P.S.

Oh yeah, and these were on sale in Madison! Sweet!

Movie Reviews
Laura has the corner on movie reviews, but I did see a couple from Netflix recently that I gave 5 stars to, which is not common in my queue. They are:

Copying Beethoven
Ed Harris plays Beethoven just prior to "the beast's" death and the public debut of his 9th Symphony. It's fictional in that a somewhat meek but talented music student enters Beethoven's life as his copyist. She ends up helping him conduct his symphony (cuz he's pretty deaf by now) by standing in the shadows and guiding him. The music and that scene in particular are stunning -- it's very sensual without being icky. I thought Ed Harris' portrayal of Beethoven was also fantastic. He captured the tortured existence of a brilliant and at times compassionate soul who was also socially retarded in his ability to relate to people.

The History Boys
This is the movie version of Alan Bennett's celebrated play, which won a bunch of Tony awards and what not. It's about eight very clever, crass, public school boys (played by the original cast) from England's industrial North who are vying for scholarships to Oxford or Cambridge. The smarmy headmaster is *obsessed* with breaking into these schools, so he hires Irwin, a young ringer of sorts to coach the boys and "teach to the test." However, the boys are also devoted to their closeted and very eccentric English teacher, Hector (which is what they call him, even though it's not his actual name), whose philosophy of education is at the other end of the universe, and their pragmatic and somewhat protective history teacher, Mrs. Lintott (played by Frances de la Tour as the grande dame fed up with teaching "centuries of masculine ineptitude"). Every character is charming and yet so different. It's certainly not action packed, but the rapid fire bantering that goes on between the boys and their teachers is so enjoyable, you don't notice how little they actually do in the movie. And the special features on the DVD are fun too.

I'm also watching the first season of Bones, which I won't blather on about, but it's awesome. David Boreanaz made the transition from a vampire with a soul to a somewhat insecure FBI agent relatively seamlessly.