It *must* be springtime in Northern Alabama! Plants are blooming, my allergies are on the rise, the temperature is tolerable, and the tornado siren got its first sounding yesterday afternoon!
Whatever it was it passed south of us and no damage was reported. We got a frog-strangler along with some hail for about 10 minutes then the sun came out.
What I'm Watching:
UP We finally watched Pixar's latest. Yes, it's terrific and deserved it's nomination with the rest of the Best Movie choices (it won best animated feature) but I was boo-hooing 10 minutes into the movie and plenty of other scenes set me off too.
I'd really like to see Pixar do a movie where a woman (or a female character) is the central character. I'm not complaining, really: I'd just like to see one. Yes, Boo, Dora and Elastigirl are awesome, but they weren't the central characters. I can't rank it yet with the other pixar movies because I don't know if I want to subject myself to that again any time soon.
Zombieland I've pretty much given up on zombie movies, but after an enthusiastic recommendation from Helly Jon and I gave this one a shot and we laughed ourselves silly. It's violent, but not grindingly so, and had some surprising warmth to it. That's about all it has in common with Shaun of the Dead, if you were wondering - the writers of the former freely admit they were inspired by the latter. Zombieland is as American as Shaun of the Dead is British and other than funny + zombies they don't resemble each other at all. Of course I loved and enthusiastically agreed with all of Columbus's 31 rules - I insisted on pointing out some of my own (to my husband's annoyance / amusement) one of which turned out to be a major theme: There's Safety in Numbers. Also: pretending to be a zombie as a prank during a zombie apocalypse is not a smart move.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: I've been loading up my Netflix instant queue with a bunch of these shows. For the uninitated, MST3K was an original program that was shown on the Comedy Channel (later Comedy Central) in the late 80's and early 90's. When it was cancelled it was picked up by SciFi and eventually ended in 1999. I was fortunate enough to catch it from the beginning.
The premise involved a janitor who was put aboard a space station by some mad scientists who would subject him to their evil experiments by making him watch a bad movie every week. In order to survive, the guy created some robots to keep him company. He and the robots would watch the movie and offer plenty of snark along the way. So that was the show: we watch a guy and his robots watch a bad movie.
It was a great show and I miss it. I'm glad that slowly but surely they are being released on dvd. Some of the best episodes are missing because of copyright issues and I hope they will be cleared up eventually. Like a lot of MST3K fans I had a lot of eps on tape, and like an idiot I lent them out.
Wow, it's been a while! I think Winter is finally on its last legs, and it's about time. We've managed to burn through a whole cord of wood this season (you yankees - quit laughing!). Jon and I got so good at building large fires we managed to melt our fireplace grate.
So I saw some of the Academy awards. I was tickled Christoph Waltz one best supporting actor - he was the best thing about Inglourious Basterds. I was glad they gave John Hughes such a great tribute - the Academy can occasionally get over it's ART facade and admit that they are a large part of pop culture and Hughes' movies had a large impact on people my age.
I was happy Katheryn Bigelow won best director. As for Hurt Locker winning best picture, I told my brother this: It is better than Avatar and Inglorious Basterds, but District 9 was a better movie (these are the only nominated movies I saw. Yes, I have yet to see the Pixar movie!). Hurt Locker and District 9 both had plenty of exploding humans, but Hurt Locker didn't have any Mecha.
No, really. I thought District 9 was a better movie. Still, I'm glad for Katheryn Bigelow. Hurt Locker is a really good movie, and in it she explores a subject she is very fond of: men. Me too, Katheryn; me too!
