Little Miss Sunshine

It depressed the shit out of me.

I didn't laugh one time.

Is is just me?

I haven't seen it yet...my wife and I almost went, when it was at the 1.50 theatre, but we decided on School for Scoundrels instead....

I hope you enjoy it more it than I did. :)

its not high on my DVD to get list...I'll probably get it when it hits the 5 buck rack....

and ive been mad ever since! i loved what i had seen and am just waiting for it come on my tv.

spo my opinion is barely what you were lookin for ;) Just stating i was intrigued by what I saw and would like to see the rest.

I'm afraid it may be just me anyway. I am like the only person in the world who didn't like Forrest Gump. (It was depressing!)

You have to understand the whole "beauty queen" culture to get it...

I guess if it was grandpa's intention to stick it to everyone in the first place with the dance...maybe...? You found it to be funny?

Btw, great name, mentalsolstice.

so "out of it" culturally speaking. To him, that was good dancing and/or the only professional dancing he had ever been exposed to. It was the only thing he could pass on to his granddaughter. He really loved his grand daugther so he wouldn't have used her to stick it to anyone.

And if you've been anywhere near that whole beauty contest scene, you just knew it was a train wreck waiting to happen. I've been there, done that...no I've never been in a pageant, but I've worked them backstage (not through my own choosing I might add), in it's definitely a culture all of it's own, and a pretty sick one at that. Whatever grandpa's intention was, ya just knew it was going to (deservedly) turn the whole scene on its head. You could see it coming from miles away.

that he was so out of it, culturally speaking? Or that the mother, at the very least, wasn't aware of or interested in what he had been teaching her?

perfect 'pageant' kind of family. But his feelings for his granddaughter were pure.

The mother wasn't one of those pageant mothers either. I think those pageant moms are pretty scary trying to live their lives through the daughter and making them into tiny anorexic pageant dolls. She trusted her father enough to handle the pageant duties.

but I just wanted to say :hi:


How are you doing? :hug: :loveya:

It's so good to see you!:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

I haven't seen you in such a long time. :loveya: How have you been my friend?:hug:

If I answered this earlier today, I would have said fine.

However, I got a phone call from a very dear friend tonight who is concerned she might have cancer. She'll find the results out on Friday.

I'm just devastated right now. :cry: I am hoping for the best for the results, but it's difficult to not be so worried. She's in her mid 70's, so it's a possibility.


How are you? :hug:

dear friend who recently moved away? Gosh, I hope not. Not that it would be any better with another of your friends but I know how you cherish her and that you are not close enough to sit with her while she waits and worries.

I wish the best for your friend. I think you must know how much I mean that sweetie. :hug: Try not to worry too much. I know that won't be easy. PM me is you want to talk. :hug: :hug:

At least she's not on the other side of the country - only one province over. She's with family, so that's helpful for her.

She is the person I adore most on this planet. I've settled down a bit now, but earlier on I was just a mess. I'm going to try and relax till I hear from her this weekend.

Thanks for all the hugs and support. :hug:



How are you doing? :hug: :loveya:

I'm glad you are calmed down a bit. I'll be here if you want to talk and I'm sending my very best vibes. I wish I could offer more.:hug::hug:

:hug:

:hug:

She just called me about 15 minutes ago. She's okay!! No cancer!

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

I'm so glad. It'll be a lovely weekend, won't it?:loveya:
Hugs to both of you.:grouphug:

that I am the number 1 expert on Marcel Proust in America?

I thought I was the only one on earth who thought that was a stupid movie, so stupid I wanted to walk out, but I was with a friend. I don't see why everyone thinks it's so good. Storyline is so lame, a third grader (my apologies to third graders) could do better. It was just stupid, stupid, stupid.

I have quite a bit of dark humor in me, though.

Friggin hilarious! How can you not laugh at a 6 year old doing a stripper routine at a beauty pageant?!

I also think that someone knew my family and wrote about us. Same VW bus and everything. Including some character names. (I know it's prob coincidence, but still...)

