Filling my McAvoid, or how I became a McAvoyeur…

Our regular Movie Mom, Margot, is taking a hiatus to care for her new baby and his big brother, and so urbanmoms.ca will be bringing you some substitute movie-lovin’ moms to (try to) fill her shoes for the next little while. This week, we are thrilled to welcome Laura, longtime urbanmoms.ca member and also a mom and lover of movies.

I watch movies two ways. If the movie looks like something I have to see, I will absolutely see it in the theatre. If it looks pretty good, I’ll try to see it in the theatre, but as I only go to the cinema a few times a month, I don’t get to see everything I want. A few months later, the movie is released on DVD, and then a year or so after that the movie comes to my second form of viewing….the movie channel. I have a  satellite system and receive 8 movie channels (including 2 in HD!) so every week or so I do a quick search through movies and set the PVR to record things I meant to see but didn’t get around to it. Right now waiting for my viewing pleasure is Premonition, Oceans 13, Transformers and 28 Weeks Later.

Several months ago I recorded the movie The Last King of Scotland. Now, I have a bit of a thing for Scottish actors (Gerard Butler anyone?) so I was a bit dismayed to find out the movie actually takes place in Uganda. It did get a lot of Oscar buzz, and of course Forest Whitaker won best actor, so I figured it was worth a watch. It’s the story of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, as seen through the eyes of his personal physician, a character played by James McAvoy. So I watched the movie for Whitaker, but was blown away by the Scottish actor McAvoy.

A couple weeks later I went to the theatre to see the new Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie movie: Wanted. I have a wee bit of a girl-crush on Ms. Jolie (or Mrs. Pitt?), especially in her action films like Lara Croft and Mr & Mrs Smith.  This movie was fabulous! James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, a 25 year old cubicle drone who is such as wimp that he can’t even stop his girlfriend from sleeping with his best friend. Along comes Fox (Jolie) who informs Gibson he’s the son of a first-class assassin, and that he is to now avenge his father’s death by assassinating his father’s killer. The movie is a hybrid of action and sci-fi, so make sure you check your reality meter at the theatre door. Two hours after entering the theatre, I was compelled to see more of James McAvoy.

So home I go to the Internet Movie Data Base  to check out what this hot Scot has been in. I did know

  that he was in Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but as I am not typically attracted to Fawns, he apparently didn’t jump out at me. I then find out that he starred with Keira Knightley in Atonement, which is an Oscar winning film from 2007. The movie looked great, the book is wonderful, but I never went to see it. Why? I cannot stand Keira Knightley. There is no rhyme or reason or good explanation, I just can’t stand her and those pursed lips. However, Atonement was fabulous! It’s a wonderful movie about how a little girl’s mistaken perception alters the course of a young man’s life. Set during WWII it gives a glimpse of the English soldier’s life fighting in France as well as what the English women did on the home front. More than that, it sealed the deal for me….I had become a McAvoyeur.

For the next several days you could find me on Youtube looking up interviews with him, movie clips,

  trailers, fan videos, you name it, I watched it. His accents are great, he’s American in Wanted and English in Atonement, but it’s his actual Scottish accent that I like the most, so I was very excited to find an interview with him and Craig Ferguson (my tv crush) on the Late Late Show. This picture is from the movie Wanted. It didn’t really fit with this paragraph, but I felt it deserved a spot nontheless, no?

My next bit of McAvoyuerism? Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway is on the Movie Channel this month!