The book is always better....

Well, that's not always true. Sometimes the movie is as good as the book. Last weekend I saw "The Namesake," based on the incredible book by Jhumpa Lahiri. Once I got over the hilarity of seeing the guy who played Kumar in "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" in a serious role, I really enjoyed the movie. Kal Penn was actually very good, but Tabu, the Indian actress/singer who played his mother, was the heart of the movie. You could sense just by looking at her the anguish she felt over being torn between two countries, neither one of them really being home. One minor quibble is that the setting of the movie was changed from Cambridge to New York, but it seemed to work. I had forgotten how much the book made me cry, and the movie did too. Kind of embarassing ;) (Let me note for the record that I almost NEVER cry over books - the only other one in recent memory is "The Time Traveler's Wife." If you haven't read it, do so immediately.)

I also recently saw "The Devil Wears Prada," which was definitely not as good as the book. Meryl Streep was fantastic though. Apparently the movie producers decided to give her character some glimmer of a human soul, unlike the book version of Miranda, who was purely evil. I didn't really like Anne Hathaway as the main character - she seemed much shallower than the book character. I also hated both her boyfriend and the suave writer who kept chasing her around, so I really didn't care which one she ended up with. (I won't give it away, but you can probably guess.)