Home Alone Part 1: Sunday Chili and Movies
Sarah and Eleanor left Saturday for Pittsburgh, where Sarah's father is recuperating after some major surgery. The stopped in Charlottesville, spending the night with Rich and Laura, before making it to Pittsburgh last night. They should be back next weekend sometime.
This means I am by myself this week. I am using the opportunity to watch a bunch of movies that Sarah has no interest in watching.
Yesterday I watched The Kingdom and Hot Fuzz. The Kingdom was decent if not extraordinary, entertaining and well done if a bit predictable. It was directed by Peter Berg, who tends to use a lot of hand held camera, even just for what would normally be still camera shots. That annoys me. He is also the guy that directed Friday Night Lights; some FNL elements made it into The Kingdom, which was kinda surreal. Tim McGraw was a distraught father, the coach from the FNL TV show was a minor FBI agent who gets blown up at the beginning, and it sounded like Explosions in the Sky did the orchestration.
Hot Fuzz was hysterical (and a pretty good action movie). Clever, quirky, and really funny with it's British humor that toed the fine line between absurdly silly and really, really dry (sort of like Monty Python). Plus the movie looked really nice. I actually think I liked it better than Shaun of the Dead. I wonder if Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg will take a stab at a straight up (non-comedy/satire) film, because I think they could pull it off, given the nice horror and action elements in both of the films they have made so far. Of course, they could be one-trick ponies a la Guy Richie.
I also made chili yesterday, which turned out really well. I wanted to make a pure Texas chili (which has no tomatoes), but added some tomato paste at the last minute. I am glad I did, because otherwise I think it would have been too dry.
A pretty good Sunday, considering my family was far away. I don't know how many other movies I will get to this week, given that classes started today, but I do have a couple of punk rock documentaries waiting in the Nexflix queue.
We had a very nice time with Sarah & Eleanor when they stayed on Saturday night, and spent a nice long breakfast talking with them at Bodo's.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the punk documentaries that you have in the queue? I'd highly recommend End of the Century (Ramones) and Westway to the World (The Clash). The Filth & The Fury (Sex Pistols) is also pretty decent, but not as good as the other two.
"End of the Century" is on there. The other one is "We Jam Econo" about the Minutemen. Of course, the Ramones pic just got bumped down a notch because the Dragonlance movie comes out tomorrow. I am such a geek.
ReplyDeleteWe Jam Econo is very good as well. I forgot about that one. Matt & I went to see that when it was screened at Satellite Ballroom.
ReplyDeleteNow I have to go bump Dragonlance up in my queue...