"Will not break! Will not --- it broke."

You know how much movies mean to me. Don't you? Come on - if you've read any of my posts or comments then you know that I don't have an original thought in my head, and that everything that comes out of my mouth (or keyboard) is a line from a movie. I think I'm annoyingly obsessed with movies.

And now my DVD player is broken.

Superstar broke it. The tray thingey won't close. I can hear the mechanism moving around in there, but something's in the way. Atleast the VCR side still works, right? So, let's see...I can watch: What About Bob?. Or Raising Arizona, or 101 Dalmatas (Espanol),or The Wiggles, or Fletch ("Provo, Spain?").

I watched 'Million Dollar Baby' last night. Did you see it? What did you think of it? I want to like Clint Eastwood, really, I do, but I hadn't seen him in anything that I particularly liked. I liked his performance in this, though. I was a bit skeptical when he half-growled, half-whispered, through clenched teeth, "I don't train girls," and then, even worse, "Girlie, tough ain't enough." Duh. But, at movie's end, I was okay with him.

Last weekend, I rented 'Guess Who?' and 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' I liked the modern one. I like Bernie Mac. Now, as for the Classic: you cannot beat a performance done by Sidney Poitier. Can't. But that girl, who plays opposite...well, I can't stand to watch stage actors on screen. Makes my skin crawl.

Also watched 'The Phantom of the Opera." From about the age of 10 until about 17, I had spent hours equalling weeks, if not months, listening to the original Broadway Cast recording of this - the one with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. The music had been etched in my memory, yet it had been years since I had heard any of the songs. My freshman year of high school, we took a trip to see this show at the Pantages Theatre in Toronto which, in 1989 (I think) re-opened having been re-finished, re-constructed, what-have-you, specifically for this show. Unbelievable. Took my breath away. Old Lady in front of me started humming along to 'Music of the Night' (aka, 'School Days'), though. Could have done without that. Darin really liked the movie version, although at one point jokingly asked, when Raoul came on screen, "So...is that Jean Valjean?"

The thing about watching the Phantom movie was that li'l ~j. was fixated, glued, could not and would not be torn away. I like to think that somehow she was maybe hanging around me in my younger years while I spent all that time with this music, and maybe it had been etched in her, too, and that's why she loves it so much.

Have you seen any good movies lately?