Grass and Sky

I should have done at least a little work this evening. I've volunteered to help with the annual bookfair coming up at some point in Nov/Dec, and the task I was given is to turn our Amazon wishlist into an Excel spreadsheet. Easy peasy (once I came up with a work around for entering isbn numbers that start with zeroes into a program that doesn't let numbers start with zeroes) but a little time consuming, and deadly boring if there isn't something else going on. So, instead I watched The Ghost and Mrs. Muir on the laptop, via Netflix. I like that they now have unlimited Watch Instantly time, and I've been doing a lot of instant watching lately, mainly Doctor Who.

Yesterday was a dvd, however, of Doctor Who: The Invisible Enemy, another Fourth Doctor and Leela episode. ( The Invisible Enemy )

Tonight's viewing, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was entertainment of a totally different nature. Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison are the main stars in this 1947 movie. Totally schmoopy romance between a young widow and the ghost of a salty sea captain, the kind of movie I can only enjoy if it was made before 1950ish. I've always liked this movie, with its seaside backdrop and quiet love. It's schmoopy and sappy, but not drippingly so. And the characters are save from the fallacy of being perfect paragons. Mrs. Muir is occasionally haughty and a bit too full of her own good breeding, while the ghostly Captain Gregg is capricious and quick to judge others. He is, underneath all that and an unsurprisingly earthy personality, a good, kind soul. And Mrs. Muir is much the same. And somehow, the movie provides a happy ending to such a star-crossed pair. It was a good movie for tonight.