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Yesterday was a wash, really
I did drag myself out to the grocery in town, because it was the last day for coupons that they had sent me in the mail. And in the afternoon, I finally decided I had to get the sweeper out and try to get the understory of cat fur off the living room floor. It's definitely FAN TIME now, and blowing the fur around makes it stick to my sweaty skin, and that just makes me feel worse.
But, the sweeper overheated (um, yeah. Means I was working it too hard, with too much clogging the filter, so MY BAD!) and once that happens you have to give it a long time to cool down. Good thing I started with the corner where the armchair and fan are located. So the living room is only half-done, you can really see that line of demarcation.
So in the early evening I decided to watch some movies. I have seven DVDs home from the library, and I started with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, moved on to Bad Teacher, and ended the night with Unknown.
I have an extremely low tolerance for Tom Cruise, so I was hesitant to try Ghost Protocol. But, action adventure! Explosions! Preposterous physics! I love those things, so I decided to give it a try.
I will say that, as long as it was the action, I had no problems with Cruise in this. But, when they slowed the plot down and attempted to inject angst, and feeeeeelings, I found that irrational urge to slap his obnoxious, SQUINTY, smirky face rising up quickly. As for the action, well. On one level, it was very good and splodey. But, you know how there are action movies that suck you in, and you feel like it could happen? This was not one of those. Nor was it one where the filmmakers pretty much acknowledges that it's ridiculous, and play it tongue-in-cheek to that effect. Sadly, this meant that this qualified as one that was so unbelievably over-the-top that you just sat back and went, 'OK, this has now passed into the realm of unintentionally ludicrous"
So, yeah. Fun moments, none of which were from Mr. Cruise, but ridiculous. No, I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I have no need to ever watch it again.
The next two I had were ones I had cleaned when they were returned with complaints from the previous patrons. I probably wouldn't have chosen them to bring home, since I rarely watch much these days, but I know I would have wanted to see them if things were different in my life. So, yeah. I'll take them home myself to test them.
I need to say right off the top that the plot of Bad Teacher was obviously unrealistic. And it was overwhelmingly offensive to the teaching profession in general. BUT, I saw Cameron Diaz develop her character so subtly and slowly that it was a joy. Justin Timberlake had 'sanctimonious, shallow jerk' nailed beautifully, while Jason Segel made it clear that smart-ass doesn't have to equate mean, or pathetic. But even more fun was watching the excellent turns taken by the other, more minor characters. Seriously, I can't remember when I found the ancillary people in a movie get a chance to shine like they did here.
And then I watched Unknown. Liam Neeson is amazing, this movie was absorbing- to a point. Then I was getting impatient, because we were really seeing nothing to explain anything. For long, long stretches of plot, we were going nowhere. And then, when the Big Reveal happened, I just... I'm sure you could argue, perhaps there is research on this, but somehow the filmmakers failed to persuade me that a severe head trauma and 4-day coma could result in such a complete personality shift as to change an amoral mercenary assassin into a highly-principled, good man. So. I was left making the twisty-mouth expression of I DON'T BUY THIS. But it was a nice payoff, seeing the botany researcher holding his press conference to announce the new SuperCorn he developed, with all the data being made widely available at no charge to anyone in the world. Because, yeah, I had failed to really follow the plot thread about his research, so when I realized the bad guys were copying his files from his laptop, I was puzzled. It did, in fact, take Liam Neeson essplaining that killing off the researcher after stealing his research would mean someone could file patents on all of it and make billions of dollars in profit. So, final analysis? Eh. Not a waste of my time, don't need to see it again.
And in gas line repair news, they did not work on the problem Saturday. I did see that they moved the backhoe, which was a good thing- our streets are pretty narrow, and having that backhoe near the corner made it impossible for people at the stop sign to be sure no traffic was coming down the street. But when I was getting the groceries out of the car yesterday, the neighbor from the next corner down was walking past and stopped to ask me about the excavating. She said she was pretty sure the only reason the backhoe was moved was because the busybody loudmouth down the street complained to the village. And it was only moved as far as the parking lot behind the lodge in the middle of my block.
So I'm guessing they'll be at it bright and early tomorrow morning.