I found it almost inexpressably sad. It's another one of those damned movies that are marketed as a comedy, but are anything but. Edward Scissorhands is another good example.

SPOILER ALERT!


The mute brother with flight school. The suicidal uncle with the oblivious crush. Grandpa. The dad who tried so hard and was so clueless about how to simply love his family. The mom trapped in a loveless marriage. The little girl, unable to get approval from her own family, having to seek it through the most demeaning avenue available to a little girl, a beauty pageant. When they show up, just poor and poorly dressed and all the other little girls are so perfect and thin and lovely...it just takes me right back to my own childhood, pudgy and always wearing the wrong, cheap clothes, and desperately seeking approval from anyone who would give it to me because my parents were so fucking self-absorbed. I don't know...it was just so sad to me. Maybe it hits too close to home. It's just not my kind of thing. When I watch movies, I want to be shamelessly manipulated, so if I cry, it's movie crying, not real crying. I don't want to be crying over humanity and loss and loss of innocence and my childhood. I want to be crying because they had to leave Bruce Willis behind on the asteroid in order to save humankind.

I've changed your words a little:

'When they show up, just poor and poorly dressed and all the other little girls are so perfect and blond and lovely...it just takes me right back to my own childhood, awkward and stupid and always wearing the wrong, ugly clothes, and desperately seeking approval from anyone who would give it to me because my mom was dead and my dad was abusing me.'

It was so effing sad to watch - and they didn't even give the little girl a way out - a happy ending. I kept looking for the happy ending. There was none. Her favorite person in the world is dead, her contest is lost and she's left with one "family moment" to erase a lifetime (and future) of pain and disappointment. If that's all there is my friend....

I'm with you on what I want out of a movie. I want fantasy. I want heroics. I want something better than what real life has already served me.

Okay, enough said. (Thanks for helping me analyze my thoughts on this movie. :-) I'm sorry you understood so well, if you know what I mean. :hug:)

Oh, btw, I felt the same as you about Edward Scissorhands, and there are others I'm sure.

at different places and evokes different responses from us as we draw from our own human experiences. it exposed real life for what it is...it did NOT wrap it up in glorious hollywood wrapping paper and then tie a big red bow around it...

it left us naked and exposed to our human errors and fallacies and showed how easy it is to slip through the cracks of relationships on ALL levels...

just my.02--ymmv

For example, I own Torque on DVD.

If I want to feel like you describe, I listen to music.

now i want to see it, who is in it? what genre?

i am a movie geek

and you like to escape with you movies...i understand that... i do too...just that the trip is not always going to be fun...and that is okay with me...

i do the same with music

and this is weird: sometimes when i am happy i want 'sad' music
sometimes when i am sad i want 'happy' music

In fact, it's touted as being "From the producers of The Fast and The Furious and Triple X". LOL! I don't think that's anything to brag about...


It's the most horrible movie you've ever seen. You must immediately watch it! :D

:rofl:

Very emotional and deep review wildhorses.

I might go see it now.

:D

:blush:

I thought it ended the opposite of "sad" -- it showed how people can pull together when need be, overcoming differences and anxieties.

GREAT movie. Wonderful cast.

We have the same taste in movies, I think!

i love all kinds of movies--you just have to accept them for what they are
action is action
hollywood is hollywood
and so forth and so on

to succeed within the genre or to actaully transcend the genre is success

i do NOT rate movies by the box office take.

and yes, i agree this movie ended on a positive note.

and yeah, i think we have the same tast in movies, too:hi:

is that all there is? A "family" moment and then it's back to their tragedy of living?

Doesn't seem like enough to me.

The sister was there for the brother. The uncle was there for the brother. The grandfather was there for his granddaughter.

In the end, they all came together for the little girl.

I loved it.

it's also a very good movie and was robbed at the golden globes :(

i do think the movie would fit better under the drama category though. i really liked the movie.

