Movie #1 Done!

Remember my New Year's Goal to watch 15 movies I hadn't seen off the AFI Best 100 List? Well, I started in at the bottom and watched this:

And, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it! I don't see what it's doing on a Top Film list, to be honest, but it was a great, fun, adventure, with a nice number of "jump in your seat" moments (though, to be honest, the one that startled me the most had nothing to do with the shark at all!), and a nicely-paced story. I'd been worrying about how on earth they could be on a boat looking for a shark for the length of an entire movie, but the set-up took a good portion of the film, and I enjoyed it too.

Not a bad start to my 15! Let's hope the next 14 are as enjoyable, though I have my doubts about a few... :-)

Oh, by the way, I found the most wonderful time-wasting movie site. It's called ICheckMovies, and it's basically a checklist of every top movie list ever made, including the AFI, Oscar winners, Roger Ebert and so on, as well as things like "top sequels" and "top horrors". Go. Play.

Another one gone

I just heard that Kathryn Grayson died yesterday, and I'm inexplicably sad. Now before you all go, "Kathryn who?", she was one of the big musical stars at MGM in the 1940s and 50s. She co-starred with people like Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Mario Lanza. She was in Showboat and Kiss Me Kate. I'm not exaggerating when I say she was one of the biggies.

And I didn't even like her.

I never was a big fan of the soprano leads in musicals, like Kathryn and Jane Powell. I found them a bit shrieky and I never liked the songs they chose for them. I'm much more of a jazzy, alto, Judy Garland-type lover (well, duh, if you know me at all). But I'm so SAD about Kathryn's death. You see, with her passing, we come ever closer to losing every last one of the great stars of my favourite film era of all time - the Golden Age of Hollywood. And THAT makes me want to cry.

As soon as I heard the news of Kathryn's passing, I went and dug out the list I made a few years ago of the big classic stars who are still alive. Maybe it's a bit of a depressing list, but I'm morbid that way, and anyway, I LIKE lists. I hadn't looked at it for some months, and I immediately had to delete Jennifer Jones, Jean Simmons and Karl Malden, as well as Kathryn. What saddened me is I didn't even know that Jean Simmons had died until a friend told me last week. I guess it just wasn't big enough news, which makes me even sadder.

I love old Hollywood. I adore it. And yes, I know these stars will live on through their films, and them being alive or dead really makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. But for me, it's like a piece of magic has disappeared off this earth.

Here is the list of those magic-makers who are still with us. Please let me know if I've forgotten someone, because I very likely have! And it would make me feel so much better if the list were longer.  The dates next to them are their dates of birth.

Luise Rainer (1910)
Tony Martin (1912)
Kirk Douglas (1916)
Olivia De Havilland (1916)
Joan Fontaine (1917)
Lena Horne (1917)
Ernest Borgnine (1917)
Celeste Holm (1917)
Maureen O' Hara (1920)
Mickey Rooney (1920)
Jane Russell (1921)
Deanna Durbin (1921)
Esther Williams (1921)
Doris Day (1922)
Eva Marie Saint (1924)
Lauren Bacall (1924)
Tony Curtis (1925)
Gloria DeHaven (1925)
Angela Lansbury (1925)
Farley Granger (1925)
Patricia Neal (1926)
Leslie Nielsen (1926)
Gina Lollobrigida (1927)
Sidney Poitier (1927)
Ann Blyth (1928)
Shirley Temple (1928)
Jane Powell (1929)
Tippi Hedren (1930)
Joanne Woodward (1930)
Rita Moreno (1931)
Debbie Reynolds (1932)
Peter O' Toole (1932)
Elizabeth Taylor (1932)
Omar Sharif (1932)
Kim Novak (1933)
Shirley Jones (1934)
Sophia Loren (1934)
Shirley Maclaine (1934)
Julie Andrews (1935)
Margaret O'Brien (1937)


Please tell me someone else is sad about how short this list is! And I can't even let BFF Ruby Slippers know, because she's on holiday in the bush, with no cellphone reception. :-(

Yours, sadly,
Ruby Slippers

The best Trash the Dress photo EVER.

I just wish it was mine!

It won't let me save it, but do yourself a favour and go see it here. Because, wow.

Dream Home

I think I might have found my dream house (or loft, in this case):

Look at the low-running bookcases! I want!

There is a little garden IN the kitchen! And the space! Divine.

I think this might be the most perfect bathroom ever. Be still my beating heart.

 

See the rest here.

in the hospital

So. Remember my last post, where Mr Ruby Slippers had a stomach bug and I was sitting on the computer in the middle of the night to avoid his possible vomit? Yeah...turns out, not so much a stomach bug. We went off to the doctor in the early morning, after the poor guy was unable to sleep because he was in so much pain. Many X-Rays and ultrasounds and even more $$$ later, it was discovered that he had a blockage in his intestine. And they had to operate. Twelve hours after I wrote that last post, he was being prepped for surgery.

I did NOT see that coming.

I was assured that he was never in any danger and that it was all pretty routine, but it was just so...hard. Hard seeing him lying there, barely able to move, with tubes down his nose and in his arm and up his...well, you know. Hard to drive to the hospital two or three times a day to see him. Hard to be strong for him when I just wanted to cry. And hard to carry on with work when all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep. I never realised just how exhausting it is to have someone in hospital. I don't cope well with stress, I think.

Mr RS was released from hospital eight days after his operation. He hobbled around at home for a while, and he had his stitches out last Thursday. Now, aside from a painful and quite scary-looking scar, he's doing okay. And my mind is getting more or less back to normal. I felt quite hazy for a while there.

As for what caused the blockage, we still don't know. The surgeon said it was something he ate, something mostly fibrous, that hardened into a bezoar (and yes, I also immediately thought "ooh, those have magical properties!"). Unfortunately we didn't get to keep it :-)

Anyway, so that's where I've been for the last two weeks.

I'm going to leave you with a pretty picture I found on desiretoinspire.net:

 

It's a fairytale. LOVE it.