I know we don’t see as many movies as we used to. There was a time when we would see most of the films nominated for best picture, and know the actors nominated in the best acting categories. Not this year. We were planning to see The King’s Speech a few weeks back, but got caught up with a late dinner and never made it. We did see Toy Story 3 on DVD though. I guess that’s our vote for winner – in every category.
Tag: movies
Last weekend I spent some time painting one of the hallways – it was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint – and I decided to plug in my iPod while I worked. Rather than listen to a random selection of Genius picks, I chose two albums to listen to in their entirety: Bonnie Raitt’s Nick Of Time, and Bruce Hornsby’s Scenes From The Southside. I had not listened to these in a long, long time, and playing them again made me remember what really good albums they are. Nick Of Time won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1990; Scenes From The Southside is Hornsby’s second release with The Range, and I’d always liked this album better than BHATR’s first album The Way It Is, and one song in particular, The Show Goes On is one of my favorites.
It was featured in the trailer for an early Leonardo DiCaprio movie, This Boy’s Life, based upon autobiographical tales by Tobias Wolff. I saw the movie in the theatre back when it was released in the early 1990’s, and although I loved the film I was disappointed that the song does not actually appear in the movie.
Here is the trailer:
We watched Julie & Julia the other night. It was OK – Meryl Streep is spot on as Julia Child, and Julia’s life in Paris and the realization of her passion for preparing French cuisine is the much more interesting half of the story, as I really had no empathy for Julie Powell’s story or her stunt to cook her way through the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Anyway, early last week I was channel surfing and found a program American Revolutionaries featuring directors on Ovation; it was profiling John Cassavetes, and some of the promo spots spotlighted Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Conversation, among others. It made me think about some really good directors and movies, and made me want to watch some of the great films I’ve never seen, as well as re-watch some of the films I’d seen years ago. I reserved American Graffiti and The Conversation from the local library, and watched them on Sunday and Monday nights, respectively. Today, I was browsing the IMDB site during lunch, and it occurred to me to check out the National Film Registry catalog, and it then further occurred to me to maybe conduct my own Julie & Julia challenge to watch every film currently registered in the NFR. I have no timeline set to accomplish this task, and don’t really know that it is doable, but it is interesting to think about giving it a try.
You can find the complete list of NFR films here.
I took W. to see Avatar 3D on Saturday. I’m not sure that he was too excited about actually seeing the movie (I guess he’s just not that aware of the movie at all, which is kind of a good thing, I guess) but I thought he might enjoy it anyway, so off we went over to Manville for the 12:30 PM showing. It was not bad – the story is OK, but the effect are pretty darn impressive. You can bet it will see a bunch of Oscar nominations this week.
I also updated a bunch of the kids’ book over on LibraryThing the other day – we’re finally near the end of cataloging every book that is worth cataloging. Also, I finally finished book 7 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had bought books 1 through 4 10 years ago, before W. was born, for my children to one day read. Sure enough, last year W. came across the books on his bookshelf and instantly fell in love with the stories. I bought the books 5 through 7 for him, which he devoured in no time, so I decided to read the books myself. They were sure enough entertaining, but it really wasn’t until the Goblet of Fire that I felt the story become interesting, to the point that I really wanted to know how it was going to end. Some things I figured out (like Severus Snape, for example) but even so, there were enough twisted along the way to make the overall series enjouyable. The problem is: what to read next!
This coming Saturday night, TFS/LFS is holding their slightly delayed 2008 Holiday dinner event; I get to accompany E. over to Morristown for an evening of dining at Arthur’s Tavern (ok, it’s technically in Morris Plains, but whatever…) So a great big thank you goes out to every person who financed a Toyota or Lexus in 2008 – I will be thinking of you while I enjoy my medium-rare steak and a large glass of Fetzer “Barrel Select” Cabernet Sauvignon. Of course, it was a down year for the auto industry in general and even Toyota brought out the red ink for this past quarter, so this does not quite compare to 2007’s Holiday Fest when we spent the weekend in Mystic, CT and took in some gambling at Mohegan Sun, again courtesy of all of those Toyota and Lexus buyers. Oh well, here’s to better times in 2009.
In the meantime, we’re trying to squeeze in a side-trip to the cinema after dinner, since it’s been like, I don’t know, maybe 5 years since we saw a movie in an actual movie theater alone,just the two of us (I think we saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean by accident, after intending to catch some other movie that was either sold out or we missed the showing, but Johnny Depp made it a pretty serendipitous viewing.) I’m leaning toward Slumdog Millionaire over in Chatham. Anyone have any suggestions?
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