Playin' hooky and going to the movies...

Every once in awhile it feels good to take a day off from work and just relax. No rushing around. No stress. Yesterday was that day for us. On my “To Do” List for the day…

1. Sleep in - Ron and I did just that – I slept in until 7:30 am! That never happens to me anymore – Ron didn’t come downstairs til about 9 am.
2. Relax – Stayed in my pj’s til 10:30 – a real lady of leisure!
3. Movies – Thought about trying to squeeze in 3 movies but then decided that 2 would be enough. Decided to see “Legion” & “The Lovely Bones.”

“Legion”

I have to admit that I do enjoy this genre of movie…end of days, biblically apocalyptic, and the fate of the entire human race depends on one reluctant savior that is in the middle of a crisis of faith…”The Seventh Sign” with Demi Moore and Michael Biehn; ”The Prophecy” with Christopher Walken and Eric Stoltz; “End of Days” starring He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (the present governor of California –used to love him and now I REALLY don’t) are 3 of my favorites. I usually watch these on cable late at night when Ron has already gone to sleep. He agreed to see “Legion” with me because we went to college with one of the actors…Doug Jones. Actually, we were at Ball State University at the same time he was. I was his fiancé’s RA and Ron and I did actually attend Doug and Laurie’s wedding. I am quite sure he would have a difficult time remembering us. Nevertheless, we do feel connected to him and keep up with his career. Some of his credits include “Pan’s Labyrinth” as Pan; Abe Sapien in the “Hellboy” movies; “Fantastic 4 – Rise of the Silver Surfer” as the Silver Surfer. The sad thing is that he is usually unrecognizable in these roles. Anyway, Doug is in “Legion” as the Ice Cream Man. We went to see this movie to see Doug. He was on screen for about 60 seconds…really, that was it. He was scary but it was 60 seconds. There were some well known actors in this film – Dennis Quaid, Charles Dutton, Kate Walsh and Paul Bettany as the angel Michael. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of backstory or substance to this movie. The scariest part was when a sweet looking little old lady spouted profanity, climbed the walls, crawled across the ceiling and then took a big bite out of one of the customers in the diner where the majority of the action was set. The angels Michael and Gabriel were quite beautiful but weren’t featured enough – they had amazing razor sharp wings! That just wasn’t enough to make this a good movie and I’m sorry that I can’t recommend it…

“The Lovely Bones”

I had heard about how wonderful this book was from my daughters a long time ago. I only read this book about a year ago. It really touched me. It was so tragic and horrible, but also beautiful in some ways. It never occurred to me that anyone would try to make a movie based on this book. The subject matter in this movie is also tragic and horrible, but parts of it were beautiful in many ways. The acting was excellent – Susie Salmon is played by Saoirse Ronan – a wonderful young actress. Mark Wahlberg is also fantastic as is Rachel Weisz. Stanley Tucci was so good as the murderer, he is nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this year. He was seriously creepy and evil. This film is director Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the book. Some people are probably not happy about some of the liberties he took with it, but I thought it was very well done. I would certainly recommend this movie with the warning that it’s not a ‘feel good’ movie. When it was over, Ron and I just sat there for about 10 minutes while the credits rolled. It sucked the energy out of us, but it made us think.

All in all, we accomplished what we set out to do - we had a calm, relaxing, stress-free day. Playin' hooky was just what we needed!