Three sentence movie reviews: Short Term 12

Sometimes when there is a lot of tremendous gushing about a movie* it scares me off and that’s one reason it took me so long to catch up with this fabulous film.  However, I should not have tarried, as this has an interesting setting (“short-term” care facility for troubled youth) and great female character in the lead as well as an excellent romantic interest.  It’s sweet without being saccharine and hard without being formidable and I highly recommend you search it out.

Cost: free from Library’s Hoopla
Where watched: at home

*The Filmspotting podcast I listen to could not say enough good things about this movie.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/short_term_twelve.html

An ambling type of day.

I had a few hours between appointments on a lovely Saturday, so I did something I rarely do.  I wandered about with no real goals in mind.  It was a beautiful day to do so.

This lilac impresses me with the amount of blooms it has managed to produce.

In Massachusetts I lived in what was called a Philadelphia-style house.  I just googled the term and results seem to indicate that this term is only used in the Boston area to descibe a two-family house.  At any rate, they were everywhere in the Boston area and I don’t often see them here.  So I took a picture of this one, which is not only a Philidelphia-style house, but said house seems to have managed to escape the sprucing up most houses have undergone in this neighborhood.

It was record store day.  This is a line to get into one of Portland’s record stores.

I ate my lunch here.  I did not try their delicious flan.  That term is an oxymoron in my book.  But every time I run across flan, I think of the Birthday Flan in one of the episodes of Friends and I smile.  That Birthday Flan got what it had coming to it.

Three sentence movie reviews: Girls Season 3

Season three continued the uneven plotting that appeared in previous seasons and as usual, I was quite happy to overlook this, because I enjoy the show.  The girls are getting older, (25) and do/do not seem to be settling in their lives.  Great performances from all made this required viewing and I’m hoping that I don’t have to wait another year for Season 4 to appear on DVD.

cost: free from library
where watched: at home

poster from: amazon

Postcards from Louisana, Texas, and three from Pennsylvania.

Regular commenter Heather sent me a passel of postcards from her travels.  Here they are.

This is from the stopover in New Orleans where the Wolf Pack rode one of these carriages through the French Quarter.

Everyone’s favorite Pennsylvania town: Intercourse.    Heather also lists other dubious names in the area:  Bird-in-hand, Blue Ball, Paradise, Virginville, Smoketown and Mountville.

Here’s a pretty one from Texas.  This is where they celebrated L’s fourth birthday.

I do very much enjoy unusual recipe postcards.  Perhaps someday I will make myself a shoo-fly pie.  I notice that this recipe card makes two pies. That’s a lot of shoe-fly pie.

I love this incredibly long laundry line.  I wonder if they hang their unmentionables somewhere else?

Three sentence movie reviews: 12 Years a Slave

This movie is filled with so much violence, both overt and casual, that I had to distract myself with something else to do while I was watching it.  Excellent performances all around (though I found Mr. Pitt to be annoyingly distracting–how convenient that one of the producers turns up as the savior) .  This wasn’t easy to watch, but worthwhile.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/twelve_years_a_slave.html

On the way to breakfast.

Here we have an example of how infill affects the neighborhood. In the foreground, we have two small cottages, typical of the street.  The two houses next door are infill, looming over their neighbors. You can also see one in the background.

Sometimes a lilac needs a little help from its next door neighbor.  The neighbor in question is a tall fir tree.

I love this re-do of a frame for an espalier.  New frame is made of 4x4s.  You can see the old 2×2 frame also.  The yard is so often about redoing.

Three sentence movie reviews: Agent Carter Season One

An excellent series that takes place in the post-war 1940s where Agent Peggy Carter has to fight not only crime, but sexism as she is one of the few OSS agents.  It was never explained to my exactly why a British citizen would be a member of the OSS, but that’s my only gripe about this.  And you get to enjoy a fine parade of 40s fashions.

Cost: I think Matt paid $3.00 for the first episode.  The rest we watched on Hulu.  Which has a lot of commercials.  Which was one of the reasons I stopped watching TV.
Where watched: at home with Matt.

poster from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3475734/