Honestly, Saturdays are dull, if relatively pleasant, days for me, and the film review is about all I've got. Other than the bizarre snowstorm this morning, which came and went in 15 minutes, tops, and the cold wind blowing out there. Get this: the route that the girls took on Thursdaty night to get to Toronto, i.e., through western New York state, was battered by horrible winds all day Friday, closing schools and businesses. If I had begged them to wait and go during the day, and if they had listened -- never likely, of course -- they would have been travelling right through it. I wouldn't be surprised if the NY Thruway was actually closed on Friday as well. It's a strange little universe we're living in here.I set the various machines to talk to each other this morning while I went out and about to the supermarket and so on, and so movie #1, which was Twelve Angry Men, played and recorded while I wasn't home. I have seen this any number of times; I just wanted a recording of it, so I let that one go. I'll have to remember a strange Twelve Angry Men story to tell another time, maybe tomorrow.
Then I put on The Awful Truth, which I've heard is the classic screwball comedy of the 1930s. Despite my Cary Grant love and Irene Dunne enjoyment, I did not so much care for this one. Tooooo long. The dog was cute, though.
Then, omg, Watch on the Rhine. It was written by Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, and though it was worth watching, it teetered over the top from time to time. It did wring the occasional patriotic tear, however. Paul Lukas won an Oscar for playing a devoted anti-Fascist. He was, in fact, very good, and not overdone. Bette Davis, on the other hand ....
I was looking for something light, but all I had left was The Enchanted Cottage, which I'd seen before but not for some time. Well, I really enjoyed watching this one, the story of two "homely" people -- their word -- who find love in a New England seaside cottage and are thereafter beautiful to each other. There's a little more to it than that, but it was a good little romance/fantasy to watch.
Now? Now I've got Back to the Future on, which I have seen about a skibillion times because there's very little that R loves more than the whole Back to the Future trilogy. When the girls were little, the Hubs recorded the sound of the film onto a cassette for them, and they would listen to it every night when they went to sleep.
Oh, I have, in fact, watched a bit of the Olympics here and there, if only for amazement value. Actually, the only sleep I got at all on Thursday night was when I put mistakenly put it on in the hope that I might watch some Conan O'Brien, but of course there was only people speeding down icy chutes instead. I simply do not get a lot of what's going on at the Winter Olympics. To whit:
- Ice dancing -- How is this a sport? I can see that it's an activity that takes a lot of ability and practice, and that it's pleasant to watch, if you like that sort of thing. But what makes it a sport?
- Skeleton -- How did anyone ever even come up with the idea for this one? And how did they ever get anyone to do it?
- Curling -- Forgive me, anyone in Canada, but I just do.not.get.this. It's a game, yes. Perhaps it is enjoyable to play, I don't know. But once again: a sport? How is this a sport? It's shuffleboard on ice, no? Does ice make it a sport? Why?
Oh, I've said this before, but I just don't think the Olympics are the same without Jim McKay. As soon as they went to NBC, it started to suck. And is it true that it's an NBC thing to say that these are the "Torino" Olympics, because the actual name of the city is Turin? It sure says Torino all over the place there. How did this one happen?
