My family has a catch phrase that relates to this film, a movie that I enjoyed more than I care to admit. (Except that liking this kind of film is what this blog is all about.) The phrase: "I read it in a magazine."

The line comes from one of my daughter's then tween-aged soccer teammates who used it a time too often when challenged on some dubious statement she made. Ever since, if we assert something that we know may not hold water, members of my family back it up with, "I read it in a magazine."

"What's Your Number?" (2011) is based, implausibly, on something supposedly read in a magazine. Ally Darling (Anna Faris) sees an women's magazine article saying a woman who has had sex with 20 or more men is unlikely ever to get married. Something to do with poor self-esteem. After totting up her conquests (not that a woman refers to them that way), Ally realizes she's already hit 19.  So begins a quest to recheck her past bedmates to see whether any of them is marriageable. Her marital clock is ticking, especially since her younger sister is readying happily to tie the knot.

The concept that a supposedly intelligent woman like Ally would find it necessary to go on this quest is silly enough. To add to the silliness, she seeks help from the despised serial womanizer Colin across the hall in her apartment building. Surely you see where this is going. I did, but I was charmed all the same. I won't say that either Faris or Chris Evans (as Colin Shea) is a terrific actor, but when they are together, they make the unreal feel more natural. You can feel the characters grow to like each other and, oddly, we like them better too, despite the oddities they go through.  I must admit,  however, even I found my credulity taxed by watching them  play HORSE in Boston Garden in their underwear.

In fact, both leads are in minimal clothing on maximum occasions, which is kind of a plus. If the visuals aren't  enough, there are some enjoyable, rather clever writing bits ... though perhaps they are maybe not quite as clever as they seemed at the time. These include Ally's thumbnail description of the perfect girl (as she thinks Colin sees her) and the wedding near the end where small children run around shouting the four-letter word they learned when Ally fell off a fence.

Does this film really deserve four stars? Perhaps not, but I was engaged enough to consider watching it over right away. (It's better than the trailer. Honest.) And not because of the acres of epidermis on display. I was charmed, but I finally decided to send it back to Netflix so I could get another silly film. And though these romantic comedies may not generally win Academy Awards, they are important for helping understand and improve the social and romantic interactions of men and women. I know that, because I read it in a magazine.

What's so bad about merlot, anyway? Regardless of what the film "Sideways" did to sour the market for that varietal, my favorite wine of the moment is a merlot. (Yorkville, 2009) That probably speaks volumes about my taste, or lack thereof. Chances are, it is the wine equivalent of my weak-hearted love for romantic comedies. So be it. That's all the more reason to mix romance movies with wine. Instead of rom com, it's vin cin.

Here, then, are the results of my laboring in the cinematic fields -- a case-worth of films, each with at least a bouquet of winery or some vineyard notes. For many of them, wine is integral to the plot, including a whole subgenre of "Inherit the Winery" movies. Drink up! But be careful, some of these are definitely of the sip-and-spit sort.

