On Movies and TV

It's a quiet night.  It was a very relaxing weekend even though I didn't do much except get provisions (food for the landlubbers).  I did watch 4 movies, 2 sitcoms & 2 episodes of The Apprentice.  Since I'm not much of a TV or even a movie watcher, that's a bit of media overload in a weekend for me.  One of my goals for this TV season is to actually consistently watch at least one show.  I don't watch much TV at all anymore, which is probably a good thing, but some mindless watching wouldn't kill me.

I should never watch two Bradley Cooper movies back-to-back.  He seems like he's the next Jude Law - not the nanny thing, but the being-in-five-different-movies-in-the-same-year thing.  And he kind of wigs me out.  His teeth are a light source of their own; obviously he is quite indebted to a cosmetic dentist.  They almost look like dentures - way too freaking perfect.  And his hair doing that sticky up thing with all that gel.  It's kind of like Ryan Seacrest added 20 lbs and went into movie acting.
 

The gel-coated, frosted tip, sticky up thing isn't my favorite hair style on guys.  Maybe it's what that look represents; the look takes way too much time in the bathroom.

Of the four movies I watched, Griffin & Phoenix was my favorite.  Have you heard of it?  I hadn't either.  It has Dermot Mulroney and Amanda Peet in it; thank goodness for a Bradley Cooper reprieve.  Dermot and I go waaaaaay back.  I remember him from a TV movie he did in 1987.  It's kind of trippy to basically watch him age over the last 23 years.  He still looks good though.  

I don't deal well with death.  Just like everything I don't deal well with, I tend to avoid the talk of it.  I don't watch movies that touch it.  So I haven't seen Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, and all those other classic death movies.  And if I get sucked into a movie that ends up having a long, drawn out death scene, I usually just turn it off at that point.

Along those same lines, I don't do Lurlene McDaniel books.  Every main character ends up dead in the end.  Yes, I know we all end up dead at some point, but they really were depressing books.

Now psycho serial killer movies?  Friday the 13th?  Halloween?  That's different.  I'll totally watch those.  I just don't do the heart wrenching, slow deathbed stuff. 

Anyway, back to the movie.  It was well made and interesting but not a tearjerker even though death was heavily intertwined in the plot.  The focus was on life instead of death.  And the movie ended before anyone died.  Whew. 

Caught up with some new sitcoms on Hulu.  I do adore Keri Russell, so I had high hopes for Running Wilde.  Eh.  I liked Raising Hope better.  Maybe because I like the trailer trash family.  I don't think either sitcom will last very long. 

Had to catch The Apprentice.  I don't like the celebrity ones as much as the ones with everyday people on it.  Since this one has everyday people on it, I will definitely have to watch it this season.  It's so hard to make predictions about who will win, though, because they haven't given some people ANY screen time yet.  They've really only given screen time to the project managers thus far and the troublemakers. 

Some of my favorite TV shows are the ones from the early 2000s when PBS got into the reality historical experiences.  It wasn't like their version of Survivor.  It was more like they went back to a specific historical time and cast 8-16 people in roles.  They did a Texas Ranch House where they went to Texas and everyday people took jobs in a ranch as a ranch owner, a cook, a cowboy, a maid, etc.  They did a Manor House, where they went back in time to an English manor and took roles as upper class or lower class.  All of these were sociological experiences, and it was so interesting to watch the dynamics of power and class even in a small microcosm. 

Those PBS shows were a lot like that show three years that got all that flak.  Remember, kids ran a town.  Kid Nation, that's what it was.  It got flak because it was all kids.  But the premise of recreating a society in a microcosm was much like those PBS series of shows that went back in time.