a nice weekend

It’s been a nice weekend. Kate came up to visit, and I dragged her to see “Rock of Ages”, a film which she had no particular desire to see. Afterward she almost forgave me, except she doesn’t like Tom Cruise and the movie made her like him and that was pretty unforgiveable. :)

I have made headway into cleaning my office. So far I’ve gotten all the Christmas wrapping paper out of there, which was a big improvement all by itself. I also cleared one bookshelf entirely of crap, which allowed me to put all the actual books onto one bookshelf. I emptied some of the third bookshelf too.

Unfortunately, of course, now the entire table is entirely buried in crap, and something will have to be done about that… :)

I put my son down for a nap two hours ago. He’s been up there laughing and playing and cheering the whole while. In a few minutes I expect I’ll go up and say to him, “Did you have a nice nap?” as I get him out of bed. Although I said that last time he did this and he gave me this incredulous look of, “What are you, some kind of idiot? I haven’t been taking a NAP. Didn’t you hear me in here?”

Oh my this looks tasty: Black Forest cream cheese pie. O.O

Picoreview: Rock of Ages: This is an awful movie. It’s terrible. It’s not nearly as charming as the same director’s “Hairspray” (which, admittedly, is possibly the most feel-good uplifting movie I’ve ever seen), and some of the acting is really appalling. That said:

I laughed all the way through, and dearly hope I get to go see it again.

Seriously, it’s *awful*, but it’s great fun, and Tom Cruise is completely amazing. I think it may be the best performance I’ve ever seen from him. He was utterly, utterly fantastic, and he is the reason you want to see the movie. Even if, like Kate, you don’t like him. Or maybe especially if you don’t, because you may never get another chance to see him being someone else entirely.

It’s not the story I expected–I vaguely thought it would be a…sort of biopic of a fictional rock star–but although Cruise’s character is central to the entire film it’s not really even his story. From the opening chords all the way through the end it is utterly preposterous, but a lot of the singing is wonderful and it repeatedly made Kate and me turn to each other and say “Why doesn’t it WORK THAT WAY?” when characters burst into song and the full orchestra came up behind ’em and random people turned into backup singers and all. Really, real life *should* work that way. It would be *so* much more fun. And there were parts that had us hitting each other as we wheezed with laughter, crying, “No, no, they’re not, they’re not, OH MY GOD THEY ARE” as we writhed in our seats and howled.

So yeah: good movie? Really really not. Hugely entertaining movie? Really really yes, and a tour de force performance from Tom Cruise. I must see it again.

eta: and oh squee Ted just brought me the soundtrack home! <3 <3 <3!

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