Well, I was overwhelmed with the idea of hand-coding and posting anything over at my regular site right now, especially as there's about to be some upheaval with the Spies servers. So I appreciate your patience in navigating the waters of Diaryland, at least for now. I know you miss the little pies. I do too!

I have a lot of catch-up entries to write. I crammed a ridiculous amount of socializing and movie viewing and grasshopper eating and midnight kissing and present opening and waterlogged driving into my one-week holiday vacation.

The first order of business may be writing about the movies, though. I was in Los Angeles for a week and saw eleven movies! And I still feel like I'm behind. What with Oscar season approaching, I still need to see Kinsey and apparently that dumb-looking boxing movie. (My friend at work said, "I have a two-word review for you. Lifetime movie.")

In order from best to worst, these are the movies I saw on my vacation (the only spoiler in here, I think, is for Finding Neverland:

• Bad Education (Gael Garcia Bernal is... incredible. Not a depressing "good-for-you" type of movie. Kind of noir-ish. Wonderful.)

• Closer (The dialogue and performances are both top-notch. I expected less, I think. I also expected to hate the characters more, but didn't, at all. Really an excellent movie. Also, Jude Law is hot.)

• The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (The previews made it seem like it didn't quite gel, or was over-the-top wacky. That's a little true, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it anyway. Also, points for Cate Blanchett.)

• Finding Neverland (It was one of two movies that I saw with the oh-so-annoying "someone coughs in the first reel and you know they'll be dead by the end of the movie" plotline. But Kate Winslet and Johnny Depp are incredible; you can't go wrong. I saw a review of this movie that said it captured the magic of J.M. Barrie, but didn't create any magic of its own. I think that's exactly right.)

• A Series of Unfortunate Events (I saw this movie with three people whose names are in the credits, so that was fun. It was okay. Entertaining. I feel sort of neutral about it.)

• Shaun of the Dead (I didn't really understand a lot of the zombie-movie conventions, and it wasn't as hilarious as everyone made it out to be, but it was entertaining enough.)

• The Aviator (Too long, I didn't find DiCaprio's performance to really be all that. I felt sad for Hughes but didn't really sympathize with him. Cate Blanchett did such an amazing job with Katharine Hepburn, however. Like Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, here's a performance worth seeing an overly long Scorsese movie with problematic storytelling for. Except that Blanchett is in this one less.)

• De-Lovely (Shut up, Jonathan Pryce. Was this a collection of Cole Porter's worst songs?)

• The Phantom of the Opera (Just cheesy and ugh. Ian was like "What was your first clue that it would be bad? The fact that you bought a ticket for it? The words 'Andrew Lloyd Webber'?" If you're going to make a movie musical, you might not want to fuck up the lip synching in every single song. Just a little advice there.)

I wonder what I'm missing; I was sure I had seen eleven movies. Oh, I did watch my Christmas present, the extended edition of Return of the King which doesn't really count, I guess. I fast-forwarded through all the spider parts. I had a lot of very strong opinions about stuff that strengthened the movies and stuff that I was glad was left out of the theatrical release, but I can only remember one thing so far. I liked the ships pulling up in the theatrical release and the ghost army streaming out of the ships because it felt like a big surprise. The extended release shows the attack of the ghost army twice, and the second time is no longer a surprise because you already know they're on the ships.

Maybe I saw ten movies, because I am looking at my list and don't have any other ones written down. Hmm. Well, this weekend I saw Maria Full of Grace. The lead actor was indeed very good and she is lovely, but the movie didn't do much for me. I liked Traffic much better, as far as movies about the drug trade go.

Aaah, I feel better, finally having written about that. Now I just have to write about the rest of my trip. And New Year's resolutions. Thanks, Diaryland!