then she appeared

Today I woke up late and did an awful lot of nothing. Read a book, read the internet, had lunch, ate a couple of truffles (the godiva kind, not the kind pigs find!), then finally got off my arse and went out with Patrick — we took my car so I could play some more with my new GPS, which is my new fave tech toy evar! We went to see Slumdog Millionaire and both really liked it. I think my favorite bit (that wasn't encased in human waste) was the dancing during the end credits, but it was all pretty great. Danny Boyle is rapidly becoming one of my favorite directors: Sunshine, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, even A Life Less Ordinary. I guess I really need to rent Millions and Shallow Grave.

And if you haven't seen Sunshine and you like space drama with some surreal horror tossed in, you're missing a great movie.

I am apparently all about movies this holiday season. Next up from Netflix: The Old Man and the Sea, A Mighty Wind, and for some reason Netflix shipped me an extra movie, Wall-E, which I've seen but bears watching again. And they still owe me one, so Croupier is next, closely followed by Grey Gardens and Veronica Guerin. This should be a pretty fun few days! I have one more week of vacation and I intend to get a lot more reading done, too. Yay, vacation!

Taking vacation this week. Haven't had more than the occasional sick day off since Christmas, so this is well overdue.

Yesterday I was the queen of sloth, sleeping late, reading, surfing the net, buying lunch at the deli, then hanging out with Patrick. We saw Indiana Jones and the....really long title. Afterward P commented that there was so much Indy porn in the movie (between the music, the whip, the hat, the improbable chases, etc.), and I pompously pointed out that Friday night Neil Gaiman discussed that very concept at the lecture I saw, and how he'd come up with a definition of genre that basically requires certain set pieces in order to make the fans of that genre happy -- there's a difference between reading a book set in the west and reading a western. A western has cowboys chasing cattle rustlers, or roping cows, or riding the range, whatever. Whereas a novel set in the west might have some cowboys, too.

Anyway, however pompous you want to get, it was an Indy movie! And he didn't look too old! And it was really fun when Karen Allen showed up (but I must admit it was a little less fun before she showed up, Russians with bad accents notwithstanding).

Today, in honor of vacation, I peeled the plastic off some of the windows in the house and opened the windows! For you people who live in Texas and California and the south, you're all "you waited til now?" and I know you've had 80 degree days (and higher), but in my defense this was the first year in a long time that we have actually had a spring around here and it's been cold enough at night that it keeps the house cool during the day. Also, living with Mom as I do, I am subject to her old-lady metabolism, so while I probably would have opened my windows around April 1, here we are.

But today is a gorgeous day, and now that the windows are opened the cat is all riled up wanting to go out. I need a plan for the rest of my day...

Netflix just announced that the Watch Instantly program is now unlimited (assuming you're a subscriber, of course, and assuming you're not one of the lowest-tier subscribers). Watch Instantly is just what it sounds like — it allows you to stream a movie to your PC and watch it immediately, for no additional charge beyond your subscription. I thought it was a cool idea when they rolled it out last year, but found that the selection was somewhat...lacking. No new releases, no full seasons of tv shows (they'll let you watch MOST, but not all, of a season), and just not that much that I'd be interested in, so after watching one movie, I didn't use it again.

Today, reading the announcement, I thought maybe the selection might be a little better. They now claim "Over 6,000 full-length movies and TV episodes". I think when I tried it before it was something like 3,000. That's gotta be better, right? And hey, I just got a giant shiny new widescreen monitor that faces my bed! And it's my day off! And a snow day! The heavens have aligned correctly for me to finally try it out.

I've found a few titles I will indeed watch. Pan's Labyrinth, This is England, Letters from Iwo Jima, a couple of tv series. But honestly? Not that much, still! Here's the Top 50. Why haven't they added more? The studios must be so locked into deals with iTunes that they're unable to do more at Netflix.

Today I tried to watch Walking Tall 2 (I wanted something on while I did laundry, sue me) — but it was in French! Then I tried House of Cards (the British tv series) but I wasn't in the right mood so I pended it for later. Then I found a sort of mixed Sherlock Holmes movie ("Sherlock: Case of Evil"), which was interesting and fun in spots, and stars the VERY cute James D'Arcy as a very young Sherlock, but lord, Vincent D'Onofrio was terrible as Professor Moriarty — laughable, almost (on the other hand, Richard E. Grant was a welcome bright spot as Mycroft Holmes. He needs to be in every movie, I think).

Finally I found something actually good: "Maxed Out," a documentary about the personal debt crisis in America. Lots of stuff I didn't know (watching GW Bush smugly sign the bill making it very hard for middle income America to file for bankruptcy was just infuriating, especially when they tell you that the bill was written by MBNA, who is Bush's top contributor...), some stuff I did know, and several heart-wrenching tales of woe. Overall very good, in a very depressing The Country Is Doomed kind of way.

Oh jeez. In writing this up it occurs to me that I'm not supposed to watch streaming television or movies because of the writer's strike. Ooops! In my defense, I haven't visited a network site or downloaded a thing from iTunes since the strike started. And I used to! But I wasn't thinking of Netflix...shoot! My mother the proud Union member will be very disappointed in me. I guess I'll stick to On Demand. Or reading! Reading is good. Reading supports writers. There you go. Go read a book.

Another entry in the so-bad-they're-almost-good SciFi Channel movies list. This time it's "Mammoth"; with Vincent Ventresca in the Corin Nemec role, 25-year-old Summer Glau playing his 16-year-old daughter, and Tom Skerritt totally slumming as crazy-old-coot-who-believes-in-aliens Grandpa.

But wait, there's more! Vinny (SciFi's "Invisible Man" series) is Dr. Frank Abernathy, a scatter-brained natural history museum director; his current obsession is a well-preserved wooly mammoth. When he accidentally signals the mother ship by drilling into the mammoth's butt and pulling out some kind of transmitter, mayhem ensues. The mammoth comes to life and becomes a, yes, mammoth-alien hybrid zombie, and runs amok in all the usual ways. And hello? Why WASN'T Corin Nemec cast in this movie? Was he too busy? They couldn't possibly have written the part with anyone else in mind.

Summer Glau is totally underutilized as Jack, who is supposed to be celebrating her 16th birthday, but is instead being neglected by her flaky scientist dad. She has a boyfriend (played by Cole Williams, Paul Williams' son (yes, THAT Paul Williams)) who convinces her to sneak out and go to a really dull rave. They do, and mammoth mayhem happens with predictable results. Her job? Looking upset. Running. Screaming. Pouting.

We lost count of the many many good movies that they referenced: Men in Black, the Blob, Night of the Living Dead, Addams Family, Jurassic Park, Signs, War of the Worlds; basically every SF movie there ever was -- meaning there wasn't a new or original idea in the whole movie. But it was cheesy fun, and I laughed a bunch. Since it was a Saturday night and we'd already gone out to the movies and had dinner, it was an acceptible way to spend a couple of hours.