Alex Fletcher - Hugh Grant
Sophie Fisher - Drew Barrymore
Chris Riley - Brad Garrett
Rhonda - Kristen Johnston
Sloan Cates - Campbell Scott
Cora Corman - Haley Bennett
Actors need to sing these days besides being the typical celeb with a wild lifestyle. Hugh Grant plays Alex Fletcher, the second-best-known member of an 80's bnd called PoP. Kind of like WHAM! Grant is a one-time one-hit-wonder from the '80s whose singing partner went on to megastardom. As pop bands typically 'pop' out of existence so did PoP. Alex was left behind doing two-bit appearances at theme parks and whatnot.
The plot:
Fifteen years after the band's dissolution, Alex lives the single life in New York City. He occasionally writes a song and lives off the royalty check..
Grant's partner is Drew Barrymore, who plays Sophie Fisher. Alex keeps plants and needs someone to look after it because he cannot be bothered to perform such un-star like duties. Sophie turns up at his apartment one day to tend the plants substituting for the regular plant lady. No Alex is in a dilemma. He has less than two days to find a lyricist so that he can write a hit single commissioned by a superstar. Yeah, superstars don't write their songs they just lipsync. This one is no less than a Top 40 sexpot named Cora (Haley Bennett) who loved his music back then and wants him to write her a song within 36 hours and sing it as a duet As fate would have it Alex and his newfound lyricist cum plant lady are slaving away at the piano. And then all the attraction matters turn up to spoil the partnership.
Into the fray comes Kristen Johnston as Sophie's sister Rhonda, who runs the family weight-loss clinics. She actually has a plausible connection rather than serving as a relief character. Rhonda plays a power-mom with a high school crush on Alex bringing in the added twist.
The verdict:
It's a sweet love comedy that could have been a typical flick in the hands of less capable directors and actors. Grant plays it with aplomb with his deft and underplayed comic timing that makes the punchlines all the more smile inducing. Not only that but Drew Barrymore makes a perfect companion with her bubbly comedy delivery. They look very enjoyable together onscreen without making it too sweet to digest.
The movie is unoriginal yet so adorable simply on the merits of the two main characters. It's one of those movies that leave you feeling a little warm inside without any particular reason. Mushy isn't the exact word though.
In the end, the movie's just the kind of enjoyably empty-headed stuff like the puppy love it portrays.
By Monty Python
You have used the iPod, you have seen the iPhone, now get ready for the new appleTV. Well don't be fooled by the name, cos it didn't drop from a tree and it isn't your everyday TV showing boring contents. Apple TV is much like a TiVo, but with internet connectivity and wireless connections to iPod and other apple products.
First of all, it won't just be like another set top or cable TV box set that's sitting in your living room and gathering dust, it supports high definition sets like a plasma TV which plays at an amazing resolution of 1080 by 720 wide screen, and stores all your favourite TV programs. Previously, you may have had a plasma TV, but you couldn't store your TV programs. You were also limited by the cable provider's video picture quality. But with apple TV, you would no longer need a cable service provider. AppleTV is able to show video or shows from the internet through the iTune online shop.
Apple is also thinking about starting an online television network which will air live programming and other entertainment programming which could be live streamed to your applyTV and be played via your plasma TV (if you own one) by a wi-fi connection.
What is more with appleTV is it can also be connected to iPod devices and be used to store and view pictures as well from your computer, all done wirelessly and through an apple Remote. It has a 40GB hard drive which can store up to 50 hours of video or 9000 songs or 25000 photos. Talking about wi-fi, apple TV boasts apple's AirPort 802.11 networking connection, making it the fastest and most extensive in-home wireless network device, which connects with up to 5 computers at a time to deliver media across the home network. At the moment, iTune has about 250 full feature movies and 350 TV shows which can be downloaded and watched in appleTV. Users can also listen to music by direct download via iTune and also listen to Podcasts.
