Flaming

I owe a bunch of e-mails, but since it's the first of the month and I haven't posted in a really long time, I figured I better do that first.

Happy Ash Wednesday, everybody! I've already blown it a few times on the whole giving up swearing thing, but that's one I have to work into gradually. I'll get better as the six weeks moves along. I put the Girl Scout cookies away last night and finished up all the junk food that I had accumulated over my Fat Fortnight.

On to the movies watched in February (these are actually in the order in which I watched them):

Saving Silverman (R)
Changing Lanes (R)
The Aviator – Special Features (N)
Lifeboat (N) (Hitchcock)
Crash (N)
Pelle the Conqueror (K)
Manxman (N) (Hitchcock)
I Confess (K) (Hitchcock)
In A Lonely Place (N) (Bogart)
Torn Curtain (N) (Hitchcock)
Foreign Correspondent (K) (Hitchcock)
Hotel Rwanda (N)
Saboteur (K) (Hitchcock)
Rope (K) (Hitchcock)
Strangers On A Train (K) (Hitchcock)
Shadow of a Doubt (K) (Hitchcock)
An Affair to Remember (K)
March of the Penguins (N)
The Corpse Bridge (N)
Good Night, and Good Luck (T – w/Martha)
Rear Window (K) (Hitchcock)
To Catch A Thief (K) (Hitchcock)
Nosferatu (K)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (K)
North Country (N)

Please note that I only got to watch 10 Netflix movies this month. The large gaps in (N) movies is because I didn't have any to watch (damn throttling). I got three in the mail yesterday and I immediately watched North Country.

Re: Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I bought a book on Saturday when out with Martha after seeing Good Night, and Good Luck (if you haven't seen it, I think it's worth it, especially if you know even a little bit about the McCarthy era). The book is called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. The book is set up in chronological order, so Nosferatu (which I had seen before) and the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari both filmed in the early 1920s were listed. I had actually just bought the DVD from dvdempire.com (it was a whopping $2.50), so I watched them and now can put a check mark next to CoDC in the book, which being the anal person I can be, I am marking every movie which I have seen. I would say that I am actually not doing too badly. IMHO, though, they did not include enough Hitchcock films. The Bogie film that I saw this month though, In A Lonely Place, was one of them, so I feel so smug. One of these days I'll count up how many I've seen of the 1001 and let you know. And I have to say (more smugness) that a good number of the movies listed that I haven't seen are in my Netflix queue.

I absolutely LOVED The Corpse Bride. I'm normally a huge Wallace & Gromit fan and would have picked them for the Oscar, if I hadn't seen The Corpse Bride (I've seen both of them, the third isn't out yet, so I can't judge that one).

My favorite quote from the movies I watched this month is "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me." – In A Lonely Place

An addition to the monthly synopsis will be what knitting I accomplished while watching the movies, so y'all don't think I'm a slacker. I knitted a scarf for Heeland Lass (her very belated b-day present) and 2 potholders. I also wound this big hank of yarn into a ball, started a blanket for my cousin's toddler son which I then messed up and had to take out and since I was holding two strands of yarn together it ended up into a huge mother of a knot which took me HOURS to undo. That was a nightmare. I also started a scarf for myself since I was feeling left out. I do so much knitting and percentage-wise have very little of my own knitting.

Books read in February:

"The Decay of Lying: An Observation" by Oscar Wilde (essay)
The Hitchcock Murders by Peter Conrad
Death Benefits by Thomas Perry
Pursuit by Thomas Perry
Gazelle by Rikki Ducornet

I found The Hitchcock Murders book to be fascinating and it was the reason I watched so many Hitchcock movies in February. After I would watch the movie, I would go through the index and then re-read everything he had to say about the movie throughout the book. Obsessive? Maybe. Just a little. But I found mistakes in the book. ;-)

The Thomas Perry books were incredible! I read both of them in a single day (per book). I had read a number of his Jane Whitfield books when they came out and when I saw those two books at Borders last year I decided to check them out. I read one last Tuesday, the other on Wednesday and then on Thursday went to Alibris where I found most of his other books and bought them. Hardcovers for $2.95 a piece. The last of them arrived yesterday along with my three Netflix movies. I'm going to start his very first book The Butcher's Boy today.

I hope everybody had a good week (since I'm pretty sure it's been darn close to a week since I last updated).