The Holiday
I’m not going to try to write an objective review of this movie because I have too much connection to it. My brother K.C. was the First Assistant Director, and I visited the set a couple of times, meeting Kate Winslet, Eli Wallach, and Cameron Diaz, as well as writer/director Nancy Meyers. I was terribly tongue-tied meeting Kate Winslet who was friendly and sweet and posed for a picture with me in spite of my awkwardness. Eli Wallach, who turned 91 the day before the movie opened, Meyers, and Diaz were also very friendly and put me totally at ease. Although I was nervous when I met Kate Winslet, Kate I promise I will be so much more interesting and relaxed if we ever meet again. Not that I’m pleading or anything.
Meyers, who also wrote and directed Something’s Gotta Give and What Women Want, follows in The Holiday with another good-looking romantic comedy filled with good-looking people with interesting jobs dealing with various problems in their love lives. Diaz plays Amanda, the hard-working owner of a company that makes movie trailers. She works with Miles (Jack Black), who writes the musical scores, and her next door neighbor Arthur Abbot (Wallach) is a retired screenwriter. Plopping Winslet’s character, Iris, a copy writer at a London newspaper, into this environment gives Meyers plenty of opportunities to pay homage to classic movies and the art of movies. Abbot points out (quite rightly) to Iris that she is a leading lady, but she’s living her life liek the best friend (who never gets the guy). Amanda, meanwhile, sees her own life in the style of a 30 second movie teaser providing some of the movie’s biggest laughs, and goes to Iris’s secluded charming English cottage to get away from it all. That works for about 6 hours until Jude Law, playing Iris’s brother, shows up cutely intoxicated at Amanda’s door (well, really Iris’s door, but Amanda is staying there).
This is a great date movie: funny, stylish, and not taking itself or the romances in it too seriously. And did I mention that I met Kate Winslet?
December 13th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Who was it that you met again?
See you when you get home! All the girls are missing you. Mr Darcy doesn’t seem too distressed.