An exciting Black Friday yesterday for the Fischer family: two big pigs, one male and one female, were running loose in the neighborhood! They settled down at our house and stayed in our yard for about two hours! One of them chased Julia around, and Gabriel, who loved them, wanted to ride one of them! Funny things!
I've never encountered anything like it before. The pigs brought the neighbors out and had Daisy hoarse with fury!
*
One movie you should watch:
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
2012
Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, The Debt)
I really enjoyed this one... okay, I loved it. It's a sweater movie - you know, cozy, comfortable, warm, familiar. It's a crowd-pleaser. Heck, it's a movie for all ages, and it stars some of the greatest over-50 British actors on the planet.
Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, and Ronald Pickup are Brits who, for various reasons, find themselves traveling to India and staying at a faded, adorably ramshackle hotel run by a charming local boy who is something of a likable black sheep in his family (Dev Patel).
Dench is a recent widow forced to sell off her possessions; Nighy and Wilton are, respectively, a man who made a terrible investment and his wife, who finds joy in absolutely nothing; Smith, in her element, is a racist old codger forced to travel to India to have hip-replacement surgery; Wilkinson is a retired judge who wants to return to the land he grew up in; Pickup is an old lothario on the prowl; Imrie is a woman seeking a wealthy man and a new start.
Needless to say, the cast is divine, and the film is well-shot. It's constantly inviting and engaging, touching. It's safe filmmaking, to be sure, but I wasn't expecting a scathing expose on modern India - for that, I'll read (and am reading) Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Adapted from Deborah Moggach's 2004 novel These Foolish Things by Ol Parker, the film moves well and is damn near impossible to actively dislike.
I can't wait for the possible sequel.
*
NFL Picks for the weekend:
(Well, I was 2-for-3 on the Turkey Day games, which I'll take. Other than the Denver-K.C. game, I don't feel good about any of the following picks. I'm going with some upsets this week, for better or worse:
- Tennessee over Jacksonville
- Buffalo over Indianapolis
- Pittsburgh over Cleveland (ehh...)
- Oakland over Cincinnati
- Chicago over Minnesota
- Denver over Kansas City
- Seattle over Miami
- Atlanta over Tampa Bay
- St. Louis over Arizona
- Baltimore over San Diego
- New Orleans over San Francisco
- Green Bay over NY Giants
- Carolina over Philadelphia
Last Week: 13-1
Season Record: 103-56-1
*
Born today:
Well, guess...
Clues:
- post-Impressionist
- a chronicler of colorful and bohemian arisian nightlife, specifically the Moulin Rouge
- due to a congenital condition and bone dysfunction, never grew taller than 5'1
- frequented the social circles of Montmartre, illustrated for magazines, and was a lithographer
- his most famous work was probably the posters he did in conjunction with the opening of the Moulin Rouge:
- became friends with Oscar Wilde
- due to the stresses that accompanied his physical deformities, he was often depressed and frequently battled alcoholism
- was admitted into a sanitarium two years before he died of alcohol complications and syphilis
Give up?
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Images courtesy of:
http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/the-best-exotic-marigold-hotel.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1Vd1Ywd2Qw/TWYec2JHsII/AAAAAAAAAVo/YMpUP-VGQGI/s1600/300px-jane_avril_by_toulouse-lautrec.jpeg
http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/timelines/modern_art_slideshows/p7ssm_img_1/fullsize/Toulouse-Lautrec_2.jpg
http://www.awesome-art.biz/awesome/images/medium-i2/At%20the%20Moulin%20Rouge%20by%20Toulouse-Lautrec.jpg
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/EUR/2300-2037~Moulin-Rouge-Posters.jpg
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