INCEPTION...Leo,Ellen, Joseph, & many more...2010

I would like to exhale now. And as I do, a slow facitious "Thanks alot" will be directed at the creators of the show LOST, Lieber, Abrams & Lindelof, for taking me far away on that lovely train ride for six years only to reveal a final year in pergatorial limbo. As one of Kristen Wiig's best characters would say, "I'm not angry. I'm just very upset."

The midnight crown yelled. Yelled, at the closing frame. It sounded like, "Whaaaaaa???AAhhhh!" Then, it was 4:30 am before I fell asleep, granted we left at almost 3. But, what is time? Dream time feels more like real life. Layers. Didn't the priest from Princess Bride coin the phrase, "...a dream within a dream." Believable, striking, lovely. The well-selected team of actors gave depth to decidedly pragmatic characters, endearing them through pure curiousity. Joseph G.L. was given perhaps the most memorable sequence in anti-gravity fighting circa Fred Astaire's spinning room dance sequence.

Thanks to this phych-thriller, I am plagued with questions and needing to see it again. I woke up the next morning pondering new theories and casting possibilities after a stream of violent, but very cool dreams.

DESPICABLE ME...a Universal and Illumination toon...2010

I'm learning the hard way that if it's not Pixar, I can expect some of what the rating board calls "crude humor." Did I laugh with the junior high boys in the room? Okay. But would I want to take my little kids to it? I guess not. Now, I know that I watched The Love Boat as a kid and loved it. I missed ALL of the crude humor then. But somehow I feel that xeroxing butts and laughing, responding "Poop" in frustration, and calling the known Villain "hero" and "good dad" brings daddy issues to a whole new level.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP...A Banksy film...2010

Throw legos down on the floor of a nursery and two types of children will emerge: thinkers and doers. The thinkers pose with purpose - piecing mental masterpieces and creating the vision with precision. Thinkers care about how others perceive their work, since internally the work is the outpouring of the worker, a hint of self, desiring to be known. It plays upon the eternal to leave such a mark - a grasp on immortality, some might say.

For the doer, however, the project is one of accomplishment. Block towers are built to be torn down. The rubble is equal joy to the construct itself. It is in the doing and the done.In this documentary film entitled Exit Through the Gift Shop, artist Banksy shares much of the life of accidental artist Thierry Guetta. Banksy is a self-proclaimed, self-promoted, yet ironically self-effacing graffiti artist. He shouts art for art's sake. I have always appreciated, in some rebellious way, well-placed graffiti.

And, though unfamiliar with his name until tonight, I recognized Banksy's work immediately. Maybe that's his true point: promoting ideals, not effort, propaganda through paint. His bitterness felt acutely, Banksy used mostly old footage from Guetta's possessed "filmmaker" days before Guetta himself used what he learned, became a copycat street artist, and took the nom de plume: Mister Brainwash. Unbeknownst to world-renowned street artists such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey, they were training Guetta as master teachers would an apprentice.

As far as documentary films go, this entertains as though a Christopher Guest creation. The artist reveals his own absurdity without analytical reinterpretation. Where Banksy delights in educating the world through careful placement and purpose, so Guetta proves only to paint the tower just in time to see it crumble to the ground. And afterward, I felt a possessive impulse to go and tag a building myself, but it was getting a little late.

ECLIPSE...Edward, Bella, Jacob...Team, uh, Howard? 2010

So, I did it. Pulled the old bait and switch. TS3 was exiting the theater, and my curiosity pervaded my decision-making centers and pulled me into the next theater in time to see Bryce Dallas Howard in a bare-toothed battle against Robert Pattinson. My sister's boyfriend calls my action petty larceny. Semantics. I feel that I was the one wronged. I had a skin-glimmer of hope that Oprah was right this time and that this extreme, blood-soaked trilogy was worth its weight. But wait, what's going on? I stifled the laugh from the back row of the sniffling audience as Taylor welled up all of the sweat that he could muster from his well-read abs. Sadly his best acting occurred beneath CGI fur. And Pattinson showed all fifteen magnum facial expressions as Bella professed that her agitated life force found its belonging in his ways and and in his kind. You know that feeling when you've cried so hard you start to laugh? Or throw up. Or that feeling of feeling nothing because you don't understand the popularity of these three awkward enemies finally finding friendship and love. Wow. Yes, I've opened the book...research. I perused a few chapters. It seems enticing, certainly. I want to understand the fanaticism, and the rare eqinanimous love affair with book and film alike. Perhaps the effect of a ubiquitous media education...and what my mother calls demonic influence.

Dakota Fanning says she really enjoyed the challenge of wearing the red contacts.

I'm glad that she and Kristen are friends. Everyone needs friends. The big puzzle for me is Bryce. Bryce, daughter of filmmaker Ron Howard & M. Night's fav it girl, is an actual actress. She, however, may also have let curiosity damage her hypothalamus.

TOY STORY 3...Buzz, Woody, & the whole gang 2010

Pixar! Do you remember being little, sitting on the porch step with your orange half a popsicle dripping down your legs? Ah, youth. Ah, reminiscence. Ah, summer. Ah, life. Toy Story 3

KNIGHT AND DAY...Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz...2010 (by James Mangold)

Classic Cruise and Classic Cameron. In fact that's the whole idea. This perfectly paced film plays on the well known stereotypes. Cruise is an action movie star. And, he's crazy. Cameron is on screen for her body of work...actually just her body.

A favorite professor of mine used to say, you are only allowed to mock from within your own culture group - essentially you should only mock yourself. Tom Cruise embraced these perceptions and obviously made fun of himself to my utter delight. It was such fun. I laughed for 2 hours - good medicine they say. Well done.