Aimee won the Oscar pool we had (by a hair, I might add, and but I’m a gracious loser), and so it was up to me to take us out to any movie of her choice. I was pleased when Jersey Girl defeated The Prince & Me, because at least Kevin Smith might entertain or anger me, and I held out no such hope for Julia Stiles and whoever directed that one. Anyway, more interesting than the film, which was treacly-sweet and mostly watchable, was the preview for the other new J.Lo vehicle – will she be edited out of this one, too? – Shall We Dance? It’s another one of those remakes of recent foreign films that too few people saw like Insomnia and Abre los Ojos, this time of the Japanese Shall we dansu? (yes, that’s the Japanese title). There are a number of strange things about this film, including Richard Gere dancing, because apparently he didn’t get enough in Chicago, Susan Sarandon cast off into the “suffering wife” role, Stanley Tucci’s wig, and what really caught my ear, Peter Gabriel and an unknown woman performing a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “Book of Love.” Beautiful song, but strange to hear appropriated in such a way and in a film like this. According to this page, Gabriel joined the Fields on stage in 2001, so I guess there’s a connection there, but it’s still strange to hear another distinctive voice sing that song.

The film is directed by none other than Peter Chelsom, whom I saw in Cambridge (UK) in 1995, introducing his brilliant film Funny Bones, which was ignored over here, but introduced me to the work of Lee Evans and Oliver Platt, and which featured none other than Leslie Caron and Jerry Lewis. Looks like it finally came out on dvd here last fall. Good. He went on to do that disastrous Town & Country a few years ago – maybe he survived, though this one doesn’t look too promising.