Movie and Book Catch-Up

I haven't been very good about writing in here about my progress on watching the Academy Award Best Picture winners and on reading 10 Pulitzer Prize winners. At this point, knowing myself as I do, I won't be writing an update about the ones I never wrote about, so just know that I've watched a couple more movies than I've written about, and I've read one more book than I've written about. :)

In an effort to be better about this, though, I will say that my next Pulitzer Prize winning book is on hold for me at the library, so I'll be starting that soon. I chose Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which won in 2003. It looks like an interesting book, and I look forward to reading it.

As for the movies, Netflix is sending me All Quiet on the Western Front, so I'll have that tomorrow. And J and I watched Milk the other night. That's not a winner, but it is a current nominee, and I'm going to watch all the current movies that are nominated for Best Picture until my 1001 days are over.

Milk was a very interesting movie. Sean Penn did a great job, I can see why he won the Oscar for Best Actor. What surprised me is that this fight for gay rights has been going on for this long. I was only a small child for most of the time that this movie was set in, so I had no idea of the fight that was going on even back in the early 70s. It was interesting, though, to see some of the same arguments used from people who were trying to keep gay people from getting equal rights back then and in the present. Those arguments didn't make sense in 1972, and they don't make sense now, and yet they're still being spouted by people who think letting gay people get married and be equal in every way is going to hurt heterosexuals, or that it will go against their idea of God. Ugh. People just make me sick, they really do.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into that here, I just wanted to say that I was surprised by the fact that this fight was going on back then, and is still going on now. It seems like we'd have wisened up by now, you know?

This was a very good movie. I enjoyed watching it. It's not one I feel the need to own, but I enjoyed it. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

I had taken a break from reading the Pulitzer Prize winners, and watching the Oscar winners. It feels good to get back to them. I really can't wait, especially, to catch up on all the movies, and to be able to say that I have watched them all. Well, all except the ones that aren't on DVD (there are still a couple of the early ones).

Boring movie/book entry over. Resume normal activities. :)