"Love, Wedding, Marriage"  (2011) -- The wine part of this movie is still a bit of a mystery to me. The hero, we are told at the beginning, was working in wine in Napa when he met the heroine, but then the whole film shifts to Louisiana. I reckon it's prohibitively expensive to shoot in Napa these days. But he's still working at a winery. In Louisiana. The plot? Don't bother.
"Parent Trap" (1998) -- Quite likely Lindsay Lohan's best movie and a favorite of my daughter's formative years. Dennis Quaid is winemaker Nick Parker, not famous wine guy Robert Parker. Sorry aficionados. Nick Parker is also the dad to the long-separated twins (both are Lohan) who try to reunite their parents.
"Sideways" (2004) -- Probably the best known film of this bunch, it features two guys on a boys' trip to the lovely, wine-producing Santa Ynez Valley. One is a wine snob -- hence, his line: "If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving." The other is his pal, who is having a last fling before marriage. A fling with lovely wine bar hostess Sandra Oh. 
"The Chateau Meroux" (2011) -- Wendy inherits a winery from her estranged father. We're led to believe it's Napa, since it's a quick drive from San Francisco, but it was shot in the not-so-pretty Central Valley wine region. Wendy falls for the rival winery owner's son, while her BFF falls for the assistant winemaker, played by the movie's writer. He should know you can't make a good wine (movie) with bad fruit (script).
"A Good Year" (2006) -- I quite enjoyed most of what Ridley Scott did with Peter Mayle's novel. Russell Crowe plays the heartless financier -- an investment wanker, let's say -- who finds fertile ground for love in the French vineyard inherited from his beloved uncle. Charming, and above average for this sort of film.
"Letters to Juliet" (2010) -- A minor winer. The main premise is the search for Lorenzo Bartolini, the long-lost love of an Englishwoman now in her twilight years. He is found, at last, amid the vines of Tuscany. Marriages follow.
"Bottle Shock" (2008) -- I have not yet tasted this one, suggested by wine movie sommelier Mike Dunne. It's a fictionalized version of the great Parisian blind tasting of 1976 in which a Napa wine beat the Europeans. Unexpected, but it was bound to happen.
"Corked" (2009) -- If "Bottle Shock" twits the Euro-snobs, "Corked" is the comeuppance for the Napa/Sonoma snobs. This mockumentary appears to be a send-up of the Wine and Whine Country.
"A Walk in the Clouds" (1995) -- This one sounds to me like a cloying dessert wine. A young soldier helps and then falls in love with the pregnant girl returning home to help with the harvest. 
"Autumn Tale" (1998) -- I haven't seen it, but knowing it's Eric Rohmer, I'd expect French, lust, laughs and romance. Set in the vineyards of Southern France.
"French Kiss" (1995) -- Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan: Is that annoying or romantic? Even they can't seem to decide in this film, but there is winemaking along with the lovemaking.
"Bed & Breakfast" (2010) -- This is a ghastly film billed as being about a Brazilian woman inheriting property in California wine country. The property turns out to be in arid Southern California, far from the coast, and winds up being a house, not a vineyard. (At least, as far as I could tell from the dull first 30 minutes. That's all I could take.) Wineries are mentioned and vineyards are seen along the way. If any scenes were shot in vineyards, I'm guessing it ruined that year's crop.

Bonus:
"The Language of Flowers" (in the works) -- Even though IMDB doesn't have much on this, I expect to see it in a few years. The movie version of Vanessa Diffenbaugh's 2011 bestseller will certainly have (Sonoma?) vineyard scenes including one climactic heart-breaker.

Poor Reese Witherspoon. She's always having to choose between two hunky guys: It happened in "Sweet Home Alabama." It happened in "How Do You Know." Even (sorta kinda) in "Legally Blonde." 

Now she's forced to choose between Chris Pine as FDR and Tom Hardy as Tuck in "This Means War." (For what it's worth, I think she makes the wrong choice at the end, but everyone else is happy.) "This Means War" is the latest in the ongoing effort to entice those who love action comedy and those who love romantic comedy to the same movie. According to the post-Valentine's Day weekend returns, not much of either demographic showed up.

But I did, and I liked it. Sure it's silly and implausible and Witherspoon can be annoying, but I like the no-nonsense competence her character, Lauren, shows in most of this movie and the interplay between the two guys is clever, even when it's largely testosterone-driven.

FDR and Tuck are not just any rivals for the girl's affection. They are best buddies and covert operatives for the CIA. In Los Angeles. If that sounds like the TV show, "Chuck," it might not be accidental. Don't mess with success.

As CIA agents, the boys use their espionage abilities and equipment on the object of their affections. One almost balletic scene has them executing a brown bag operation on Lauren's apartment as she bops around obliviously, making popcorn and dancing to the music in the way you only do when you think no one is looking. (Me? No I don't do that. No.) FDR and Tuck's spying is pretty chaste, though you would have imagined at least one of these guys would be tempted to do some shower peeping on their target.