I thought it was going to be a biting satire on the whole childhood beauty pageant thing. Instead it was a rather ordinary run-of-the-mill dysfunctional family comedy, with too many characters and too many subplots. If they eliminated the brother and the uncle, and kept the storyline strictly on the goal, with the winners/losers theme between the dad and the girl the main point, and poked more fun of the beauty pageant and the contestants and all that, I would probably have liked it more. But I did think the little girl did an outstanding job.

but I know it because I'm an English teacher and we teach the short story "The Scarlet Ibis" to our 9th graders and I have looked it up so I know what it looks like. Damn cool birds.

Formula is there for a reason- people overall migrate toward a story arc that works. It's the quirky film that veers off the arc that can be hit or miss, love or hate for people.

It was okay, but it wasn't at all funny to me. I really wanted to like it, but :shrug:.

I was disappointed. It was okay. The little girl did an excellent job...I guess they all did, so it must have been the story that was...*shrug*

I can't believe the nomination.

Although I wonder if Proust was a good fit for telling the "moral" of that film to the nephew. Steve Carell's character points out to the nephew who hates everythign that Proust realized that the parts of his life where he suffered were the best, but Proust also kinda chose to stop living and just sort of consume his past and his neuroses while writing in bed.

I thought it was uplifting in a nihilist sort of way

If you've ever read Proust or Nietchze the movie fits in perfectly with their works

people were cheering at the end. Stunned and cheering at the same time. It was as if there was hope at the end of the tunnel.

It was very different from many movies I have seen, and I have seen a lot of movies, many of em art films.

The acting was great. Greg Kinnear really has a pretty good reach....

great movie!

But not a screwball laugh fest. More of a light human drama.

Though I don't see why why it garnered an Academy Award nomination. It wasn't that great.

sweet and disturbing, all at the same time.

Matter of fact, I'm home on a sick day today and I watched it this morning on Comcast On Demand. Laughed my poor sick ass off! It was so absurd. :hi:

of humor to appreciate films like that. I loved it.


My son is home sick (lying on the couch this am, never a good sign). I had to go out for work for a while and husband had to go in late.... He must have that odd cold that's going around. I was at a meeting and the woman running it could barely talk....

I told him he needs to clean his room, and do some studying. Since he seems a lot better since he's had some Motrin....

starts to feel better, she decides she likes being sick after all and will milk it as much as possible. Which is of course exactly what I'm doing right now - I felt pretty crappy yesterday, today I could have gone in to work but I just didn't feel like it. Shame on me.

and not sneeze on your co-workers.

My son doesn't usually fake it, so if he wakes up and is lying there on the couch, I've learned (the hard way) not to send him.

hope you feel better.

Like the American neuroses to be "successful," thin and "beautiful"; concern about gender issues, sexual identity issues, and just trying to be being happy and have some kind of individual identity in a world that fights against that.

For its cheery title, and all the sun-washed Southwestern landscapes, the themes were very dark for the most part. And yet there were just enough bright spots in the story, too.

Didn't laugh out loud much, but I smiled a lot, which meant I was thinking.

Good film! :thumbsup:

It does help to have seen it in the theatre. (lots of people laughing there.)

I saw my own flawed family in it. We are freaks, but we love each other, and that is good enough.

I especially loved Steve Carrell.

It reminded me of that movie where the steelworkers have to strip in order to make money over there in England...

Now there was a bittersweet, funny movie!

I loved it....

but I definitely was turned off on the whole "little girls pageant" theme when they finally got to California. I kept thinking about the endless coverage of the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey ten years ago.

Meanwhile, it won't win any Oscar for Best Picture. Also, I have no idea why the Academy turned thumbs down on "Dreamgirls" in that category.

I'm not sure of what you are asking? (sorry)

The whole family was so screwed up individually.....and yet...they worked so hard to keep moving together...
the rattletrap VW bus that they had to push-start and load up on the run...what a perfect
visual metaphor...and the way they helped the
little girl and supported her during that hideous pageant...they LOVED each other and the stupid
outside world and all its phony standards ultimately didn't matter...
I just loved it. Not because it was a gag a minute...but because at the end they were such a family fortress.
And in the spirit of the movie...if it depressed you, that's ok too....because you're family.

:hug:

:shrug:

Sorry, you're wrong.

:)