Okay, so sue me

I was going to try to keep this updated a bit more often than this, but oh, well.

Anyway, here's what's been going on. I made it through Season 1 of The West Wing. There's honestly not really a bad episode in the bunch, if you allow for it to be mostly fiction. I mean, it's about drama and comedy, people and how they interact with each other and it just happens to be taking place in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Anyway, the season cliffhanger was, of course, shots ringing out in Roslyn and we didn't know who'd been hit (which I took to mean, when I first saw this episode, that they hadn't completed contract negotiations for all the actors, but perhaps that was just me being a bit jaded).

When I finished that season, I finally found it in me to pop in Disk 1 of Children of Paradise, a movie I'd long heard of, but never seen. It's three hours long and I had to watch it in spurts, in-between working and stuff, but I found it very, very difficult to shut it down. It's a wonderful movie, simply marvelous. And gorgeous! I really, really loved it. I also watched the Terry Gilliam intro and I listened to the commentaries on both Part 1 and Part 2. This allowed me to concentrate on the actors faces and movements, instead of having to pay attention to the subtitles--which I still prefer to seeing a movie dubbed, though. I also watched the documentary on how they restored the movie.

I've packed up those disks and put them in the mailbox back to Netflix--but now I want my own copy. It's a wonderful Criterion set and, well, I just got La Belle et La Bete and now I want this film, too.

Of course, I do have another film from Netflix--Finding Neverland (I think that's the title)--but, no, it's time to start Season 2 of The West Wing. It's In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part 1, and Josh has been wheeled into the emergency room (followed by Toby, CJ and Sam, as if they would have been allowed in there in real life-ha!) and we're into the first flashback. I have this fantasy that someday my friend who hates the show will come to me because she wants me to show her the required episodes so she can discuss it intelligently with someone. I'd show her the entire first season and the first two episodes of Season 2 and that should do it. Without the backstory that these first two eps give us, she'd be lost.

More later.