movies

I've been watching a lot of movies the past couple of weeks. Older movies, some that I've been wanting to see, others that I thought I'd never bother watching. Our cable service started offering a "movies on demand" feature which is included with our digital service. It's been a nice treat to start and stop movies on my schedule. One of the things about watching so many movies is that you learn to take the good with the bad.

Last week I watched "Love Liza." I'd been looking forward to seeing it for a while and was not disappointed. It's not a "feel good" movie but it was (I thought) well written and the cast was strong. I always love Kathy Bates in whatever she does and Philip Seymour Hoffman is such a great actor and he's terrific in this tragic story of a man coping with the sudden suicide of his wife.

Friday afternoon, I watched "Down with Love." What a huge piece of crap. I know that this was supposed to be a tip of the hat to one of my all-time favourite films, "Pillow Talk" (I LOVE Doris Day & Rock Hudson). Sadly, it failed miserably. I could put a list together as long as my arm of things that were wrong about it not the least of which was the display of the Canadian flag (our maple leaf) in what's supposed to be 1962. The "new" flag wasn't introduced until 1965.

Last night, we watched a neat little piece of Canadian fluff called "The Last Casino." The film centers around three math students who are taught by their professor to count cards. The idea is that they'll raise enough money by playing black jack to dig him out of a financial hole. The professor was played by Charles Martin Smith (from American Graffiti). I don't think that anyone plays a nervous little man any better than he does. Overall, it was entertaining albeit, a smidgen predictable.

So, other than watching a bunch of movies and doing some laundry, we've done very little this weekend.

One thing that made me smile today: We're planning to see Sideways this afternoon. There are a bunch of movies that I'm really looking forward to seeing but none of them are playing here in Kingston yet (sad but true). Finally, Sideways is playing here and I'm sure it'll only last a week so we're hitting the matinee this afternoon.