Movie Double Header Saturday

It's a rainy Sunday today. Alicia and I slept in to compensate for waking up early yesterday. But Saturday went well. Alicia got to cross two items off her "I Want To Do" list. We saw two movies, and ate at a restaurant named the Spotted Pig.

First movie we saw was Wall-E, the 11am showing. It was great. Pixar has had a great streak with me. I was really excited for Ratatouille last year, and it lived up to my expectations. I wasn't terribly excited for Wall-E, but it was fantastic. It was different style of movie, as Wall-E didn't speak much at all. Plus, there were real live human footage in the movie. But it was the most beautiful one yet. The shots of outer space, the shots of the pretty robots, it was very well done. Highly recommend. A. O. Scott of the New York Times put it very well, "The first 40 minutes or so ... is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in."

After the movie let out, we wandered from 2nd ave to 8th ave to a restaurant named The Spotted Pig. Alicia had wanted to go for awhile, as they are a fancy restaurant with a casual atmosphere. What finally made me excited for the place was seeing its chef on Iron Chef. She fought against Bobby Flay about two weeks back. She lost, but it was really cool realizing we could go to a restaurant whose chef was on Iron Chef.

The food was great. It was Saturday around noon, so of course brunch was served. Alicia ordered Bacon Hash with Poached Eggs, I had a Prosciutto tart with two words I can't remember. Alicia's was the fanciest, greasiest breakfast food I'd ever tasted. I wanted it too, but we couldn't order the same thing at a new restaurant: variety was needed! Mine was surprisingly great. The tart had prosciutto on top (a dried ham), with green leafy on top of that and some sort of cheese or cream in the center. It was very different (I'm not much of a tart man normally), but a great adventure. I'd order it again if I didn't want that bacon hash Alicia had so much.

After brunch, we decided it was still early enough to see another movie. Alicia had been wanting to see Wanted, and I'd worked myself up to wanting to see it too. I had prepared myself for a ridiculous story with cool shooting action.

It was ridiculous, but I was disappointed with the action. I thought it had more whining than action. Alicia liked it, I thought it fell somewhere in the 40% to 50% percentile of movies I've seen, 0% being the worst, 100% being the best. It wasn't awful, but both of us agreed we didn't like being called sheep because we aren't assassins. And I'm convinced there are several plot holes. Granted, when you have bullets that are curving like bowling balls, not everything should add up. But I'm was just confused about some of the characters. Oh well!

Today, I'm planning for my summer class, which starts next Monday, 7/7. Because it has a different class schedule than a normal Fall/Spring class, I've got more leeway in how I want to teach it. So I've been brainstorming, and I'm writing my notes today.

Hope the weather is going well there. When I started this post, it was thunderstorming, but now it is just a light rain. Sun tomorrow!