More weekend, more movies

So this was just a weekend for movies, I guess... Another couple of days, another couple of pictures. This was boosted by a trip to the library - holy cow, they have a lot more DVDs than I remember! They must be adding them all the time! Anyway, since I'm really into older films right now, it's perfect. I got a collection of Buster Keaton shorts that I can't wait to watch. Anyway...

Last night, my mom and I finished Agatha Christi's Death On The Nile, which was just plain fantastic. Not sure how much I got into this last night, but it has an amazing cast, and was such a classic old-movie murder mystery flick. Hercule Poirot (with his great mustache) is hilarious, and I hope to watch Mystery on the Orient Express next weekend. Anyway, it was great to finally find out WHO DID IT and wrap it up.

I was literally sitting through a lot of the movie just thinking "this is great, this is great." It had that combination of suave British/30s charm (though it was made in the 70s) and with such a great cast and melodramatic acting and filming... it was a real treat. I really recommend it!

Next up was To Catch a Thief, today... as something we happened to see on the shelf (Grace Kelly and Cary Grant! -- and Hitchcock!) and decided to use as a reward for me finishing homework and a last bit of fun to end the weekend.

So it was basically GREAT Grace Kelly. Wow, between her white and blue dresses, there was a bit of fashion-related drooling in this picture. Cary Grant was... very much as I know him to be. Very tan, very smooth (he would be a good James Bond!), and a very good reformed jewel thief. It had some great moments, though it wasn't one of Hitchock's most suspenseful films. It did inspire me to set a little goal, though not quite sure how likely this is to happen... It'd be really cool to see all of Hitchcock's movies either before the end of the school year or before next school year starts. They seem like films I should see (even though I don't particularly want to see Psycho or The Birds).

And then there's tonight... right now.. It's Disney Movie Night again in my dorm, something I found out about last weekend and attended for the first time last week (Hercules). In a different sense of older-movie traditions, MAN old Disney is great! I don't think I'll ever grow out of these movies and hope I can raise my own kids on them some day. The current Pixar or Shrek-type films just don't even hold a candle to the music and magic of Lion King, Aladdin, and ALL the rest!

But anyway, here I am with a group of people who know the words to Lion King by heart and have been singing along the whole time and... well, life is good.

I'm particularly excited about this week, though it's really the same as every other, with long Tuesdays and Thursdays, homework, general business... Anyway, there's something that makes it special: MORE MOVIES.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the movies we're watching in my film classes this week, PARTICULARLY Singing in the Rain, but also Fatal Attraction (which I just feel like I should see), and Fight Club (which I KNOW I need to see, even though I haven't). Anyway, on top of that, I have the Ian McKellen production of King Lear to supplement my reading for my British Literature class, and Shakespeare in Love because I saw it on the shelf and though I'd see if I have time to see it again.

Right, so there's another post that's very simple and probably not gramatically correct or fully spell-checked, but I really do want to start blogging more often. It's a good journaling experience. Cheers! :)

What do Fred Astaire, SNL, and Dan Brown have in common?

...They've all been a part of my weekend. I'm once again going to pick up my goal of blogging more frequently by chattering about what's recently been in front of me. They are three mediums, and certainly three very different pop icons, but between last night and this morning, they've all been in front of me.

I honestly don't know that I've ever seen a Fred Astaire movie. I'm a big Gene Kelly fan, so I may have seen Astaire in a movie with Kelly, but as far as the famed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers go, I don't know that they've ever actually crossed my path. Anyway, the recent abundance of oldie movies that I've been seeing in film classes have inspired me to keep it up on the weekends. Last week I watched Some Like It Hot, which I had heard of but certainly had to see it. I wanted to find out why it was being called the "best comedy of all time" by AFI. Anyway, this week, I grabbed Swing Time with Astaire and Rodgers off the library shelf. It was really quite sweet, in that old "swell romance" kind of 30's musical kind of way. And, man, can they dance. Once again I feel inspired to take tap lessons... Who knows, maybe I'll actually do it next summer. This week in my Intro to Film class, we are watching and discussing Singing in the Rain. I couldn't be more thrilled and I feel fairly certain it's going to make me want to see Anchors Away, another favorite, yet again. Anyway, that I know of, Swing Time didn't have any TOTALLY FAMOUS songs or dance numbers in it, although I can't say I really know what Astaire (and Rogers) are most famous for. Anyone know...? I guess there's the scene where he dances on the ceiling and walls, but are there any other pictures he did that are pegged on that "OMG how have you not seen ____" list?