As for today, I have spent the morning lying in bed, trying to persuade myself to get up and go to CVS (another coupon to use that expires today). I finally dragged myself up to the shower and got my breakfast around 2. Not really sure I'll make it out to use that coupon.
But, the sweeper overheated (um, yeah. Means I was working it too hard, with too much clogging the filter, so MY BAD!) and once that happens you have to give it a long time to cool down. Good thing I started with the corner where the armchair and fan are located. So the living room is only half-done, you can really see that line of demarcation.
So in the early evening I decided to watch some movies. I have seven DVDs home from the library, and I started with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, moved on to Bad Teacher, and ended the night with Unknown.
I have an extremely low tolerance for Tom Cruise, so I was hesitant to try Ghost Protocol. But, action adventure! Explosions! Preposterous physics! I love those things, so I decided to give it a try.
I will say that, as long as it was the action, I had no problems with Cruise in this. But, when they slowed the plot down and attempted to inject angst, and feeeeeelings, I found that irrational urge to slap his obnoxious, SQUINTY, smirky face rising up quickly. As for the action, well. On one level, it was very good and splodey. But, you know how there are action movies that suck you in, and you feel like it could happen? This was not one of those. Nor was it one where the filmmakers pretty much acknowledges that it's ridiculous, and play it tongue-in-cheek to that effect. Sadly, this meant that this qualified as one that was so unbelievably over-the-top that you just sat back and went, 'OK, this has now passed into the realm of unintentionally ludicrous"
So, yeah. Fun moments, none of which were from Mr. Cruise, but ridiculous. No, I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I have no need to ever watch it again.
The next two I had were ones I had cleaned when they were returned with complaints from the previous patrons. I probably wouldn't have chosen them to bring home, since I rarely watch much these days, but I know I would have wanted to see them if things were different in my life. So, yeah. I'll take them home myself to test them.
I need to say right off the top that the plot of Bad Teacher was obviously unrealistic. And it was overwhelmingly offensive to the teaching profession in general. BUT, I saw Cameron Diaz develop her character so subtly and slowly that it was a joy. Justin Timberlake had 'sanctimonious, shallow jerk' nailed beautifully, while Jason Segel made it clear that smart-ass doesn't have to equate mean, or pathetic. But even more fun was watching the excellent turns taken by the other, more minor characters. Seriously, I can't remember when I found the ancillary people in a movie get a chance to shine like they did here.
And then I watched Unknown. Liam Neeson is amazing, this movie was absorbing- to a point. Then I was getting impatient, because we were really seeing nothing to explain anything. For long, long stretches of plot, we were going nowhere. And then, when the Big Reveal happened, I just... I'm sure you could argue, perhaps there is research on this, but somehow the filmmakers failed to persuade me that a severe head trauma and 4-day coma could result in such a complete personality shift as to change an amoral mercenary assassin into a highly-principled, good man. So. I was left making the twisty-mouth expression of I DON'T BUY THIS. But it was a nice payoff, seeing the botany researcher holding his press conference to announce the new SuperCorn he developed, with all the data being made widely available at no charge to anyone in the world. Because, yeah, I had failed to really follow the plot thread about his research, so when I realized the bad guys were copying his files from his laptop, I was puzzled. It did, in fact, take Liam Neeson essplaining that killing off the researcher after stealing his research would mean someone could file patents on all of it and make billions of dollars in profit. So, final analysis? Eh. Not a waste of my time, don't need to see it again.
And in gas line repair news, they did not work on the problem Saturday. I did see that they moved the backhoe, which was a good thing- our streets are pretty narrow, and having that backhoe near the corner made it impossible for people at the stop sign to be sure no traffic was coming down the street. But when I was getting the groceries out of the car yesterday, the neighbor from the next corner down was walking past and stopped to ask me about the excavating. She said she was pretty sure the only reason the backhoe was moved was because the busybody loudmouth down the street complained to the village. And it was only moved as far as the parking lot behind the lodge in the middle of my block.
So I'm guessing they'll be at it bright and early tomorrow morning.
As for today, I have spent the morning lying in bed, trying to persuade myself to get up and go to CVS (another coupon to use that expires today). I finally dragged myself up to the shower and got my breakfast around 2. Not really sure I'll make it out to use that coupon.