Rainy Afternoon

It's a good thing I don't have to do serious writing today because it's one of those days when there isn't enough tea in the world to keep me alert and focused. I have two things I absolutely must do today and one thing I need to do today. Two of them involve leaving the house and one involves writing. Once they're done, I plan to hibernate, and it will be lovely.

Yesterday was rather nice. I walked up the hill to the movie theater and saw Leap Year. I'm planning a more extensive discussion about it in a series I'm planning to write on romantic comedies leading up to Valentine's Day, but I will say for now that it falls into the category of Mostly Harmless. It's pretty much what you expect of a gimmicky romantic comedy released at this time of year, but it wasn't as awful as some I've seen. There were a number of things I wanted to fix but it also did a number of things surprisingly well and in ways that undermine a lot of romantic comedy tropes. We know Amy Adams is a good actress, given the way she racks up Oscar nominations, but seeing her in a relatively weak movie shows just how good she is. She's utterly fascinating to watch because of the way emotions and even micro-emotions flicker across her face. You can practically read her mind. I probably won't be getting this one on DVD, but I can imagine it's the sort of thing I'll get sucked into when it comes on TV and I don't have anything better to do, or I'll put it on as background noise when HBO has it OnDemand. It's a good rainy afternoon movie.

What was really fun for me with this movie was the audience. There were a couple of other women by themselves in the theater, which is what you expect with this kind of movie. But then there was the gaggle of elderly women on the row behind me that I'm fairly certain was a group outing from the retirement community down the street. They were a hoot. I spent a lot of the movie listening to their reactions (they said "My stars!" a lot). Then there were three men there by themselves (separately, not as a group), and they were not the type you'd expect in a movie like that. They looked more like the guys they cast in those "learn to be a motorcycle mechanic" commercials, and they were laughing out loud in the movie and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

And then it started raining when I was walking home, so it was especially lovely to get inside and make some tea before I curled up under a blanket with a book.