Wonka and Golden Globes

When I was talking the other day about the movies Rob liked, one of them was Beau Is Afraid, and I had completely forgotten what it was, but I did notice that it popped up on the Golden Globe nominations, Joaquin Phoenix for Best Actor. (It's an Ari Aster movie, the guy who made Midsommar and several other movies that Rob has liked and I haven't gone to see.) (I know, I'm a wimp.*)

Also I said I forgot all about Across the Spider-verse but I noticed while I was poking around on movie websites that it made nearly $400 million domestic and is currently the #3 movie of the year at the box office. (#1 being Barbie, of course.) And while it wasn't as great as the first one - I adored the first one, I've watched it a dozen times or more - it was still pretty good. (Maybe I should go track the 2nd one down and watch it again, come to think of it!)

The reviews of Wonka are pretty good. We saw the Johnny Depp one (mostly because Christopher Lee was in it, to be honest) and I imagine we're going to end up going to see this one too. Who knew, when I was like, eight, and saw very the first one, that there'd still be Willie Wonka movies coming out all these years later?


*Certain horror movies just freak me out completely and I just go to almost none of them rather than have one give me nightmares. I don't guess that's really being a wimp. Rob doesn't seem to mind going by himself, really, anyway, and it certainly saves us a lot of money.

Spiderwick Chronicles

I was poking around on Prime looking for, I don't know, a Christmas movie or something, and I ended up watching The Spiderwick Chronicles - which I know we saw back in the day, but nobody else we knew ever seemed to have seen. I didn't actually know I was hitting play on the movie at all just now, I thought maybe they made a TV series or something (they are, see below), but no, this is the movie.

We really liked it at the time, I remembered that, but it was one of those movies that vanished into the ether, as movies that don't make money tend to, and I almost forgot it existed. But, y'know, kids' movies have a way of persisting, if they find an audience, and here it is. (It's funny that I was talking yesterday about the Johnny Depp Wonka movie - which I couldn't honestly have told you the name of even though it's the name of the book - and here's Freddie Highmore, the same kid who played Charlie in that.) The animation shows its age, but it's not bad for something made 15 years ago.

(Later) Ah, ok, I knew I'd heard something about a series. Disney+ ditched it just recently and now it's going to be on Roku. I'm glad to know I wasn't imagining that.