We watched August Rush on-demand on Friday evening. A cute fable of a story, with Robin Williams in an interesting Faginesque role. It’s a dreamy movie almost completely detached from reality, but charming all the same. We rented The Jane Austen Book Club on Saturday and loved it. A passing familiarity with Austen’s novels, characters and themes definitely enhances appreciation of the film, but the ensemble cast is terrific. Kathy Baker (from Picket Fences), Amy Brenneman, Jimmy Smits, Maria Bellow, Emily Blunt, Maggie Grace (LOST) and Lynn Redgrave. Each of the female characters bears at least a passing similarity to an Austen heroine, and the addition of a male character to the book group complicates its dynamics nicely.
I finished and turned in the short story I’ve been working on for the past few weeks after a few more editing passes. On the final pass I was only tweaking a word here and there, which is usually my sign that I’m done for the time begin. I’m sure that if I left it alone for a few weeks and went back to it, I would change other things, but the story is due at the end of the month and I have a lot of other things to work on, so I submitted it. My list of stories in need of new markets was growing, too, so I got that more or less cleaned up, finding new places to try out three stories. I’ve only got one that’s lying fallow at the moment, a long crime story, and there are precious few markets for tales like that.
This month’s Storytellers Unplugged essay is up: The Sketch Artist. I also posted two new book reviews this morning: Comfortably Numb by Mark Blake (The Inside Story of Pink Floyd) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Swedish author Stieg Larsson.
I watched the reunion episode of Celebrity Rehab yesterday. The title is a little disarming, but the series on VH1 was very watchable, primarily due to the calm, cool demeanor of Dr. Drew Pinsky. He’s a very rational, level-headed guy who handled whatever the addicts threw at him. For me, one of the most alarming parts of the show was seeing how Jeff Conaway has changed since Taxi due to problems with pain killers after he injured his spine in Grease. He was barely recognizable as Bobby from that classic comedy. Dr. Drew is the kind of guy I’d like to sit down and chat with.
The outcome of the HoH on Big Brother was pretty amazing. The task was apparently much harder than it looked, especially for the bigger guys. Natalie hung in there forever, but I was amazed that James survived when he seemed so clearly in trouble an hour earlier. I guess spite trumps pain.
The Monday comedies are back. Yay!
