A screwball comedy and a screwed up T-shirt

Yesterday I saw a delightful little movie titled Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which stars the quirky Amy Adams and the brooding Frances McDormand. I love it! It's a romantic comedy set in pre-war London, a time when cabarets were in full swing and everybody smoked the hell out of their lungs. The art direction is simply wonderful. Every shot can be turned into a postcard. Just look at the set below.

I believe that this movie is an adaptation of an eponymous novel by Winifred Watson. Regardless whether the movie was faithful to Ms. Watson's work, the adaptation works primarily because of the fine performances of Adams, McDormand, and the rest of the cast. We all know that McDormand can act when we saw Fargo, a movie she made when she was really pregnant. Based on my experience being around with pregnant people, these women are always hungry, sleepy, tired, and irritable. (They seem to be constipated quite frequently too.) My goodness! I'm imagining what the Coen brothers went through when they were filming Fargo with the about-to-pop-any-minute McDormand.

Amy Adams remains one of my favorite actors. She isn't pretty like, say, Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Biel, and all the models named Jessicas. (If I dig chicks, I'd stalk Amy Adams, get caught, and have my 15 minutes in the network shows.) Nevertheless, Adams is perfect in this screwball romantic comedy. Oh, and that dreamboat from "Pushing Daisies" is there too -- Lee Pace. I didn't immediately recognize him though; he seemed "chunkier" in the movie. When Pace first appears on the screen, I just knew that he'd get the girl in the end. You see, he plays a piano player, and no girl can resist a guy who's good with his hands.


It's seldom that a movie inspires me to seek out the novel it is based on and read it. The last time was when I saw Battlefield Earth, a movie so bad that the novel couldn't get any worse. I just hope that I see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day in bookstores soon, and I am praying that the cover wouldn't be the movie poster. For the mean time, I have to satisfy my craving for English comedies with my copy of The Collected P.G. Wodehouse. I have yet to see a movie inspired by P.G. Wodehouse. I know that I shouldn't raise my expectations when I do see one. The T-shirt below sums up all the feelings of book lovers everywhere every time they see a terrible movie adaptation of their favorite book.


Speaking of T-shirts...

My mother gave me this last week. I doubt if she knows what the print means. She's "all sugar and spice and everything nice." (The shirt is part of a spoofs line, so don't mind the typo. It's intentional.)

When she gave the shirt to me, I couldn't help but grin. Thanks, Mom! I could never have enough friends with benefits.