Grass and Sky

Tonight's movie review: Outsourced

I caught a few minutes of the tv series of this once, a few months ago, and didn't know what to make of it. So I was a little dubious going in, but I really liked it. ( Spoilers )

Happy Fourth of July!

It's been a very laid back holiday weekend. I did next to nothing Saturday and yesterday, although I did get the laundry washed. (Note to self: fold the laundry.)

It's been a movie-watching weekend. Yesterday, I watched a movie called The Curiosity of Chance, filmed in 2006 but set "somewhere in Europe, sometime in the eighties." Chance is an out of the closet teenage boy trying to make it through his first months at a new International school. The eighties soundtrack was fun, the clothing and hair varied from early to late eighties but there were no Madonna look-a-likes, so that was something. It was a bit of a dramedy with more focus on the comedy aspects. The acting was mediocre at best, with the young stars putting a little more hip hop, Justin Timberlake attitude into their characters than is possibly warranted with the 'sometime in the eighties' description but it was entertaining.

Next up was Highlander. It was on my list of 'gotta see 'em sometime' movies and this weekend seemed like the perfect time. Hm, yeah, it was mostly crap. Full of silly camera angles and dramatic pauses, with Christopher Lambert doing most of his acting by means of gazing off into the distance while flashback sequences were shown. This movie was authentically 80s and as such a certain amount of that stuff can be forgiven, but it was just a bad movie. Marginally entertaining, but I found myself laughing in places where I don't think laughter was the desired response.

I did get out of the house for a bit earlier. Did the weekend grocery run. Thanks to the humidity it was less fun than usual, but I have food in the house and that's always a good thing. And now it's time to start thinking about supper and how to pass the evening hours away.

Positives:

*I had a yummy, yummy cheeseburger and sweet potato fries for supper tonight.

*I didn't have to go outside into the cold at all, for any reason, today.

*My movie of choice for the evening was Little Miss Sunshine. A much better choice than yesterday's regrettable adventure. Little Miss Sunshine managed to combine elements of National Lampoon-like absurdity with heart-felt emotion as each member of the Hoover family struggled with their individual crises. I give it two thumbs up.

I decided my Christmas present to myself this year would be to update the decor in the bathroom a little bit. I took a leap of faith with the shower curtain - the matching hooks were super cute but there was no image of the curtain itself. It's mod dots and whales, so I think it will be okay. I also got a fairly generic, not quite matching, liner, some simple but cute hooks that should coordinate with the shower curtain (not the actual matching whale ones, because I think that would have been a bit much), and a bath mat that should also hopefully coordinate.

I don't actually have a shower curtain now, just a liner, which is hideously dark red (a remnant from when I lived in an apartment with an ugly bathroom tiled in pink/black that I did my best to coordinate with), shredded by Mal when he was a bit younger, and pretty well soap scummed. My bathmat was irrevocably soiled by Tookie in her final months and never got replaced. Even if the new things don't coordinate as well as I hope they will, they will be a huge improvement on what I currently have.

I also attempted shoe shopping today, since all of my good fall/winter walking shoes have fallen apart. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything I liked in any sort of reasonable price range at the local independent store. So next weekend it will be off to find something cheap but functional at one of the chain stores.

I was hoping to see Harry Potter this weekend, as well. Until I remembered that the local theater that got the popular Hollywood blockbuster type movies had closed down, leaving us only with the crappy theater (as in, tiny screens, uncomfortable/old seats, bad sound) that has a selection of arty/indie/foreign films that I'm never even remotely interested in. Almost a guarantee they won't be getting Harry Potter. Maybe I'll do my shopping in the Southside next weekend, and catch it there.

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.

I watched a couple of fun movies tonight, Better Off Dead and Grosse Pointe Blank.

Better Off Dead was a hilariously painful reminder of all things bad about the eighties, from the hair to the clothes to the music, and the bizarro world approach to high school was scarily appropriate.

Grosse Pointe Blank, which is about an assassin dealing with his high school ten year reunion, made me realize that I'm actually closer to my twentieth than my tenth h.s. reunion. Yikes! But the movie has a great cast, awesome soundtrack (and, you know, lots of mayhem and blood and violence) and is lotsa fun.

Well, it's after midnight and I'm supposed to get up early to go jogging of all things. Yep, I'm giving the running another try. Despite the fact that it's on the road (ouchie painful hard unyielding surface) I'm feeling surprisingly good and the sore shins I had from trekking around town last week have even gone away. Wow!

I saw Batman Begins with P and Mr. P today. We all really enjoyed it. The pacing seemed a little weak at points, leading me to think that the movie was nearly over about half way through, but other than that it seemed very solid.

For some reason that I no longer remember (possibly a negative comment in the early press or something like that), I wasn't sure about Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne but I think he did a fantastic job. P asked me if he was in anything else and I couldn't think of anything. Turns out he played Laurie in Little Women, with Wynona Ryder. (I always had a soft spot for Laurie -- Meg was so unfair to him and I always kind of thought he was settling with Amy.) He was also in American Psycho, Shaft and Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Apparently he's been around for awhile, lol.

The theater we went to is in North Conway, which is nearly an hour away, and is located in something that may have been a mall, once upon a time long, long ago. Now there are only about four or five stores in the entire building, with many empty storefronts. The theater itself was very small, but the seats were comfy and no one sat in front of me, so that's all that really counts. I was hoping for a Serenity trailer but no joy there. The obligatory War of the Worlds trailer, as well as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the Dukes of Hazzard (that one I'll wait to see on DVD, thank you very much).

/ramble

Well, you've spoken (or at least polled) and I'm taking your advice. First I went for a nice long walk in the fresh air and sunshine, earlier this afternoon, when it was nice and sunny out (now it's grey and cloudy). I had to remove all the yard sale signs I'd posted on phone poles and such, on Friday. One of our neighbors warned us that the city had recently passed a new ordnance or something that gives them the right to fine us up to $300 a day if we leave our signs up past the date of the event. It made for a nice walk, probably close to three miles all told.

When I got home, I gave in and watched the last few episodes of Angel. I have now made my way through all three series helmed by Joss Whedon. I must say that Firefly is my favorite, hands down. I liked Buffy and Angel, but I love Firefly. *bg*

Now I'm trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to come up with something for the hobbit_ficathon moving challenge before settling in to watch one or more of the original Star Wars movies.

Speaking of which, I went to see Episode III last night with eve11 and her boyfriend, D. Afterwards we entertained ourselves by ripping the movie apart, criticizing the directing, acting and writing (the dialogue stunk badly and the plot was kinda holey) but we all admitted that we enjoyed it nonetheless. I think it was the best of the three and it was entertaining but I agree with pumpkinescobar's grade of C+. Maybe B- but that's debateable.