But let’s be honest: George Clooney is not quirky. There is nothing in his dazzling face and sultry tone that could ever come across as flawed or confused. Why? George Clooney is The Man. George Clooney is at least two-thirds of an action-adventure movie. He oozes suspense and intrigue. He was voted People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”… twice. Fact: George Clooney is the one person both your little sister and grandmother are attracted to.

I couldn’t picture him as Ryan Bingham, a lost soul living out of a suitcase. But I’ve also never had to. I can’t tell you the last time he played someone natural, normal, and – dare I say – vulnerable. Luckily, this is it.

To my surprise, his performance blows my mind. For starters, Ryan’s professional exterior gives way to an interesting core. His layers reveal themselves easily, but sometimes too easily, to the point where you’re left wondering how he let himself get so isolated. He definitely doesn’t seem all that uncomfortable with people, so perhaps he just doesn’t like them much. It’s a tough call.

I was pleased to find that Anna Kendrick is really likable. She doesn’t play the 23-year-old know-it-all she appears to in the film’s trailer. Kendrick’s character, Natalie Keener, has the intellect of an adult, but a benevolence that can only come from someone with her innate youthful candor. Her performance, both a little shocking and even a little cute, marks a good beginning. Natalie is younger than the rest of the cast, but you get the distinct sense that she knows what she’s talking about. You want to put faith in her because she has faith in so much. (Also, she gets bonus points for holding her own in arguments with Ryan.)

Then there’s Alex Goran (played by Vera Farmiga). She seems to be the right woman for Ryan. While she does make for a real twist in an otherwise textbook plot, often she seems too convenient and too much like Ryan. That is, until he hops a plane to her place – hoping to surprise her after they’ve spent the weekend at his sister’s wedding – and discovers that she has kept a crushing secret from him.

In their last conversation, Alex calls Ryan an “escape” from her real life (which he’d thought he was a part of) and a “parentheses.” It delivers a blow that is unbearably harsh and truly hard to take. For that, I really respect Jason Reitman’s exploration of the truth through one-way deception. It makes Ryan’s journey more believable, and ultimately, more interesting.

After all that, the ending is more ambiguous than you’d expect. The thing to remember is this: an ending isn’t sad just because it isn’t happy. When Ryan stands before a big board of arrivals and departures, I don’t believe that he is returning to an empty life of card-key access. While I would scrap his last monologue entirely (too confusing and possibly too cheesy), I like the general feel of the last five minutes. I find myself in his shoes, arms down at my sides, back at the airport. It’s the right ending because it’s the only place to begin again.

For starters, the animation is seamless. The art is key in this version of the classic tale. It manages to look clean through Disney’s black three-dollar 3D glasses, which are always relatively bulky but downright fun by association. You can practically feel the lines in Scrooge’s face; each spirit rings ethereal, and even Bob Cratchit’s tacky muttonchops look good.

Meanwhile, for every actor whose voice translates to the screen, his or her character has some trait in keeping with the actor’s real life look. Colin Firth, who voices Fred (Scrooge’s nephew) in the film, is perhaps the best example: Fred is a dead ringer for Firth, whose angular features are especially recognizable in the first few minutes. Bob Hoskins makes an incredibly jolly Fezziwig, while young Scrooge really does look quite a bit like a young Carrey.

The film comes together like a true fairy tale – tradition included. When the Ghost of Christmas Present pulls back his robe to reveal Ignorance and Want, you really learn their faces. They’re the very embodiment of human tragedy, done in a remarkably palpable fashion. While the artwork may be designed to captivate the younger set, the details brought to life by this adaptation are wonderfully refreshing for an older crowd. If you’re like me, you’ll leave the theater feeling nostalgic. You might even forget to recycle your glasses on the way out… deliberately.

Ethan Hawke and Emilie Ohana

Each vignette was shot in roughly two days, and some of the various directors include: Faith Akin, Joshua Marston, Mira Nair, Natalie Portman (her directorial debut), and Randall Balsmeyer. While Joshua Marston is the only one to branch outside of Manhattan, the scenes mesh together almost flawlessly, giving this big city a flavor, a face, and a life of its own. However, you can’t have everything; there are no homosexual pairings in the entirety of the film and most couples are comprised of white, straight heterosexual men and women. It’s a romantic vision of New York, sure, but it’s a bit less realistic and a bit more eccentric than even we New Yorkers would admit to. There is a clear distinction in real life between actively picking up a beautiful woman on a street corner (who turns out to be a hooker – no surprises there) and bumping into a very handsome man getting out of a cab and introducing yourself. With that being said, there are likely more misses than hits in both worlds, but the film does do a good job of exploring every interaction with great zeal.

Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach (AP Photo/Vivendi Entertainment)

New York, like most major cities, is often made intangible and achingly beautiful; as such, it’s typically left underdeveloped in movies. Of all the stories in New York, I Love You only a few really last after the credits have rolled: Natalie Portman’s moment of tenderness in her exchange with Irrfan Khan, and the domino effect of an impossibly perfect one-night stand, featuring Drea de Matteo and Bradley Cooper. Every laugh, every look, every touch is felt by these six degrees of separation. Even when it’s silly and overplayed (i.e. the scene in which Anton Yelchin has sex with his seemingly handicapped prom date, played by Olivia Thirlby) there’s a connection that makes these otherwise outlandish characters come to life. It’s real enough most of the time, and that’s what makes both the movie and New York so darn lovable.

And ladies, you know you’re looking just to see what she wore today.

Networks know that just having some stiff reading the news is not enough so the smart ones put some eye candy (with brains for the most part) to help pique your interest.

