A few weeks ago, I wrote a March movie preview that included the film Sunshine Cleaning. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a trip to the theater, since Emily Blunt and Amy Adams have great chemistry together as sisters and turn in terrific performances. My only complaint is that the movie isn’t as lighthearted as the trailer makes it seem—bring tissues. The movie opens wide on the 27th, but it’s already playing at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
My opinion of the movie aside, I have a Sunshine Cleaning-related contest and giveaway today. In honor of Amy Adams’s unusual profession in the film as owner of a crime-scene cleanup business, we’re giving away an awesome gift basket full of Method cleaning products: surface cleaner, disinfecting wipes, hand soap, dish soap, a reusable shopping tote, and more. The retail value of the products is $40.
The nice folks who are providing this gift basket would like me to say the following about its contents: Method is the leader in healthy, eco-friendly home-care products. The cleaners are nontoxic, natural, and safe for your home, family, pets, and the environment. They look great on your countertop and leave behind fragrances that smell like nature, not chemicals. You can find them at Target, Lowe’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond.
Really, though, the important thing is that they’re free. I don’t know about you, but to me, saving 40 bucks on cleaning products means I can spend more money on movie tickets.
So, how do you win the gift basket? In the movie, the two main characters have some, well, troubles when they start their cleaning business—which leads to one of them accidentally falling on a blood-covered mattress. It’s the funniest part of the film. I want to hear your most hilarious cleaning-related story. E-mail your best anecdote to mlascala@westchestermagazine.com. (Make sure to include your full name and address so we know where to mail the gift basket.) I realize this is Westchester, and not everybody deigns to clean their own houses. So, feel free to use an anecdote from when you were in college, or something that you heard happened to a friend, or something your kids tried to do when they wanted to “help” straighten up. I’m casting a wide net here, is what I’m saying. In fact, I’ll start you guys off: Once, my friend’s mother told me that, when she was in college, she ran out of shampoo—so she washed her hair with Woolite. The funny part is that she loved the way her hair turned out! She said it was really soft and manageable. (Results not typical: don’t try it at home.) She wrote a letter to Woolite about it, and they sent her a case for free. Can you top that? I’ll post the winner’s anecdote in a future post.
And, speaking of cleaning, I have a little spring cleaning to do for this blog. There have been a few things I’ve wanted to alert you about, but none of them have really warranted their own posts. So, here they go, in easy list format:
*I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about the new remake The Taking of Pelham 123. Besides mentioning Pelham right in the title, it stars Mount Vernon native Denzel Washington, so I’m expecting some excellent Westchester references. You can watch the trailer here.
*Speaking of summer movies from local folks, I’m also really intrigued by Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, which was aptly filmed in the Hudson Valley. When the film was announced, I’d never heard of its star: Demetri Martin. Now Martin has his own show on Comedy Central, and I can see him getting himself back to the garden. See some of his deadpan, cerebral jokes here.
*A while back, when the Westchester Broadway Theatre was doing Buddy, I interviewed Staton Rabin, a local author who was doing a YA book on Buddy Holly. Well, the book is out if you have a Kindle, and it looks fantastic! Check it out here.
*Speaking of local authors, who is more local than John Cheever? An out-of-print story of Cheever’s was recently serialized on FiveChapters.com. Sadly, though this may be “Cheever Country,” I believe the story takes place in Massachusetts.