The price of this baby has not yet been unveiled, but you can expect this to be competitive with the new TiVo 3 series. But a the similar pricing, you get more than what TiVo's offer plus AirPort in home networking. The remote itself works from 30 feet away. SO I suggest go get it as soon as it gets in the market, that is if you have a lot of cash to burn with a blazing fast internet to download all those contents from the internet. Sigh! If I only had a Plasma TV.
By Ahmed Ashiful Haque Niloy
I will teach you to be rich
www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com
In the blog I will teach you to be rich, Stanford graduate Ramit Sethi will do exactly what the name suggests: he'll teach you to be rich. Already featured in the likes of Wall Street Journal and Guardian UK, this is a blog about personal finance and personal entrepreneurship for college students, recent college grads, and everyone else.
“Getting started is more important than being the smartest person in the room. Making mistakes is ok. Action is more important than reading 50 blogs. Ordinary actions get ordinary results. And there's a difference between being sexy and being Rich.”
New readers, start here: http://tinyurl.com /2ckbcv. This page has got all most interesting and important posts. Check out the table of contents for the stuff you like best: http://www.iwilltea chyoutoberich.com/toc.html. And sign-up for the newsletter: http://www. Iwilltea chyoutoberich.com/newsletter
Forgotten NY
www.forgotten-ny.com
Forgotten-NY.com is a fascinating tour guide to the New York City of the past, from 18th-century cemeteries to nightlife neon. The site has rich photo essays and a lot of write-ups documenting the remnants of forgotten eras of the “capital of the world.” There's no neat organized navigation; just like
QuoteDB
www.quotedb.com
If you like reading quotes, QuoteDB is something you have to check out. It's got a huge database of thousands of famous quotations, neatly organized into categories. It's like the Quotes section you can find in the Encarta Encyclopedia. Also reminds me of Points to Ponder from the Reader's Digest. "Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved," said author D.H. Lawrence. So make sure you spend your time at QuoteDB.
the rambling walks the site documents, it is a luscious sprawl to get lost in for hours.
Cute Overload
www.cuteoverload.com
Cute Overload will do exactly what its name suggests; it'll shower you with piccies of adorable little doggies, puppies, kitties, duckies and more. And SO much more: they've even got stuff like little monkeys and “cutie cutie” squids on display. Can squids be cute? Well go there and see for yourself! This might just the thing to get you over the pain and suffering the day's work, stress, and stupid annoying people around you causes or the final annoying annoyance that makes you stop looking at Rising Stars forever.
10x10
www.tenbyten.org
10x10 is a newsy site offering a snapshot of the world, with the 100 pictures that matter the most on a global scale. Updated hourly, the site scans a few decent news sites to come up with the top 100 words and images. Clicking on the images lets you dig deeper and find the stories behind them.
Crying While Eating
www.cryingwhileeating.com
If you love watching people cry when they're eating, this is one website you should be checking out. Crying While Eating, a performance-art-type site, shows videos of just that: People crying about various things while eating various other things. Over here you can see, for example, some dude eating some mashed meaty things while crying about all the chain-letters that flood everyone's inboxes and how wrong it is to spread them. Then there are other dudes eating fruit and pudding and whisky and crying for some race car show. Now if THAT isn't entertainment, I don't know what is.
Paper Toys
Www.papertoys.com
Like paper moles? You DO know what paper models are, right? Paper models are little models of everyday things made of paper, silly! (I SUCK when I try to be funny.) Anyway, PaperToys shows you how to make a paper model of everything from a Mercedes 320 SL to a Jimi Hendrix guitar to the Neuschwanstein Castle. PaperToys.com features cutout templates of those and loads of other paper models you can download, print out, cut out, and fold on your own. Neat!
Guess-the-google
grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google
In this fun and frustrating game, you're presented with a grid of 16 images that are the results of a Google search for images. The goal is to guess the search term within 20 seconds. The faster you guess the right search terms, the more points you get.
That's all for this week. DO let me know if you like this week's links. For that, and for anything else, contact me at niloy.me@gmail.com
