Just watched this. Most moving, the friendship between two men and the transformative possibilities within that bond. Favorite line, Lionel: the prince must know what goes on between his brain and his mouth. Bertie: You haven’t known many princes have you? Or something like that. A brilliant evocation of a world about which I know little, between the wars Britain.
- Tag Archives movies
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Various Ways to Watch A Movie
Fall Waxing Harvest Moon
When I workout, on my treadmill 5-6 days a week, I watch movies. That means I need a source of movies since I can go through 2-3 in an average week. I used Comcast for a while, with their movies on demand, but the cable box won’t let me. I’ve swapped it out twice with no joy and had a comcast person come by the house and offer to set up a service call. I took him up on the offer, but no one showed up. I still have the service, in part because they also provide a reasonably good internet connection, though it’s slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world. I bought movies for a while, but that was expensive and I had to buy a lot. Blockbuster and I shared many transactions, but that required physically going to the store and remembering to return stuff on time. My current solution is netflix. They mail me movies, I watch them and mail them back. Pretty easy.
Netflix also has a service which allows you to watch movies over the internet if you have a properly configured device. Upstairs, where Kate’s Wii sits, I long ago connected with our wireless router and happily watch movies up there without mailing, buying or stopping somewhere. A while back I began looking at the Playstation 3 because it has a blu ray DVD player and the capacity for wireless link up. The Wii is not blu-ray. So, I ponied up the cash and bought one for downstairs.
It took the better part of 3 hours to get it connected to the internet, get permission to stream the Netflix movies and configure the blu ray remote I purchased. It took so long because computers are, in essence, stupid things that only do exactly what they’re told and if you miss a beat on a password, a step in a process, or don’t wait long enough for a particular action, nothing happens and you have to start over. I know this from years of handling electronics in various forms, still I dithered, shuffling my desktop with a password over to the Playstation, then back to the desktop to finally write down the password I’d not remembered quite correctly. And so on.
Still. I got it done. Now I can watch movies from a broad selection with minimal hassle. It’s important to keep in mind when mumbling through the set up of some electronic device that the time it will save way more than compensates for the groaning and moaning, so it’s worth it. I keep telling myself that.
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Cheesy Sci-Fi Movies
21 bar steady 1mph W dewpoint 15 Spring (yeah, right!)
Full Moon of Winds
Spent this afternoon and evening watching NCAA basketball and movies. Watched a medium bad Sci-Fi movie about a blackhole created in a lab in St. Louis. It’s bad in part because of the acting. Cheesy sci-fi movies only seem to have enough budget for one take. It’s also bad because I read the hard sci-fi book from which the concept came and this movie bore no relationship to the very good book at all. Which is a shame since that book had real science behind it and would have made a good movie. This one had a beast that came out of the black hole and ate energy. Hmmm. So much wrong with that premise, you’d think I’d stop watching, but, no. I have a low threshold for quality when I want entertainment.
Been kicking around the idea, for a few years, of writing some original theology/atheology, a ge-ology, or something. The woman who complimented my learning this morning, Lois Hamilton, got me thinking about all this again. I’ve spent since 1965 getting seriously educated. In a lot of fields. I’ve had interesting real world experience in politics, the church, development and working with developmentally delayed adults. I’ve traveled some, read a lot and learned a good deal about gardening and art. Maybe I don’t need to anything, but I feel like a bad steward of the work I’ve done and the knowledge I’ve gained if I can’t set it down in some form for others.
Not sure what I want to do, or if I want/need to do anything. Just pondering, for now.
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Coming Down off a Techno High
30 96% 30% omph WSW bar 29.85 rises windchill30 Winter
New Moon
Watched an HD movie tonight: An American Haunting. Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland and James D’Arcy provided the core of a good ensemble cast. This movie tells of the Bell Witch, an early 19th century century haunting in Adams, Tennessee. There is a cottage industry of folks who believe, including debunkers of other believers. A bit like a snake biting its own tale. The book An American Haunting: The Bell Witch recounts the supposedly true events which ended in 1821 with the death of John Bell. The movie suggests incest, but fails, at least to my satisfaction, to link it to the strange occurrences at the Bell House. Here is a website with further information.
Feel like I’m coming down off a techno high, a sort of cyber electric dream occasioned by optical cables, coaxial cables, HDMI cables, speaker wire, subwoofers and high definition televison. Alice could tumble through an HDMI cable into a virtual wonderland, I have. This is an enchantment of sorts, and as such it must be encountered with awareness, not naivete.
Hey, how about that Hilary, huh? Coulda fooled me. Looked like Obama was a shoe-in in New Hampshire. Just what this means for the race is anybodies guess right now. I love it. Real candidates in a real horse race. Jockeying for position, fighting over the issues and over how to organize campaigns for types of candidates who’ve never run before in this serious a manner. This is (to use a much abused phrase) a historic moment for American democracy. It can be a time when we win back the world’s admiration if we allow ourselves to enter the process without cynicism. Hard, I admit, but possible and desirable. Imagine a campaign about real politics and not weirdo ideologies.