And, no, I’m not talking about the Giants/Packers game, though I will get to that in a few moments. I’m referring to the gratifying conclusion to The Amazing Race. As I intimated before, it was a rare situation where all three teams were worthy of winning the $1 million, but I was secretly hoping that the team that actually won would win. I enjoyed watching Phil’s behind-the-scenes videos (on cbs.com), because I’m always intrigued by how these shows work and I like to hear about incidents where they run into problems—like the fact that Phil’s luggage was lost three times on the race and they got lost trying to find the camels in Africa.
We watched the second half of the Giants/Green Bay game. The owner of the local bagel shop where we eat breakfast is a Brooklynite and a big Giants fan. On Saturday, he said in jest that he was wagering the shop on the outcome of the game, so we were curious to find out if the shop would still be there this morning or if it would be a cheese shop. It was a very exciting game, even for people who don’t watch much football.
Also watched a few movies this weekend. I met Toby Jones from The Painted Veil on the set of The Mist so I was curious about this one, and Ed Norton and Naomi Watts sealed the deal. A very well done film with heroic and tragic moments. Very nice to watch but it didn’t leave us with much to talk about afterward, for some reason. Then we queued up Paris, je t’aime which is an anthology movie. A bunch of directors from all over contributed five-minute movies about different arrondissements of the City of Lights. The cast was as eclectic as the array of directors, and the individual styles as well, and yet it all blended together nicely. Among the recognizable names in the cast: Elijah Wood, Nick Nolte, Juliette Binoche, Ludivine Sagnier, Willem Dafoe, Gena Rowlands, Marianne Faithful, Natalie Portman, Steve Buscemi, Gerard Depardieu and Ben Gazzara.
We tried to watch Volver but the DVD had a defect, and so did the replacement, so we’re stuck in the middle of the scene where Penelope Cruz’s character is singing for the wrap party. We’ll have to track down another copy for next weekend.
I finished The Painter of Battles yesterday and will have a review up at Onyx sometime this week. I picked up another Ross Macdonald novel, The Barbarous Coast. I didn’t get much writing done over the weekend, but was back at the keyboard this morning and got another 1000 words in and completed another chapter.