While trying to outdo each other in their wooing, they are also coping as a team with some sort of international bad guy whose brother they killed. What's it about and why? Doesn't matter. This part of the plot fades for long stretches while romance comes to the fore. That is, "This Means War" refers to the war between friends more than the war between countries. However, international evil surfaces occasionally, and the battling is so frenetic you can't quite tell what's going on. That's so you don't notice how artificial it all is.

Articial also probably applies to the dichotomy between Tuck -- earnest, in touch with feelings and ready for love -- and FDR -- shallow, in touch with his black book and ready for a score. Lauren must make her choice under threat of death, as a huge SUV careers toward her, ready to knock her into oblivion. She opts for ... I'm not telling.

But Witherspoon will probably just have to decide all over again in her next film. Kind of like "Groundhog Day" without the snow.

It might not be universally acknowledged, but it is nevertheless the truth that not all remakes are created equal. 

When it became known that Keira Knightley was going to star in a new version of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," (back around 2005) I think more than a few Jane-ists were horrified. Although the actress shares a surname with one of Austen's most-clear-headed characters, her critics could only paraphrase Emma's Mr. Knightley: "Badly done, Keira." The girl just wasn't right for the part, so they said.

I watched Knightley's "Pride and Prejudice" (2005) again recently, and I enjoyed it. That is, I enjoyed it as much as I could with my wife cringing and shaking her head next to me. For her, it's the book or it's Jennifer Ehle's "P&P," (1995) and nothing else measures up. To be sure, the multi-part BBC version is remarkably faithful to Austen's book and the Knightley version is not. How could a two-hour version be equally faithful?

Knightley's version, I admit, has one or two scenes of overwrought emotion, worsened by heavy-handed music. And I do find Knightley's giggles and the way she brings her hand over her laughing mouth somehow annoying. (Would "vexatious" be appropriate?) But I don't agree that there's something "wrong" about the portrayal. It's just different. I thought the film carried the sense, humor and emotions of the book's story well, and I like some of the secondary characters better in the newer version than in the BBC. Better means I still dislike Mr. Collins, but found the less-oily new version more palatable.

I also enjoyed some beautiful (though admittedly unnecessary) landscape shots in the new version and appreciated a Bennett home that better reflected the family's frayed gentility. The divergences from the original plot, well, they mattered little to me. In the end, I take joy in the inevitable pairing, though I've seen and read it many times before.

But I won't watch this version again soon. I have compassion for Mrs. CFG's poor nerves.

What do you think? Have you seen the two (or more) P&P versions? Feel free to take the little poll or write a comment.

Presidents get no respect. They serve their country, hardly ever do anything illegal or immoral, and what thanks do they get? Here and there they get a coin, a school, a library, a statue. More and more, however, someone puts them in a bizarre movie that belittles their greatness (or their weaknesses) and there's nothing they can do about it. Especially not if they're already dead, as most presidents are. 

Here then, are a few examples of the strange things we (by which I mean film makers) have chosen to do with our elected leaders. (Or maybe not-clearly elected leaders, in the case of George W.) By the way, these are not for the most part romantic comedies - or romances of any sort.

1. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" (2012) -- I wish I made this one up, but it's for real. The plot has Honest Abe discovering a plot by vampires to take over the United States. I can only hope it's some sore of political allegory.
   
2. "An Amercan Carol" (2008) -- A spoof of Michael Moore and liberals, in general, built around the concept of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." With the Father of Our Country as Angelina Jolie's father. Well, really with Jon Voight as George Washington.
   
3. "Definitely, Maybe" (2010) -- Real Bill Clinton shows up in old clips in the movie centered around a political campaign worker/consultant. Some of them relate to the Lewinsky scandal. A fake Clinton shows up jogging in Central Park.
   
4. "Fancy Pants" (1950) -- Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in an antic film that features a visit from Teddy Roosevelt.
   
