Tuesday, Mar. 15

Word of the day: etiolate : to deprive of sunlight, vigor; to make weak, pale, sickly

Well, the stay-cation is almost over. It's been a bundle of fun. Gabriel has been flat-out weird, in the sense that his naps are all over the map. We've played games, read, taken Gabriel to the mall, had an amazing date (dinner at Bravo Italiano being the highlight) and seen some first- rate movies.

Unknown was a full-barreled blast, with plenty of ingenious twists, another solid action turn from Liam Nesson, and some pungently seedy location work in Berlin.

The Greatest was a finely-tuned gem, with attention to detail and scenes so poignant and raw in their anguish that it's advisable to look away from the screen. Carey Mulligan, Pierce Brosnan, and Susan Sarandon are at the top of their games, and Johnny Simmons as the left-behind younger brother is equally affecting.

Life as We Know It, like almost every other Katherine Heigl film, received some below average reviews, but it's a poignant pleaser, often very funny. Shot in Atlanta and directed by Greg Berlanti (creator of the WB's marvelous Everwood), the film forgoes sitcom-tidiness, pat, predictable characterizations. It's a little more gnarled, idiosyncratic than what's to be expected. Heigl and Josh Duhamel are very charming.

Heartbreaker is a funny, likable French film with the charismatic Romain Duris as a stud whose job it is to break up relationships. Two guesses as to what happens when he finds his latest assignment is to sever the union between a beauty (Vanessa Paradis, lovely, barely withstanding a distractingly huge gap in her teeth) and her flawless British husband. Any film that features both a Monte Carlo setting and not one or two but three scenes of Duris aping the climactic number to Dirty Dancing has at least two things going for it.

Today's name-the-star quiz: Valentine's Day, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, The Golden Compass, P.S. I Love You, Rumor Has It, Bee Movie, Fred Claus, Little Black Book, Around the World in 80 Days, Failure to Launch, American Outlaws, Dragonfly, Rat Race, The Waterboy, North, Dick Tracy. One Oscar. Two additional nominations. Hugely likable, versatile, stage and TV performer. Name him/her.

(By the way, the previous quiz's answer is Julianne Moore.)

Looking at the NCAA tournament brackets, I am at a loss as to what's going to happen. I'm usually terrible at predicting the games, but here goes. These are the teams I think will make the Elite Eight: North Carolina, Ohio State, Duke, Connecticut, Kansas, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, and St. John's.

The above painting is of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan. (I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, Julia). It was done by Hans Holbein the Younger, the court painter for Henry VIII. Henry, the English king during the Protestant Reformation, was worried about the possible invasion of England by the now-allies France and the Holy Roman Empire (a Catholic alliance), set out to find a bride from a foreign duchy or country, a country, like England, who had willful disregard for papal authority, and might be willing to be allies with England. His trusted painter Holbien, a German who had done remarkable portraitures of Thomas More and Erasmus among others, traveled to Milan to take the above portrait of Christina, niece of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Henry was beside himself with joy and excitement when he saw the painting, but, alas, the marriage, for purely political and bureaucratic reasons, was never to be. It's not clear if Henry ever even met Christina. On a side note, some time later, looking for another prospective bride, Henry found his bride-to-be Anne of Cleves to be far uglier than the portarit of her done a few months earlier by Holbein. Furious, betrayed, Henry eventually divorced her and took out his disillusionment not on Holbein, but on his long-time minister and adviser Thomas Cromwell, who had negotiated the marriage, beheading him after a stint at the Tower of London.

Pizza tonight! Yippy skippy!