Best Picture

Just now tuning in late to watch the Academy Awards, just now watching Argo win the Best Picture. This year we managed to see Argo, Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook and Lincoln before the awards, and Argo was my favorite of these. I still want to see Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour, and Les Mis.

Glad that Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor and Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress.

Netflix, Again

This is a copy of a letter I sent to Netflix via USPS. Apparently there is no easy way to find an email address for the company.

Documentaries

While H was spending a long weekend umpiring in Oklahoma City last weekend, I decided to get caught up a little bit on my Netflix streaming queue.  I watched five documentaries, three worth blogging about. My favorite one, Chops, is about a high school jazz band preparing for a major competition.  I wrote more about that one on my music blog on Monday, June 25.

Last year sometime I heard Kevin Clash on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me. He is Elmo's puppeteer, and when I saw that there was a documentary about him, I thought it would be worth watching. It most certainly was. Being Elmo is about as charming as you might imagine.

For some reason I had a documentary in my queue (perhaps it was suggested by Netflix, I'm not sure) entitled Bill Cunningham New York. Not really knowing anything about it except that Netflix thought I would rate it a 4, I started it up and then found out it was about the photographer for "On the Street" in the Sunday NY Times. These are the photos of people who are wearing similar kinds of clothing. Bill  Cunningham rides his bike through the streets of NY looking for style and taking photos on the fly.  I also recommend this film about an interesting character.

So, when the heat gets to you this summer, three recommendations for ways to amuse yourself.

More from Universal Studios

Here are a few shots from the driving tour we took at Universal Studios on Monday.

This is Boo Radley's house from To Kill a Mockingbird

Here is the Bates Motel from Psycho - the tall, crazy buildings in the back are from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

The house from Psycho 

A 747 Plane Crash from War of the Worlds 

You can see a video of the whole site here

Saturday in Claremont

This morning we finally hung up the three small reproductions of old Chicago posters in our dining room.

We made it out to the REI used equipment sale and got a great backpacking pack for Hal for a great deal.

Claire has posted pictures of her first few days in London here. (She is also linked from my picasa web photos page.)

This afternoon we may go see the new Coen Brothers movie - Burn Before Reading. And then again, we may watch The Station Agent on DVD which got better reviews.

Movies

Tonight I watched My Kid Could Paint That - a documentary about a 4-year-old painter named Marla Olmstead. It explored the questions about raising a gifted child (or exploiting one, or creating a fraud), and just how does one judge abstract art? It was somewhat interesting, but about 25 minutes too long. Sometimes I wonder if I should be a movie editor (she said in jest).

I also watched East of Eden, that classic from 1955 with James Dean. Last summer I read the book (and loved it), and I loved Dean in the movie. And as well done as the movie was, it left out at least the first half of the book, and also my favorite character - Lee.

When Hal returns from his last umpiring gig of the summer tomorrow, we'll get back to watching The Wire. We've just started Season Three.

A Movie Blog

A few weeks ago, my friend, Bill, invited me to be a contributor to his blog - http://whatsinyourqueue.blogspot.com/

Bill and his son, Tim, write about the movies they enjoy, and their tastes are quite unusual, so don't be looking for reviews from any Pixar or Indiana Jones movies on this blog. I've written two reviews for whatsinyourqueue.