I took Friday off, which was really nice, even if I did nothing more exciting with the day than go to the post office and buy some pants. (I did these separately; the post office has a lousy selection of trousers.) It was nice having the day off, though it did weirdly feel like Saturday, which by extension made today feel like Sunday. And while there are things I like about Sunday — the crossword puzzle, my writing group — there’s a certain kind of melancholy to it that I’m not sure needs to be repeated twice in one week.
But still, in reality it was two Saturdays, so it’s not so bad.
Last night, I watched Brian De Palma’s 1978 movie The Fury, which was…how should I put this? Terrible. It’s like De Palma got done making Carrie the year before and thought, “That psychic stuff was fun, but it wasn’t halfway confusing enough. Maybe we could throw in some really bad comedy, too?” The plot of The Fury is just a mess, and characters disappear for long stretches, connect in ways that either bore or don’t make any sense. It stops short of being a total disaster, but only just, and all of De Palma’s worst excesses and impulses as a director are on screen. Carrie, on the other hand, is also full of visual excess — you may know its most famous images even if you’ve never seen the movie — but it also has terrific performances, particularly from Spacek, and a simple story grounding the whole thing.
This? Not so much.
Though I did note that Andrew Stevens, whose acting in this isn’t very good, was last in Mongolian Death Worm. So, y’know, Sepegal.
Tonight, I watched Oldboy, which was….weird. Very violent, disturbing, visually impressive, and weird. I’d been meaning to watch it for some time, since Spike Lee’s American remake will be coming out soon, but Netflix only has a dubbed version available for streaming.
Other than that, I’ve been watching Scandal, which is ridiculous, but ridiculously addictive. Also, How I Met Your Mother, and I decided to sample the first episodes of Arrow and Haven. The latter is a little too Syfy Channel-y for my liking, and the former could become too CW-y, but so far they’re intriguing. Not as compulsively watchable as Scandal, maybe, but intriguing.
That’s been my weekend, more or less, and I still have an actual Sunday to go.