U2 in 3D

There are many excellent reasons to see "U2: 3D," aside from shifting your gaze for 85 minutes from that big red circle on the calendar marking WEE LEE'S DUE DATE.

If you are not still carrying a hot air balloon under your shirt a day after WEE LEE'S DUE DATE, there are other valid reasons to go see The First Live Action 3D Concert Movie, for which National Geographic has not paid me to endorse, but probably should, because when I'm not working to will this hot air balloon out from under my shirt, I'm going to be playing Rah-Rah girl for U2 over the course of the next month. With or without you.

Whether or not this concert is playing in a theatre near you, the point is that you get to count Bono's eyelashes in a theatre! In cushy chairs! With no hairy backed guy standing in front of you blocking your view, and no guy singing off key and spilling his beer on you from behind. I know that sounds really white girl bougie, like "Yeahhh! Let's go rage at a concert and sit back and drink our slurpees and get home at a decent hour!" PART-AY! But this is the closest I'm going to feel as though I'm standing on the edge, staring up at The Edge, for twelve moneys, and I'm not too proud to say that this was a pretty good Saturday night for me.

The concert itself mainly takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as the cameras pan the stadium, I'm pretty sure that there is no one left outside of the stadium in Buenos Aires. They are all there singing "One" with Bono, and that's probably one of the most beautiful things I've seen in the last year - a whole South American city swaying and singing "One" in a language that is not its first.

There are some great moments on stage that are the stuff of live music's wonder. Bono is as much a passionate believer of his lyrics as he is a complete nutbar who appears to be doing an interpretive dance that no one can interpret. The Edge is the coolest Irish man alive. Larry Mullen Jr. is given his due spotlight as the enduring drummer of the set. Adam Clayton's hair is outrageous and his facial expressions always cause you to wonder if he is amused by the fact that he is still rocking with a band that was once known as the Larry Mullen Band.

You might be overcome with the urge to throw your 3D glasses off and hold up your cellphone and keen over Sunday, Bloody Sunday, or suddenly mash faces with the person next to you, and you might just leave a little blissed out. It's a powerful show from a powerful band. Let me know if you go.

Juno, see also: "What kind of a girl"

Saturday night - when I was not otherwise predisposed to snarking at the punks next to me in the theatre who insisted that "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?" came from a show called "Webster" from the '70s - I was busy allowing the movie "Juno" to inch its way into my Top Ten Favorite Movies of All Time.

If you've ever been sixteen, or pregnant, or both, you must see this movie.

It's very wise in a way that films about adolescence only sometimes succeed. Juno, played by the brilliant Ellen Page, is spectacularly snide, clever, and self-assured. She has a plan, always, it seems. She probably even planned to wear her cherry underoos when she goes to pop Paulie Bleaker's cherry. But then there is a moment when she confesses to her father and stepmother that she's pregnant, and her father says, "I thought you were the kind of girl who would have known when to say when."

And then Juno says, hesitantly, "I don't really know what kind of girl I am."

Here we begin to realize that she is not so wise. She does not always have a plan. She is sixteen, she is pregnant. She is very confused.

There's a courage in her concession. I don't really know what kind of a girl I am.

When I was sixteen, I was very busy overachieving and not eating and covering my notebooks with aphorisms and "Proud to be a virgin" buttons. I thought I knew what kind of girl I was. I thought I had a plan, always. Now, I realize that I was a chickenbone. I was the wilted pickle on Juno's hamburger phone. I didn't know what kind of girl I was and this was evidenced in how I treated those around me, and how I treated myself. I should note that one of my old neighbors told her kids that Juno reminded her of me. And I can only hope it was because she once knew me in high school when I dressed androgynously and wore a perma-ponytail, and not because I was someone who always seemed to have a plan. Because that would just be too painful to know.

I've been thinking about "Juno" for a few days now, and I've watched every interview with "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody on youtube, and I've listened to a few tracks from the soundtrack eleventy four times a piece, and when I am not otherwise sobbing from all the beautiful scenes these rewinds trigger, I am thinking that I hope Ellen Page wins the Oscar. I think she's the kind of girl who should win.

Photo from Oscars.com