Though the official death toll nationwide from Hurricane Ike is something on the order of fifty, an article in today’s Houston Chronicle indicates that there are over 400 people still unaccounted for two weeks after the storm passed through. Granted, some—indeed one hopes many—of these may simply be from people who don’t have access to phones or other forms of communication yet, but still I expect that as the debris fields are searched and the power is restored we will discover that the toll is significantly greater than the current tally.
We watched two movies yesterday. The first was a sweet little tear jerker called Definitely, Maybe starring Abigail (Little Miss Sunshine) Breslin as a precocious girl who insists that her in-the-process-of-divorcing father tell her how he and her mother met. He spins her a lively tale, with the names and some of the facts changed, about his early years. His work on the Clinton election campaigns forms the backdrop for his various romantic liaisons, including one with a character played by Rachel Weisz, who is also enamored of a philandering university prof played with gusto by Kevin Klein. I will be curious to see how Breslin fares in the coming years as a child actor, but she has serious chops at present. A mature, earnest presence. Hopefully she will avoid the pitfalls to which many others have fallen prey. Unknown (to me) Isla Fisher is a standout.
Then we watched Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day, staring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. McDormand is a down-at-the-heels governess who can’t hold a job and resorts to the soup kitchens of 1939 London for her sustenance. Unable to get another position, she pretends to be someone else to shoehorn her way into a job as social secretary to the character played by Adams, who is an American singer/wannabee actress who has several men on the line at the same time. The movie starts out like a French farce, with McDormand having to manage the revolving display of men to make sure they don’t find out about each other. Then it settles down into a quasi-serious comedic drama as McDormand maneuvers her way though a part of society she only knows from afar, mixing and matching would-be lovers. The entire film takes place over an eventful one-day period in the shadow of World War II. Few of the characters remember war, but McDormand’s character does, having lost her one true love to the previous war. Lee Pace (from Pushing Daisies) is excellent as the piano player who courts Adams’ character. He had me thinking that he might truly be British, but it turns out he graduated from high school 15 miles from here, in Klein, Texas, and is an alum of Houston’s Alley Theater. Adams emotes like a stage actress in the beginning, which I guess is appropriate since her character’s entire life is an act.
