well...

I plan to see Friends With Money and the opening-wide-this-weekend Terry Zwigoff film Art School Confidential. I saw The Sentinel the night I was to see Friends With Money as I was the doting son and let my mother decide what she wanted to see.

I saw Mission: Impossible III last Friday night. It was the best of the three films, with all of the film's cohesive elements coming together wonderfully. JJ Abrams managed to make the film actually feel like an episode of the television series, where the IMF team actually had their own expertise and they all worked together to get the job done. Couple that with great action setpieces, a really terrific villain played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a funny role for Shaun of the Dead star and co-writer Simon Pegg, Keri Russell's quite convincing role as an IMF agent, and a great score by Michael Giacchino (who composed the amazing score for The Incredibles) and you've got a very good movie indeed.

We went out to Masato, a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant formerly part of the Kyoto chain until the owner got tired of paying franchise fees and decided to just name it after his son and run it himself. Aside from renaming menu items, the restaurant was just like it was the last time I ate there ten years ago. My sister took us (my mother, myself, and her best friend Toni) there to celebrate my mother's belated birthday which was actually last Friday. Sake was consumed. I only had one shot of sake -- believe me it was more than enough -- and half a can of Sapporo. Then we met Joe, a friend of my sister's whose father owns the McDonald's franchise near our house. We met him at the nearby Chili's (and I mean nearby -- right across the parking lot from Masato) where we had a few drinks (I just had three Bud Lights) and finished off the evening with good conversation and a Buttery Nipple, of which I really liked as the Bailey's Irish Cream and Kahlua did a very good job of masking the alcohol. I don't drink often (never) but figured I'd do so to celebrate. So all in all, it was a very fun evening.

I watched Tristan & Isolde Saturday evening. Director Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and scribe Dean Georgaris crafted a sumptuous tale of love and devotion in a time of tumultuousness. James Franco and Sophia Myles have a very believeable chemistry and help make this a tender and haunting love story that blends the best of cinema's romantic elements amidst a running parallel of violence. Rufus Sewell also gives a remarkable performance, as he always does. Check this movie out; you won't be disappointed.

I've got the season finale of Veronica Mars awaiting me. Nine thousand plot threads need to be wrapped up in this final installment of season two and I don't doubt creator Rob Thomas and his writers ability to do just that, although I've heard some minor plot threads may carry over into next season - if The CW picks the show up, that is. I've also heard that next season will not be about a season-long mystery but rather several smaller ones.

Also awaiting me on the lovely TiVo is Orson Welles's Mr. Arkadin. I've heard alot about this, Welles's second most-troubled production (behind his most famous). There are several different cuts of this film; I am unaware which version this is but I'll know more later.

M. Night Shayamlan's latest film Lady In The Water will be released on July 21st. It stars Paul Giamatti as Cleveland Heep.

In "Lady in the Water," a story originally conceived by Shyamalan for his children, a modest building manager named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). He rescues a mysterious young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) from danger and discovers she is actually a narf, a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. Cleveland and his fellow tenants start to realize that they are also characters in this bedtime story. As Cleveland falls deeper and deeper in love with the woman, he works together with the tenants to protect his new fragile friend from the deadly creatures that reside in this fable and are determined to prevent her from returning home.

M. Night stopped by Ellen yesterday to debut the new trailer and..wow! I can't wait to see this one. He said that even though initially sold as "A Bedtime Story from M. Night Shayamalan", it's actually quite dark and intense. I've loved all of his movies thus far - yes even The Village - and Lady In The Water just shot up several notches on my "Must-See Summer Movie List".

More thoughts will follow after food is consumed, including why X-Men: The Last Stand will remain unwatched by me. I mentioned it briefly when the initial trailer debuted; this time I'll be a bit more substantive. Now though it's time to eat.