Two movies and John Barrowman on radio...
The radio thing of course was John Barrowman on the Elaine Paige show on BBC radio 2 for the second week in a row. Again, I loved it. I love the showtunes - that goes without saying - but I get a special fannish kick out of hearing John Barrowman and knowing I'm hearing him in real time.
While I listened, I made breakfast for maaseru and maaboroshi. Logan flew around and chewed on the curtains.
I saw two movies today:
Ghost Rider. I loved it. Granted, I've never read Ghost Rider, though I've read many stories in which Ghost Rider appeared in a team-up with some other Marvel hero. I don't think I ever heard of Carter Slade, played by Sam Elliott - though Pat, who's a little older than I am, remembered him well. This movie isn't deep or clever but it had a lot of heart, and made me laugh, and I enjoyed all the supernatural fantasy. I reacted rather as I did to Constantine: Loved the special effects and the action, loved the hero, and liked the tone of it all.
The Wedding Banquet. One of Ang Lee's earlier movies. I've been wanting to see this since it came out in 1993. I loved it. It reminded me of the comedy Mambo Italiano, which was about a gay guy in Montreal, with Italian-Canadian parents; and even more of Touch of Pink, which is about a gay guy in London, whose Pakistani mother comes to visit. More or less proving that parents are parents the world over. The plot? Wai-Tung is a successful gay man in New, living happily with his boyfriend Simon. His parents in Taiwan desperately want him to marry. Tired of their nagging, he agrees to marry a female friend who has been unable to get a green card and is on the point of being deported. The parents decide to come to New York for the wedding. The deception continues, totally disrupting Wai-Tung's life, as he tries to please his parents without losing Simon. It's a delightful movie, with a sense of realism about it - that kind of realism that touches on every parent who ever had expectations of their children, which means all parents everywhere. It's a lovely story.