5. "The Gorgeous Hussy" (1936) -- Hey, this one sounds romantic. IMDB says, "President Andrew Jackson's friendship with an innkeeper's daughter spells trouble for them both." With Lionel Barrymore as Andrew Jackson. Can we look for Drew Barrymore to play President Hillary Clinton someday?
   
6. "Wild, Wild West" (1999) -- Kevin Kline must save Kevin Kline from the evil doctor. In this case, Kline plays Artemus Gordon and Ulysses S. Grant.
   
7. "IQ" (1994) -- The wackier portrayal in this film is probably Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein, but there is also a bit with President Eisenhower.
   
8. "Dick" (1999) -- I think Dan Hedaya's great, but I'm not so sure about this movie, which has him as Tricky Dick Nixon. I only saw bits of it and it was hard to tolerate despite cute-as-buttons Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst.
   
9. "Pizza Man" (1991) -- Ronald Reagan is the president in this movie with a story based on a pizza man discovering a plot to rule the world. The only stranger presidential pizza man movie would be the one based on Herman Cain's  (former CEO of Godfather's Pizza) campaign for office.
   
10. "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" (2008) -- I'm probably not the first to say it, but this movie sounds like torture to me. The dope smoking protagonists share some with George W. Bush, though I thought W was more into coke.
    

Special Bonus: "The Man and the City" -- I just had to include this show although it's TV and though there's no real president. I liked it because Anthony Quinn plays a character with my last name added to a president: Thomas Jefferson Alcalá. 

I'm a cyclist, so I'm a little sensitive to cars and bicycles not getting along. When there's a conflict, bicyclists usually lose. Just today, a car turned in front of me when I was in the bike lane, but guess who had to stop.

Anyway, it may be that my bike sense was triggered when I noticed two recent movies with very similar bike versus car scenes. So I decided to come up with a couple of others on the theme. 

"A Good Year" (2006) -- Investor inherits French winery and discovers himself. The character played by Russell Crowe is fiddling with a bit of technology (his phone) as he's driving and takes his eyes off the road just in time to run a cyclist -- the character played by Marion Cotillard -- off the road.  Later, they fall in love.

"Eat Pray Love" (2010) -- Writer in crisis travels to discover herself. The character played by Javier Bardem is fiddling with a bit of technology (his tape deck) as he's driving and takes his eyes off the road just in time to run a cyclist -- the character played by Julia Roberts -- off the road.  Later, they fall in love. (Sound familiar?)

"One Day" (2011) -- A charming film of long-frustrated love reaches a climax with a bike v. truck accident that was so unexpected I flinched in pain. Well, the pain may have been because I was in a sling with a broken arm at the time. Broken from falling off my bike.

"Conversations with Other Women" (2005) -- As Aaron Eckhart's character, Man, undresses Helena Bonham Carter, as Woman, he notices a nasty scar on her leg that didn't used to be there. She had been hit by a car and was in the hospital for months, she tells him.

"Bike Lanes" -- OK, so this isn't a romantic film at all, but five is a better number than four and I've always liked this YouTube short of a guy who gets cited for riding outside the bike lane and goes on to show what happens if cyclists stay in the lane. You can see the whole thing below.

Aside from the fact that Helena Bonham Carter appeared in two of these films, they really don't have any connection -- except that I saw them in the past couple of weeks and didn't want to do a whole post on any one of them. They're all decent films, though, and some are a little off the beaten track, so I thought it might be worth calling them to your attention.

"The King's Speech" (2010) ✰✰✰✰ -- The best of the five, but not the one I'd rate my favorite. Geoffrey Rush does a wonderful job portraying Lionel Logue's unbroken cool in the face of a monarch who is wrathful and pitiful at the same time. Actually, that cool is broken once, when his wife comes home unexpectedly and finds the Queen having tea alone at her table. Perhaps not my favorite because it's not about love (the Chick Flick Guy's favorite topic) although Helena Bonham Carter's manifest adoration for and complete support of her husband, the King, is great.

