Surviving the Media Meltdown

I made it through my Day of Much Media and survived.  In fact, everything was terrific all around.

I'll get into far-more in-depth comments about Harmony, but the short version is that it was very good.  A few things seemed familiar, but I can't specifically make many comparisons to this production and the one 15 years ago in San Diego.  It's still not a classic, finished product -- but it's awfully well done, and the audience was full and very enthusiastic.  More later.

Then I drove straight to the Writers Guild Theater, where they had two screenings back-to-back.  The first was Veronica Mars, which I quite enjoyed, despite only having watched the TV series just once or twice, and that because friends directed episodes.  But the film makes it easy to get up to speed, the cast is good -- especially Kristin Bell (who I adore on general principle, and she clearly loves playing Veronica who is basically her signature role), and Enrico Colantoni was terrific as her father.  There are a few plot holes, and it gets a little convoluted, but the script is smart, there are some very funny lines throughout, and it was solidly done. 

The movie that followed was Bad Words -- which I absolutely loved, to my surprise.  It's a crude, rude movie about a highly unlikeable guy, and they play it for all it's worth.  Jason Bateman (who also directed) is a 40-year-old guy out to win the national spelling bee, having determined that the rules only reference school grade for the contestants, not their age.  He refuses to explain his reason for entering, and is blunt and obnoxious all the way through.  What I appreciated is straightforward they play everything, as reasonably-realistic as possible (given the ludicrousness of the situation.)  Usually I don't like crude, but this is so unabashed that I admired the effort, and found too that there were some laugh-out-loud sequences.  Also, there are a couple of good plot twists that keep it from just being a one-joke film -- though that one-joke is a hoot.  All-in-all, a smart, well-done movie -- albeit one that's really rude.

And that left returning home finally at 9:45 PM and watching the recording I made of UCLA's tournament basketball game, which had a happy ending, as they won by 20 points.  This might be as far as they go, since their next game is against Florida, who many experts pick to win the championship, so we'll take the wins when we can get them.  At least they made it to the Sweet 16.  Thank goodness for fast-forwarding -- I was able to get through the game and finish by around 11 PM -- after having left the homestead this morning at 11:30 AM.

And now it's time to rest my weary eyes...