personal

This day just makes me sixth

Today I watched the first episode of American Horror Story and The Hangover, both of which were rather disappointing. The difference, of course, is that I basically expected AHS to be bad, since the batcrap insanity of its awfulness was the main (and maybe only) selling point of the whole endeavor. I have co-workers who watch it religiously, but I don’t know that any of them would argue that the show is good. Tonally, the pilot episode was a little like if David Lynch had decided to direct a sitcom. Then again, I started to deeply appreciate the awfulness of last year’s Happy Town, so maybe I’ll continue watching. And rumor has it that when the show returns next year, it will be with all new stories and characters — some played by the same actors this year. So even if I absolutely hate hate it…

This is what I’m telling myself, anyway.

The Hangover, on the other hand, was just disappointing. For such a big hit, full of ostensibly funny people, it’s kind of a shambling, only sporadically amusing mess. I wouldn’t call it bad, but partly because it never really works itself up to be much of anything.

I also did a little work on the Kaleidotrope website, but I’m still trying to figure that out.

Thursday various

Taking the fifth

Day five of my vacation, and I have to admit, I finally broke down and briefly checked my work e-mail. Of course, then I went and saw the new Mission Impossible movie, so it’s not like it was all work for me today. I also read a little, wrapped some Christmas presents, and then this evening watched another movie: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Which, amazingly, I’d never seen before. It’s not perfect, and the effects sure are dated, but it’s genuinely quite entertaining. No spoilers, even some thirty years later but that ending must have blown Trekkies’ minds back in 1982.

Oh, and Ghost Protocol is pretty good, too. Well staged action and at least as good as the one right before it…which, actually, I only barely remember. (Say what you will about Brian de Palm’s muddled first outing, it’s memorable.) Aside from some really annoying technical glitches in the theater — a dark screen for almost twenty minutes, then a picture with no sound, and then trailers superimposed on the screen during the last five minutes — the movie was quite fun.

And that was…Wednesday, right? Yep, a decent enough day.

Going fourth

Another terrifically unexciting day. A trip to the post office, a trip to the bank, then capping the evening with Dial M for Murder, which is delightful, if by the end just a little silly, in its convolutions and deceptions.

Just two short weeks left in this vacation. Where does the time go?

Day three

Out of the weekend and into the proper start of my vacation, today was something of a lost day, actually. I didn’t do much more than watch a few episodes of 30 Rock and The Vampire Diaries. (I’ve never been good about keeping up with the former, and I’ve heard some good things about the latter, though I’m not quite sold on it just yet.)

This evening, before dinner, I took the dog to the vet to have a chronic ear infection looked at. And then, after dinner, I watched Conversations With Other Women. It’s an interesting movie, not quite what I expected, and if I’d been made aware of the fact that it’s a split-screen, following a long conversation between Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter from different angles and moments, I had forgotten that. As Tasha Robinson writes:

The effect is distracting, but it’s also strikingly intimate and voyeuristic, like studying a series of X-rays taken from all sides of a subject’s body.

Which makes it sound, by the end, much less appealing that it really is. The two leads, who are on camera for most of the running time, which is really just the two of them talking and flirting and remembering, are quite good and good together.

That was Monday, anyway.