"That Thing You Do" (1996) ✰✰✰✰ -- About as far from "The King's Speech" as you can get (and still have a movie I'd watch.) Tom Hanks' clever film takes us back to the early 1960s, albeit a version of that decade that's as freshly scrubbed as a Mouseketeer. He recreates the sound of the times in a clever soundtrack and even handles the prickly race issue with some unthreatening characters. Liv Tyler is as sweet as she's ever been -- almost diabetes-inducing. Tom Everett Scott does a great job, sadly making him as much a one-hit wonder as his band in the film. Hanks does a lovely, smirking supporting role and Obba Babatunde and Steve Zahn are scene stealers. I'd watch this again right now.

"Converstions with Other Women" (2005) ✰✰✰✰ -- A fascinating film on a couple of levels. It uses a split-screen double shot for almost the entire film. Sometimes the action is shared with flashback, sometimes it's the same moment from two angles, sometimes it's different takes. It feels much like an adapted stage play, as everything of significance takes place between just two characters. What I'm most intrigued by, however, is how it looks at the old topic of infidelity between two characters who, we're meant to believe, belong together. The relationship was doomed long ago, for reasons we don't quite know, but like one of the characters, we keep looking for a way for it to work. And then are satisfied when it doesn't. It's the kind of film that makes a Chick Flick Guy feel more mature. By the way, for CFG regulars, it has a bouquet toss not mentioned in my earlier post on bridal flowers.

"Something Borrowed" (2011) ✰✰✰ -- In some ways, this is the opposite of "Conversations." It's the same theme, but handled in a rather drawn out, and occasionally tedious fashion. The good movies don't have you saying, "We know what's going to happen. Stop putting it off." But this move has you saying that. It does throw in a few minor curves, but it still tries to have you buy into a rather shaky (to my mind) happily ever after. Kate Hudson's the big name in this film, but not the focus, which is kind of nice. By the way, the film is based on a novel that is part of a series. Which explains the "To be continued" notice during the credits.

"Anything Else" (2003) ✰✰✰ -- Perhaps the most depressing romantic comedy ever. Christina Ricci may as well be wearing horns for all the discomfiting devilment she, as Jerry Falk's girlfriend Amanda, inflicts on Falk, played by Jason Biggs. But she's not the only one who torments his character by manipulating him. There's a psychiatrist, an agent, Amanda's mother and Falk's pal/mentor, played by the moviemaker himself, Woody Allen. This is classic Allen angst unrelieved by optimism. Yeah, there are jokes, but there is no levity. Well-made, well-acted, not too enjoyable. But if I told Allen that, he's say, "Yes, but it's like anything else."

"One for the Money," (2012) which is based on the first of Janet Evanovich's successful series of Stephanie Plum novels,  seems clearly to have been made with the thought that it would spawn an equally popular series of films. Off the top of my head, I'm guessing the movie maker calculus equation involved a lot of dependable constants like these:

• Plucky heroine played by bankable star, looking for a series that would keep her busy for years
  
• Fish-out-of-water female character in a man's world
  
• Girl with a gun, always good for laughs
  
• Just enough bare skin, just enough violence
  
• Tantalizing antagonists who are also in love (as in Heigl's "Life As We Know It" and ""27 Dresses")
  
• Built in audience of Evanovich fans

The problem is that some of the variables -- the unknowns in the equation -- turned out to be zero. Even a million winds up nothing when you multiply it times zero.

In the film, Katherine Heigl plays Stephanie Plum. Out of work and out of money, Plum somehow goes from lingerie saleswoman (so we are told, not shown) to bail recovery agent -- a bounty hunter. The Plum job, so to speak, is to bring in her one-time boyfriend, a cop on the run because he's suspected of murder. 

