Is There Anything As Still As Sleeping Horses?

Ever since I first saw a movie being shot (December 2003) if I make an active effort to pull myself out of the story, I can find even the most banal crap engaging by watching the filmmaking. Last October I spent a night watching both "You've Got Mail" and "Runaway Bride" all the way through for the second time on this premise. Well, also on the premise that watching the TV is more fun than getting work done, but still.

Couple this with the fact that I've started reading novels again, and so am a much more discerning viewer when it comes to story, again. Back to my old snobbery, in many ways, though I have also decided (temporarily, undoubtedly) that literature is bilk and if Saul Bellow can't get me interested in the first ten pages I'm sure as hell not going to stick around for another five hundred and ninety. Narrative delight or nothing, boyo.

My movie reviews are as follows:

"What About Bob", which of course I've seen before, is fairly bad, especially Drefus's histrionics, although the lines "All I want is some peace and quiet" "I'll be quiet" "I'll be peace" still make me laugh out loud, particularly the way good old Bill laughs in the pillow. He laughs as hard and hysterically as I laughed when I was fifteen and my Mom asked me if pee and poo humour was still amusing to me.

"Ordinary People" is very good.

"Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason" despite the pink and purple accents on the cover is really not good. To accomplish dry British humour, engage dry Brits. Though Bridget running with giant boobs in her silly shoes was funny. The Thai prison scenes were uninteresting except for how all the Thai people kept calling her "Be-shit". Now, the A&E "Pride and Prejudice", that is a funny, funny show. "Shelves in the closet: happy thought", the horses rearing up outside when Mary Bennet sings at the ball, that's courtship humour. The point is not that the Brits are willfully stodgy, but that they don't know how to be anything but. Except of course for Ian Wright (wow, check out the hilarious instance of incorrect spelling on this page).

"Bubba Ho-Tep". Whatever points it loses in dragging a little, it makes up with many of Elvis's lines, particulary, re: finally feeling the smallest movement in his elderly penis: "Just the tinest flutter, like a pigeon having a heart attack". Also notable: Ossie Davis's JFK's delivery of the line: "Wow" re: Marilyn Monroe in the sack. Also, fine sound editing on the wheelchair, folks.

Also, I want to marry the man who wrote that story.

But only after I marry Bill Calahan.