The Diana in Winter

How come it took me 27 years on the planet for someone to tell me about this movie? It’s one of the most amazing films I’ve ever seen! Seriously, if you’ve never seen The Lion in Winter, go out and rent it right this instant. Like, tonight. Brave the snow or whatever. Dialogue like I’ve almost never seen. And written by William Goldman’s brother James and wow, so much talent in one family… see if you can recognize how many times it slipped into iambic pentameter.

We rented it because they quote from it at one point on vintage The West Wing, and we figured that if Aaron Sorkin thought it had good dialogue, it was worth checking out (though I still don’t understand his obsession with Gilbert and Sullivan).

In other news, yesterday I polished off that Judy Blume essay. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s what Jennifer was looking for! I saw this description of some of the other stuff she’d been receiving on her blog and wondered if I wasn’t getting personal enough with it…

Finally, another dud of a TV-show-on-DVD-from-Netflix experience. Sometimes, I think, you can agree that it was cancelled for a reason. I fear we were spoiled by our fabulous Firefly and Joan of Arcadia experiences. Wonderfalls wasn’t too bad, but Tru Calling — man, its dialogue is like the opposite of The Lion in Winter. I had to turn it off because my eardrums started bleeding. The plots were pretty ridiculous, too. Like the one where two fully suited up and oxygen tank-bearing fireman hold Tru back while a completely non-suited, non equpped fireman runs into a burning building. Or the one where a telemarketing company lets some girl in jeans wander all over their office. Or the one where the same girl in jean convinces some big-time corporate lawyer that she’s been sent by a four star hotel in person to discuss a problem with his reservation. I can’t throw my television against the wall, but I sure as hell want to. Ugh, seriously, skip it. I heard it gets better when they add Jason Priestly to the cast… as if that shouldn’t have given me a clue, right? Actually, I kinda like the Priestmeister. And it can’t possibly make it worse. Sailor Boy and I are thinking of watching it with the volume turned down, because… well, Eliza Dushku. Very very easy on the eyes. And she runs a lot. It’s like Baywatch in that respect.

Another recent TV-show-on-Netflix dud was House. People have been raving about this show, so we thought we’d try it out, and the plot are interesting and all, but it’s like CSI on the living, and I never really liked the CSI format. Too structured for me. It’s like you know how well something’s going to work and whether or not it will make something worse depending on what commercial break you’ve reached. Plus in every episode they seemed to have this completely random need to always, always always show the patients getting a very very painful spinal tap. The producers are obsessed with filming needles. It’s like the gore they show on Nip/Tuck. Is that shit strictly necessary? House himself was funny though. He’d really liven up ER, I think.

Any recs for TV shows I should be watching on DVD? (I’ve got LOST, btw). Should I finally catch up on Battlestar Galactica? My brother’s a big fan and I tried watching with him, but that episode right at the beginning where the robot people figure out how to track the hyperjumps and no one can sleep or eat or anything because they have to keep jumping every half hour? Yeah, that was the part where I figured that the humans were completely outclassed and the show was too depressing for me. But people keep telling me that I a) look like Starbuck and b) have to see this show, have to have to, have to, so I might have to brave it again.