I just watched Maid In Manhattan. It was actually quite refreshing. Almost everyone is a wholesome character, and the movie stays on a feel good path the whole time. They don't take too many cheap humor shots (with the notable exception of two women excercising in their room) and while the story is certainly a stretch it is believable in the fantasy world it lives in.

Other things that came to my mind about this one:

• I watched about the first half of the movie trying to place Ralph Fiennes. He had that feel of an actor that I'd watched a whole lot. Then it finally hit me that he played Lenny in Strange Days. For those of you that haven't seen that one it is my favorite cyberpunk movie. Cyberpunk is actually one of my favorite genres and it's unfortunate that Hollywood has butchered most of their attempts to film it. I'm having trouble finding a decent webpage to talk about what cyberpunk is, but if you want to know you can ask me or go read Snow Crash and Nueromancer.
  
• You gotta love a movie with lines like this - JLo: "I just came here tonight to tell you that tonight is the last night for us", Ralph: "Then you should have worn a different dress."
  
• They had great music! Simon and Garfunkle, big Grammy winner Nora Jones, and even Eva Cassidy (doing a Paul Simon cover no less.) If you haven't listened to Eva Cassidy and you like slower music you should give her a try. My favorite albumn is Time After Time which incidentally has a wonderful cover of the Cindy Lauper song. Also, Eva's rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow is great as well.
  
• I guess the staff that works on the suite floor of a 5 star Manhattan Hotel might be as well off as these characters, but most of them aren't. I've done some activism work with hotel workers (the Hotel Workers Organizing Committee in Portland, Oregon) and they really get screwed around. I don't feel like getting on my soapbox about this tonight, which is probably better for you.
  
• My favorite character in the movie was the floor butler, he was sweet and is the kind of character that makes me want to meet someone like him in real life.

The bottom line is this was a fun, feel good, Cinderella movie. It won't change your life, but it will entertain you for 105 minutes.

Also thinking about music I forgot to mention something in my musings about The River Wild. Their theme music was an orchestrated version of The River is Wide. While it's neat that they do the whole river thing, this song is a slow and kind of sad song and they played it as background music for some of the action sequences. This really annoyed me since this is a song I really like it kept conflicting with the mood of the movie for me. Then during the closing credits they finally played a version with lyrics.

That's it. I should get to bet soon since I have to leave to raft again in about six hours...

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