haywire and the whole world is threatened.

In addition to Sam and Flint, I particularly liked Flint's father, who owns a sardine shop and talks in nautical metaphors than Flint can't understand at all. Dad also has heavy eyebrows so that for most of the movie his eyes are invisible, which gets a laugh when he tells Flint to look him in the eyes and tell him things can't go wrong.

SURELY you jest......