What an unusual Christmas week we had. It was so warm, we had to turn on the air conditioner for a couple of days. There were high temperatures in the eighties and overnight lows in the seventies.
We celebrated a day early, because of family travel reasons. Christmas Day evening we walked through the neighborhood to see all the lights. I think I like these new laser gun star projectors. Plug it in, point it at the house and shazam–lights everywhere. The first time I saw one, I thought it was a net of lights. Then I realized that there were even lights in the surrounding trees. It’s a cool effect.
The weather broke on Sunday, dropping thirty degrees during the daytime amid a heavy round of storms. Nothing near as bad as the tornadoes 200 miles to the north in Dallas, or the foot of snow at the panhandle, though. Now it’s back to “normal” winter weather, and the heat is on again. We were even able to run the fireplace last night.
We’ve seen a few movies over the past week or so. We all went to The Force Awakens last Wednesday, and had managed to avoid all spoilers so it was a thrilling experience. My first observation to my son-in-law and daughter was one that seems to have bothered a lot of people: the number of parallels between it and A New Hope. I didn’t mind them that much; it was just an observation. I really liked Rey. Two of her early scenes stood out. First was the one where she was being mugged for her droid. Finn starts moving toward her to help but sees she has things under control and just shrugs and leaves her to it. Then her insistence that he stop taking her hand. Fiercely independent. Even crusty old Han Solo liked her. I think I know who she’s supposed to be, or who we’re supposed to believe she is. Looking forward to the next installment.
Yesterday we saw Joy, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Deniro and a host of others, including Bradley Cooper. It’s about a high school valedictorian whose life is derailed by her family and she spends years toiling in obscurity. She was always creative but stifled. It’s built on the base of the Cinderella fairy tale, with camera angles and characters drawn from Roald Dahl, including a mother who almost never gets out of bed. The mother watches soap operas all the time, and a fictional soap opera created for the movie stars all sorts of old soap opera stars, including Donna Mills and Susan Lucci. Joy’s home situation is dysfunctional to the max. Her ex-husband lives in the basement and, later, so does her father (DeNiro) after his latest break-up. She has two kids, a “wicked” half-sister (Elizabeth Rohm) and a live-in grandmother, who’s the only one who supports her. She gets an idea for a revolutionary invention and meets up with Bradley Cooper, president of the new QVC shopping channel.
It’s a difficult movie at times, because the hits just keep on coming and every piece of news comes with an even worse follow-up. Finally, the audience’s patience is rewarded with some terrific scenes at the end. This is entirely Lawrence’s movie and I can only watch her in awe of her ability to internalize and externalize all this stuff, realizing that she’s four years younger than my daughter. I sincerely hope she manages to maintain an even keel in her personal life because she has greatness in her future. Heck, in her present.
Last night we watched the Doctor Who Christmas special, which was fun and entertaining. Lots of great gags with the head in a bag, and the Doctor getting to pretend to see the inside of the TARDIS for the first time. Then we watched Windtalkers from 2002, the Nicholas Cage movie about the Navajos who learned to communicate over open frequencies to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific. It was a mediocre film, but has some good supporting performances from Mark Ruffalo, Christian Slater and Noah Emerich (The Americans). Probably would have been better with someone with more acting chops than Cage in the lead role. Even Adam Beach looked good by comparison, and he’s a stiff actor at the best of times. Some good battle sequences, though.
