theatres, movie rentals and books, oh my

Recently we have gone a bit crazy with the movies we have seen. Dan saw Star-Wars III and we both saw Hitchhiker’s guide, which was good but not great. I’m glad I saw it but it could have been funnier. There were a lot of inside jokes that people who had read the books and knew them well would laugh at, but they were understated so that newbies wouldn’t feel too left out. The best one was when Zaphod and Ford see each other after Ford’s long absence on Earth and Zaphod says “Good to see you again Ix, uh, I mean Ford …”. Some of the re-written plot and added scenes were clever – for example each time the improbability drive is engaged they turn into different forms of the same type of object and at one point the entire crew becomes made our of yarn for a few minutes which was very cute and well done. Although I really wanted to see the 1000 monkeys with their re-written Hamlet who never made it into this movie.

Last night we actually rented a movie (first time in ages) – The Abyss, which I had seen when I was younger. This is a long, long movie, especially the special edition. Regardless of the relatively bad acting, cliches and 80′s movies stereotpyes it is still a really good movie. I’m watching the “making of” right now. We also bought Tin-Tin (“l’isle noir”) in an attempt to improve our french, which we watched while eating breakfast this morning. The close-captioning was on even though we didn’t turn it on, but it did help in several places when we couldn’t quite catch what they said. Nevertheless, the close-captioning was often quite different from the real dialogue. For example, Tin-Tin and his dog are running through a train chasing two criminals and the dog happens to grap a roast chicken on the way. When Tin-Tin notices this, the captions say “Not now, Snowball” but he really says “Milou, ce n’est pas temps pour le déjuner” (Snowball, its not lunchtime!). Very cute.

I have been reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle which I found at the nearby library (in reverse order, don’t ask its a long story) and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I also bought my first book in years – Harry Potter à l’école des Sorciers and have been pleasantly surprised that I understand most of it. The majority of the words that I don’t know are adjectives and adverbs and I have to say that Ms. Rowling does use some very good descriptive language which is good for children to read to improve their vocabulary; for example: ahuri means astonished.

We visited the Bibliothèque Nationale today – the large, recently constructed library near Berri Metro. After my previous experiences with Montreal libraries, I have to say this is a very pleasant surprise. Anyone in Montreal (or Quebec, for that matter) can join this library and it is huge. It has 4 large floors with what appears to be an excellent collection of books, both fiction and reference. I didn’t sign up to get a card because a) I didn’t have a a hydro Quebec bill with me and b) the line up to get a card was about 100 people long. I think I will probably get a membership one weeknight when it will be less busy and take our some more French books there. Much needed and the sheer number of people at the library today shows just how badly Montreal has needed more library services. Now if they can get the whole system networked at make inter-library loans work, it will be great.