It's been awhile since my last update! Between the Journalscape outages and our weekend galavanting, I haven't been able to update as much as I would've liked.

This past weekend we rented a couple of movies (Terminator 3 and North by Northwest), and on Sunday we visited an outlet mall, did some shopping, and then went to dinner at a nearby restaurant to celebrate Carrie's upcoming birthday. That restaurant actually has lamb on the menu! Joy of joys! This is one of the things I miss that is available in abundance in Australia. It's so hard to find lamb here in the US, and as a bonus the lamb chops were a decent size and there were lots of them! Mmmmm...

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I was a little leery of Terminator 3 from what I'd heard of it, including reports that the ending was a big letdown. I was pleasantly surprised! The acting is merely okay and the massive destruction often implausible, but this is a Terminator movie, people - it's all about the action!

The action scenes topped the previous two movies, in my opinion, and I thought the ending worked very well. I don't see how people could find it disappointing when the clues are there throughout the whole movie (starting with the title).

I think it fits in well with the other two movies in the trilogy - I only hope they don't start churning out endless sequels (unlikely since Arnie's recent appointment as Governator of California...).

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I've been meaning to see North by Northwest for awhile now. I enjoy a good Hitchcock movie, and this one was no exception. No wonder it's currently number 19 in the Internet Movie Database top-250 movies!

Although I prefer Jimmy Stewart to Cary Grant, Grant still did an excellent job as Roger Thornhill, an advertising exec mistaken as a spy. The other actors did a sterling job also. I was surprised to see a much younger Martin Landau than I'd seen in the past, in other movies and his X-Files appearances.

The cinematography was gorgeous and even the staged scenes (watch the DVD documentary for these) were convincing. The colours and clarity are amazing for a film that was made in 1959, and the DVD format really shows how much detail there is.

The mystery slowly unravels as Grant journeys across the country in pursuit of the elusive Mr. Kaplan. All the while he's trying to avoid the attention of the authorities and the people who are determined to kill him. Despite the identity of the real spy being fairly obvious early on, the various plot convolutions still kept things interesting.

If set in present-day, many of the events that take place in the movie would be highly unlikely given advances in technology and beefed-up security. Considering when the movie was made, it was plausible enough for me to maintain suspension of disbelief, and after the first half-hour I was hooked!

If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favour and check it out! North by Northwest is one of Hitchcock's best.

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There's nothing much new on the reading or writing front. I'm still jotting down story ideas and still reading Wolves of the Calla. I better get back to it!