footnotes to the chocolate factory

1. In my review of Charlie, I wrote that the previews all looked at least modestly amusing. So I was almost tickled to get an e-mail from Fandango, from which I'd bought my ticket last week (I thought the theatre would be sold out), asking me to take a survey which turned out to concern my reaction to the trailers. Will I see Ice Age 2? Maybe. Why maybe yes? I liked the first film. Why maybe no? Sequels suck.
2. Today the world is going out to buy Harry Potter VI. But not me. I'll wait for the paperback, and maybe longer. I read the first four books with varying levels of enjoyment, but bogged down in two attempts at book V. What is it with sequels anyway? Dahl, who dates back to the days before bloat hit children's fiction, wrote exactly one sequel to Charlie, which despite my enjoyment of the original I have never read. I am oddly proud of this.
3. Also seen yesterday, the DVD of Bride and Prejudice, which it took me over a week to find, all the local Bockblusters having massively understocked it. (Meanwhile, huge piles of new horror films sit unrented all weekend. Doesn't anybody keep track of what customers want?) Trivia q: identify the one actor who appears in both this film and Charlie. This film got bad reviews, for implausible plot and unsympathetic characters, but don't believe them: it's just delightful. My understanding is that it resembles a Bollywood film the way the food in a chop suey joint resembles Chinese, but at least it gives the totally untutored a faint impression of what a sampler of the real thing might be like. B. and I particularly liked the musical number in which the four girls (there is no Kitty) in their white pajamas make fun of the Mr. Collins character. As a fan of both Austen and Austen adaptations I was curious to see what the script would make of the story: despite the added complexities of ethnic and national differences it actually stuck closer to P&P than Clueless did to Emma, and several of the book's best lines appeared nearly verbatim. Among the few changes: Lady Catherine (played by Marsha Mason!) is Darcy's mother, not his aunt, so Rosings and Pemberley are the same place, namely Beverly Hills. Incidental effect of this is that when "Elizabeth" visits Darcy in situ, the Derbyshire local color turns out to be the mariachi band at a Mexican restaurant.