Also, last night, my mom and I started watching Death on the Nile, a film based on an Agatha Christie novel and starring an amazing group of actors like Maggie Smith, Bette Davis, David Niven, Mia Farrow, Olivia Hussey, Angela Lansbury... and on and on. We haven't finished it yet, but the whole time we were watching the first half, I was just sitting there ABSOLUTELY loving every minute of it. More on that when I've seen the rest!

Anyway, after that came the wonderful weekly comedy fest that is Saturday Night Live. I was thinking back and I realized that i have seen absolutely every episode of SNL since around 2005 - the first episode I DVRd was when Catherine Zeta-Jones was hosting... yes, I still remember. So, yes, my family is a big fan of the show. We've watched actors and actresses come and go, the Weekend Update desk change hands, sat through skits with glazed eyes thinking 'this isn't funny,' and split our sides laughing. Last night was a good episode. It had a fabulously weird Samburg Digital Skit: Throwing things on the ground reminded me of the "punching people while eating" sketch that still makes me laugh. The host was Ryan Reynolds, although I can't say I saw him that much. It was great to see them using "what the....?" musical guest Lady Gaga, who, I must say, I appreciate in a new way after the episode. It also had the feel of a Season Finale, with celebrities popping up left and right. My mom and I were going "is that really Madonna?!" for about 10 minutes, and then it was Elijah Wood (who knows why), and Scarlett Johanson (no big surprise as she's married to Reynolds). The skits were funny, Seth's news was great, and I doubt I will ever forget Andy in a bubble outfit.

Oh, and Drew Barrymore and Regina Spektor next week... could it get any better? Drew is hilarious, and I absolutely LOVE Regina Spektor's voice.

So that was midnight last night - or rather, this morning. Anyway, when I woke up after a nice doze today, I decided to tackle the last 100 pages of Dan Brown's latest giant bestseller, The Lost Symbol. I feel a bit torn between the book, mainly between the fact that I have always like Brown's addictive writing (even the lesser known ones like Deception Point), that the man is simply an irresistible phenomenon of an author, that the book is about D.C. and the Masons (which I find really interesting)... and all the relentless teasing he's been getting lately. A prime example of this teasing is this article, which is really quite hilarious. However, I think I had that article's tone of voice a little too much in my head... to the point that I couldn't fully appreciate the book I had looked forward to and was enjoying. Anyway, I would give the book four stars out of five... it was interesting, but felt like it needed a little tightening up. It didn't have the urgency and pace of his other books, and got a bit too bogged down in the creepiness of the bad guy and the interesting-ness (I know that's not a word) of Robert Langdon. However, I really liked a lot of the points the book made, and found the information about Masons and Noetic Science particularly fascinating. It's always cool to learn some fun facts, like the bit about the recurrence of 13 on the US National Seal. Furthermore, there was one bit at the end (I don't think it really gives anything away, but here's a SPOILER warning just in case) that I want to remember, because it captures something very well:

Two heads are better than one... and yet two heads are not twice better, they are many, many times better. Multiple minds working in unison magnify a thought's effect... exponentially. This is the inherit power of prayer groups, healing circles, singing in unison, worshiping en masse. The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It's a hard-core scientific reality... and harnessing it has the potential to transform our world. This is the underlying discovery of Noetic Science. What's more, it's happening right now. You can feel it all around you. Technology is linking us in ways we never imagined possible: Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, and others - all blend to create a web of interconnected minds. [...] And I guarantee you, as soon as I publish my work, the Twitterati will all be sending tweets that say 'learning about Noetics,' and interest in this science will explode exponentially. (Brown, 504).

Yup, that's pretty much it. Articulate and interesting stuff. Feel free to comment on anything I've brought up. Cheers :)