March has arrived! Or will tomorrow, anyway. My Mom used to say In Like a lion, out like a lamb, so the end of March should be nice here. We’re getting ice pellets in my part of the world.
I’m in the middle of Penelope with Christina Ricci. It is OK. I really like Ricci and she is one of my current Dirty-old-man crushes. I think she is one of those who act because she likes to and doesn’t worry about the money - she seems to pick and choose parts that are off-the-wall and a little out there. I have been watching this for over a week, as I usually only watch DVD while I’m on the eliptical and the weather has been so nice I’ve been walking outside this week. At least tomorrow I’ll have a chance to finish, eh?
I’m hoping to watch at least some of the movies on this Alfred Hitchcock multi-disc thing a friend got me. It’s mostly his pre 1940’s movies, which I’m not too familiar with.
Yesterday I watched two Titanic movies (the big one from 1997 and the one with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck from 1953) and Dr. Zhivago. Funny how you can watch movies you’ve seen before and still hope they’ll end differently.
My only real complaint about the 1997 Titanic is having Jack and Rose trapped below deck twice. And Rose’s survival – I don’t know how long she was floating on that piece of wood, but she was soaking wet in frigid water and it’s really hard to believe she made it.
*Outsourced *- When his call center is outsourced to India, an American sales manager travels to a small Indian town to train his replacement. Culture clash ensues. Not a great movie, but it was charming and funny in spots, and the scenery was beautiful. I enjoyed it.
The Visitor - A lonely widowed professor (Richard Jenkins) returns to his apartment in NYC to find a young illegal immigrant couple living there, victims of some kind of real-estate scam. He invites them to stay, and the professor gets caught up in the drama of their lives. It’s a quiet, simple little movie, very enjoyable.
I re-watched October Sky with my kids recently, which is a great movie.
I’ve also started watching Showtime’s Dead Like Me. I’m about four episodes into the first season, and I like it pretty well.
Finished Penelope. I enjoyed well enough. It was very sweet in parts. I’m not sure if it was intended for adults or kids, or what. I don’t know that I would have been happy to have seen it in the theater, but it was OK for a rental.
Just wanted to pop in say that was me, and I’m sorry for locking it in the first place. I misread the title of the thread and thought it was a duplicate of another. I meant to post a mea culpa once I unlocked it, but I got busy doing something else. So, sorry for the confusion.
These threads just do not garner attention like the *reading *threads. Is it because we as dopers are bigger readers, or because we are more likely to open a new thread for a new movie than we are a new thread for a new book?
Just finished The Contract, a mediocre action film with John Cusack and Morgan Freeman. I didn’t hate it, but wouldn’t recommend you go watch it.
Just started the Condemned. I suspect I will repeat the above two sentences when I finish it.
I finished watching the “I, Claudius” miniseries a few days ago. I’ve watched a few episodes of “The West Wing” as suggested by numerous dopers, and it’s pretty damned snazzy, but I keep getting distracted by the shiny internets.
It may reflect the time commitment in a book vs. a movie. It takes, usually, at least four or five hours to read a book (basing that on 250-300 pages and an average page a minute rate – either one of which estimates may be way off), and an hour and a half, maybe two hours to watch a movie.
Thus, a) I want credit for the larger time commitment, and b) I want to help my fellow readers choose good books/avoid bad books for their time commitments.
I just finished S4 of Alias, which isn’t great, but is just good enough to keep me watching. I wish I’d started withLa Femme Nikita instead, which I understand is better. oh well.
Also:
Glory, decent middlebrow entertainment. Denzel Washington was very charismatic, Mathew Broderick was appropriate for his character.
Versus. Yakuza v. Zombies. Kind of like a Japanese version of an early Peter Jackson movie. Highly recommended if that’s the kind of thing you like.
I’m about to start S4 of Doctor Who and S2 of Torchwood.
What did you think of I, Claudius? I can’t look at John Hurt without seeing him as Caligula.
I haven’t watched anything interesting lately. Those six Battlestar Galactica episodes on my DVR are hanging over my head. I’m unhappy with the show now, but I hate not to watch the final season since they are ending it.
Still watching The X-Files with my son. We’re up to season 4. He likes them more than I thought he would. They are getting more disturbing this season - I’ve made him skip two or three episodes.
Watched three episodes of the Ricky Gervais series Extras last night, based on recommendations in a recent “TV on DVD” thread, and was underwhelmed. There’s something about “these are really unpleasant people” comedy that doesn’t work for me.
I watched a movie last night called Lars and the Real Girl. I forget where I got the recommendation, but based on the description (“A delusional young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the Internet”) I was expecting something like a slapstick comedy. Instead it’s a very sweet little comedy/drama about how the family and friends of this lonely, disturbed man try to help him. It was a very pleasant surprise.
Oh, I just did a search, and **twickster **mentioned it in the January thread.
I kept expecting it to get really weird, then about halfway through I realized that wasn’t the direction they were going at all, and I relaxed. It’s a sweet ending, but:
[spoiler]I don’t think I could date somebody who had experienced that kind of intense, prolonged delusion. Love them as a friend/brother/co-worker, yes, but not date or marry them.
And this is maybe only the second movie I’ve ever seen, after Fargo, where a woman begins the movie pregnant but does not deliver the baby before the end.[/spoiler]
