Thoughts: 31-May-2010

I just read a terrible review of Sex and the City 2 on rogerebert.com. I guess I should not have loved it as much as I did. I agree that the film was over the top, but that was the show's premise. As I said yesterday, if you are a fan of the show like I am, you will love this movie.

Sports Update.

Boston Red Sox: They beat the Royals yesterday 8-1 with a great Jon Lester pitching performance. So they split the series and have today off, before they start a three game home series with the Oakland Athletics.

NCAA: Big 12 is going to talk about conference realignment at their upcoming annual meeting. I guess that Nebraska and Missouri are going to consider a switch to the Big Ten if an offer is made. Big 12 may be trying to get their wayward members back in line.

Eleventh Hour (British version): I watched on DVD the first two episodes of this series which starred Patrick Stewart as Ian Hood (Rufus Sewell played John Hood in the American version). Both episodes were remade in the American version of the show, the British episodes were about 23 minutes longer. Pretty well done and makes me want to watch my DVD set of Sewell's show. A

I mentioned some guilty pleasures yesterday. Charlie Chan movies were regularly broadcast on local Harrisburg TV stations when I was growing up. They even had a Charlie Chan theater every Saturday that my dad and I would watch. Then they kind of faded from being shown on TV, AMC when they used to show old movies without commercial interruption would do Charlie Chan marathons. every couple of months, those made my day. TCM got the rights to the films but decided not to show them because of complaints regarding racial issues with the portrayal of Asians in this film. Actually, African Americans were the ones who had stuff to complain about, those portrayals are really bad, the Chinese were a lot more respectfully treated in these films. At least now these films have been coming out in DVD sets, so I can again watch them at my leisure.

Some debate about the Warner Oland-Sidney Toler-Roland Winters portrayals of Chan. I like both Oland and Toler's work on the series, my favorite Chan is one that Toler did, "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum". I have never seen any of the Winters' Chans, but a couple are going to be released with the next DVD set which is coming out this week. I cannot wait.

Oh well.