Last night, Margaret and I were painfully reminded of the old adage: "Just because A-list stars are in a movie doesn't mean the movie is A-list." I think that adage was coined after Shakespeare appeared in that bomb of a play "Get Thee to a Nunnery," universally panned as the worst play in the Elizabethan era--Queen Elizabeth even had the producer beheaded! Anyway, we rented a movie with Sean Penn, Claire Danes, and Joachin Phoenix called "It's All About Love." It was so disjointed and impossible to follow that it was almost comical. I don't know what the actors were thinking! Plus it wasted two hours of our lives that we'll never get back! How do you get a refund for THAT?

Speaking of which, I remember one time a friend invited us to see a Winona Ryder movie called "Lost Souls." It was so bad that the people who hadn't walked out by the end of the movie actually booed over the credits! Now THAT'S bad--when someone is willing to expend energy booing moving names at the end of a movie with no chance of the people involved hearing it whatsoever. I guess it is more catharsis for the viewer. Afterward, our friend EB kept showering us with apologies for how awful the movie was and that she was so sorry for suggesting it. In fact she was so mortified that soon after she and her family moved to Africa to escape the shame! (Well, at least I THINK that was the reason--that or her husband got a job with Mercy Corps there--it was one of the two.)