And tomorrow ...... SCORCHIO

Too hot to move. I flop about with the wobbly five foot fan trained on me, watching movies and dreaming that this country were advanced enough to have air-con anywhere. I see mirages of darkened rooms with a bearable temperature, and if the car weren't 50 degrees, then I could drive to the cinema and live there forever.

Movies I've been watching this week:
Solaris: Which had a pants plot, but was a work of genius in terms of everything else: acting, pacing, cinematography, score. Really reminded me of Kubrick and 2001. Not to mention it starred the incredible Clooney (hadn't previously been that impressed with his acting, but loved the imagination and skill he showed as a director, in his directorial debut.) Soderbergh produces my old alumnus Chris Nolan's movies, so I must admit to watching his stuff purely to gain a feeling of sneaking jealousy, really.
My friend Caroline has a theory that most writers feel their art is a basically confessional impulse, but also shows a misunderstanding of the impulse - she thinks they're doomed to eternally confess something of themselves, but never resolve it. This film seems to prove her right.
Frailty: I love Sam Raimi movies. They remind me so much of Tales of the Unexpected. Bill Paxton loves Sam Raimi movies, and this is the first film he's directed. Liked this when I saw it at the flicks, and this week I bought it.
Primary Colors : I loved the book of this film, because its elegant prose reminded me of Gore Vidal. It's an effective movie, starring the admirable Adrian Lester, who really should have been given an Oscar vehicle by now, but it's not the best in the world.
S1m0ne: Just frigging awful. So bad it gave me nightmares. From the director of the Truman Show, who has apparently not snorted his way through the profits of said Show yet, as he can't even be arsed to get himself in focus on the dvd extras interview. Oh Mr Pacino, how can you do this crap?
Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Vuet Du Bien: Another one I caught by accident at the cinema and loved. It's just incredible. Watch this, then watch Vertigo or Psycho, and see the parallels.
Alice Adams: Katharine Hepburn is patently 43, but in this movie she's the teenage daughter of a local crabby working man who refuses to allow himself to become upwardly mobile, to the horror of his grasping children. Hilarious, but unintentionally so.

Nobody feels the need to add a signature tune to a snowy day.

Just reminded of another summertime horror: the way people insist that the one thing that would complete the perfection of their brain boilingly moronic perfect day is to open the windows and blast a bit of R n B out (or in this area, some Bhangra Techno [copyright Chris B] as often as not).
Why must they bless us with their execrable flabby taste in mood music when it's hot and I can't suffer grumpily in silence so easily?

Finally, a link for Looby. Does blogging ever serve a useful function, or is it "hardly anything to do with telling the literal truth; and everything to do with fashioning an authentic persona from bits of alibis and consistent lies" ... ?