Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Seen any good movies lately?

It would take a pretty special movie (maybe a new Christopher Guest Mockumentary) to get us out to the theater these days; we watch almost everything on Netflix including most television programs. TiVo would be nice, but we don't have cable and get just a few crummy stations plus local PBS over the air. We aren't big TV watchers anyway, so it works out well for us-- not only is it "free" but we can watch DVD's at our own pace, delivered to the door by Netflix, without commercials or other interruptions like phone calls at critical moments in Masterpiece Theater! The only downside is we're months behind the rest of the country with network shows like Madmen, Deadwood, Weeds etc. until they come out on DVD.

On the other hand, PBS publishes their DVD's immediately, like the new Ken Burns National Parks series we're laboring through right now. I say "laboring" because this one is classic Burns. You know what I mean if you've watched his endless series: mesmerizing in a boring way, with a heavy voice-over and filled with corny sound tracks and still photos like the one below. Great for zoning out on a work night.
As for real movies, this weekend we watched Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep playing a wonderful and believable Julia Child. Is there anything this woman can't do? The movie had everything for me: cooking, blogging, writing, period settings, grown-up relationships. I think John liked it too, although it isn't the type of movie a man would admit being crazy about :-)

Amy Adams (below) plays Julie Powell, who cooks all the recipes in Julia Child's first book, and blogs about it nightly.

2 comments:

  1. R and I have not been to the movies in years - oops actually we saw Hitchcock's "Spellbound" with some friends who had extra tickets for the CAPA Summer Series. But interestingly, we are almost 180 different because we have DirecTv; no choice in the holler. I cannot count our DVDs and hardly watch them with all the movie choices through the ether. But we do not watch most of the tv programming these days. I should say "I" because R watches tv only sporadically, although she has become hooked on the Dog Whisperer and some other programs that will go unmentioned.

    I would like to see J&J; the reviews were quite positive.

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  2. As for regular network TV, there may be lots on, but little worth watching. And, you have to endure the commercials...I'll take DVD's!

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