An interesting experiment: C.S.I. and Two and a half Men are swapping writers for this week’s episodes. The trailer for tonight’s comedy looks interesting but I’m wondering how the comedy guys are going to do on a techie show.
Today it’s raining like it hasn’t rained here for a long time. We’ve had promises of rain off and on for many days during the past couple of weeks, but this is the first time the weather has lived up to the promise. I read a statistical review recently that said if weathermen always predicted “no rain” for the last day of a seven-day forecast, their success rate would be better than trying to guess if it’s going to rain seven days out.
Fortunately, it was a wonderful weekend. We barbecued on the back deck both afternoons. Also watched a few movies:
Live Free or Die Hard: balls to the walls fun, featuring improbable exploits, the Mac guy from the Mac/PC commercials playing a (oh really?) computer geek, and a feisty daughter. It took me a while to figure out where I knew the bad guy from, but it was Timothy Olyphant who was Pete in Dreamcatcher. Check your brain at the door and enjoy the ride.
Love in the time of Cholera, starring Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men as a man who pines away for the love of his life for over fifty years until her husband dies. However, he doesn’t exactly live a celibate life, racking up over 600 conquests during that time, almost all of them brief flings. The guy is actually a little pathetic, waiting until he is in his 70s to truly begin his life. Other familiar actors include Hector Elizondo, Benjamin Bratt and Live Shrieber.
Miss Potter, a biopic about Beatrix Potter. A movie that belies the belief that you need to have conflict and tension to make a film. There is one unfortunate event, and Beatrix’s mother is contentious and disagreeable, but basically everything proceeds without hindrance from beginning to end. Still, it’s a charming movie, even if I did spend more time marvelling at Renée Zellweger’s accent than I should have.
We also watched the finale of Dexter last night. They did an interesting job of preserving much of the novel’s intent without being slavishly faithful to it. None of the prosthesis stuff appears in the book, nor does the romance between Deb and the prosthetics guy or the subplot involving Rita’s ex-husband. I thought they amped up the Doakes suspicion a lot at the end, more in line with the books than what was shown in the early episodes. And they also tamed down Dexter’s dithering over Debs at the end, which I guess is more in line with keeping him somewhat sympathetic. I liked the resolution of the season arc much better than what Lindsay did in the book, though.
