Friday Night Movies

E - Strawberry Shortcake. She liked it. M read a book. I checked my email.

M - Pee Wee's Playhouse. She liked it. E was scared. I read the newspaper. (I posted a while ago about my heretical lack of interest in Pee Wee, but I'm too lazy to find it.)

Me - The Upside of Anger. At first I watched impassively, thinking, great, here's another supposedly good movie that's doing nothing for me. Have I lost all ability to respond? Slowly, though, it grew on me. Joan Allen is another one of my favorites and she is excellent (if ridiculously thin) as a suburban mom who loses it when her husband disappears and leaves her with four troublesome teenage daughters. Kevin Costner does his shambling dude with a good heart thing, but he does it well. There is crisis after crisis, but some very funny scenes too (I laughed particularly hard when the bungie-jumping gay teenager crashed through the French doors, though perhaps the best was when the DJ overheard Andy breaking up with the producer because the mic was left on). Think The Virgin Suicides meets The Ice Storm, but I think I liked it better than either of those. Though I could have done without the precious voice-over. (And I wonder when I started identifying with mothers rather than daughters. Whenever it began, the identification is now complete.)

[In weather news, we are now well into our ninth straight day of rain. I took advantage of the rare occurrence of S's presence to go for a run this morning, thinking that perhaps it was only drizzling. Wrong. Then I washed my hair--at 8:30--and it's still not dry--at noon. Where's Noah when we need him?]