After a few weeks of being too busy to watch many movies, I watched The Natural and Whiplash this week.

I had the opposite reaction. They both feel kind of generic, but Noah's seems like a world the writers know about, whereas Alison's feels like someone trying to extrapolate the details of a soapy small-town story. It doesn't help that I find Ruth Wilson's performance in the Alison segment to be overly self-conscious.

To be fair, her voice isn't really very strong. If you watch I Love Melvin or Athena, it becomes very obvious that she isn't much of a singer. She still gets a great song in Athena with "I Never Felt Better", but Hugh Martin seems to have tailored it to her limited range (it's almost entirely within an octave and…

It's impressive, but still kind of stupid, and not a patch on the Red Shoes ballet Kelly was clearly inspired by, not to mention making some really bad cuts (and re-orchestrations) to Gershwin's tone poem.

Apparently Stanley Donen admits the dance sequence is unecessary, too. It was really all Gene Kelly's thing, even though none of his "dream ballets" or whatever he calls them are much good.

I've decided to take the long route with Ozu (and Mike Leigh for that matter). I love their movies, but I particularly love watching them as different and more meditative in the middle of all of the other films I'm watching. I'm not sure if I'd feel as refreshed by them if I watched a bunch of them in a row.

This week I watched Night of the Comet, Gone Girl, and PTU. I recommend all three highly, and the reviews will probably be quite detailed.

This week I re-watched The Birdcage and Aladdin, and then watched Tangled and Night and the City.

I felt the clunky effects were part of the charm, and I thought most of it worked fairly well (especially Wang flipping around and Kurt Russell's "all in the reflexes" murder of Egg Shen). I'll admit the first raid was probably better overall, though.

Shostakovich No. 5 is probably my favourite symphony. I particularly love the third movement. I have the Kabalevsky concerto, but I haven't listened to it yet.

I really enjoyed Big Trouble in Little China when I saw it last week. One of my favourite things, which I forgot to mention last week, was how they didn't bother to explain much of anything to Kurt Russell. Most of the exposition boiled down to "It's a Chinese thing. You wouldn't understand."

This week I watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. I liked both of them quite a bit.

The best way to beat him was to play as Eddie, the cheapest character there is.

I'm in a similar thing with Ulysses. I've tried to read it once, and loved the 150 or so pages I did read, but for some reason I just couldn't finish it.

I had a go at listening to the Big musical after watching (and enjoying) the movie. I didn't make it all the way through, and was generally surprised that Maltby, Shire and Weidman would turn out something so mediocre.

This week I watched Big, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Pajama Game and Lili.

This week I watched The Best Years of Our Lives and Sabrina. I quite liked both of them.

Even with the rain, we should have won. We batted too conservatively until Anderson got in and actually started ticking things over.

This week I watched Margaret and re-watched Ratatouille.

I remember X-Men Legends 2 seeming like a bit of a step down from X-Men Legends for some reason. I liked the wider roster, but something about it didn't quite gel for me.