So who really is your number one?

Check the photos, then let’s put it to a vote. (This is not a complete list, so don’t bit my head off and do feel free to leave a comment with who you think should have made our list. But don’t forget to still vote)

UPDATE: By popular demand (yes i am actually getting requests) We have included two more name for you to vote on.

So now, rather than simply let it exist as the hugely successful children’s book that it is, Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak, and writer/editor Dave Eggers decided to blow our mind grapes by adapting it for the screen in what looks to be one of the sweetest adaptations of literature to film of all time.

The costumes are estatic, the voices seem accurate, and the overall feel of the project is one that we all might really enjoy – I mean, every last one of us who ever imagined someplace slightly more animated than their current surroundings – and all the different shapes and sizes we come in. I mean, it looks like it just might be one of those films that reaches the whole spectrum of audiences. 

The cast is pretty exemplary as well with Catherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker and young Max Records playing the King of the Wild Things himself. And just when the cast, concept and production team were seemingly enough they used Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up’ for the trailer. Boom. 

So fair enough, I am obviously a fan of this project and am clearly interested in how it will be received, but can you really blame me? I may be basing this reaction solely off the previews and my prejudices towards extremely talented people working together but still, it looks like we may all be in for a serious treat. I would suggest that in the time between here and October 16th, we all get really excited. I mean, like really excited.

Lock in your vote.

@VogueEvolution , @RHYTHMCITY, @FR3SHOnline, @Massive_Monkees

In this photo her arms look really weird, then it occured to me that i saw arms like that once before.

(Photo: Flynet)

On Madonna.

But Madonna’s total package looks a lot better than Lindsay.More toned. I guess Lindsay looks more like a less toned older sister of Madonna.  Shall we all say Hot Mess!

I can go on all day about this, but let’s just do a simple comparison.

Robert Pattinson and Brad Pitt

Robert Pattinson and Richard Gere

Robert Pattinson and George Clooney

Robert Pattinson and Gabriel Aubry

Robert Pattinson and David Beckham

Need i even bother to post more photos? Heck even Zac Efron is better looking than this guy. Someone please put us out of our misery and dump some cold water on the Twilight franchise (how about Setting Moon for the next movie. That usually comes after an Eclipse.) before we start seeing Urkle and Elmo on the world’s sexiest men list.

But since this is just my perspective, let’s put it to a vote!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Oh yeah, no more “Glimpses” of New Moon trailer.  What the hell is a glimpse of a trailer. Is a trailer a glimpse of a movie? So is this a glimpse of a glimpse? Will there next be a glimpse of the glimpse of the trailer?

Sheesh. I’m starting to sound like foamy.

Transformers 2

Holy Crap that was bad.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Great CG and somewhat entertaining acting from Daniel, Emma and Rupert. If you’re looking for cool effects and adolescence hormones going askew then this is the movie for you. From what I’ve been reading about the next and final installment in the Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part I released in 2010 and part 2 2011) will  be more truer to the books. It’s a good thing too, because the books are way better.  When comparing the books to all of the films, the film lacks depth and cohesive story telling. Professor Snape is the Half-Blood Prince.

500 Days of Summer

It’s so easy to fall in love when the yummy yummy hottie thinking-man’s actor Joseph-Gordon Levitt is involved.  500 days proved to be the independent darling that the advertisements were pushing it to be. Levitt is heart-breaking and Zoey Deschanel his girlfriend (well at least for 500 days) is quirky and adorable. I was afraid the music numbers would get in the way of the movie, but it only enhanced the story. This is a great date movie for lonely girls and couples. And it’s not as gross and lovey-dovey as an adult time-travel who falls in love with an little girl and then knocks her up years later.  Here is a music video the two stars made, the song is called “Why Don’t You Stay Awhile” by Zoey’s band She & Him. Adorable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

G-Force

I didn’t watch this on principle. I love Zach Glaf-something Greek, so I don’t need to see him pay off his credit card debt by participating in this film. But, I will say that it was the #1 movie for two weeks, which tells me that parents don’t want to talk their kids, they’d rather have Guinea Pigs do it.

Funny People

Oh Apatow, will you ever make a movie that’s not 4hrs long? I was on the fence about this one. As I love the stand-up routines placed in the film, the actual story itself was a little dragged out. Apatow is great with comedy, but he does lack a dramatic element that could really round him out as a fantastic director. I think Knocked Up was a flook. Sandler has been trying to go down the Robin Williams/Tom Hanks road for a long time. I think he needs to keep walking. But, it’s definitely worth the price of a movie ticket. If anything you should check it out for the hilarious character  “Raaaaaaaaady!”  played by Aziz Ansari

Click here to view the embedded video.

What to look forward to:

GI Joe (8/7/09)

What! There are two black men in this action flick?! That means at least one of them has to live! I like them odds! What!? Joesph Gordon- Levitt is this flick too. Gimme my popcorn!

District 9 (8/13/09)

This Peter Jackson produced sci-fi film, about human and aliens, is going back to the basics effects-wise. There is CG, but for the fight scenes to make them more gritty and real, CG was minimal. This film directed by Neil Blomkamp (he’s done nothing that I’ve heard of, I just think he’s name sounds funny) tells the story of refugee aliens seeking a home on earth, but instead are confined to an area in South Africa called District 9. While trying to figure out what to do with them and how we can benefit from their weapons, a human gets infected with alien DNA and starts *gulp* changing!

Early screenings of this movie proved VERY promising. I trust Peter Jackson completely. He gave me LOTR, he can do no wrong.

District 9 Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.