I turned 52 yesterday. Or, as my wife likes to put it, I have a full deck for the first time. Now to start collecting those jokers.
The day got off to an early start with a 6 a.m. phone call from the Emergency Weather System warning of heavy thunderstorms, possible damaging winds and hail. Turns out all we got was a nice soaking rain for a few hours.
Issue 18 of the Lilja & Lou podcast contains an interview I did about my Stephen King review collection Twenty-First Century King for Cemetery Dance. It went live yesterday.
Had dinner out on Friday night and got home at around 8:30. As we were bidding our guests adieu, we heard a strange noise at the side of the house where our outdoor A/C compressor lives. It was a hot enough day that the A/C was running, even that late at night, and it sounded like there was something inside being batted around by the blades. A pine cone, I thought, or a piece of a branch. Turns out that it was a rodent of some sort. There weren’t enough parts left to identify it. Call it death by misadventure.
We saw Iron Man 3 on Saturday. We saw it in 3D, though not by design. That just happened to be the next showing after we arrived at the cinema. The 3D was subtle, adding depth to many scenes without being in your face, for the most part. The movie was good fun. Ben Kingsley was terrific as the villain. Some of the best scenes are the ones with him and Tony Stark meeting face to face. The kid was also a scene stealer, and that takes something when you’re going up against Robert Downey, Jr. Good to see Pepper Potts’ role expanded. I guess we missed out on some major developments by not having seen the Avengers movie. I’m not a big fan of superhero movies, as a rule, but I like this series. It has a wry and self-effacing sense of humor. Stark is a bit of jerk, but a likable enough one that he doesn’t get under your skin. It went a little over the top toward the end with all the suits, but I liked the payoff of the early scene where Tony has his remote control suit interact with Pepper. The Air Force One rescue scene is also pretty cool.
Last night we watched For Lovers Only starring Stana Katic from Castle as a former model who meets up with an old lover during a trip to Paris. Both of them are in relationships (apparently not happy ones), but they rekindle their affair and travel around France. It’s a bit like A Woman and a Man in style. It’s shot in black and white, and has snippets of subtitled French dialog, though it’s mostly in English. It’s almost entirely about these two characters and it’s shot in a dreamy fashion that makes their adventure seem surreal. The French Riviera scenery is breathtaking and the story is poignant. There’s a fair amount of sex. It’s available on iTunes.
I’m happy to see that the second season of Prisoners of War is coming out on Hulu. If you’re a Plus member you can watch all of the episodes now, but on the free channel they’re being released one per week. This is the Israeli series upon which Homeland is based. The entire first season (12 episodes) is there for free now.
We finished the sixth season of Lewis this weekend, so that only leaves us with three more episodes to go from season 7. I think I’ll tackle Orphan Black next, now that the season is over. I’ve been hearing good things about it.