I like Heigl, but what I've found charming in other films rarely appears here. She comes off more tarty than sultry, more game for a challange than capable. Part of that is the fault of the writing that leans on stereotypes of bounty hunters, prostitutes, boxing promoters and more. I haven't read the Evanovich books, so some of it may trace back to that. I don't want to knock detective fiction.  I just don't read it because (having read a few Rex Stout mysteries) I know I'd just get addicted, the same way I'm hung up on romantic comedies. But there isn't a lot of danger of me becoming a slave to Stephanie Plum films.

I wanted to like this movie, but it just didn't have the hook I expect from a bang-bang love story. They're supposed to keep you on the edge of your seat wondering whether the next bullet or Cupid's arrow will hit the leads. Even the frenetically violent Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" and the laughable "Knight and Day" include enough nuance, humanity and plain animal magnetism to make those films more charming that this one.

"One for the Money" -- one movie made just for the money -- seems likely to be the only one. I would deem it unripe pickings for a sequel of "Two for the Dough," Evanovich's second Plum novel. But I won't bet on the franchise withering on the tree. After all, there have been at least three sequels to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."

Back when I was young, the offbeat female love interest was expressed in a song: "I love the flower girl/Is she reality/Or just a dream to me?" The flower girl has morphed, becoming the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the movies.  It's roughly the same thing, but we don't have imagine how she looks because she's right there on screen. The movie writers apparently don't have to use their imagination either, just a formula for the stock figure. Take a little otherworldly cuteness, add some flouting convention and throw in a smitten guy in need of an unreality check and, poof, quicker than you can say "Who's that girl," you've got that girl. Girl, as in she never grows up, either.

Don't get me wrong. I love these characters. I looovvvve these characters. But they are easy to poke fun of and I feel lucky I didn't marry one. Here then, are some of my favorite manic pixie dream girl films. By the way, I didn't make up the monicker. Apparently a film critic (a real one, not like me) first described the phenomenon. I stole it from Cracked.com, which produced the clever send-up of the type girl in the video below.

1. "Amelie" (2001) -- With apologies to my pal Maureen, Amelie Poulain is a perfect MPDG. She even speaks French, an otherworldly language to most Americans. She sends lawn gnomes on trips, fondles lentils and has a fixation on the photo booth man. She's everything we love, or hate about the pixie.
   
2. "Benny & Joon" (1993) -- Joon wears a snorkling mask and uses a ping-pong paddle to direct traffic. Need I say more? But wait! There is more. This MPDG is paired with a rare MPDB. Johnny Depp's Sam is equally eccentric and untethered by reality.
   
3. "(500) Days of Summer"  (2009) -- Zooey Deschanel's Summer Finn plays house in Ikea and hanky panky in the copy room. She's so good at representing the type, it's pretty much her look that Cracked.com used for their video.
   
4. "Garden State" (2004) -- Look, it's another wacky Sam. This time it's Natalie Portman, conducting guinea pig funerals and lying with charm to capture Andrew. Love the way she tugs her earlobe in the falling arrows scene.
   
5. "Restless" (2011) -- Mia Wasikowska doesn't quite have the mania, but she sure has the elfin look as she gets her guy to embrace life, and bird lore, before her inevitable demise.
   
6. "Jane Eyre" (2011) -- I wouldn't have put this movie into this category except for thinking about Wasikowska made me remember how Rochester calls her a "fairy" at least once and accuses her of waiting for her little people the night his horse threw him and he met her. She was the MPDG of her time. Great film.
   
7. "Definitely, Maybe" (2008) -- Isla Fisher plays the enchanted April in this film. A pixie and a waif, but one with some steel. And guess what's the book April collects? Yep, "Jane Eyre."
   
8. "Elizabethtown" (2005) -- From what I read on Wikipedia, this is the film that spurred the critic to christen a cliché. Kirsten Dunst's version is a little more conventional, but still has the fairy propensity for popping up unexpectedly. 
   
9. "Scott Pilgirm vs. the World" (2010) -- Ramona Flowers appears in a dream before she appears in reality. Though she's gruffer than the average MPDG, she sure fits the uncoventionality requirement.