Movie spotlight on: Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Some thoughts on Gone Baby Gone (2007),based on the novel by Dennis Lehane:

What I liked:

• Even though it really wasn't my type of movie (i.e., it didn't star Hayley Mills as an adorable truant), I still liked it, because...
• It had a good story, with plot twists even I (the master of the art of plot prediction) did not see coming
• There was a character named Helene (true, she wasn't particularly likeable, but beggars can't be choosers)!
• Definitely a qualifier for best movie title of the year
• Good, sharp, talented cast (with Ed Harris wearing Viggo Mortensen's beard from Eastern Promises)
• Intriguing but little seen character named Dottie, who they should definitely build a TV spinoff around
• Finally figured out that Michelle Monaghan (in the movie) is not the same person as Bridget Moynahan (not in the movie)
  

What I didn't like:

• Everybody spoke in that annoyingly fake Boston accent that you rarely actually hear in real life (well, maybe you do hear it in Boston, but I don't live there)
• Plot was a bit confusing in places (especially when it came to some guy named "Cheese")
• Where was Mark Wahlberg? Why wasn't he in this movie?
  

Stick Your Face in Ice Cream Cake

A new restaurant opened up near work that features a vanilla ice cream cake dessert with hot fudge frosting, an oreo cookie crust, and heath bar crunch in the middle. It's delicious. I mean, so I've heard. 'Cause of course I wouldn't know personally.
Is it time for lunch yet?

Why we should weed...

Books, I mean. Here's a typical sentence from a book I weeded today: "The sacramental aesthetics developed by Christian existentialism amounted to an ontological solution to the painful epistemological dilemmas embodied in the secular aesthetics of silence."
No, I am not making this up.

Spray Misty For Me

The most fun book of the year (if you're into that sort of thing) has got to be Perfumes: The Guide, in which Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez take on the titans of the perfume industry with reviews of the current crop of fragrances that tend to be of the scathing variety (but also some that are positively glowing). To wit, a few, mmmm....samples:

• "I believe there's a handsoap in a certain airline's lavatories that smells exactly like this." (The Blanc)
• "Vile, yes, but somebody in a jeweled cardigan has been waiting for it all her life." (Nanette Lepore)
• "So overwhelmingly cute that I think it would only work properly on a Clint Eastwood lone-avenger type, chewing cud and asking, "Who you calling sweet, punk?" in a hissy voice." (Fairytales)
• "..this simple, cheap composition should be called something like Powder Fresh and should stop perspiration for twelve hours." (Park Avenue)
• "I lived in Provence for eight years and mercifully never encountered this extraordinary accord of cheap gin-and-tonic and wet concrete." (Clean Provence)