Dedication

On Tuesday I went to a screening of the new Billy Crudup/Mandy Moore movie Dedication, directed by actor Justin Theroux, who played Brenda's fiancé during a season of Six Feet Under. It's out in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

What can I say? Crudup is, as always, brilliant. He's totally nuts, totally angry, totally mean and very, very sexy as a children's book author with an unfortunate past and bleak future. Moore plays an illustrator with typical, quarter-life crisis issues. I'll admit it, I'm a huge Mandy Moore fan, but I recognize her limitations. She nearly holds her own against Crudup, which is a huge compliment.

Script? Well written. Cinematography? A little too forced for me -- lots of annoying, Michel Gondry-but-without-the-talent dream sequences and quick cuts -- but there are some great shots of the Williamsburg bridge. Soundtrack? I'll sit out on the Joanna Newsom, but the overall, it was quite good.

The story itself is not indie as the rest of the film might hope to be -- it's a mainstream romantic comedy, with a predictable ending. But I enjoyed it. There were moments that genuinely reminded me of my own life, and that's rare.

Enjoy the weekend.